From Whence Did the Monster Spring?

The death of the mass-murdering Islamist thug Abu Musab al-Zarqawi at the hands of the US Air Force yesterday has prompted many in the media to ask what the effect of the monster's death will be on the current civil war in Iraq. Those still enthusiastic about US nation-building efforts in Iraq call it a "turning point;" detractors of the project, and even some it its remaining supporters, point out that Zarqawi had no control over the Sunni nationalist militias whose daily battles and vendettas against the Shia and their militias now accounts for most of the hourly carnage in Iraq, and that his death will not bring an end to the simmering religious/ethnic strife. However, in an article today on TCS Daily, Ralph Kinney Bennett makes an acute observation regarding the underlying reasons murderers like Zarqawi exist and continue to garner media attention.

...criminals like Zarqawi would be non-stories were it not for the over-arching credo of murderous hatred and revenge that continues to pour forth from spokesmen of "the religion of peace" all over the world. While the West has bent over backward to accommodate Islam and give it its due as "one of the world's great religions," a grim reality is emerging. No matter how many ways the scholars parse it, jihad always turns out to mean murder and destruction. The lessons being taught in Muslim schools are harrowing in their narrowness and hatred. The voices of tolerance in the Arab media and the intelligentsia are weak and rare. And the silence of the "peaceful" imams is deafening.

Residents of Zarqawi's home town in Jordan are reportedly mourning his demise as a "martyr" and suggesting that innumerable Zarqawi clones will spring forth to take his place. Doubtless this may be true. Islam seems to produce no end of young men who think it their religious duty to slaughter anyone who disagrees with them.

Too bad no one in the mainsteam media wants to ask exactly why that is.