OPINION:
Ramadan is Islam’s period of religious reflection and observance, but this year, radical Muslims are making it a ritual of mayhem and murder. An outburst of attacks on innocents last week killed dozens. Traditionally a time of fasting to honor the Prophet Muhammad’s first revelation of the Koran, the Islamic holy book, this year the leader of the Islamic State called his followers to make the month-long holiday a “calamity for the infidels.”
Ramadan comes to an end on July 17, but the killing almost certainly won’t.
At least 38 beachgoers were shot to death last week and many more were wounded when a gunman pulled the familiar Kalashnikov assault rifle from a beach umbrella and fired on them at the Tunisian resort of Sousse, a favorite for vacationing Europeans. The attack followed by six months a similar assault on foreign visitors at a museum in the Tunisian capital.
At least 38 beachgoers were shot to death last week and many more were wounded when a gunman pulled the familiar Kalashnikov assault rifle from a beach umbrella and fired on them at the Tunisian resort of Sousse, a favorite for vacationing Europeans. The attack followed by six months a similar assault on foreign visitors at a museum in the Tunisian capital.
Muslims were not spared from the order to punish infidels. A suicide bomber allied with Sunni Muslims blew himself up inside a Shiite mosque in Kuwait following Friday prayers, killing 27. An ISIS statement said the bombing targeted a “temple of the apostates.” A 30-year-old Muslim delivery driver drove a car packed with bombs into the gates of an American — owned factory near Lyon in southern France, and put up the severed head of his boss on an adjoining fence. The suspect’s wife told police her husband is a “normal Muslim.” Such a man does not sound normal in any religion.
It was a busy day of bloodletting, all done between sunrise and sunset, when observant Muslims refrain from food and drink. For ISIS and its leader, Abu Bakr Baghdadi, there’s no refrain from murder.
Some Americans might take foolish consolation that, after all, it happened “over there.” There’s an oft-overlooked threat on U.S. soil, too, with radicals looking for opportunities and occasions to make trouble. Some radicals on the left say the suspects to watch are Christians and conservatives. New America, a Washington advocacy group, argues that over the past 14 years “anti-government organizations” have killed more people than Muslim jihadists — 48 by “Christians” and 26 by Muslim jihadists. New America omits Sept. 11; including the toll on 9/11, the figures are 48 and 3,000. There had been no comparable abomination between Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, and none since. New America might check its math.
Conservatives, Republican or otherwise, who celebrate a vow to destroy the U.S. government and raise their flag over the White House, as ISIS has done, are hard to find, because there aren’t any. Since the homegrown jihadi attack on participants in a Muhammad cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, last month, nine men on ISIS-inspired missions have been killed or arrested. But for law enforcement excellence, the number of innocent dead would be far greater.
In April, Judicial Watch reported that ISIS is operating a training camp in Mexico only a few miles from the border at El Paso, Texas. Mexican drug cartels stage their deliveries from these borderlands; it’s likely that ISIS terrorists are camping there to hitch a ride to the United States with the smugglers.
As long as ISIS pushes its announced goal of dominating the world, or at least as many backwaters of the world as it can, Americans, like the Europeans, Africans and others, cannot allow attacks anywhere to go unrecognized and unpunished.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.