A Billion Osamas

What?  A billion Osamas?  That's not what we've been informed by well-meaning Westerners hoping to lead people away from fear and apprehension about the presence of Muslims in their midst.  Who, we are informed, and with good reason, are respectful, law-abiding and deserving of respect from non-Muslims.

 Muslims have integrated themselves in business, government, academia and all aspects of social life - more or less.  (Throughout the Western world where social welfare is of primary importance.)  Less when it comes to social integration, since Islam is a total way of life - and more when it comes to finding their place in business, government and academia.

That would describe immigrants from Muslim-majority countries many of whom made a conscious decision to find their futures and those of their children elsewhere than in the sometimes-stifling atmosphere of Islamic politics, governance and social engineering.  Yet, for most of these immigrants the importation of much of what they felt they might wish to escape became part and parcel of their futures; choosing to retain that which appealed to them, deigning to retain that which did not.

Muslims were offered "mutual respect" on an international scale by the newly elected president of the most powerful nation on our Globe.  In the end, it turned out that they weren't looking for mutual respect; mutuality was absent in any event; the Muslim radicals and their fanatical supporters felt that respect was not earned by the West, while demanding it for themselves because they were entitled to it, and had no need to earn it.

Mutual respect became possible in those countries where Muslims emigrated to and took up new lives.  But old habits give comfort and they die awfully hard.  While the attacks by violent jihadists against Western interests and symbols have decreased, though attempts are ongoing, the Muslim world has torqued itself toward fundamentalism and remains in the ongoing process of destroying those who prefer moderate rather than rabid Islam.

The religious-political contortions that the Islamic Republic of Iran represents along with Wahhabist Saudi Arabia and the growing Salafist movement throughout the Muslim world represents a turning away from Islam grown complacent with itself.  "Pure" Islam, the Islam of striving through all means, inclusive of violence to spread the sacred word of surrender is in the ascendancy.

From North Africa to the Middle East and the far East, Islam's nature has evolved back to its roots.  Where other religions grow into a mellow enlightenment reflecting human needs and the world we inhabit, Islam has turned its back on all of that; the blunt instrument of the religion hammers people into submission; people need no longer be concerned about being submissive, the emotional state has overtaken them through spiritual force.

And the Salafists everywhere, using the United States as the outstanding symbol of all that is wrong with a world that has not wholesale adapted itself to Islam, agreeing to enlarge the Ummah exponentially and in the process destroy the presence of Jews, joyously proclaim : "Obama, Obama, there are still a billion Osamas".