According to the Paris-based think tank Fondation pour l’Innovation Politique, between 1979 and 2019, at least 33,769 Islamist terrorist attacks took place worldwide (not counting the civil wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen), killing at least 167,096 people, 91.2% of them Muslims.
“In Europe, in forty years, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Spain, Finland, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland and Russia have been hit [in addition to India, Bangladesh, Thailand, China, Niger, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Somalia and other parts of Asia and Africa],” according to the foundation.
Eleven million Muslims have been killed since 1948, of which 35,000 (0.3%) were killed during Arab-Israeli wars. Over 90% were killed by fellow Muslims.
The 14-century-old scourge of Islamic terrorism (three of the first four caliphs were murdered in the seventh century) was not triggered by despair, by the United States or by Israel. Islamic terrorism is due to a megalomaniacal aspiration to force the Western “infidel” and the Arab “apostate” to submit—unconditionally, peacefully or militarilyto Islam, the only “legitimate” religion, divinely ordained to rule the world.
Hamas’ anti-Western priority
According to its 1988 covenant, Hamas is a branch of anti-Western global Islamic terrorism.
Hamas was established by the Muslim Brotherhood, whose vision is to topple all national Muslim regimes, establish a Quran-based universal society and bring the “infidel” West to submission, peacefully or militarily.
Hamas is heavily assisted by Iran’s ayatollahs, whose strategic goal is to oust all “apostate” (Sunni) Muslim regimes and defeat the “infidel” West, and especially “the Great American Satan.”
Anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism independent of Israel
In recent years, Iran-affiliated terrorists in Yemen, Iraq and eastern Syria have challenged the U.S. posture in the Persian Gulf via routine attacks on civilian, commercial and military sites controlled by the United States, and against the pro-U.S. (and “apostate”) Sunni Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, Iran has challenged the U.S. posture in Central and South America by collaborating with Latin American drug barons, terrorists and anti-U.S. regimes.
This apocalyptic Islamic terrorism has targeted the United States—and has plagued Muslims since the seventh century—independent of Israel and the nature of U.S. policy.
Thus, Islamic terrorism has afflicted the U.S. irrespective of President Carter’s facilitating the rise to power of Iran’s ayatollahs, and regardless of the U.S. diplomatic option, which has netted the ayatollahs hundreds of billion dollars since 1979.
It has assaulted the United States despite the mega-billions in US assistance to the Islamic Mujahideen, which enabled the Mujahideen to end the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
It has plagued the United States in spite of the U.S. bombing of Serbia, which yielded independence to the Muslim-dominated Bosnia and Kosovo.
It has attacked the United States notwithstanding the generous U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority.
Islamic terrorism haunted the United States during the Obama and the Trump administrations, as it did during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Islamic terrorists view the United States as the “enemy of Allah,” a “modern day Crusader” and the key obstacle in the way of Islam’s imperialistic vision to bring the “infidel” West to submission.
According to the late professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, who was a leading expert on Islam, Islamic terrorists are convinced that they can absorb U.S. retaliation, while the United States will not be able to withstand painful terrorism abroad and on the mainland. Their aim is to erode the confidence of Americans in their government’s capability to defeat Islamic terrorism.
Anti-Western Islamic terrorism has been energized by the dramatic Islamic penetration of Western Europe, which is losing its will to flex cultural and military muscle. It has also been adrenalized by the success of Islamic terrorism in forcing the 2021 U.S. retreat from Afghanistan. This retreat followed the 1989 Soviet retreat from Afghanistan, which impacted the disintegration of the USSR.
The confidence of Islamic terrorists in their ability to defeat the “infidel” West has been bolstered by the overwhelming surge of Iran’s ayatollahs —since their February 1979 rise to power—in the areas of global terrorism, drug trafficking and the proliferation of advanced military systems (including in Latin America), while the United States sustains its 43-year-old diplomatic option toward Iran, eagerly seeking another accord with the ayatollahs responding timidly to the Iranian bombing of U.S., Saudi and Emirati installations.
The bottom line
Islamic terrorism—which has been a Middle East fixture since the seventh century—is driven neither by the United States, which was established in the eighteenth century, nor by Israel, which was established in the twentieth. It is driven by a fanatic, religious, imperialist and uncompromising vision dating back 1,400 years.
Islamic terrorists consider Israel to be a Western beachhead in “the abode of Islam” which constrains the maneuverability of anti-Western Islamic entities. They view Israel as the role model of counter terrorism and a critical line of defense for Western societies. An Israeli failure to defeat Islamic terrorists would provide a critical tailwind to their assault of the “infidel” West.
In order to defeat Islamic terrorism, Western democracies—led by the United States—must acknowledge its inherently apocalyptic, uncompromising vision/aspiration, which is driven not by despair, but by the quest for submission and suppression.
Islamic terrorism’s assault on the West is a clash of cultures that is being leveraged by Russia and China in order to advance their own global aspirations.
As such, Islamic terrorism must be confronted militarily, not diplomatically, recognizing the role of hate education and mosque incitement (in Muslim countries as well as in Europe and the United States) as a most effective production line for Islamic terrorists.
An effective war on Islamic terrorism must be offensive rather than defensive, preemptive, fought in the terrorists’ own trenches, rather than reactive and in Western trenches.
Counter-terrorism authorities should implement an American football principle: The closer you get to your opponent’s end zone, the closer you are to scoring a touchdown, and the closer you get to your own end zone the closer is your opponent to scoring a touchdown.
Originally published by the Ettinger Report.
