Note: An earlier version of the following article was first published by PJ Media.

Because it is my field of study, one would expect I’d have much to say immediately after jihadi attacks of the sort that recently occurred in Brussels (35 killed), or San Bernardino (14 killed), or Paris (130). Ironically, I don’t: such attacks are ultimately symptoms of what I do deem worthy of discussion, namely, root causes. (What can one add when a symptom of the root cause he has long warned against occurs other than “told you so”?)

So what is the root cause of jihadi attacks? Many think that the ultimate source of the ongoing terrorization of the West is Islam. Yet this notion has one problem: the Muslim world is immensely weak and intrinsically incapable of being a threat. That every Islamic assault on the West is a terrorist attack — and terrorism, as is known, is the weapon of the weak — speaks for itself.

This was not always the case. For approximately one thousand years, the Islamic world was the scourge of the West. Today’s history books may refer to those who terrorized Christian Europe as Arabs, Saracens, Moors, Ottomans, Turks, Mongols, or Tatars — but all were operating under the same banner of jihad that the Islamic State is operating under.

No — today, the ultimate enemy is within. The root cause behind nonstop Muslim terrorization of the West is found in those who stifle or whitewash all talk and examination of Muslim doctrine and history; who welcome hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants while knowing that some are jihadi operatives and many are simply “radical”; who work to overthrow secular Arab dictators in the name of “democracy” and “freedom,” only to uncork the jihad suppressed by the autocrats (the Islamic State’s territory consists of lands that were “liberated” in Iraq, Libya, and Syria by the U.S. and its allies).

So are Western leaders and politicians the root cause behind Islamic terrorization of the West?

Close — but still not there yet.

Far from being limited to a number of elitist leaders and institutions, the Western empowerment of the jihad is the natural outcome of postmodern thinking — the real reason an innately weak Islam can be a source of repeated woes for a militarily and economically superior West.

Remember, the reason people like French President Francois Hollande, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are in power — three prominent Western leaders who insist that Islam is innocent of violence and who push for Muslim immigration — is because they embody a worldview that is normative in the West.

In this context, the facilitation of jihadi terror is less a top down imposition and more a grass root product of decades of erroneous, but unquestioned, thinking. (Those who believe America’s problems begin and end with Obama would do well to remember that he did not come to power through a coup but that he was voted in — twice. This indicates that Obama and the majority of voting Americans have a shared, and erroneous, worldview. He may be cynically exploiting this worldview, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s because this warped worldview is mainstream that he can exploit it in the first place.)

Western empowerment of the jihad is rooted in a number of philosophies that have metastasized into every corner of social life, becoming cornerstones of postmodern epistemology. These include the doctrines of relativism and multiculturalism on the one hand, and anti-Western, anti-Christian sentiment on the other.

Taken together, these cornerstones of postmodern, post-Christian thinking hold that there are no absolute truths and thus all cultures are fundamentally equal and deserving of respect. If any Western person wants to criticize a civilization or religion, then let them look “inwardly” and acknowledge their European Christian heritage as the epitome of intolerance and imperialism.

Add to these a number of sappy and silly ideals — truth can never be uttered because it might “hurt the feelings” of some (excluding white Christians, who are fair game), and, far from suspecting them, the West should go out of its way to appease Muslims until they “like us” — and you have a sure recipe for disaster, that is, the current state of affairs.

Western people are bombarded with these aforementioned “truths” from the cradle to the grave — from kindergarten to university, from Hollywood to the news rooms, and now even in churches — so that they are unable to accept and act on a simple truism that their ancestors well knew: Islam is an inherently violent and intolerant creed that cannot coexist with non-Islam (except insincerely, in times of weakness).

The essence of all this came out clearly when Obama, in order to rationalize away the inhuman atrocities of the Islamic State, counseled Americans to get off their “high horse” and remember that their Christian ancestors have been guilty of similar if not worse atrocities. That he had to go back almost a thousand years for examples by referencing the crusades and the Inquisition — both of which have been completely distorted by the warped postmodern worldview, including the portrayal of imperialist Muslims as victims — did not matter to America’s leader.

Worse, it did not matter to most Americans. The greater lesson was not that Obama whitewashed modern Islamic atrocities by misrepresenting and demonizing Christian history, but that he was merely reaffirming the mainstream narrative that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing. And thus, apart from the usual ephemeral and meaningless grumblings, his words — as with many of his pro-Islamic, anti-Christian comments and policies — passed along without consequence.

***

Once upon a time, the Islamic world was a superpower and its jihad an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Over two centuries ago, however, a rising Europe — which had experienced over one millennium of jihadi conquests and atrocities — defeated and defanged Islam.

As Islam retreated into obscurity, the post-Christian West slowly came into being. Islam didn’t change, but the West did: Muslims still venerate their heritage and religion — which impels them to jihad against the Western “infidel” — whereas the West learned to despise its heritage and religion, causing it to become an unwitting ally of the jihad.

Hence the current situation: the jihad is back in full vigor, while the West — not just its leaders, but much of the populace — facilitates it in varying degrees. Nor is this situation easily remedied. For to accept that Islam is inherently violent and intolerant is to reject a number of cornerstones of postmodern Western thinking that far transcend the question of Islam. In this context, nothing short of an intellectual/cultural revolution — where rational thinking becomes mainstream — will allow the West to confront Islam head on.

But there is some good news. With every Islamic attack, the eyes of more and more Western people are opened to the true nature of Muhammad’s religion. That this is happening despite generations of pro-Islamic indoctrination in the West is a testimony to the growing brazenness of the jihad.

Yet it still remains unclear whether objective thinking will eventually overthrow the current narrative of relativism, anti-Christianism, and asinine emotionalism.

Simply put, both celebrating multiculturalism and defeating the jihad is impossible.

However, if such a revolution takes place soon, the Islamic jihad will be easily swept back into the dustbin of history. For the fact remains: Islam is terrorizing the world, not because it can, but because the West allows it to.

Finger Lake Times, by Dan Hennessy

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”

— Matthew 5:13

As far as human beings go, we’re not so very much unlike those who came before us and are probably not much unlike those who will come after us. But, the fact that large-scale crimes against humanity are ignored, even when public news of such horrors abounds, remains a stain on the soul of the species, especially in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda, etc., etc.

It is the week following the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and the world has so far, tragically ... inexcusably ... unthinkably … done to Christians what it did to the Jewish people last century: ignored them as they were slaughtered … men, women, children, grandparents, grandchildren ... in mass numbers over an inexcusably long period of time.

You would think we’d have learned our lesson. But, according to Raymond Ibrahim, writing for the Gatestone Institute on March 17, the Obama Administration’s original rejection of the term “genocide” was changed to include Christians only after the House of Representatives voted 393 to 0 on a resolution that does describe Christians as victims of genocide. And yet, still there is no initiative to “fast track” Christians for immigration as they are publicly targeted for destruction. Despite the fact that, according to the Congressional Record, there is precedent to authorize “fast-tracking” due to religious persecution: in 1989 ... 2004 .... 2007 … Senators Lautenberg, Specter and Kennedy, respectively, passed bills that granted priority status to specified religious minority members. [114th Congress, 2nd Session, March 17, 2016]

But do we really need any legal precedent to do what’s obviously so morally right? Do we need legal precedent to instigate a rescue action of such great human consequence? In Syria, Christians, who totaled 1.25 million in 2011, are now down to about 500,000. [“Persecuted and Forgotten?”Aid to the Church in Need, Executive Summary] According to Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D, the Christian population in Iraq has been decimated in a little over a decade, dropping from 1.4 million in 2003 to just 275,000 today. The Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, Bashar Warda, has testified that for many long centuries the Christians of Iraq have experienced hardships and persecutions “but what we have now experienced are the worst acts of genocide in our homeland. We are facing the extinction of Christianity as a religion in Iraq.”

But this is not really about numbers, is it? This is about the heart and its intersection with memory. Is there a Christian mandate for fast-tracking Christians for immigration to safety in the United States? How about this: “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done?” [Proverbs 24:11-21]

It is the church that ought to be leading the effort to rescue Christians abroad, in keeping with the Torah and with Jesus’ teaching. The church did not “love its neighbor” during the Holocaust. Nor did it behave as the “good Samaritan” to the Jewish population of Europe and others as all were led to slaughter. Its silence was deafening. It is deafening still.

Holocaust survivor, professor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel says that “indifference” is “the epitome of evil,” going so far as to specify that “the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” [US News & World Report, October 86]

Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” It’s hard to read any “indifference” into that statement. And yet, one is want to say, as concerns Christian leadership at this time in history: Is anyone listening?