I hope your optimism prevails.

Submitted by Gustavo Aquino (United States), Jan 12, 2015 at 06:21

Dr. P. An excellent OpEd.

I hope your optimism prevails. In historical perspective, however, the tactics carried out by extremist Islamists have a record of success, and as the West becomes more comfortable its luxurious cocoon, and more willing to compromise in the face of conflict and to behave in self-defeating ways just avoid charges of islamophobia, the West becomes more attractive a target, and the persistence of the radicals moves closer toward their inexorable goals: success at global "da'wah", [rpgress toward a global Muslim plurality, and near-global recognition of sharia. Once those goals are reached, various factions of the radicals will then sort out among themselves who are the inheritors of the booty and of their prophet's good graces.

From Mohammad's Medina phase, terror was has been used to silence enemies and to exact revenge against the perceived enemies of the Umma. Under Mohammad's successor, Abu Bakr's the Ridda Wars (http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=6703.0) took vengeance on all of the prophet's former subjects who drifted on their own paths. Today's radicals look to the Ridda Wars as a guidebook on how to "perfect" Islam by correcting apostates and "faulty" believers through terror and the sword. Tellingly, the extremists' warped theology finds no contradiction in the Ridda Wars' tactics and the faith. The Ridda Wars and Mohammad's conquest of Mekka should be studies by all who want to unerstand the methods of the radicals.

Islamists hold on to a belief that there will be periods of victory and defeat, but that momentum is on their side. The conquests of Khalid over the Persians and Byzantine Romans as the first sign of their faith's own "Manifest Destiny".

Europeans should recall their history. Tamerlane's 1396 invasion of Europe and the fall of the Balkans, marked more aggression from the East versus the West and a period of continual strife culminating in the 1529 attempt by Suleiman, to capture the city of Vienna. Even after the Hapsburgs won a decisive victory at Lepanto on in 1571, hostilities from the East continued until 1683's Battle of Vienna. Although Europe's victory reduced the Ottoman efforts to size, Muslim hostilities against Europe only formally ended in 1791 with the British-brokered Treaty of Sistova that ended the Austro-Ottoman Wars.

We have not reached a point where we can relax and leave it to a handful of security agents to handle the threat of extremist islamofacists.

The population of Europe has peaked and the population of it's Muslim minoroties are doubling every 20 years or so. So in a few generations, the Europe we know now could be mired in civil religious unrest as never seen since the Treaty of Westphalia. Let's hope that the path of history follows Professor Fukuyama's End of History glidepath and not Professor Hussey's (author of the 2014 book, The French Infitada).

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