Recently, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was asked whether he would support a Muslim for President. His answer reflected what many in Western societies do not understand and is probably one of the most important ideas articulated throughout the long and arduous campaign as we approach the 2012 Presidential elections.
Republican candidate Newt Gingrich responding by saying that the answer to that question really depends on whether the candidate was “a modern person who happens to worship Allah.” Or “a person who belonged to any kind of belief in Sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us.” He correctly concluded by stating that the former would not pose a threat to America or the Western world, while the latter would be a “mortal threat.” Newt Gingrich is absolutely right in making such a distinction. The danger facing America from the Islamic wave sweeping the Middle East and beyond arises not from the fact that people practicing the Islamic religion are Muslim, but rather from the degree to which they adhere to the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of Sharia. Newt Gingrich has rendered a real public service by not shying away from this issue on the campaign trail and has raised a serious concern that should concern all Americans. What was perceived in the past as threat on Israel is now beginning to be understood as a problem for the whole world, this is the real meaning of the Domino Effect.
Over the past 100 years, powerful and belligerent conglomerations of state and non-state Islamic forces have adopted the use of terror to create a strategic threat on the continuing survival of the State of Israel. During those years the use of Islamic terror was considered a local threat to Israel and a consequence of the ongoing conflict between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Islamic terror was perceived in the West as a complimentary Islamic tactic to weaken Israel between periods of intermittent full-blown military warfare always resulting in Israel's defeat of combined Arab military forces. Islamic terror was not understood or interpreted as a strategic threat on Western nations. Islamic terrorists enjoyed the status of celebrities and were welcome to the corridors of power and intelligentsia throughout Europe and the United States. This acceptance of Islamic terror as a genuine and justifiable expression of nationalistic aspirations provided for the leaders of the state and non-state Islamic forces the belief that the Western world must accept Islam, by force if necessary, and that they have a divine right to impose Islam on the Western world.
Current policy assessments continue to be based on obsolete principles and strategies often based on political bias leaving many of the Western nations unprepared for the emerging threat of a new Islamic imperialism. In the same manner that the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center changed the perception of Islamic terror from being a local and regional Israeli problem, to a threat on all the Western industrialized nations of the world; similarly, the recent Islamic takeover of the majority of the 22 Arab nations of the Middle East may herald the transformation of the whole Middle East ruled by Islamic parties to a threat on all industrialized nations and not just a threat on Israel. Iran's recent threats backed by the deployment of naval battleships, to block the Strait of Harmutzand prevent the free flow of oil to the Western World is only one recent example.
Numerous reports have emerged over the past year indicating that Islamic organizations in Europe and the United States are growing at an alarming rate creating Islamic cultures and societies within their host nations that dissociate themselves from the prevailing values, mores, constitutions, laws, and legal regulations, claiming that Sharia Law is above all "human made" local rules and regulations. These Islamic organizations have no true intent to allow for real integration but rather use the freedom of Democratic societies to strengthen their message, that Islam is not and will never be subservient to any other religion or political system.
Israel stands today alone in the Middle East, in the midst of a sea of Islamic forces as a bastion of democratic stability, a regional military superpower, and as a frontline defense for the Western World against the expected belligerency and imperialistic inspirations of Islamic forces to conquer the West. What may seem as a localized conflict for territory in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) will evolve into a direct territorial threat on Cyprus, on Greece, on France, on England, and on the United States of America. The seeds of this Islamic threat on the integrity of the Western World are already positioned to attack from within and from without, creating a Domino Effect that will disrupt Western societies as we know them. The Domino Effect, beginning here in Judea and Samaria, the biblical and historical heartland of Israel will develop into an Islamic tsunami of political and religious intolerance for religions and ideologies that are not subservient to Islam and Sharia Law in open societies of Western and industrialized nations.
Today more than ever, we must demand of our political leaders to prepare an effective response to counter this Domino Effect and meet the challenges and dangers inherent in Islamic ideologies use of Western democratic institutions to further their own fundamentalist goals ignoring basic concepts of democracy, tolerance, human rights and gender equality.