Maybe so, a reader might say. But what does protesting Shariah in Europe have to do with either American policy in Iraq or Sept. 11?
The answer is everything. What were the attacks of Sept. 11 all about? Al Qaeda's terrorist plot was designed not only to strike at the United States, but also to advance the cause of establishing an Islamic caliphate -- a world government ruled according to Shariah, which, among other things, forbids criticism of Islam. Polls indicate that sizable numbers of Muslims (solid majorities in key countries), regardless of their opinion of Al Qaeda, share this same goal of a Shariat-based, Islamic caliphate. This is a highly significant overlap between the goals of Islamic terrorism and what we think of as mainstream Islam.
Meanwhile, though, in our childish, PC wisdom (accepted across the political spectrum), we have let Islam off the hook when it comes to terrorism, sticking to the story that our whole problem is with a Tiny Band of Extremists That Hijacked Islam, not the jihadist teachings of Islam itself. To make the story stick, we also seem to ignore the impetus behind Islamic terrorism -- the imposition of Shariah, what with its ultimate institutional denigrations of non-Muslims and women, and its denial of freedom of conscience and expression.
This blinkered view of Islam explains how even in our commemorations of Sept. 11 we ignore the ongoing threat to liberty posed by the spread of Shariah across the West, which the SIOE was trying to protest. It even helps explain our confusion over Iraq, where, ignoring the formative influence of Shariah on the native culture, we are stumped by our failures to remake Iraq in our own Western image.
There is another consequence of our blindness: a terrible indifference to cultural allies in Europe who are fighting its Islamization -- a cataclysm for the liberty-based West.
We ignore them at our peril.