By Vijay Ayyagari

To paraphrase Karl Marx, a specter is haunting the world… the specter of Universal Jihad. From New Delhi to New York, Moscow to Madrid, Bali to Bagdad, cosmopolitan cities the world over have experienced terror, mass murders and destruction by Universal Jihadists.

Universal Jihadists demand theological, racial, political and cultural supremacy - Islamic imperialism - over the rest of the world. This conflict is between the cult of Islam and western jurisprudence. In Islam, belief and politics are inseparable. The Quran is not only the book for Muslims; it is also a political doctrine that clearly spells out how Muslims must deal with non-believers.

Islam's message is limited to its believers. Islam has no universal message. Literal Islam is the eternal aggressor that pretends to be the perennial victim. The only choice that non-believers have, according to Islamic doctrine, is to convert, or submit and become dhimmis - subjugated under Islamic restrictions - or be annihilated.

Our war is for intellectual freedom and the alternative is unconditional surrender of the mind. Islamic civilization is an oxymoron. Islamic civilization is the conglomeration of the civilizations of conquered nations. For example, in mathematics, the so-called Arabic numeral system and algebra are of Hindu heritage. Most ostensible Arab scholars were Assyrian Christians, Sephardic Jews, Zoroastrian Persians, or Hindu and Buddhist Indians who had been forcibly converted and were usually only one or two generations away from their original traditions.

Demographic conquest is the most permanent form of conquest. The Indian state of Kashmir, for example, was a Hindu majority state for thousands of years. Through invasion, forcible evacuation and conversion lasting centuries, Kashmir became a Muslim majority state, leading to an armed insurgent conflict by separatist Muslims seeking to impose Sharia law. Pakistan, one of the modern day sponsors of Islamic terrorism, threatens to use nuclear weapons against India to take Kashmir. The jihadi struggle in Kashmir is a grand theological rehearsal. The ultimate goal of Muslim Pakistan is the total conquest and Islamization of a divided and secular India.

Terrorists are products of ideologies and not vice-versa. Unless we confront the ideology logically and persistently our efforts are futile. However, in the land of the brave and the home of the free we choke on the truth. Our culture is drowning in the growing cesspool of political correctness. The liberal left in the United States and Europe have become apologists for Islam. They say that the terrorist attacks are the consequence of America's foreign policy in the Middle East and its unconditional support for Israel rather than the continuation of 1,400 years of jihad. The left fails to understand the fact that there are few Americans or Jews in India, Thailand, The Philippines, Bali, Nigeria, Sudan, Russia and host of other countries where Islam has been waging a relentless campaign of terror.

The Left, by its silence on the issue of Islam, has betrayed its own ideals. The fight against Political Islam should have been led by the liberal intellectuals in our universities, but instead they support a seventh century totalitarian ideology that negates all forms of rational thinking, intellectual pursuit, and pluralism - the very ideals which are central to the philosophy of the left. Liberals have become the lackeys of Islamic imperialism in their words and deeds. They fail to mention the 1,400 years of Jihadists' terror in this world. How can we cry for the genocide in Darfur and ignore the cause?

The Bush Administration, in its response to the September 11 attacks, has been waging a War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq for five years, and still a meaningful and lasting victory seems elusive. Its foreign policy lacks coherent and effective strategic goals - goals which should include absolute and unconditional surrender of the apologists of Universal Jihad.

The protracted war in Iraq and other policies of the Bush Administration sends a schizophrenic message to the Islamic world. The Bush administration opposes Wahabis, Al-Qaida and Bin-Laden. But it supports Saudi Arabia, the source of the Wahabi doctrine. It supports Sunni Pakistan, calling it key ally against war on terror, and opposes Sunni Taliban which is the creation of Pakistani intelligence services. It opposes the Iranian regime of Shiite Ayatollahs and at the same time it supports the Iraqi Shiite-led government. The administration opposes Sunnis in Iraq and supports Sunnis in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Kuwait.

This administration's myopia minimizes the effectiveness of our military making it incapable of distinguishing a friend from a foe. George Bush is guilty of conducting a defensive war. He wants to protect the United States from terrorists, but fails to understand that terrorists are the product of their philosophical views and he fails to attack their philosophy which is Universal Jihad.

The progenitors of Universal Jihad are Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia – the true Axis of Evil.
 

 "Islam Reviewed" by M. Ali