Ten years after 9/11, it could be said there is far less clarity of understanding about Islamism and Islamist terrorism than there was in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on America.
Indeed, it is ironical — though the man responsible for 9/11 has been disposed of deservingly, the U.S. and rest of the West readily continue their downward slide of appeasing Islamists and their political agenda.
In New York, the biggest cheerleader of the Ground Zero mosque project is none other than its mayor, Michael Bloomberg. We have seen President Obama bowing in the direction of the Saudi king and former president George W. Bush take the same king gently by the hand as an honoured guest.
This is the Saudi leader, King Abdullah, whose citizens engaged in the mass casualty attack on America's most famous city.
Arab petrodollars have thoroughly perverted Islam, or more appropriately the "official" Islam of the Arab-Muslim world, into a homicidal jihadi cult.
But it has also infected the West, and severely warped its capacity to think critically when it comes to dealing with the Arab-Muslim world.
The insidious effects of petrodollar corruption are all around us. The mainstream media and universities seeking their share of Arab petrodollars have greatly abandoned their roles of maintaining objective and critical views of the world, and inculcating the same in their audience and students.
The infection has spread to the churches. My friend Marc Lebuis — I have once before written about his work — runs a small organization named Point de Bascule in Montreal devoted to exposing Islamism and Islamists in our midst.
Lebuis' efforts are of an engaged citizen concerned about the appeasement mentality widespread in his country. In recent postings on his web magazine (www.pointdebasculecanada.ca), Lebuis draws attention to the Second Global Conference on World's Religions after 9/11 being hosted by McGill University in Montreal on Sept. 7.
The astonishing thing — perhaps not astonishing anymore when such things occur, likely greased by Arab petrodollars — is the extent to which non-Muslim religious leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, and clerics and scholars of religious studies, engage in soft-peddling Islamism to western audiences.
Lebuis has it right when he notes such interfaith engagements are all about "getting non-Muslim religious leaders to repeat Muslim Brotherhood's mantras."
The star of the event will be Tariq Ramadan, controversial Islamist ideologue par excellence and grandson of Hasan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood presently rides high with the agenda of imposing Shariah rule in Egypt.
Instead of universities, churches and mainstream media educating people in the West about Muslim Brotherhood's fascist nature and the double-speak of its propagandists, such as the Swiss-born Ramadan, who has denied any contacts with terrorists or Islamic fundamentalists, they have assumed the role of spinmeisters for Islamists and Islamism that are at the roots of why the Arab-Muslim world is retarded and its civilization a toxic wreck.
Ten years after 9/11, fishes might feast on the remains of Osama bin Laden, but his ideas now receive a ready pass, even find accommodation, in the West
