may not travel, even though the elder one is now anrnadult, without their Saudi father’s permission. The girls havernbeen forcibly converted to Islam and can only look forward torntheir eventual marriage, for which their consent is at best a formality.rnFawning by Loudoun Count}’ authorities extended even to arnblatant disregard of the county’s own laws. A Loudoun ordinancerndefines a private insfitution as one that is neither fundedrnnor controlled by any government: On both counts, thernLoudoun Islamic academy fails. Yet the county board rejectedrntestimonv by a former board member—the author of the relevantrnordinance —that the academy was not a private insfitution.rnNo matter. Today, neither Loudoun County, nor the Commonwealthrnof Virginia, nor the United States would be able torncreate and run an educational insfitufion based on any religiousrndoctrine. But a foreign government—a government thatrnis every bit as bigoted, intolerant, and ugly as the Post wroirglyrnaccused the school’s critics of being—may do so.rnEspecially illuminafing in the Loudoun controversy was thernposition of local Chrisfian social conservatives, who stayed neutralrnor even supported the academy. In the dimmer recesses ofrnthe American Christian inind, the only concern was whatrnprecedent denying the variance might set for private Chrisfianrnschools, or the availability of public vouchers. The importafionrnoiShari’a into a once-Chrisfian commonwealth seemingly registeredrnnot at all in evangelical minds blissfully unaware of Islamicrnaims. But as Bat Ye’or wrote in The Decline of EasternrnChristianity Under Islam,rnThe Islamist movement makes no secret of its intentionsrnto convert the West. Its propaganda, published in bookletsrnsold in all European Islamic centers for the last thirtvyears,rnsets out its aim and the methods to achieve them,rnrhey include proselytism, conversion, marriage with localrnwomen, and, above all, immigration [emphasisrnadded]. Remembering that Muslims alwa}’s began as arnminority in the conquered countries (“liberated,” in Islamicrnterminology) before becoming a majority, the ideologistsrnof this movement regard Islamic settlement inrnEurope, the United States, and elsewhere as a chance forrnIslam.rnThe element of willful blindness in Western perspectivesrnon Islam cannot be overesfimated. So deeply embeddedrnis the notion that all religions are fundamentally the same thatrnevidence to the contrary is simply wished out of existence.rnWlien the AyatoUah Khomeini states thatrnMuslims have no alternative . . . to armed holy warrnagainst profane governments, . . . the conquest of all non-rnMuslim territories…. It will be the duty of every ablebodiedrnadult male to volunteer for this war of conquest,rnthe final aim of which is to put Koranic law in powerrnfrom one end of the earth to the other. . .rnsuch utterances are as little heeded as were similar statementsrnby Lenin during the Cold War. After all, Khomeini is a knownrn”fundamentalist.” Surely, his statements cannot be heldrnagainst the moderates, the “mainstream,” who represent “realrnIslam,” whose beliefs and values are not so different fromrnours—can the)? The contenfion that Khomeini and his ilk arernin fact Islam’s historical “mainstream” not onlv is dismissed butrnis considered evidence of a dangerous “Christian fundamentalism,”rnwhich is every bit as bad as the Muslim varieh’, probabK’rnworse. The growing number of Muslims in America (Islam, accordingrnto some claims, has already overtaken Judaism as thernnafion’s largest non-Christian religion) and the irrefutable presumpfionrnof Muslim peaceableness ha’e set the stage for Islamrnto become both a social and polifical force. Under the Clintonrnadministration, Islam has made major strides to join denatured,rnhimianized Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism in theirrnsemi-established status as kindred denominations of a singlernAmerican civic creed, symbolized bv Hillary Rodham Clinton’srnsponsorship last year of the Eid al-Fitr end-of-Ramadanrncelebration at the Wliite House.rnLikewise, the idea that Islam shares an Abrahamie pedigreernwith Chrisfianih’ and Judaism, that we are all, in the Islamicrnphrase, “peoples of the book,” is now almost uniersally accepted.rnBut suppose that, during the early Christian era, a paganrnphilosopher from Athens had claimed to have received a visionrnfrom a divine messenger to the effect that Zeus/)upiter, thernGreco-Roman “father god,” was the one and only God —inrnfact, was the same God the Father v’orshipped by the Christians;rnthat the Christians had corrupted their Scriptures to hidernthe fact that Jupiter had been worshipped by Adam, Noah,rnAbraham, Moses, and Jesus; that only the self-proclaimedrnprophet’s recitation of his own vision was authoritative; that thernrites and sacred places of the Olympian gods (the EleusinianrnMsteries, tiie Delphic Oracle) had alwavs pertained to Jupiterrnalone and indeed had been established by earlier Abrahamiernprophets; and that those who had surrendered their will tornJupiter were commanded to wage holy war under his thunderboltrnsymbol on “infidels” who resisted the divine will. Is therernany doubt that Christians then would have rejected the supposedrnkinship of the new teaching to their own faitii as quicklyrnas today’s Christians rush to accoinmodate Islam?rnThere is litile doubt that Islam’s god is the former chief deiK’rnof the pohtheisfic Arab pantheon, stripped of his consorts andrnoffspring—a variation on tire moon god common throughoutrnthe ancient Middle East, among the Babylonians known as Sinrn(the Sinai peninsula is probably named after him) aird amongrnthe Sumerians as Nanna. Among the pagan Arabs, he was usuallyrncalled simply “the god,” al-ilah: Allah. The moon god .1-rnlah, whose crescent symbol today caps mosques the world over,rnheaded a pantheon of over ^00 lesser divinities, including threerndaughters called Lat, U/.za, and Manat. In fact, tiie controversyrnover The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie centers upon anrnembarrassing (and historically documented) episode duringrnMuhammad’s evolving “revelation” (after his deafii collected asrnhis Koran—Qur’an, “recitation”) in which he admitted the possibilit)’rnof retaining the three daughter-goddesses under his newrndispensation. He later resciirded this idea as having been ofrnfalse —”satanic” —inspiration. Muhammad (the son of Abdallah,rn”slave of Allah,” a further attestation of the deitv’s pre-Islamicrnorigin) was of die Quraysh tribe, the custodians of thernMeecan shrine to the pantheon known as the Kabah (“cube”),rnwhich houses a black stone (probably a meteorite) that Muslimrnpilgrims continue to venerate. Pilgrims also perform other pre-rnIslamic pagan rites such as stoning the devil at Wadi Mina andrnpartaking of the waters of the Zamzam well.rnIn short, Islam is a self-evident outgrowth not of the Old andrnNew Covenants but of the darkness of heathen Arabv. Despiternludicrous historical suggestions to the contrarv’ (such as the idearnthat the Kabah was built by Abraham), Muslim apologists haernFEBRUARY 1999/15rnrnrn