The true face of Islam

Victor Davis Hanson's website has published a review, by Bruce Thornton, of Ephraim Karsh's Islamic Imperialism. A History. It is a long and interesting review. I recommend reading all of it, but here is the part which I found most interesting:

Osama bin Laden must be placed in this long, continuous tradition of Islamic imperialist ambitions sanctified by the faith's universalistic pretensions. His declaration of jihad against a United States, spurred as well by his reading of America's spiritual corruption as evidenced by its ignominious retreat from Somalia in 1993, is not, as Karsh notes, a "novelty": "Declaring a holy war against the infidel has been a standard practice of countless imperial rulers and aspirants since the rise of Islam. Nor does bin Laden's perception of jihad as a predominantly military effort to facilitate the creation of the worldwide Islamic umma differ in any way from traditional Islamic thinking." The difference is that "military effort" now necessarily consists of attacks by terrorists rather than armies. In short, bin Laden has not "highjacked" or "distorted" Islam, as Islamic propagandists and Western apologists for jihad have it, but rather has acted consistently with its traditional beliefs.

I have said this before on this blog. The reason that those who wish to "reform" Islam will have a hard time is that the Islamofascists are accurately interpreting the Koran and faithfully following the example of Mohammed.

This conclusion should be sobering to us all, but particularly to Europeans who have, through a neurotic nexus of spiritual exhaustion, colonial guilt, and multicultural sentimentalism, allowed Muslim immigrants to preach a virulent hatred of the West in schools and mosques frequently subsidized by state welfare payments. The goal of Islamic global triumph "need not necessarily be pursued by the sword; it can be achieved through demographic growth and steady conversion of the local populations."

I believe that this is a big part of the reason that Europe is lost. Sometime between 2035 and 2050 it will have become Eurabia an Islamic caliphate under sharia.