I'm reposting an edited version of something I wrote a year ago, I think it still matters!

It has now been more than two years; on August 19, 2008 my friend was murdered. Taliban gunmen assassinated Mohammed Ayoob on his doorstep, in a village along the Kunduz River, in the Kunduz Province of Northern Afghanistan. Ayoob, only twenty years old, served as the supply sergeant for an Afghan Police unit in the district of Chahar Darreh where he lived.


Hardly the toughest soldier, Ayoob sometimes seemed to fear his own shadow. His commanders assigned him to the supply section; the Taliban noted his gentler nature and targeted him. In the end, he was tougher than he realized.

Courageous in the face of death, when three terrorists ambushed him with AK-47 assault rifles, he drew his sidearm, and fired a single round at his killers before falling, the pistol smoking in his hand.


My friend’s death exemplifies the dynamics of the violent struggle for Afghanistan. A small, fringe minority resorts to terror to intimidate the majority. Wherever Afghan and US Forces fail to secure the populace, the Taliban terrorizes the people into obedience. Since I left Afghanistan last fall, the Kunduz Province has slipped further into the Taliban grasp. Ayoob’s murder was merely a single act in their long campaign.


The last time the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, fear and violence reigned. The rule of the Mullahs confined women and girls to their homes. Taliban officials destroyed schools. The Taliban stoned adulterers. They killed apostates who converted to Christianity and then destroyed the iconic Bamiyan Buddha statues. Afghans, with America’s help, overthrew their oppressive regime.


As an American soldier, I was proud to call Ayoob my friend, but language and culture made understanding difficult. I never knew whether he was more concerned with defeating the insurgent than with holding a paying job. I suspected the latter. Ayoob, and his family, lived in a state of poverty. Like most Afghans they scraped by as best they could from year to year.



Whether he fought for patriotism or money, Ayoob chose to stand up to the Taliban. Despite the risks involved, Sgt. Ayoob accepted a job that endangered his life. He demonstrated personal courage and a rejection of the Taliban. Soon after he died, I realized his family stood with him.



Muslims must be buried within twenty four hours of death. The day after Ayoob died, my team, continued our own anti-Taliban efforts in the district. On the way back to our base we passed Ayoob's funeral. In a nation where few people have cars, I saw dozens of cars, packed with hundred’s of friends and relatives at the hilltop cemetery where they laid Ayoob to rest. Attendance at Ayoob’s funeral represented a public rejection of the Taliban.



Ayoob’s friends and family are hardly unique in their rejection of the Taliban. Last year, Afghan presidential elections were held for the second time this decade. While insurgents intimidated millions of Afghans into staying home, millions more risked heir lives to vote.



Today, in the US, politicians quote recent polls worded insure that a majority of Americans reflect the belief that Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting for. The left worked to prevent the surge strategy. President Obama campaigned for office on the claim that Iraq had distracted us from fighting the “right war” in Afghanistan.

The mid-term elections are little more than a month away.

Americans may be weary of the war after nine years. Surely though, we are not more weary than the Afghans; they have known only war and terror for decades. The difference is that millions of Afghans know this war is worth fighting.


Like the loved ones of Mohammed Ayoob, they clearly want to end the violence. Their communities have been torn apart by decades of violence, but they will not surrender to terror to achieve peace. They know that the peace of the terrified is no peace at all.

Here at home, Americans are bombarded by the objections of the political left, and spoon-fed the dubious opinions of mainstream media pundits, but hopefully we will remember our own recent past. Eight years ago the Taliban allowed al-Quaeda to plan and train in Afghanistan. Al-Quaeda used that sanctuary to attack America here at home.


Today liberals, and an increasing number of conservatives are willing to allow that same Taliban to reclaim rule over Afghanistan. Today when Pakistan is much weaker and more susceptible to the Taliban in its own borders, this would spell disaster. Disaster for Afghans, and disaster for America; our enemies, safe in their sanctuary will plot once again to export their violence to our shores.

Tolerating The Intolerable?

Who will miss Western Culture when it is gone? Will the liberals and leftists who espouse tolerance for all belief systems, except right of center western political thought, miss their liberty? Will they lament it, when non-western right of center religious and political systems, and leftist non-religious political systems finally overcome us, because we were so tolerant? We have gotten to the point where we let the fox in the hen house, and refuse to see the danger for fear of being labeled anti-foxists.

The WTC mosque controversy is a glaring example. A vast majority of Americans and of New Yorkers have voiced their opinion against building the Mosque so close to Ground Zero. A vocal minority side with Imam Rauf and his Cordoba Initiative. Rauf and his allies have framed the debate largely in terms of tolerance, or in terms of Constitutional protection of religious freedom. In fact many on the left have implied that the First Amendment guarantee of Freedom of Religion, mandates acceptance, and absolves Islam from criticism. Nonsense, that First Amendment also guarantees our right to voice our concerns about the Mosque, and about Islam in general.

In fact, putting aside the salt in the wound aspect, that placing the Mosque in downtown New York City has for many, the controversy really is about the reach and influence of Islam in America’s future. How much tolerance are we required to extend to Islam, and what is the intent of Islam?

As a religion, Islam’s followers are generally entitled to practice their beliefs. American legal history, does require that they do so in compliance with our Constitution and our laws. While the courts are often required to sort out fine points of religious freedom in the US, egregious violations of our legal tradition have been found to be unacceptable. Hence Indian drug use, and Mormon polygamy are not legal, religious freedom notwithstanding.

Islam should expect a similar reception. Stoning, slavery, corporal punishment for wives etc., are outside the legal norms we practice. In the name of tolerance, however, some liberals have sought to weaken our norms, asserting that we should not force our legal values on Muslims, hence a recent NJ judge's decision not to grant a restraining order against a Moroccan husband (fortunately overturned on appeal). The creation of Sharia only zones in Great Britain, Canada, and France, has encouraged Muslims and apologists to seek similar legal allowances in enclaves in St. Paul Minnesota and Dearborn Michigan. It has troubled police and neighbors where it has been allowed.

So why not? Isn’t “live and let live” part of our values? Isn’t religious tolerance inscribed in the constitution?

How do we deal with Islam, or is it Islamism? Islamism is the name that is catching on to describe those factions of Islam, both radical and mainstream that pursue jihad. Jihad is one of the pillars of Islam; the requirement to “struggle” for one’s faith. This concept of struggling has been described as both internal (within the self) and external. Jihad is used by Muslimsto describe the historical spread of Islam across much of Asia and Africa, by war, trade and assimilation.

Islam is a complex multi-faceted faith with sects and strains, just like all the other great religions. Jihad is central to all of its sects. The external Jihad is deeply entrenched in enough of those strains that it can hardly be called radical. What is now termed radical Islam, consists of those factions which seek a violent spread of Islam today.

Mainstream Islam, as it defines itself, today in the West, does not eschew external jihad, merely violence. We have accepted the Council on American Islamic Relations and Imam Rauf’s Cordoba Initiative as ideals of peaceful mainstream Islam in the US today, and yet they have obviously Jihadist doctrines.

"Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

Omar Ahmad, Co-Founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations

In America, we have a Constitution that created a three-branch form of government - legislative, executive and judiciary. The role of the judiciary is to ensure that the other two branches comply with the Constitution. What Muslims want is a judiciary that ensures that the laws are not in conflict with the Quran and the Hadith.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf

“Well so what?” ask many Americans. After all many religions are evangelical, seeking new converts and aspiring to grow, and even to dominate.

Islam is different . Islam as a religion, includes a complete set of social, economic, political and legal prescriptions. It calls on its adherents to create theocratic states governed by Sharia, Islamic law. While Imam Rauf can soft pedal Sharia as divinely inspired law, akin to the appeal to the creator in our Declaration of Independence, the fact is that Sharia law as it is practices throughout the world is deeply at odds with Western Humanism, whether secular or Judeo-Christian.

Sharia is the law of the land in Saudi Arabia. Sharia allows slavery. Sharia oppresses women, making wives property of their husbands. Sharia calls for the execution of homosexuals. Sharia calls for the stoning of apostates. Etc etc.

Americans simply don’t want to live under Sharia. Liberals, in the media, and in academia have so elevated tolerance as a value that we develop a lack of clarity about what Islam as a belief system promotes. It promotes a non-democratic non-western government and society.


“We could deal with those Islamists except for one thing: A large segment of our fashionable opinion-makers… think that Islamists aren’t as bad as all that; and if they are, then we are still worse, and what we stand for isn’t really worth defending. So the public doesn’t know what to think, and a few self-appointed custodians push them into all manner of doubt and guilt by accusing anyone who criticizes, or — horrors! — laughs at Islamists of Islamophobia, racism, fascism, etc. etc.”

David Pryce Jones

If Islam, were not a religion, if it was an otherwise all encompassing belief system, we could talk more freely about its challenges to democracy. Communism was (and still is)a belief system that prescribes an entire set of beliefs about how people should interact, how they should be governed, and even what they should believe about God (he is an imaginary figure). Most Americans, even if they happen to be Marxist in their outlook, do not begrudge an honest discussion about Communism and the advantages and disadvantages of the system, surely even American liberals are not saying that communism is beyond criticism, by virtue of our freedoms of speech, conscience and association. Liberals are rabid attack dogs when challenging any perceived fascism, a much abused word that still includes a definition of Totalitarianism. Atheists and Agnostics are often quite critical of Christianity and Judaism, often because that’s where they started out. But Islam is sacrosanct. As Pryce Jones noted in today’s society criticism of Islam as a thought system=Islamophobia=Racism=Fascism=Evil.

I think that far leftist thought is often rooted in guilt and self loathing. When we no longer care enough about our own culture and traditions to defend them, we have nothing left to fight for. Tolerance is as beautiful a thing as prejudice is ugly, but blind tolerance is blind to threats. Will the last liberal standing please give the Jihadists the keys