Be afraid...Be very afraid

I was driving behind a car the other day that had a one-word bumper sticker with the plea "COEXIST". It's one of those sentiments loved by those “trendy change the world be nice to every one and free the refugees” trendies, one designed principally to flatter their sense of moral superiority. The C was the Islamic crescent, the O was the hippie peace sign, the X was the Star of David and the T was the Christian cross. A very nice and hard to argue with slogan. But the reality is it's the first of those symbols that has a problem with coexistence. Take the crescent out of the equation and you wouldn't need a bumper sticker at all. Indeed, coexistence is what the Islamists are at war with; or, if you prefer, pluralism. The idea that different groups can come together within the same general neighbourhood. There are many trouble spots across the world but, as a general rule, even if you give no more than a cursory glance at the foreign pages, it's easy to guess at least one of the sides:
Muslims v Jews in Palestine, Muslims v Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims v Christians in Nigeria, Muslims v Buddhists in southern Thailand, Muslims v (insert your choice here). Whatever your views of the merits on a case by case basis, the presence of one group is a fact.
The reality is that there are more Muslim states than a half-century ago, many more Muslims within non-Muslim states, and many more of those Muslims are radical and fundamentalist. It's not hard to understand. All you have to do is take them at their word. As Bassam Tibi, a Muslim professor at Gottingen University in Germany, said in an interesting speech a few months after September 11, "Both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms, these terms mean different things to each of them. The word peace, for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or House of Islam -- to the entire world. This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought. Only when the entire world is a Dar al-Islam will it be a Dar a-Salam, or House of Peace." That's why they blew up Bali in 2002, and again last weekend, and why they'll keep blowing it up. It's not about Bush or Howard or Iraq or Palestine.
It's about a world where everything other than Islamism is destroyed.

As I said in the beginning. BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID