A religion that believes it is above the secular law.
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Why fear leaves us powerless in the face of Islamic terrorism

By Kevin Myers
Friday, 13 November 2009

I imagine a lot of American Muslims this week feel like the Irish once did in London after an IRA bombing there: let this massacre not be by one of ours, dear God. But it was.

Fort Hood was the work of Nidal Malik Hassan, an American Muslim. Not an immigrant, not a September 11 kamikaze intruder, but the home-grown product: the all-American boy who turned on his own people and his own army for politico-religious reasons.

Obviously, most American Muslims want to live in peace with their fellow Americans. But within, it seems, all ‘moderate’ Muslim communities, are some fundamentalists who hold the local |franchise for the global grievance of Islam.

And no one really knows what such Islamic fundamentalists want, because the demands change according to whatever market the local Islamic franchisee is operating in. But at the bottom, jihad — the holy struggle — is the key liberator which enables the Muslim fundamentalist to depart from the rules of the society in which he is living.

Jihad can be formed as a result of the teachings of an imam, but it boils down to a personal contract between Allah and the believer, based on an extreme interpretation of Islam. This effectively declares: “If you feel very strongly that the rules in the Holy Koran about never injuring the innocent, and always respecting women |and children, and respecting the rights of the kaffirs to remain non-believers, are subordinate to jihad, then these rules do not apply to you.

“Moreover, if you feel specifically enjoined to break these rules in pursuit of jihad and martyrdom, the reward shall be paradise and all the blissful wherewithal of the heavenly hereafter.â€