Readers who thought that perhaps Viewpoint was overstating the case somewhat when we expressed our concern that Europe is hurtling toward a religious civil war might wish to check out a pair of AP articles in the Washington Times. The first is titled Netherlands Braces For 'Jihad' and the second covers some of the same ground but provides a little more detail.
Europe, like the United States and Israel is confronted with an implacable enemy which believes that it is doing the will of God by destroying Western civilization. Those who see the war in Iraq as disconnected from the war against Islamic terror do not see things the way the Islamo-fascists do. For them there is only global jihad. They do not think in terms of national boundaries which are, in any event, artificial constructs imposed upon them in a time of weakness by the infidel nations of the West. Amsterdam and Fallujah, Madrid and New York are just different theaters in the global war that all Muslims everywhere are obligated to wage against the infidels.
One of the shortcomings of Senator Kerry's candidacy for the presidency was that he showed no indication that he grasped this crucial fact. His insistence that the war in Iraq is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time reinforces the impressison that he is oblivious to the Islamic threat to the West. He seemed to think that terrorism is merely the product of difficult or unjust economic "root causes", and that the way to end terror was to negotiate better living conditions for poor Muslims. This would reduce terrorism to the level of a "nuisance". The Senator's plan, of course, is as naive as Neville Chamberlain thinking he could negotiate peace with Adolf Hitler by conceding Czechoslovakia.
As Bernard Lewis, perhaps the foremost scholar on Islam today, reminds us, for Muslims there is only Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam in which Muslim law prevails and Dar al-Harb, the House of War, which is the rest of the world. In Dar al-Harb jihad will continue, interrupted only by temporary truces, until all the world either adopts Islam or submits to Muslim rule.
The Netherlands has long been regarded as one of the most tolerant of nations. It will be instructive to see how far their tolerance can be stretched.
