The Islamic Threat Can Be Countered

Freedom of conscience, so valued in the West, is repudiated by the jihadists. Theirs is a theocratic ideal, and the linchpin is obedience to God in a tribal or semi-tribal order, not within the nation-state concept as we in the West understand the nation-state. It is a religion without miracles, without grace, without mercy and forgiveness as the linchpins of personal faith.

Concern about our safety is not merely some kind of paranoia by Americans who fail to appreciate the sentiments expressed in the sonnet "The New Colossus" written by Emma Lazarus and engraved on a plaque on the Statue of Liberty. Her poem invites the dispossessed and weary of the world to our shores. Her words invite those who come seeking a haven, not for those seeking a new battleground in which to impose alien and/or violent values.