In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them.
- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, October 12, 2011

Think of this as Islam's guilty plea.

Will we accept it?

Don't bet on it, because ten years after the worst sneak-attack on the U.S. so far in Islam's war on America, the nation's situational awareness is worse than ever.

1. Most of us still stubbornly refuse to admit what we already know about Islam: that it's a violent, malevolent religion whose adherents can't stop themselves from announcing to us their intentions to make war against us until they've either killed us or made us slaves.
2. Most of us still stubbornly profess our belief in a "true" Islam, peace-loving, egalitarian, more or less an Arabian version of Christianity.
3. Most of us reflexively channel all blame for the daily bombings, beheadings, murders, mutilations, honor killings, and sundry other savagery committed in the name of Allah away from "true" Islam onto what we're told is a distorted, hijacked Islam embraced by only a tiny fringe.
4. Most of us haven't lifted a finger since September 11, 2001 to find out if our opinions about 1, 2, and 3 have any basis in reality; we haven't read a single book, done a single Internet search, or tried reading a Qur'an.

For the past week media attention has focused on the "Occupy Wall Street" phenomenon.  The commentariat justly criticize the mobs for their incoherent message.  Panels debate, "Who are these people, and what do they want?"  

I find no signs of such curiosity in response to what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had to tell us.  Not only did he fully answer the two questions the silly Occupiers cannot answer, but he answered them without even being asked.  Too bad he was drowned out by the Occupier kid who wants free college tuition.

Let me put it another way.  Last Wednesday, the most important public trial against, potentially, the deadliest al-Qaeda jihadist to breach our airspace since 9/11 concluded when the defendant, a highly educated, well-spoken man who is neither crazy nor addled by pain nor drugs nor waterboarding, told us who he was and what he wanted.  More important, he told us what Allah and the Qur'an and Islam wanted -- namely, that "every able Muslim participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them." 

Excerpts of Abdulmutallab's remarks were reported in the news, and the transcript was published.  None of it inspired any analysis.  The story was old news Thursday morning.

I realize Abdulmutallab was just one defendant pleading guilty in a courtroom that day, while in a squalid park in New York City thousands of barefoot campers were stepping on each other. 

Still, they'll all soon vanish like a swarm of flying ants. 

Not so Abdulmutallab and his fellow jihadists.  Abdulmutallab ended his statement to the court this way: "If you laugh at us now, we will laugh at you."  Not "I," but "we."  The very first thing to which he pleaded guilty was a criminal conspiracy count.  "I had an agreement with at least one person to attack the United States."  I'll say he did.  He was doing only what is demanded of "every able Muslim."

And for that he says he's not guilty according to the Qur'an; for attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, he is "innocent in Muslim law."

No one has seriously contradicted him.  Dawud Walid, executive director of CAIR-Michigan, certainly wasn't too convincing when he pretended to the media that Abdulmutallab's "actions and speech are antithetical to how 99.99% of Muslims worldwide understand the Quran."  (If your calculator's not handy, that would leave a mere 160,000 misinformed Muslims, a smaller number than Egyptian "freedom fighters" who showed up to Tahrir Square to promise Yusuf al-Qaradawi that they would march to Jerusalem to become martyrs.)    

Walid doesn't really speak for 99.99% of Muslims.  But he does speak for the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of CAIR.  And the Brotherhood reads the Qur'an the exact same way the Underwear Bomber does.  Their motto goes likes this:

Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. 

And the Charter of Hamas, the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood so admired as "freedom fighters" by many of Dearborn's "moderate" majority (like Arab-American News publisher Osama Siblani), contains similar language:

We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the [Islamic] Umma, clash with the enemies and join the ranks of the Jihad fighters. ... I swear by that who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad! I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill (told by Bukhari and Muslim). 

So, why the national yawn at news that a religion of 1.6 billion has a religious obligation to make jihad on us?

I'd say because of points 1, 2, and 3 above.  And especially 4. 

Let's face it: we've heard all this before.  Even if a bona fide Islamist terrorist, caught red-handed (or in this case caught red-...well, anyway, you know what I mean), goes to the trouble of announcing to America that "my Islamic religious obligation requires me 'to carry an explosive device onto an aircraft and attempt to kill those onboard and wreck the aircraft as an act of jihad,'" we still act as if Islam had nothing to do with it.

This isn't innocent until proven guilty.  This is innocent regardless of pleading guilty.

"That's unfair!" someone will protest.  "We all know Abdulmutallab's guilty.  He's responsible for his own actions.  We can't put Islam on trial." 

Except that he wasn't acting on his own -- not really.  Neither were Nidal Hasan or Faisal Shahzad or Little Rock shooter Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, to name only a few. 

And as for putting Islam on trial -- that's my point.  If Islam were on trial, would the testimony from the prosecution's witnesses sound any different? 

Nidal Hasan's calling card identified him as a "Soldier of Allah." 

Times Square bomber Shahzad's statement to the court when he pleaded guilty was very similar to Abdulmutallab's, saying that "[i]t's a war":

"One has to understand where I'm coming from," Shahzad told the judge. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier."

"And it's a war to kill people," he coldly declared.

The Little Rock shooter identified himself as a "soldier" of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and described his shooting as a "Jihadi Attack."  He told the court, "It's a war against Islam and Muslims, and I'm on the side of the Muslims point blank[.]"  

What all these killers are trying to tell us is they're soldiers in a national army fighting for the Islamic Umma -- and they get their orders straight from the Qur'an.

Islam is a religion of prophets and messengers -- and messages. 

We just aren't getting the message.

TR Clancy is the pen name of a Dearborn, MI blogger.  His writing can be seen at Dearborn Underground.