The world appears to be in chaos and nearly every week there’s a terrorist attack in a Western country. For many of us living in the West, it would appear that there’s no end in sight for the increased level of violence. Radical Islam and its attempts to spread draconian laws throughout Western society has resulted in attacks in places like San Bernardino, California; Orlando, Florida; and most recently Nice, France. This radical form of Islam is alive and well and has fundamentally reshaped our perception and dealings with Muslim countries. Part of it is fear, but a large part of it is reality. And like any cancer, we must rid the world of it before it spreads beyond our control.
{mosads}Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) rightly stated that “Western civilization is in a war.” He is correct to state that we are at war. There is without a doubt extreme versions of Sharia and we must be vigilant to thwart those proponents of the faith in order to protect and defend our way of life. Our values and belief systems are antithetical to the ideology of Muslim extremists, who view our way of life as a threat to Islam. To them, the West is corrupt and needs to fundamentally change.
To understand the seriousness of radical Islam and groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), one only needs to refer The Atlantic piece “What ISIS Really Wants,” which quotes one of the group’s leaders as saying in 2013 that its “goal is to establish an Islamic state that doesn’t recognize borders, on the Prophetic methodology.” Our unwillingness to differentiate how disparate ISIS and al Qaeda are has lead to dangerous decisions. The president’s characterization of ISIS as al Qaeda’s “weaker partner” and as the “J.V. team,” as he described the organization, were clear mistakes.
The president’s demeanor has caused us — and arguably, some of our allies — to underestimate ISIS’s reach and ability. However, as we have seen, their ability to influence others to carry out attacks has been successful. Defeating ISIS must take place in more places than just the battlefield. There’s an ideological and cultural war that we must defeat in order to stop ISIS’s ability to influence and cause destruction.
However, this is easier said than done. Within a global caliphate, the extreme tenets of the faith triumph nearly every single freedom we in the West value. Women’s rights would be diminished to a point of non-existence; freedom of speech, one of the most prized pillars of our society, would cease; and members of the LGBTQ community would suffer most notably — likely death. The critique of this extremism is not to group all Muslims as extremist, but to point out the dangerousness of terrorist groups and what their agenda, if successful, could mean for those of us in the West.
The increased violence in Western cities should be a concern to all of us and indicate that perhaps we aren’t doing enough to thwart ISIS and radical Islam. This isn’t an issue of left versus right, which is how it has been played out in the media. It is about an ideology that attacks and attempts to change our most fundamental rights. If we are able to view it through that lens, then we are on the right path to collectively challenging the premise of ISIS and other terror groups. However, there may never be a way to fully relieve the world or the Middle East of groups like ISIS, because there will always be those seeking fundamental change through their corrupt lens.
Singleton is a Republican political consultant who has worked on Newt Gingrich’s and Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, and most recently, Dr. Ben Carson’s. He is currently the communications director for Carson. Follow him on Twitter @Shermichael_.The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.