Note from Robert Spencer:
Of course, we have this from human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar: "None of the people on this list are terrorists. They are ordinary people who are being persecuted." Once again, it would be more credible if Muslim activists could admit to the existence of at least one Islamic terrorist somewhere in the world. Otherwise, this sort of thing just becomes part of the background noise whenever arrests or law-enforcement efforts are made. From The Scotsman, with thanks to Teri

Why is this not a detail but significant? One forgets thatBin Laden's goal is not terrorism; that is a mere tactic; his goal is to ensure that the conditions for the spread of Islam across the globe (not all at once, of course -- Western Europe most susceptible to Da'wa, black Africa most susceptible to outright force, East Asia hardly susceptible at all to either) are created.

For Bin Laden, as for Tariq Ramadan (just given a three-year professorship at Notre Dame, where his careful attempt to separate Christianity from its roots in Judaism can proceed, funded by American Christian donors to a 501(c)(3) non-profit, without much hindrance, as he attempts to conduct his sly Da'wa.

These articles on terrorists are important, but they should not obscure the larger question. Islam is a danger and a failure. Though left-wing critics such as Hitchens like to talk about "Islamofascism" -- as if this were simply an illegitimate mutant of Islamic doctrine -- Islam itself is profoundly akin to Fascism in many ways. In this connection, one ought to read, to familiarize oneself with, and to distribute to those capable of thought, the essay by Ibn Warraq on "Islam, the Middle East, and Fascism" (simply google "Ibn Warraq" "Islam" and "Fascism" simultaneously),

Terrorism gets the attention. Da'wa, and demographic conquest from within Western Europe and ultimately North America (the glittering prize) is the real threat. If Islam is not understood, or if those who are listened to belong to the small army of apologists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, so that a real understanding is prevented (it is extraordinary that most of those in whose hands the teaching of undergraduates about Islam has been entrusted are themselves such apologists; their presentation of the matter is slyly designed to win over, and misinform, ignorant undergraduates, taught to trust their professors, and unwilling to believe that wholesale propaganzing can be taking place -- but it is, and right under the negligent eyes of alumni, parents, and of course the fearful administrations, whose faculty deans and presidents do not believe they know enough about Islam, to be able to judge for themselves, and in any case are fearful of getting into that hornets' nest.

It is as if, in 1939, all those teaching international relations and European history were presentable proponents of the idea that Germans had been "terribly humiliated" by World War I, that the English in particular had caused the Weimar Republic unemployment, that Germans deserved whatever Lebensraum they demanded, and that HItler wanted peace, peace, only peace -- and that just as today Tariq Ramadan tells us soothingly that all that ails modern Western man can be successfully treated by the "reversion" to Islam -- indeed, as he was born in the WEst, and vastly prefers the West (without realizing that what is good about the West comes precisely out of its Judeo-Christian civilization, and would not, for one minute, survive under Islam -- much less have been produced in a Muslim world), he likes to insist that the real heart of Islam will be that West, and not the Middle East that, secretly, he cannot bear, and cannot admit to himself why he cannot bear it (Islam itself is the problem).

But that is what is happening, and the only way to change things is the power of the purse -- alumni must withhold contributions until university administrations begin, with the help of students, to monitor what is being fed to students in courses relative to Islam, what books they read, what is said in class; students should be permitted to tape-record any class -- well, let those class tapes be listened to. If anyone shrieks about "academic free speech" then one can simply raise, as a matter of national security, the deliberate and systematic use of the classroom for sly propaganda. Let the American Association of University Professors, like the ACLU, take on the wrong issue. Let the professors be made to worry that their refusal to examine the real tenets of Islam will now be subject to review, and one can even provide a list of ten essential matters that can be examined: Jihad, dhimmitude, the division of the world between dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb, the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, the treatment of apostates under Islam, the "Jizya" and all other legal disabilities imposed on non-Muslims (including those who were permited to be treated as "honorary" ahl al-Kitab, Zoroastrians and Hindus -- who were more valuable as live dhimmis paying to support their Muslim conquerors), the treatment of women (and here the work done by Azam Kamquian and others should be available to students), the ability of Islam to change, or to be re-interepreted; the life of Muhammad in all of its detail (Aisha, the slaughter of the Bani Qurayza, everything -- not simply the wonderful "pax Islamica" he supposedly brought to he warring tribes of the Arabian peninsula; recent studies in the origins of Islam (Wansbrough, Crone, Cook, Luxenberg, and so on); Islam and human rights (here the Iranian exiles, such as Reza Afshari, are unanwersable and unanswered).

In other words, the days when the study of Islam were to be relegated to those practicing taqiyya or kitman, some not out of maliciousness but out of their own filial piety, or even at times ignorance, have to go. Back to the days of Arthur Jeffery, Margoliouth, Joseph Schacht, and all the great scholars of Islam who, in the current environment, would never last in academic life, and would be run out town on a rail. Real scholarship now has to be found, in this field, outside the regular departments, among those somehow able to find support.

It can be done. It must be done. The time for nonsense and lies is over.