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Editorial
Defenders
Council of Vermont
Compiled by Jamie Zeppernick
Defenders Council of Vermont
is a newly formed educational, nonprofit, non-partisan organization that
has as its mission to build Vermonters’ understanding of America’s heritage,
support our Armed Services and educate Vermont’s citizens about the nature,
reality, and threat of radical Islam. Of all the problems we have in America
right now there is one that we are not identifying very clearly. But it
is a problem that we need to identify and solve if we are to continue in
our way of life as free Americans. At present, our government won't even
define this problem, our mainstream media won't address it, and our educational
institutions are so bound up with multiculturalism and political correctness
they actually compound the problem. The problem is Islamo-fascism, Islamic
Jihad, the Muslim doctrine of Holy War.
Islamic Jihad takes two forms:
The first form is the form of violent, terrorist attacks against targets
of opportunity: from the 9/11 attack against the World Trade Center Towers
in New York seven years ago to the continuous barbaric suicide attacks
against unsuspecting, defenseless women and children all over the globe.
The second form of Islamic jihad is cultural jihad: the gradual, largely
un-noticed, unperceived infiltration into tolerant Western, secular societies
of an Islamic social order so intolerant that it determines to subjugate
to slavery or kill anyone who disagrees with it. We see the first, violent
form of Islamic jihad almost every night on our televisions innocent people
deliberately murdered by rockets, bombers and gunmen. We see the second
form, cultural jihad, transforming Europe into a dark, frightened place,
where films exposing radical Islam, like the recent film "Fitna," are fearfully
pulled from the Internet, where discussion of Islam is met with violent
intimidation, where even harmless cartoons become cause for Islamic rioting
and threats of assassination.
Europe is now a cultural
patchwork of national jurisdictions, where secular law prevails, and of
unassimilated Islamic jurisdictions, where Muslim Sharia law prevails,
creating fearful "no-go zones" where Muslim "honor killing" murders are
ignored by secular authorities and go unpunished. No less than the Archbishop
of Canterbury has recently said that England needs to prepare for the imposition
of Muslim Sharia law. Good-bye to religious freedom and free expression
in England. America’s first national encounter with radical Islam occurred
when President George Washington sent his envoy, Thomas Jefferson, to the
Barbary States in the Mediterranean to try to secure the release of American
merchant sailors who had been enslaved in acts of piracy. Jefferson was
told that piracy and slavery was a part of their culture and was sanctioned
by Allah according to his prophet Mohammed.
Islamic terrorism is really
nothing new to us historically. What is new and what is now vitally important
is that Islamic Jihad is no longer over there on the shores of Tripoli,
or over there in Jerusalem, or Baghdad, or Europe. Now it's over here.
There are about 1.4 million Muslims in America and most of them want to
live here peacefully. But consider this statement by Abdel Rahman al Rashid,
a Muslim and the general manager of Al-Arabiya, one of the most widely
viewed Arab news channels, "It is a fact that not all Muslims are terrorists,
but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists
are Muslim".
A 2007 Pew Research poll
and study (curiously titled "Muslim Americans Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream")
estimated that one in five American Muslims agrees with terrorist tactics
to further Islam in the USA. On February 23, 2008, World Net Daily published
an article entitled: "Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach anti-West
extremism- Secret survey exposes widespread radicalism:"
"An undercover survey
of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread
radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers
are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism. The Mapping Sharia in America Project,
sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained
former counterintelligence and counter-terrorism agents from the FBI, CIA
and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover
reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across
the country. An official familiar with the project said, "So far of 100
mapped, 75 should be on a watch list". Many of the Islamic centers are
operating under the auspices of the Saudi Arabian government and U.S. front
groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt. Frank Gaffney,
a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says
the results of the survey have not yet been published but he confirmed
that "the vast majority" of Islamic centers are inciting insurrection and
jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature,
videos and textbooks."
Criticism of America is nothing
new: we get some of that from some of our Christian pulpits; after all,
the freedoms of expression and religion are the bulwarks of our free society.
But inciting to violence, inciting to murder, inciting to insurrection
is illegal, and sowing hatred, repression, and intimidation in the name
of "God" is offensive to people who believe that liberty of conscience
is an inalienable right given by God to all men. The misuse of freedom
of speech to intimidate freedom of inquiry and expression and dissent is
a bitter irony in a free society. Such tactics are allowed. But here is
the dilemma we face: If we in the West naively promote the tolerance of
a ferociously intolerant belief system that tolerates only its own beliefs,
then we are effectively promoting intolerance. And when we refuse to promote
an intolerant belief system, we are accused of being intolerant.
That is the Catch 22 of trendy,
post-modern multi-culturalism. Radical Islamists have studied to use our
own freedoms and tolerance to confuse and silence us. The word Islam means
"submission." Toward those who are skeptical of the Muslim religion, radical
Islam does not and cannot adopt a live and let live attitude. It is more
of the attitude: you let us flourish in your midst and we will either convert
you, subjugate you, or kill you. That has been the history of militant
Islam for 1400 years. To radical Islam, peaceful coexistence with us means
that we submit or die. So how soon will this kind of "submission" comes
to America ? That depends on us. The Defenders Council of Vermont is dedicated
to helping all of us do something, to alerting and educating the citizens
of Vermont about the clear and present danger of radical Islam, as well
as honoring those who serve to protect us, and reviving our understanding
and commitment to America’s founding principles. We will only succeed in
this mission if we stand up and embrace the responsibility we all have
as free men in a free nation. We owe it to the authors of freedom, we owe
it to our children, and we even owe it to those enslaved to a religion
of submission. Freedom is a rare and lovely thing in the world. Don't let
it die in America. Please contact Defenders Council of Vermont at info@defenderscouncilvt.comfor
more information on how you can get involved.
Jamie Zeppernick is the
Executive Director of Defenders
Council of Vermont.
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