The hardest thing for Westerners to understand is not that a war with militant Islam is underway but that the nature of the enemy's ultimate goal. That goal is to apply the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) globally. In U.S. terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur'an.

Islam is nothing less than a violent religion that seeks converts at the tip of a sword. Appeasement, the apparent plan of John Kerry, renders the United States impotent in the face of a cultural onslaught.

Washington, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Justice noted that “the Palestinian Islamic Jihad is one of the most violent terrorist organizations in the world" when it announced the indictment of the PIJ North American leader Sami al-Arian last year.

But most Muslims argue that their faith is not violent. There exists a small group within the larger Muslim community of more than a billion people, they explain, that responds negatively to the challenges Islam faces from the West.

"the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia," a nation where people of minority faiths are executed.

LONDON The two big wings of Islam - Turkey in the west and Indonesia in the east - are reforming and changing at a lightning pace, confounding those who only measure Islam by its seemingly stagnant middle ground.

Panelists sought to dispel the myth that Islam and terrorism go hand in hand yesterday in a discussion on Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Five speakers from NT, TWU and Saudi Arabian universities participated in a panel discussion entitled "Religious Fundamentalism and Global Terrorism:

The United States has lost support in the Islamic world because of the Iraq war, and America must win back the hearts and minds of Muslims to prevent further terrorism, a University of South Dakota panel said Monday night.

The hostage-takers of children in Beslan, North Ossetia, were Muslims. The other hostage-takers and subsequent murderers of the Nepalese chefs and workers in Iraq were also Muslims.

PARIS -- The accelerating number of ever-bloodier outrages committed in the name of Islam has produced a curious transatlantic split over how this religion is to be seen.

"Let us contemplate the incident of this religious sheik allowing, nay even calling for, the murder of civilians," he wrote. "How can we believe him when he tells us that Islam is the religion of mercy and peace while he is turning it into a religionof blood and slaughter?"

Under the headline ‘‘The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists Are Muslims!’’ he wrote, ‘‘Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims.’’ He also wrote that if Muslims want to change their image, they must ‘‘admit the scandalous facts,’’

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims," Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched satellite television station Al-Arabiya, said in one of the most striking of these commentaries.

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Three years into the war on terrorism, the nation's safety remains in doubt and victory over the Islamic extremism behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is still somewhere over the horizon.

More than 30,000 people were expected to attend the meeting, which is organized by the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella association representing Muslim groups and mosques nationwide.

"It is my belief that ignorance is the biggest source of fear, and we are here to remove ignorance and build bridges between the diverse communities that live in the greater Birmingham area," said Ashfaq Taufique, president of the Birmingham Islamic Society.

A leading Saudi journalist has caused a stir by launching a scathing attack on Muslim clerics who justify the killing of innocent civilians in the name of jihad, or holy war.

While Scheuer contends that U.S. policies, past and present, have engendered the radicalization of the Islamic world, that doesn't mean, as the e-mailer suggests, that Scheuer is saying that "we deserve to lose" or "deserve what we got on September 11." To explain something doesn't excuse it.

The war that began three years ago in lower Manhattan has never been a conventional one, waged solely against enemy armies in distant lands. It is a fight for the hearts and minds and souls of millions of Muslims like Omar Shakr, whose life choices may have a greater impact on the long-term security of the U.S.

Arab leaders, Muslim clerics and others across the Middle East denounced the siege that left more than 340 people dead, many of them children. Some warned that such actions damage Islam's image more than all its enemies could hope.

TWO WEEKS ago on C-Span, I heard Condoleezza Rice say, "We must expand dramatically our efforts to support and encourage the voices of moderation and tolerance and pluralism within the Muslim world."

Kriesel said: "We are at war with Islamic extremists who have declared a jihad (holy war) against us." He pointed out that the West is being confronted by millions of Muslims who directly or indirectly support the militants.

CAIRO, Egypt -- Muslims worldwide are the main perpetrators of terrorism, a humiliating and painful truth that must be acknowledged, a prominent Arab writer and television executive wrote Saturday, as Middle East media and officials expressed horror at the bloody rebel siege of a Russian school.

The Islamic Bank of Britain, which operates strict compliance with Sharia, which prohibits customers from giving or receiving interest, yesterday announced details of a stock market flotation that will value the business at £104.7m.

Being watched or followed, however, is just one concern spreading through Arab- and Muslim-American communities. Many residents fear that a new McCarthyism is targeting Muslims, and not just Arabs, but others, such as Somalis and Pakistanis.

Nothing shows up the shallowness of the American neo-conservatives better than the choice of a French Catholic, Professor Alain Besancon, to fire a first salvo against Islam in the May issue of their flagship journal, Commentary.

In the face of Islam’s own internal struggles, it is not easy to see who we should support and how. This report provides detailed descriptions of subgroups, their stands on various issues, and what those stands may mean for the West.

When I interviewed Ramadan not long after Sept. 11, 2001, I asked what alternative he could offer Muslims. The true vision of Islam, he said, is not a snapshot of the world three centuries after the death of the prophet, but rather the unchanging Koran itself:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An Islamist women's group has begun an Internet magazine aimed at recruiting Arab women to fight holy wars against non-Muslims.

Moreover, continues Tibi, when Muslims disseminate Islam through violent means, that is not war (harb), as that word only describes the use of force by non-Muslims. Islamic wars are acts of "opening" the world to Islam. "[T]hose who resist Islam cause wars and are responsible for them."