-- Amil Imani

Last August, President George W. Bush used the term “Islamic Fascism” in a speech. In no time at all, the Bush-bashers, Islamic propaganda organizations and the rabid left unleashed a campaign of assault on the President for insulting the Muslims and sullying the sanctified religion of Islam by linking its name with fascism. Opportunistic Democrats were just too happy to lead the attack on the President. An aspirant for presidency, to the left of the [left] Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold, was so indignant by this “horrific” slander of the President smearing the stainless name of Islam that he found it his solemn duty to write a letter to the President lecturing him on his unacceptable use of the terms. Did the President indeed slander Islam, or are people like Feingold Bush-bashers who for their own reasons would never miss an opportunity to berate President Bush as well as those who support him?

Islam, the “religion of peace,” is anything but peaceful, particularly when it comes to other religions. To the oppressive Islam, there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his Prophet—the seal of the prophets at that. Grudgingly, Islam barely tolerates people of the book—namely Jews and Christians—but no other faith is entitled to any fair treatment. In Iran, the force-imposed Islam finds it expedient to extend its limited tolerance to the original religion of the indigenous people—the Zoroastrians. The terrible plight of the Baha’is in Iran is particularly heartwrenching, since they are the largest non-Muslims in the country and have, from day one, been severely brutalized by Muslims. The Baha’i faith dates back to the middle of the 19th century when an Iranian nobleman, Baha’u’llah, founded the new faith as an independent religion—a very painful thorn in the side of a ruling vested clergy with a stranglehold on the masses.

Islam can justifiably be condemned as a barbaric ideology that has energized and continues to energize crimes against humanity. Islam belongs to a raft of doctrines such as Nazism, Fascism and Totalitarianism of various stripes that promotes hate and violence against others. Despicable doctrines of hate and violence remain confined to their place under the "shameful" classification in libraries until people adopt them as their program of life. Hence, it is people who are guilty of bringing to life the dogmas of savagery. In the same way that ignorance of the law does not constitute a valid defense, not bothering to find out about the true nature of Islamic precepts and practices and blindly doing Islam’s biddings constitutes inexcusable wrongdoing. Muslims, therefore, are indictable for subscribing to the Quran and committing themselves to carrying out its ruthless instructions at great harm to the non-subscribers.

Diffusing the present dangerous confrontation between Islam and the West demands rational impartial and cool heads to untangle facts from myth, understand the Muslims’ mindset, and redress any grievances on either side. The Muslims’ perennial complaint is that the imperialist West—all colonial powers of the past, as well as the United States of America—have victimized them for decades and even centuries and continue to do so in every conceivable way. The litany of the alleged wrongdoings by the West is encyclopedic.

The terror and death inflicted on humanity is not the work of radical Islam, neither the political Islam, nor the militant Islam. It is Islam, period. Get it? And the perpetrators are not fringe elements confined to brainwashed Saudis, loony Taliban, or some know--nothing Pakistanis who have hijacked Islam and are now in the business of mass murder. The latest project of the practitioners of the “religion of peace,” aimed to blowing planeloads of innocent civilians to smithereens in midair over the Atlantic, - ought to finally drive the point home: It is Islam, dummy. Get it? How could people calling themselves sincere God-fearing religionists bring themselves to even think of acts of such barbarity, yet plan them methodically and cold-bloodedly proceed to execute them?

Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non-Muslims: A new generation of “Useful Idiots,” the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also live in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.

Useful Idiots are naïve, they are foolish, they are ignorant of facts, they are unrealistically idealistic, they are dreamers and they are willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy. They are anarchists, they are aspiring revolutionaries, they are neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population.