ISIS supporters made good on the call this week from Abu
Muhammad al-Adani, Islamic State official spokesman, to use the month of
Ramadan to create a “calamity for the infidels…and
apostate Muslims.”
On Friday, they slaughtered 38 people, mostly tourists from England, who were relaxing at a beach in Tunisia. Earlier in the day, terrorists in France
beheaded a businessman after ramming a truck into a factory and causing an
explosion. And at around the same time, in Kuwait,
a suicide bomber killed 25 worshipers and injured hundreds at a mosque.
On any given day if you happen to be an “infidel,” that is,
a Christian, Jew, Hindu, or Buddhist, or if you are a Muslim who goes to the
wrong kind of mosque, a former Muslim, or an atheist, you are a target. A
target wide as the world.
While the horror that was the beach at Sousse, and the
beheading in France by a terrorist who was known
to French authorities, may take Western attention for a while (for a lifetime
for those who lost loved ones and those who are among the many wounded) it is
especially scary to think that quickly we will stop paying attention, again.
Terror attacks in France and Tunisia are very recent, those that
ended the lives of 12 people who were working at the offices of Charlie Hebdo
and 4 people who were shopping in a kosher market in Paris as well as the
terrorism at the Bardo Museum in Tunis that left 22 people dead. Yet, every new attack shows up as if
anomalous, as if only tenuously connected to what has come before, and without
acknowledgment by Western powers of the war that has been declared on us.
Instead there will be some speeches and memorials and
investigations. The UN will focus its next emergency session on Israel.
As a member of the vast, world majority of non-jihadists, of
we, the people enjoying living life and intent on continuing to do so, I’d be
encouraged to hear some direct statements from our leadership. What kind of
plan is there for defense of the overwhelming majority of the people of the
world?
A disturbing question but an obvious one: Is giving nuclear weapons to Iran --whose
mullahs see themselves in opposition
to ISIS but also to the US and Israel – the best you can do?
