Opinion
By Abdul Masih —
Holding vast sway over American academia, John Esposito, longtime professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University, blames only The West for the problems in the Middle East.
It was The West that brutalized peace-loving Muslims in the Crusades. It was The West that colonized the region and exploited its regions. It was The West that scarred the memory of believers in Islam, all leading to modern hostilities. This is what universities are teaching students — giving rise to the Free Palestine mob.
But to monger guilt so well, you have to exclude vast quantities of historical and religious data.
How can the Muslims be considered peace-loving if it was they who conquered 4/5ths of lands belonging to Christendom? They struck first. Was Europe wrong to strike back (1095-1291), especially considering the on-going wars they waged (Constantinople fell in 1453, its first unsuccessful siege was in 674-678)?
While Osama bin Laden spoke to the West in 2004, he said he just wanted U.S. troops out of the “House of Islam,” the Middle East.
It was a public relations stunt meant to diminish support for the counter attack for the 9/11 Twin Tower terrorist attack of 2001. The fact is, as Raymond Ibrahim‘s translated Al Qaeda Reader unearthed, Al Qaeda calls on Muslims everywhere to resort to armed jihad install a global caliphate and assert Islamic dominance over the entire world in accordance with the Qur’an and the hadiths.
Iran is only the latest rogue nation to attempt to execute Islam’s theological tenets through armed conflict and terror: first to wipe out the “Little Satan” (Israel) and then the “Big Satan” (the U.S.). Directly assisting Iraq to kill U.S. servicemen, Iran is responsible for the death of 600 Americans.
The guilt mongers would have you believe that the conflagrations in the Middle East are all The West’s fault, and now especially the United States’s fault. They ignore that military conquest underpinned Islam from the beginning, is part of its theological basis and continues to motivate war and terror worldwide.
This is a battle that was brought to us, not one we initiated, Esposito.
