Seeking a Return to Medieval Past

My prayers this Easter are for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, the latest world leader to face the awesome responsibility of staring down Terrorists.

With the lives of three Japanese nationals hanging in the balance, he has opted to stay the distance in the global battle against Terrorism though the Terrorists have threatened to burn their captives alive.

The civilised world will recognise that despite the propaganda pouring out of the Arabic media and from the pens of some of the fifth columnists in the Western press, the two aid workers and a journalist being held hostage are not neo-colonialists, Militarists, or even Crusaders.

They are non-combatants, not likely to be Christians, serving the Iraqi people in the main and providing information on the situation to the folks back at home.

Prime Minister Koizumi also knows that those who are holding and threatening the Japanese cannot claim with any seriousness to be representing Iraqi nationalists.

They can only be representatives of international Islamofascist Terror, as an article posted on al Qaeda's on-line publication Sawt al-Jihad and translated by the SITE Institute strongly hints.

The piece, by Mohammad bin Ahmad Salem, warns of the Japanese presence in Kuwait and calls on Muslims to "Fight for Allah, and be mobilised for the jihad, individually as well as in groups".

Those holding the Japanese call themselves the Mujahidin Brigades.

al-Qaeda, and other groups trying to foment an international Islamist revolution, are desperate to paint the Japanese and other nationalities assisting rebuilding Iraq as partners in a coalition of Western colonisers.

The Terrorists are just as opposed to the leadership of moderate Arab states as they are to the Westerners involved in Iraq, a point hugely ignored by the so-called peace protesters demanding the withdrawal of Australian forces from Iraq.

In the online al-Qaeda article, Salem rails against every Arab nation which provides logistic support to those attempting to give Iraqis a hand.

"It is sad not to see any resistance or Jihad against this aggression, nor protests against this colonisation, especially from the Gulf population [Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Emirates and Oman]," he writes.

"Now, one year later, we are seeing the country of 'Al Haramain' at War with the Crusaders and 'their ears' from Al Saloul [meant as an insult to the Saudi royal family], and the Yemeni people constantly fighting the 'agent' Yemeni forces that are supported by the British and American forces."

"The Gulf, however, is in absolute calmness, as though they have accepted to live in humiliation, like it is none of their concern."

"If this is not the case, where are the mujahidin in Kuwait, or the enthusiastic patriots in Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates? Were their brains distorted, and instincts obliterated? Or are conscientiousness and true faith gone?"

"Kuwaitis in Iraq: Have Allah's fear in your hearts, as His anger is too strong, and the disappearance of the Earth is easier on Him than shedding a Muslim blood."

"People of Kuwait ... Becoming martyrs of your own will by killing Americans, is better than seeing your country and its wealth being used to serve the Cross. While you are watching!!"

The words are designed to inflame the passions of the ignorant, and are much the same as the Anti-Western rhetoric used by so-called radical Islamic clerics the world over.

The West is patently not on some crusade against Islam, but Islamists are staking their all to provoke a War against the West and moderates in the vain hope of plunging Arab nations and those Western nations which were once part of the Islamic world back into a medieval state of theocracy.

In recent days, discredited former leaders of the Liberal Party Malcolm Fraser and John Hewson have joined members of the Greens, Democrats and the ALP in calling for Australia to withdraw from Iraq.

Short-sighted all, they cannot see that the Islamists have the greater global vision.

Prime Minister Koizumi deserves all our prayers as he confronts the obvious.

The Daily Telegraph | Piers Akerman

See Also:
The Rising Tide of Islamic Fundamentalism (I)
The Rising Tide of Islamic Fundamentalism (II)
The True Meaning of Jihad
The Holy Qur'an Says...
The Myth That Must Die!
Why We Fight!
Calling Evil By Its Name