Tony Blankley begins The West’s Last Chance by imagining a scene from 2008 in which a Republican presidential candidate, avid for Muslim votes, declares:
“It’s time for sharia in America.” He continues: “There are only a handful of terrorists. Our challenge is to reduce that number, not expand it. We’ve been in the Muslims’ faces for too long. Of course, all Americans must be law-abiding. But for our Muslim citizens, let the law they abide by be the peaceful law of sharia. Sharia is a friend of strong family values, and therefore of strong American values.”
Inconceivable? Unfortunately not. The prospect of post-Saddam Iraq emerging as a sharia state has evidently provoked little concern in Washington. Journalist and Islamic apologist Stephen Schwartz has even asserted that “in reality, the concept that lawmaking should not conflict with Islam in a Muslim country is an entirely uncontroversial principle established in many moderate Muslim states.”
Left unmentioned is the widespread persecution of Christians in Iraq, not only by proponents of sharia, but on sharia grounds: selling alcohol in violation of sharia prohibitions for subservient non-Muslim dhimmis, women going out in public with heads uncovered, etc.
The prevailing and never-to-be-questioned dogma that Islam is a religion of peace leads to the concomitant assumption that the sharia, Islamic law, is essentially benign. No official notice can be taken of its institutionalized oppression of non-Muslims and women, its draconian punishments, its disapproval of so much that is central to human experience, even music.
Jihad terrorists around the world are, by their own account, committing violence in order to institute sharia governments first in the Muslim world and then over the entire globe. But this agenda is not advancing by violence alone. The official refusal to acknowledge the Western world is facing an Islamic jihad onslaught that is pressing forward through both violent and peaceful means has allowed that jihad to gain a solid foothold in Western Europe.
Blankley, the Washington Times editorial page editor, details how political correctness and multiculturalism have been the best friends of jihad in Europe. He reminds us that in January 2005, British jihad leader Omar Bakri Muhammad declared: “I believe that the whole of Britain has become Dar al-Harb [land of war]. In such a state the kuffar [non-believer] has no sanctity for their own life and property.”
On July 7, the British reaped the bitter fruit of allowing this kind of rhetoric to be preached unchallenged among British Muslims for years. As Blankley reveals in this book, Britain is relatively more aware and willing to stand up to the jihad than many other European countries.
The West’s Last Chance (Regnery—a HUMAN EVENTS sister company) is sobering proof that it is long past time for European and American politicians to abandon politics as usual—above all, the pandering for votes that he lampoons in his 2008 scenario, which hits uncomfortably close to home given the access to the White House that Muslims now in jail (Abdurrahman Alamoudi) and on trial (Sami Al-Arian) for terrorism-related offenses once enjoyed.
The Bush Administration’s pressure on Israel to withdraw from Gaza and follow up that withdrawal with more concessions is just the latest indication there is still little or no understanding in Washington of the jihad agenda and how to counter it. Will it take the transformation of Europe into a staging ground for international terrorism to wake up the solons of Foggy Bottom? An easier way would be for them to study Blankley’s book carefully, and heed its warnings.
