“We often hear claims Muslims don’t condemn terrorism and that Islam condones violence. As Muslims, we want to state clearly that those who commit acts of terror in the name of Islam are betraying the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet Mohammad.  We reject anyone of any faith - who commits such brutal acts and will not allow our faith to be hijacked by criminals. Islam is not about hatred and violence. It’s about peace and justice.”

This was a very encouraging initiative. 

However, I was disturbed to read in a gripping new book, “Islam, Islamism and the West,”  that in 1998, Omar Ahmed, CAIR’s chairman, declared “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Qur’an...should be the highest authority in America and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

Daniel Pipes, wrote in “Commentary” that CAIR has tried to intimidate or silence critics who say anything negative about Islam.  For example, when Father Richard John Neuhaus, a distinguished Catholic priest who edits “First Things,” condemned contemporary Islam’s “resentments and suspicions, alternating with low-grade jihad in the form of the persecution of Christians, international terrorism and dreams of driving Israel in to the sea,” CAIR asked the Catholic Church to “investigate” Neuhaus, and CAIR’s supporters sent “a cascade of abusive mail accusing him of being `obviously mentally ill,’ and `doing the work of Adolph Hitler.’” 

We’d like to believe the recent bombings in London were the acts of crazed Islamic radicals.  Yet the British named  the four alleged perpetrators, who were the nation’s first suicide bombers. Three were born in Britain from families of Pakistani origin and appeared to be normal young men. Shahzad Tanweer, 22, was a noted cricket player, for example.

 “There’s no denying it’s payback time for what’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a British Muslim boutique owner told The New York Times. “You’ve been bombing people for the last two to four years, so you are going to get a backlash. There were 24 Muslims killed in Iraq today.”

However, that is twisted logic.  The Iraq bombings were caused not by British troops but by an Iraqi suicide bomber who drove into a crowd gathered around U.S. soldiers giving out candy and toys to children.

A paramount difficulty for Westerners is to understand Muslim logic. The criteria for truth used by Westerners is “based on evidence about the human world” while Muslim logic is based on “the word of Allah as revealed to his Prophet Mohammed and recorded in the Koran” reports  “Islam, Islamism and the West,” written by Baroness Caroline Cox, a famous member of the House of Lords, and John Marks. 

What does the Koran (Quran) say that is relevant to the London bombings? Consider this verse: “Fight those who believe not in Allah...nor hold that forbidden which has been forbidden by Allah and his Prophet, nor acknowledge the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) until they pay the jizya (tax) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.” (Surah 9:29)

Thus, “Muslims must fight unbelievers, those who allow things Allah forbids, and Jews and Christians unless they pay the jizya tax. The options for other unbelievers are to accept Islam or be killed,” write Cox and Marks.

“Muslims believe that when they die they go to the grave to await the day of judgment, when Allah will decide, on the basis of works done on earth, who goes to Paradise and who to hell. (Surah 101:6-9). The only way to guarantee going to to Paradise - and avoid Allah’s verdict on the day of judgment - is to die in jihad while fighting the enemies of Islam (Surah 8:39, 4:74).

Most Muslims are peaceful, not interested in jihad. However, Saudi Arabia has financed the building of “more than 1,500 mosques and 202 colleges and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries,” according to a Saudi newsmagazine.

With what message?  In 2002 a sermon in a Saudi mosque urged parents to educate “the children to Jihad and to hatred of the Jews, the Christians and the infidels.” A 5th grade Saudi textbook: “The whole world should convert to Islam and leave its false religions lest their fate will be hell.”

 Saudi Arabia refuses to allow Christian church construction. Fifteen 9/11 terrorists who killed 3,000 Americans were Saudis.

Ominously, however, the London bombers were home-grown.