As I write this on Friday morning, there it is all over the headlines, again.Islamist Terror Wave Hits Tunisia and Kuwait.
Man Beheaded in France.
What we know as of this moment is that terrorists shot up the resort town of Sousse, some 150 kilometers from Tunis, killing at least 27 people.
Meanwhile, the Times of Israel is reporting:
A suicide bomber attacked a Shiite mosque in the Kuwaiti capital during the main weekly prayers Friday, killing and wounding dozens, officials and witnesses said. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State.And, needless to say:
At least one person was killed and several were injured in a terror attack on a factory in the Lyon region in southeastern France late Friday morning.By the time that you read this it will be old news, but I suppose the question that many of us are asking ourselves is just what is it going to take for our media and our academia and our elected officials to start taking political Islam seriously?
The decapitated body of a man was found on the premises, according to Sky News. It reported that the 30-year-old suspect was known to the foreign intelligence services.
The victim was reportedly an employee of the factory. His head was discovered by police perched on the fence outside the factory, covered in Arabic writing.
There are two things that must be acknowledged.
1) The rise of political Islam in recent years is the single most significant geo-political happening since the demise of the Soviet Union.
I do not understand why so many people seem to have a difficult time understanding that political Islam is not just a religion, but a political movement, and like any political movement it is open to criticism and opposition. The fact is that political Islam, in the form of organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State, Hamas, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, and all the rest, do not represent Islam as a whole. What they represent is Islam in its Islamist form.
The form of Jihad.
Too many people seem to think that opposing political Islam is "racist" because it is seen as "Islamophobic" or an attack on regular Muslims.
It isn't.
In fact, cliché as it may sound, no one is abused more under al-Sharia than are Muslims. What is really bigoted is holding different people to different standards of humanity. In the Europe and the United States this generally takes the form of "humanitarian racism" and it is the most prevalent form of bigotry found in the West today.
The old-timey, flat-out racism of people like Dylann Roof is, sadly, not dead, but it is certainly dying.
Coming on the heels of Ferguson and Baltimore it is politically-incorrect to say so, but mid-twentieth-century KKK-style, or SkinHeadStyle, American racism is pretty much over - despite this heinous scum in Charleston.
The Klan is not taking over countries.
Neo-Nazis are not destroying ancient artifacts in Palmyra.
On the liberal-left concern with right-wing racists in Europe and the United States is genuine, and politically entrenched, but we should not allow that concern to be used as an excuse to ignore, or downplay, the far more dangerous fact of the rise of political Islam.
2) The Obama administration sold us out on the issue.
On the question of political Islam the Obama administration simply has nothing to say other than to downplay the seriousness of it and to protect Islam's reputation from itself.
I know that I am not singing to the choir here, and that is a good thing, but it must be stressed that this administration not only refuses to acknowledge the rise of political Islam during the misnamed "Arab Spring" as a serious problem, but has actually aided and abetted that very problem.
The pro-Israel / pro-Obama American-Left must acknowledge that which is directly before their very noses.
Barack Obama is not an Israel-friendly president. Period. End of story and stop making excuses.
Barack Obama supported the Muslim Brotherhood and is enabling an Iranian bomb. All we can do is oppose the administration's foreign policy and hope to put enough pressure on Congress, and the powers that be, to oppose political Islam and prevent that bomb from coming into being.
If you think that the rise of political Islam is a problem now, just wait until you get a gander at what it looks like after an Islamist nuclear umbrella covers the region.
That will be, as they say, game over and a nuclearized Iran will be Barack Obama's foremost legacy.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.