Daniel Pipes had a commentary in yesterday Jerusalem Post entitled, ” The enemy has a name”. Pipes, to his credit, implicates our government in denying the real name of the threat to America and the West: Political Islam. Pipes notes:

Yet Westerners have proven reluctant to identify the opponent in the conflict the US government variously (and euphemistically) calls the “global war on terror,” the “long war,” the “global struggle against violent extremism,” or even the “global struggle for security and progress.”

This timidity translates into an inability to define war goals.

Good for openers. But as we’ll see Professor Eidelberg trumps him with the truth about the threat we face.

Pipes goes on to say:

Bush effectively admitted this much in mid-2004, acknowledging that “We actually misnamed the war on terror.” Instead, he called the war a “struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies and who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.”

A year later, in the aftermath of the 7/7 London transport bombings, British prime minister Tony Blair advanced the discussion by speaking of the enemy as “a religious ideology, a strain within the world-wide religion of Islam.” Soon after, Bush himself used the terms “Islamic radicalism,” “militant Jihadism,” and “Islamo-fascism.” But these words prompted much criticism and he backtracked.

By mid-2007, Bush had reverted to speaking about “the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East.” That is where things now stand, with US government agencies being advised to refer to the enemy with such nebulous terms as “death cult,” “cult-like,” “sectarian cult,” and “violent cultists.”

IN FACT, that enemy has a precise and concise name: Islamism, a radical utopian version of Islam. Islamists, adherents of this well funded, widespread, totalitarian ideology, are attempting to create a global Islamic order that fully applies the Islamic law (Shari’a).

Problem is that Pipes doesn’t get it. Islamism means Islam.

But someone who does get it is American Israeli, Professor Paul Eidleberg. Eidelberg has been an advocate in Israel for reform of its basic law, the electoral system and adoption of a written constitution.. As regards the threat of Political Islam Eidelberg clearly understands what we are up against.

Here are Eidelberg’s comments on the Pipes op ed.

With all due respect to Daniel Pipes, and although I understand his reticence, it is not sufficient to classify the enemy as Islamism. Islamism is nothing less than Islam. The Quran, the Hadith, and Islam’s murderous history make this crystal clear. But consider the judgment of two astute scholar-statesmen of uncommon urbanity:

Alexis de Tocqueville:

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I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.