On being a traitor

Kudos to Samir Khan, who in a recent essay explained what neither President Bush, President Obama, nor Osama bin Laden have been able to articulate: why a U.S.-born Muslim would be "proud to be a traitor to America." (I found the article on a website called Unjust Media, but it apparently originated on Mr. Khan's own website-magazine, Inspire.) With beautiful clarity he explains:

I am a traitor to America because my religion requires me to be one.... I am terrifically proud to be a part of such a religion and what Muslim wouldn’t? Islam has the answer to life’s problems and it is what bonds humanity together for the good.... Islam requires its domination and after eighty plus years of living in a post-Caliphate world, I would think that it's about time Muslims came together to tear down the obstacles. The most important of these obstacles today is obviously America.

That bit about eighty-plus years refers I think to the emergence of a secular Turkey in 1924. The idea is that Kemal Ataturk severed the last strand of the once-glorious Ottoman Empire, which at its height ran north almost to Vienna and Kiev, west to Algiers, and southeast to the Indian Ocean. To this you can add Spain, Portugal, Indonesia, and the Philippines, in the more grandiose vision of Islam-as-universal-nation--and perhaps Germany and France as well. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford