Most adult Americans have an opinion about the connection between Islam and the attacks by Muslims that have been carried out against Americans in America over the last several years.
The majority opinion, among Muslim and non-Muslim Americans, is that these attacks have been carried out by criminals who all just happen to be Muslim. These Americans, including President Obama, believe that the attacks have no source in Islam and should be treated as criminal actions.
Politically active members of this group believe that the motivation for the attacks comes primarily from American foreign policy, not religious dogma. The attackers are viewed as nationalists defending their countries against invasion by America. They conclude that if America were to remove all military presence from the Middle East and stop supporting Israel, the attacks would end.
The members of this majority are often self-described as ignorant of Islamic dogma and history while fearful of Islam’s militancy and sheer size.
The minority opinion is that there is a religious element in the attacks in addition to the criminal and political elements. (The attackers generally claim religious motivation but these claims are ignored, with increasing difficulty, by the majority opinion holders.) This group sees the conflict in the context of 1400 years of conflict between Islam and Judaism and Christianity.
This group is divided into at least two sub-groups. One of these sub-groups sees Islam as implacably hostile and indivisible—monolithic and not capable of reform. These people say we are in a religious war against all of Islam.
A second sub-group sees the enemy differently and thinks there may be some way to avoid an all out religious war. These people (including me) say that the attackers are attempting to start a religious war in the name of Islam—a war most Muslims do not presently support.
We say the attackers and their supporters are composed of specific, ideologically identifiable parts of the umma (the world-wide membership of Islam) that can be separated from the majority of the umma and fought on ideological grounds. We say that not all Muslims are willing to die for the Salafist interpretation of Islamic law that the attackers cite and that we non-Muslims can create conditions that could identify the members of these two parts of the umma.
(Physical attack is not the only threat from Islam. The Islamist political threat from the Muslim Brotherhood is different in strategy, though not in goals, and calls for a political solution.)
The first step in creating this identification of our enemies within Islam is to recognize that they all subscribe to the Salafist interpretation and that actions which promote the Salafist interpretation are seditious and incitements to violence. The second step is to start prosecuting violators of these American laws, removing the sheep skins from the Muslim wolves.
We must learn how to identify our Islamic enemies before they blow things up and shoot people, not afterward. We have been playing defense against an enemy we cannot see. We must go on offense. The alternative is to live for the foreseeable future as we do now--in a defensive posture, waiting for the next attack.
We can do better.
Update: 2/1/10
The upcoming trial of Sudbury, Ma. resident and US citizen Tariq Mehanna will be the first test of the viability of prosecuting proponents of Islamic law on the charge of incitement to violence.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/01/web_is_now_refuge_for_man_caught_online/?s_campaign=8315
Better late than never.
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