Sixty-two years ago, May 14, 1948, was the rebirth of one of the oldest nations in history, Israel. She is a unique and diverse Jewish state with a young viable democracy, in an unstable region. The circumstances surrounding Israel's re-birth was anything but simple. Regrettably, Israel’s journey from her early beginning to the present has been fraught with great suffering. It is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people that they persisted in their valiant struggle to re-gather again in the land of their birth. Some even go as far as saying that Israel's renaissance -- after 2,000 years or so-- was nothing short of miraculous.
The rebirth of Israel, in reality, is a culmination of thousands of years of gestation during which the Jewish people, dispersed throughout much of the world, endured immense degrees and varieties of suffering. The Nazi murderers and their collaborators capped the crimes committed against the Jewish people by brutally slaughtering six million innocent men, women and children.
Disguised as religion, Islam has penetrated democracies with the aim of replacing civility and liberty with the barbarism of 7th century Islamic theocracy and Sharia law. Islam’s multi-pronged attack aims to destroy all that liberty offers.
America, with a long tradition of protecting religious freedom, still clings to the “hands off” practice of leaving alone any doctrine or practice billed as religion. A thorny problem is in deciding what constitutes a religion and who is to make that call. We must keep in mind that to be a loyal and faithful Muslim, a Muslim must adhere to and perform many obligatory acts, as specified in the Quran by Allah and the Hadith/Sunna, during his entire life.
Looking back, I see no particular time or event that, in one stroke, severed my link with Islam. There was nothing nearly as dramatic as what reportedly happened to Paul on the road to Damascus transforming him from a rabid Christian persecutor to a devoted follower of Jesus.
My alienation with Islam started as far back as I could discern things. More to the point, I never embraced Islam in the first place, although I was born and raised in a Muslim family.
I believe in a modified version of Occam’s razor, popularly known as the law of parsimony. To me, an explanation with the fewest assumptions is either the correct one or the preferable one. The best answers, more often than not, are the simple answers.
"We just don't get it. The Left in America is screaming to high heaven that the mess we are in, in Iraq and the war on terrorism has been caused by the right-wing and that George W. Bush, the so-called "dim-witted cowboy," has created the entire mess. The truth is the entire nightmare can be traced back to the liberal democratic policies of the leftist Jimmy Carter, who created a firestorm that destabilized our greatest ally in the Muslim world, the shah of Iran, in favor of a religious fanatic, the ayatollah Khomeini.” -- Michael Evans, Jerusalem Times, Jan 20, 2007
Editorial/Op-Ed 
