It is asserted, in connection with 10th anniversary observances of al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that “we are not at war with Islam, only against a tiny minority trying to hijack this peaceful religion for violent ends.” The assertion is more lullaby than description. A decade after the terrorist murders of 3,000 people, 10 years including U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Transportation Safety Administration’s strip-search X-rays and Manhattan’s ground zero mosque, U.S. leaders including Presidents Bush and Obama have avoided a basic truth: We are not at war with Islam, but what is perhaps the most influential ideological trend in contemporary Islam is at war with us.
Shortly after the destruction of New York City’s World Trade Center and the coordinated attack on the Pentagon, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf reassured Westerners that no more than 10 or 15 percent of Muslims supported Sunni extremist Osama bin Laden. That would be at least 130 million people, roughly equivalent to the combined populations of France and Germany. Hardly a majority of the world’s Muslims, but much greater than a “tiny minority.”
