Islam's soft invasion

One of the justifications National Public Radio gave for firing veteran journalist Juan Williams earlier this year, after an appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, was his observation that America is at war, whether we like it or not, with extremist Muslims. Williams simply was referring to the claims of the Times Square bomber, but to the leftist mind, this is invalid. For instance, the gals on The View went apoplectic when their guest Bill O'Reilly noted it was Muslims who perpetrated 9/11, and those who didn't storm off the set only calmed down after O'Reilly qualified his claim with the modifier "extremist."

"Extremist," after all, implies "fringe," which implies "rare." The throngs of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after 9/11 notwithstanding. The 60 percent of American Muslims who reject the belief that Arabs were responsible for 9/11 excepted. Setting aside the majority in Jordan-and the substantial minorities in Lebanon and Pakistan-who believe in the necessity of suicide bombing. And so on. In other words, barring the data, it's really just a small tribe of illiterate wing nuts causing all the trouble.

Except that it's not.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has done the West a neglected service for a number of years, translating the speeches and writings of people who would just as soon not have them translated. For example, in the old days Yasser Arafat could give a conciliatory speech to Westerners, then turn right around and call for the destruction of Israel in Arabic, and Jimmy Carter would be none the wiser. But thanks largely to MEMRI we know right away when Libyan thug Moammar Qaddafi elucidates a Muslim strategy for conquering Europe-a potentiality Western leftists like to mock when voiced by conservatives.

And so witness a respected Egyptian journalist who is calling for Islamists to send more clerics to America in order to convert U.S. citizens. In Europe, Islam takes a different tack: As a culture of self-indulgence has reduced births to well below the rates necessary for sustaining populations, Muslims can simply move in, have babies, and wait. Eighty-one percent of British Muslims see themselves as Muslim first, British second. In another couple of generations, the distinction will be meaningless.

But in the United States, even though we've tolerated an abortion holocaust and embraced birth control like a sacrament, the move-in-and-wait strategy won't work. Conversion is necessary.

Will it succeed? Will the last stronghold of the Christian West stand firm against a soft invasion of Islam? Given that nearly 40 percent of self-described Christians believe that Christ sinned on earth, and given profound ignorance among even serious Christians of something so fundamental as the Nicene Creed, I wouldn't count on it.