Simple Solutions

The Jihadist who tried to set off a car bomb in New York City's Times Square proudly plead guilty to all charges in court. He was eager to tell about his plot — he was proud of his failed attempt — he came to court with a prepared statement.

Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born US citizen, trained with the Taliban and returned to the US to launch attacks on civilians here. He considers himself a "Muslim soldier". He said the attacks will continue until US forces leave Muslim lands.

This suggests a few simple solutions to some of our current problems. Here's a big one that would solve a number of problems:

• US and other Western forces leave Muslim lands.
• In return, all Muslims leave or are ejected from Western countries.
• The Muslim lands we leave are put into isolation — under quarantine. No more Western aid. No more Western contact. They can commune among themselves. This status will continue until those countries' populations change their regimes to governments that no longer attack the West and promote terrorism and Islamist supremacy.

If we don't quite want to go that far, we can at least require reciprocity:

• No mosque or Islamic study center can be built or opened in a Western land until Christian churches and synagogues are built and opened — without threats or violence — in Muslim lands.
• No new mosque can be built or opened in a top-level Western city like New York or Washington DC until at least one cathedral and at least one synagogue is built and opened in Mecca.

Reciprocity must be required at other levels, as well.

• Because of continued demonstrations of Muslim intolerance, including the continued harassment and murder of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Baha'is, and other non-Muslims, any demands (or requests) for tolerance by Muslims must be preceded by demonstrations of Muslim tolerance for non-Muslim religions and groups. (The simplest tolerance demonstration might be acceptance of Muslim converts to other religions, or to none.) Without such demonstrations, no request or demand will be heard.

We must also quit cutting Muslim extremists so much slack. If they are going to continue to seek converts in the West, they cannot object to Christian (and other) missionaries seeking converts in Muslim countries. If they are going to continue to limit their charity to Muslims only, they cannot object if we begin to limit our charity to them.

To smooth acceptance of these solutions and terms, we might accept the demand of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (and other Muslim organizations) for a law banning defamation of religions, making it clear that the first thousand cases will immediately be filed against mosques and imams for their preaching of hatred against Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims. Large fines and jail time might do more than all the tolerance in the world to reduce the venom and violence being preached routinely to the Muslim faithful.

Just a few ideas for simple solutions to complex problems, with the added benefit of letting some of these folks reap the appropriate consequences of their own actions and their own immature demands.

And that's before we consider the question of whether Islamism (or Islam itself) is actually a religion, or whether it is in reality just another totalitarian political ideology.