Not exactly what I would bless him with, but there's more. The Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.com) reports that the European Fatwa and Research Council hunkered down in Stockholm this summer to discuss "Jihad and Denying Its Connection to Terror." It all depends, it seems, on what the meaning of terror is. According to the council's Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, one of the leading figures in Sunni Islam, "martyrdom operations ... are not in any way included in the framework of prohibited terrorism, even if the victims include some civilians." ("Some" civilians.) The sheik listed six reasons, among them the following: "It has been determined by Islamic law that the blood and property of people of Dar Al-Harb (the Domain of Disbelief where the battle for the domination of Islam should be waged) is not protected." That means non-Muslims aren't "protected" in non-Muslim lands (and it's no bed of roses in Muslim lands) -- not even by, or rather, especially not by, the loftiest religious precepts of a significant swath of Islam.
This point reminds me of a passage in one of the greatly readable primers on Islamic jihad (the historical movement, not the terrorist group), "Jihad in the West," (Prometheus Books, 1998) by Paul Fregosi. Comparing Christian and Muslim war crimes in the 16th century, Fregosi writes, "Both sides murdered and tortured equally well. But," he adds, quoting historian Jack Beeching, "'the bloody deeds done by nominal Christians went contrary to the utterances of the founder of their religion. ... The Christians guilty of such deeds must have been aware at the backs of their minds that what they did was wrong.'" Fregosi notes: "The Muslims who carried out the same deeds, and worse, felt no guilt at all. On the contrary, they felt they were obeying the will of God. Surveying the Christian scene with an unblinking eye, Beeching adds, 'From this friction between doctrine and practice might come a change for the better.
Perhaps,' he adduced, 'this is the reason why the Christian West has never stagnated.'"
Perhaps. It is certainly true that as currently preached by many leading Islamic clerics around the world, no such friction between religious doctrine and murderous practice exists.
Killing Jews -- and by extension, Americans and other Westerners -- is doctrinally OK according to way too much of Islam. This is what must cease if ever there is to come a change for the better.