Submitted by spinifex, Jul 10, 2007 00:11

The basis of James's commentary, that Islam is primarily a personal or community religion, is highly misleading. As one who has studied Islam more than most of us, he should not take away emphasis from the critical fact that Muslims derive virtully all their principles of living from the Koran and associated texts. This includes daily life, sports, food, science, and perhaps most importantly for us in the West, politics. Islam is a political vehicle as much as it is a religious one and the obsessive faith in the latter is equalled by the attention to the former. All aspects of Islam, and to a large degree all Muslims, are not to be considered as apart from one another. That is a very different viewpoint from any Western thinking and in many ways this profound difference is a key reason we do not "understand" each other. The original article is a welcome approach but still does not address certain troubling facts. Chief among these is that there is an even more menacing trend than terrorism that grows in strength each day. This is the "silent" or demographic jihad against European countries, the US and Canada. This subversive, covert tactic consists of challenging infidels in their own countries by means of asserting a supposed need for new laws or regulations, e.g., demanding foot washing stations in airports, insisting on halal meats for Muslim school children, demanding extra break time during work hours for prayers and insisting on the wearing of specific articles of clothing (mostly for girls or women). This is in addition to the extremely well-funded general lobbying of our elected representatives. All of these actions and more are currently well underway in Europe. The real underpinning of this coordinated effort is the average birthrate of Muslims in the West, which is considerably higher than that of indigenous groups and many other immigrants. We are at the beginning of a learning curve to determine the best means of defense against a hostile and committed enemy-- Islam. It is yet to be seen what sort of learning curve Muslims are on, who can and should be considered apart from their historically destructive and aggressive religion.

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