Muslims Must Lead the War on Terror: And rise up soon

Yesterday’s headlines rang with the not-so-profound revelation that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had now declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. The world heard about al-Zarqawi’s call for “unity against the enemies of Islam”. He reported communicating with bin Laden and joining the strategy of al-Qaida with that of his own fascist “Tawhid and Jihad.” The real question is who actually believes this to be a new revelation? This coverage yesterday appears to lend credence to the fact that much of the media establishment remained under gross denial of the obvious link between the Iraq war, al-Qaida, and Islamo-fascist terror. The denial cannot last much longer. It is only a matter of time. The terrorists will remain bent on explicitly proving their associations no matter how slow the world coverage is on the uptake. It is going to become increasingly difficult for contrarians to the Iraq war to revel in the denial of linkage as al-Zarqawi and his fellow thugs make their associations clear and their obsession with Operation Iraqi Freedom clear for all to note. The Islamo-fascists came to us on 9/11 on the heels of Clinton’s foreign policy. We have now taken the fight to them in Iraq and Iraq seems to be infested with them. As Dennis Prager noted last week, “what would Zarqawi be doing today if he weren’t in Iraq today?” He is the head of a snake that has long been waiting to poison America. Taking the war to him and al-Qaida to liberate Islam from the true enemies of Islam and freedom will prove in the future to be a prescient foreign policy approach. Similarly, today will most likely yield little verbal responses from international Muslim leaders about al-Zarqawi himself being the greatest enemy of Islam. Perhaps someday soon, whether by ‘fatwa’ or a more modern pronouncement of a call to action of the moderate faithful, Muslims worldwide will declare their own clear disgust and intentions to lead the war against al-Qaida, al-Zarqawi, and their ilk – the real enemies of Islam. For until they do, the nauseating religious pronouncements of crazed zealots like al-Zarqawi will continue to be tacitly accepted by the world media on face value without criticism. Without massive worldwide immediate Muslim response and calls of action to defeat al-Zarqawi, he and al-Qaida will continue in their hijacking of the faith. A few countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are beginning to “get it.” In the setting of autocratic regimes in the absence of reform their motives will remain questionable, but time will reveal what role moderate Muslims will take in stepping up to the plate to defeat their own greatest enemy, the real enemies of Islam – Islamofascists. This column can also be found at this link at the Arizona Republic.