A few weeks ago, President Obama informed us that Osama bin Laden, the internationally recognized founder of Al Qaeda who will be forever associated in our collective consciousness with the terrorist attacks of 9\/11, had been killed in a clash with American troops.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The news was greeted by a chorus of cheers and tears from crowds throughout the country.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, while there are few people as richly deserving of death as bin Laden, I partake of none of the jubilance that has enraptured my fellow countrymen and women.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let me be blunt: contrary to what many now seem to believe, the killing of bin Laden is anything but a game changer in favor of the United States.\u00a0 Symbolically, it is a huge victory for our country, to be sure.\u00a0 But substantively speaking, in reality, it is actually a potential loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As usual, and in spite of all of our railing against the evils of \u201cethnocentrism,\u201d we in the West refuse to come to terms with the stone cold fact that the Islamic perspective on the world and our own are not only mutually distinct, but mutually antagonistic.\u00a0 Make no mistakes about it: the killing of bin Laden is most certainly not <\/em>being viewed as a setback for his numerous disciples and comrades both within Al Qaeda and beyond.<\/p>\n For well over a decade, for the sake of Allah and in the same courageous spirit of the Prophet, bin Laden has devoted every quantum of his energy to combating the Mother of all infidels, the Great Satan herself, the United States.\u00a0 Now, after all of this time, the most powerful agent of evil in our planet\u2019s history has finally\u2014finally<\/em>!\u2014slain him.\u00a0<\/p>\n At this moment, less than 24 hours after news of his death erupted, this is the narrative regarding bin Laden\u2019s fate that is already well on its way to ensconcing itself in the minds and hearts of Muslims the world over.\u00a0 To be certain, this ever evasive terrorist is unimaginably more of a danger in death than he ever was in life.\u00a0 During his time on Earth, Muslims viewed bin Laden\u2019s as the face of Islamic resistance to Allah\u2019s enemies.\u00a0 Now, his persona will emblematize the highest martyrdom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Observing the reaction to this event, it is hard to escape the sense that I have been hurled into an alternative reality of a sort.\u00a0 The very same motley crew of leftists in Washington and the media who continually decried as \u201cimperialist,\u201d \u201cimmoral\u201d and \u201cillegal\u201d our previous president\u2019s efforts to prosecute \u201cthe War on Terror\u201d are now as giddy as schoolgirls.\u00a0 Even mobs of college students\u2014characteristically the most outspoken agents of \u201cimperialism,\u201d \u201cintolerance,\u201d and \u201cmilitarism\u201d\u2014have suddenly become unabashed jingoists <\/em>as they feverishly chant \u201cUSA!\u201d from the rooftops (they can\u2019t all be Young Republicans, can they?).\u00a0<\/p>\n Particularly ironic is that those leftists who complained that President Bush\u2019s foreign policy prescriptions were actually instruments for recruiting more terrorists fail to see that even our (admittedly foolish) military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan will not prove as alluring to aspiring jihadists as the killing of Osama Bin Laden for which President Obama is now taking credit.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, few people on either side of the political divide appear to grasp this.\u00a0<\/p>\n If ever we needed proof that Obama is not a Muslim, his remarks concerning the killing of bin Laden is it, for no one remotely familiar with the nature of the Islamic psyche could for a second seriously entertain the thought that bin Laden\u2019s death signifies a weakened Al Qaeda or even the slightest advance in the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d (or whatever we\u2019re calling it these days).\u00a0 And this is the point: nearly ten years after 9\/11 those in both of our national political parties remain in willful ignorance of the painful fact that, President Obama\u2019s contention to the contrary notwithstanding, we most definitely are <\/em>at war with Islam.\u00a0 <\/em>This isn\u2019t to say that we are at war with all Muslims; <\/em>but those with whom our conflict consists are most definitely not aberrations from an otherwise dovish religion. Rather, they are acting in accordance with a literal, not <\/em>radical or extremist, reading of their faith.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Osama bin Laden did not highjack an otherwise peaceful religion, and he is not a proponent of \u201cradical Islam\u201d or \u201cIslamism\u201d; these are categories that Westerners created in order to avoid the reality that bin Laden is an orthodox or traditional Muslim.\u00a0 And his legions of followers are no different in this respect.\u00a0 As such, they will be no more deterred by his death than the first Christians were deterred by the crucifixion of Christ.\u00a0 In fact, just as the early Christians were actually inspired <\/em>by both the passion of their Lord as well as the example of martyrdom set by other Christians, so bin Laden\u2019s disciples will be inspired and emboldened by his example.\u00a0<\/p>\n Considering the corruption that the Christian mind has suffered in our secular, materialist age, it is not surprising that the religious conviction of a bin Laden should be foreign to contemporary Westerners.\u00a0 Yet the sooner we grasp that, unlike our twentieth century conflicts, the present conflict is fundamentally religious <\/em>in character, and unlike that of our previous enemies, the motivation of bin Laden and company is theologically-centered, the sooner we may recognize that as long as Islam remains with us, so too will the violence that attends it.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few weeks ago, President Obama informed us that Osama bin Laden, the internationally recognized founder of Al Qaeda who will be forever associated in our collective consciousness with the terrorist attacks of 9\/11, had been killed in a clash with American troops.\u00a0 The news was greeted by a chorus of cheers and tears from…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n