In his pre-taped remarks (how many takes were needed to get a coherent version?) on the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 jihad attacks that killed 2,977 people, Old Joe Biden lamented the fact, as Matt Margolis noted yesterday, that since that terrible day, “we also witnessed the dark forces of human nature. Fear and anger. Resentment and violence against Muslim-Americans — true and faithful followers of a peaceful religion.”
20 years after September 11, 2001, we commemorate the 2,977 lives we lost and honor those who risked and gave their lives. As we saw in the days that followed, unity is our greatest strength. It’s what makes us who we are — and we can’t forget that. pic.twitter.com/WysK8m3LAb
— President Biden (@POTUS) September 10, 2021
Of course. There is no justification whatsoever under any circumstances for violence against innocent Muslims, or any innocent people. But it was unfortunate that Biden once again repeated this hoary and easily disproven chestnut about Islam being a “peaceful religion”; at this point this idea is nothing more than a dogma of the Leftist faith, not to be questioned, and not subject to rational consideration.
Yet it has no basis in reality. One would think that Biden’s handlers, as they scripted this speech, might have been given pause by the fact that as the Taliban moved into Kabul last month, Taliban commander Muhammed Arif Mustafa told CNN: “It’s our belief that one day, mujahedin will have victory, and Islamic law will come not to just Afghanistan, but all over the world. We are not in a hurry. We believe it will come one day. Jihad will not end until the last day.” Or by another Taliban commander saying just last week, “We want Islamic law, and not just in Afghanistan.”
That commander did not have in mind millions of people going to the ballot box and voting for Islamic law; what he was envisioning was more violent jihad in the name of Islam and in accord with its teachings, in order to establish the hegemony of Sharia wherever possible.
No doubt Biden’s handlers, if they took any notice of such remarks from Taliban commanders at all, dismissed them as yet more evidence of the Taliban’s “misunderstanding” of Islam. It is taken for granted now among non-Muslim policymakers in the United States and Europe that groups such as the Taliban, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, ash-Shabaab and so very many others twist and hijack the peaceful teachings of Islam; at the same time, these groups continue to grow in power and influence, making recruits among peaceful Muslims by presenting themselves as the authentic exponents of Islamic texts and teachings.
Related: Days After Attacking Unvaccinated Americans, Biden ‘Celebrates’ Post-9/11 Unity
In just one of innumerable examples of this, Taliban jihadist Baitullah Mehsud explained a few years ago: “Allah on 480 occasions in the Holy Koran extols Muslims to wage jihad. We only fulfill God’s orders. Only jihad can bring peace to the world.” In a similar vein, the 9/11 plotters who are now finally on trial, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi bin As-Shibh, Walid bin ‘Attash, Mustafa Ahmed AI-Hawsawi, and ‘Ali ‘abd Al-’Aziz ‘Ali – styling themselves as the “9/11 Shura Council” – back in March 2009 wrote a lengthy communiqué titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s Nine Accusations.” In it, they called the 9/11 attacks an “act of Jihad,” and explained: “The Jihad in god’s [sic] cause is a great duty in our religion.” They quoted numerous Qur’an verses, including the notorious “Verse of the Sword”: “Then fight and slay the pagans wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush” (9:5) and another enjoining Muslims to “strike terror into the heart of the enemies of Allah” (8:60).
An Egyptian Islamic scholar, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, made the admission several years ago: “If we follow the rules of interpretation developed from the classical science of Koranic interpretation, it is not possible to condemn terrorism in religious terms. It remains completely true to the classical rules in its evolution of sanctity for its own justification. This is where the secret of its theological strength lies.”
Biden, and the United States government in general, have never come to grips with this “theological strength,” because they deny it even exists and simply wave away the mountains of evidence to the contrary. In doing so, they contravene one of the oldest and most important rules of warfare: know your enemy. The dogma that Islam is a peaceful religion, fatuously repeated by Biden on the anniversary of one of the bloodiest jihad attacks in Islam’s 1,400-year history, is not just contrary to fact; it has for years now hampered our ability to deal with the nature and magnitude of the global jihad threat, and will continue to do so. Biden’s 9/11 speech was, unwittingly, another example of why, all these years after 9/11, we’re losing the fight against those who hit us on that day.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member