Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13-year-old Israeli-American child, was sleeping soundly in her bed last Thursday when 17-year-old Muhammad Tarayrah broke into her home in Kiryat Arba, Israel, proceeded to her bedroom, and repeatedly stabbed the life out of her. This heinous desecration of life was immediately celebrated by the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, proclaiming the neutralized murderer a “martyr.” Tarayrah’s mother expressed pride in her son, describing him as a hero.
Seddique Mateen, the father of Omar Mateen, is a resident of Port St. Lucie, Florida. Hours before his son slaughtered 49 people in Orlando, Seddique, of Afghan ancestry, posted a pro-Taliban video on Facebook. On June 13, the day after his son committed the massacre, Seddique posted on Facebook,“God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality.”
{mosads}Could there possibly be an ideological connection between these acts of atrocity – the teachings of the proud mother and the rants of the homophobic father? Could it be that these parents have been reading from same 1,400-year-old “playbook” of Islamist subjugation?
Might we speculate, from the same gruesome pattern of butchery found at the scene of similar bloodbaths worldwide, that the same “playbook” has been followed to breed a multi-tentacled army of predatory monsters?
Since 9/11, radical Islam has claimed over 28,000 attacks across the globe. Nevertheless, the U.S. government maintains two decades’ worth of policy delirium that refuses to name radical Islam as the cause.
By referring to the Orlando shooter as a “deranged individual,” President Obama once again obscured the obvious Islamic fingerprint of Nidal Hasan, infamous perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre in 2009. In that instance, despite Hasan’s cries of “Allahu Akbar,” our president insisted on reframing the barbaric execution of 13 unarmed soldiers ed as a case of “workplace violence.”
Even when repeated events of carnage have occurred on our doorstep, we continue to allow this fantasy to prevail, pretending that increased drone strikes and other military tactics (ISIS body counts) alone will somehow counteract the Islamist infrastructure.
To the contrary, our present policy of uncoupling jihadist violence from its 1,400-year-old Islamic roots has blinded us to the institutional and cultural support that has enabled the spread of Islamist doctrine.
Instead of scrubbing the connection between Islam and the many obvious trademarks of jihadist carnage, the president should mention that more practicing Muslims have been slaughtered and displaced at the hands of radical Islam than by any other culture, creed, or religion. A policy that firmly confronts radical Islamist doctrine would help the majority of Muslims, who have in fact rejected a Sharia-compliant lifestyle, to bond with other peoples who have made the same choice. If the majority of Muslims reject the imposition of Sharia law, then an unequivocal stand against the totalitarian grip of Sharia law cannot be viewed as an attack on the religion of Islam. In fact, it is only by non-Muslims leading the charge that Muslims will feel secure enough to coalesce in visible opposition. It is time to end the 1,400-year-old myth that has allowed political Islamism to masquerade as a legitimate religion.
We do not yet have a strategy to deal with this globally metastasizing cancer. Defeating ISIS is merely a tactic. Only a universal strategy will serve to put this cancer into remission. The history of all major struggles demonstrates that until we recognize and explicitly identify the enemy’s ideology, creating an effective strategy will not be possible.
Andrew Lappin is a Chicago-based redeveloper and contributor to the Haym Salomon Center, a news and public policy group. Lappin serves on the board of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.