News of jihad finally gnaws its way in...

But not to the Left side of the aisle.

I must admit, I don't quite know how to respond to this reality (the jihad one, that is). To some degree, I can understand why folks on the Left would not even look at it. It's not something you want to believe is coming to your front yard, knocking at your door. Besides, while there are all these scum-sucking creeps flying flags for Allah that say "death to the infidel", there are thousands of equally angry young people in Iran dying (literally) to be free of the yoke of jihadi oppression. On the one hand, we have people for whom there can be no hope, because they have joined completely a cult of death, and on the other hand, we have people who have hope while living in an impossible place. So, this jihad thing can't be as big as the Bushies say it is, right?

Except that, in the case of trying to build something beautiful, it usually takes a few idea people, but many, many, many to break their backs or lay down their lives, but for destroying a thing of beauty, all it takes is a handful of nuts with box cutters.

I have such high hopes for the Azeri/Christian/other dissident groups in Iran. But I can't get too optimistic, when some of our own homegrown death merchants are still working to destroy all we have built here, let alone what they are scrabbling for, over there.


All this brings me around to the uncomfortable realization that, if this is truly jihad, we are going to need to choose sides. People have been saying this for years, and I have been trying to deny it. You know the story: "Islam means peace," "the majority of Muslims are just like you and me, trying to live in peace and faith..." Well, the majority of Muslims don't seem to be standing up and saying that MURDER is wrong, even when applied to their own women and children. The majority of Muslims have not stood up and said that they can live as good neighbors with those who believe in a different god or no god at all.

Having been an agnostic most of my life, I haven't really felt a calling to say that one group is wrong, or one is right. I've always felt that faith, and how one practices it, must be a personal, individual decision of conscience. And, when one has no personal stake in a particular doctrine, one should leave one's own opinions out of the others' practices. Unfortunately, as the saying goes, the right for a man to swing his fist ends at the other man's nose. Islam, by its very teachings, does not allow for individual conscience to decide against it, even by default. I have no right, under Islamic law, to be anything but a convert, a slave, or a corpse. Plus, as a woman, I don't get the full benefit of the first option. I can convert all I want, but I'm still some man's property, or property of the earth. Their fist swings dangerously close to my nose.

I now believe the jihad is coming, even to this little middlesex.

I can not say I will stand and fight for a Judeo-Christian God, but I expect I will have to stand strongly for something other, something sweeter to me than Allah's message could ever be.