(US News) Fouad Ajami - "The whole Arab world was dangerous for me; I went to London," said Egyptian Islamist Yasser Sirri. An opponent of President Mubarak, Sirri found refuge in London, where he runs an "Islamic observation center" and carries on with the "holy struggle" against "ungodly" Arab regimes and their supporters in the West. The geography of Islam has altered. A religion of Afro-Asia has migrated westward. The Islamists are now within the gates. Omar Bakri Muhammad fled his native Syria in the 1980s and turned up in England in 1996. Since then, he has been calling openly for "holy war" against the West, exhorting young Muslims of Britain to join the insurgency in Iraq. He hailed the death pilots of 9/11 as the "magnificent 19 who changed the world," and he called on Muslims to give the "infidels a 9/11 day after day after day." Liberty is not a suicide pact. We should be done with the search for "explanations" that dignify the hatreds, that attribute them to Western deeds and policies. We should see the new hatred dressed in religious garb for what it is: a war against the very order of contemporary life.
2005-07-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive