Many Americans don't talk about Islam for the fear of being labeled Islamophobic. When logical and factual discussions are avoided, only simplistic and extreme positions prevail. Thus there are people on the far right who totally fear Islam, and there are people on the left who can only repeat clichés such as, "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism." Here's a quick overview of Islam and the elements within Islam that give rise to extremism and terrorism.

First of all, it's not easy to generalize Islam, since there are different sects and theological beliefs. Add in factors such as culture, region and time period, and the concept becomes more nuanced. Thus, the liberal-urban-Syrian-1990s-Shiite Islam will be very different from the ultra-conservative-rural-Saudi-1940s-Sunni Islam.

Sunni v. Shiite

Broadly speaking, there are two major divisions in Islam: Sunni and Shiite. Within both, there are different schools of thoughts and subsects. Although they both follow the Quran, the Sunnis also use Hadiths, which are compilations of what Mohammed allegedly said and did.

Historically, the division of Sunni versus Shiite is based on disagreements about the successor of prophet Mohammed. It's a family feud between Mohammed's father-in-law and son-in-law. Sunnis for the former and Shiites for the latter. The son-in-law (Ali) was assassinated by Sunni caliphs during Ramadan. Thus it's not a coincidence that Shiites are still attacked by Sunni terrorists every year during Ramadan.

Radical Sunnis claim that Shiites aren't even Muslims. In Syria, most rebels are Sunni extremists and they have massacred Shiite civilians and destroyed Shiite shrines. The biggest conflict in the Middle East is between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and it's a Sunni-Shiite power struggle. Saudi Arabia's biggest fear, as exposed by Wikileaks, is the "Shiite Crescent" of Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon. It's no surprise then that the Saudi/USA-funded jihadi groups like 'ISIS' in Syria and Iraq have attacked Shia populations and shrines. It's a proxy war for regional dominance, with a potential Iran, Iraq, Syria and Russian alliance on one side against Saudia Arabia and the USA on the other.

In terms of demographics, 85% of the Muslims in the world are Sunnis.

Wahhabism, Salafism and Jihadist-Salafism

These are three important terms that drive geopolitical Islam. Wahhabism refers to the Saudi-version of Sunni Islam. Named after an Islamic preacher of the 18^th century, it's extremely dogmatic and puritanical. Salafism is almost identical to Wahhabism in terms of theology and doctrine. Both insist upon a society that mirrors what Mohammed and his companions did back in the 7^th century.

Then there are Jihadist-Salafists who want to defend and spread Salafism through jihad. By "jihad," they don't mean "internal spiritual struggle", they mean armed conflicts, guerilla warfare and terrorism. These are the people who originally came out of the Mujahideen project in Afghanistan. We can thank Saudi Arabia and the CIA for these violent Islamists who are now the biggest threat to the stability of nations around the world.

Almost all the terrorist groups around the world are Jihadist Salafists. Al Qaeda, ISIS, most 'Syrian rebel' groups, Boko Haram (Nigeria), Al Shabaab (in Somalia), Abu Sayyaf (in Philippines), Taliban etc. are all the same soup in different bowls.

Salafism and Their Extreme Sharia Law

The practice of Islam in any nation has meant a merger of state and religion from the very beginning of Islam. Around the world today, there is a spectrum of Sharia Laws. Most Islamic countries use similar civil Sharia Laws for family-related issues. Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia uses laws straight out of the Quran and Hadiths for criminal laws as well. This is why there are beheadings, crucifixions, amputations, stoning of women etc.

In Saudi Arabia, women are second-class citizens. For her entire life, a Saudi woman lives under a male guardian - either her father or husband. A woman cannot go to school, get a job, travel or even marry without written permission from her male guardian. Of course, women cannot drive a car at all and they get arrested if they don't cover themselves from head to toe in public. Here's agood article on the abysmal conditions under which Saudi women live. Two other extreme Sharia Law practices that hurt Muslim women a lot are child marriages and female genital mutilation.

Under Salafism, it's permissible to kill Muslims who leave Islam, kill anyone who denigrates the Quran or the prophet, kill atheists, kill gays, kill adulterers, kill people for pre-marital sex ... and that's a partial list. Again, we should note that Saudi Arabia is the main exponent of this type of Islam, and Saudi Arabia is fully supported by the USA.

Salafism has been spreading to moderate Muslim countries over the last 30 years. For example, in Indonesia, new Sharia police arestopping women for "tight jeans" and forcing them into Sharia-compliant dress. People - including Christians - are being publicly caned for non-Islamic activities such as selling alcohol or an unmarried girl simply hanging out with a male friend. In Pakistan, a college student was attacked and murdered by other students for posting something on Facebook that was construed to be blasphemy. In some parts of Turkey, which used to be a very secular country, women are being randomly attacked by strangers for not dressing modestly. In another case, extremists savagely attacked young men in Istanbul for drinking beer during Ramadan.

Salafists don't integrate when they come to the West. Muslim women still suffer under Sharia courts in the U.K. Undercoverdocumentaries have revealed Saudi-funded mosques in Europe and the U.S. preaching what is indisputably bigotry, misogyny, anti-Semitism and homophobia.

No Political Correctness in Salafism

While Americans and Europeans are warned about Islamophobia, there are no similar sentiments towards tolerance of Western religions or values in Salafism. Saudi Arabia explicitly prohibits non-Muslim places of worship; in Qatar, churches have to be very discreet and not display a cross. In Brunei, Christians are not allowed to openly celebrate Christmas; no Santa Claus or Christmas trees are allowed in public. In Pakistan, churches, Hindu temples, and even Shiite mosques are often bombed. To add to the depravity, the terrorists choose major religious days such as Easter to maximize the deaths and terrorize the minority religions who make up 3% of the population.

In Egypt, churches have been bombed repeatedly for many years; in one town, all the Christians were persecuted and driven out; a few months ago, a bus on its way to a monastery was stopped and all the Christians were massacred in cold blood. In Indonesia, a popular Christian governor of the capital city, Jakarta, was jailed for two years for merely saying that the Quran doesn't prohibit people from voting for a non-Muslim. In the Philippines and in Syria, Jihadist Salafists have destroyed and burned down numerous churches (video #1, video #2). The US and Saudi-backed 'Arab Spring' in Syria turned into a 'Christian Winter' as thousands of Christians were massacred by Salafists.

From Salafism to Jihadist Salafism

Most Americans don't realize that fanatical Imams casually spread terrorist messages on national televisions in the Middle East.Here's a video where an Imam talks about what happens when Muslims invade and take over a land of infidels. He talks about how all property, including men, women and children, belong to the Muslims. He goes on to discuss the details of a slave market and how to sell the infidels/Kafirs. This is a barbaric message that doesn't belong in the modern world, but it does resonate with Salafist groups like ISIS who actually perform such atrocities.

Here's another popular Imam in Iraq who says, "Yes, Islam was spread by the sword. Yes, we invade, kill and enslave. So what? That's what Allah commands us to do and that's what Mohammed did."

Bin Laden himself used Quran verses 9:73, 5:51, 8:39, 8:60 and 8:12, which say (to paraphrase), "Non-Muslims are evil, so fight them; don't take Jews and Christians to be your friends; fight the non-Muslims until everyone follows Islam; do whatever is within your power to terrify the enemy; and God will cast terror in the hearts of non-Muslims, so behead them."

Even the killing of women and children are justified by Jihadists who claim that Mohammed gave permission to do so during a war.

The Master Plan for Indoctrination

Saudi Arabia has created a worldwide army of zealots using mosques and schools. This is a massive project that costs billions of dollars every year. In the 1980's, as a part of the Mujahideen project, Saudi Arabia established thousands of Islamic schools - known as Madrassas - for poor people in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The real goal was to brainwash the kids to become jihadists. It was so successful that in the last 30 years, Saudi Arabia has built tens of thousands of Islamic schools all over the world, including Europe, US, Canada and Australia.
Syria is a perfect example for how Saudi-funded institutions can become powerful tools to overthrow governments. After Assad Sr. banned the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi mosques were secretly established in Syria in the 1990's. Over the next twenty years, Salafist jihadis from Syria and many other nations started a civil war with money, weapons and training from the USA and Saudi Arabia.

In areas held by Al Qaeda in Syria, Islamic camps indoctrinate kids to become suicide bombers. Saudi preachers go to Syria, recruit kids to become suicide bombers, and proudly post pictures on social media. A Salafist Syrian rebel even sent his own 8-year-old daughter as a suicide bomber to destroy a police station in Damascus.

Conclusion

When US politicians and media talk about poverty being the source of Islamic terrorism, they're only partially right, but they deliberately hide the puppet masters - Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Israelis and the CIA - who invest vast amount of money and efforts to recruit and convert people into Salafists and jihadists.

Islam needs a major reformation, especially Sunni Islam that has been hijacked by Salafism and Wahhabism, which insist that everyone live as if we are all tribal desert warriors from the 7^th century. From the 1920s until 1980, Islamic countries around the world eagerly embraced westernization and enlightenment. Then fundamentalists took over and have caused enormous suffering all over the world.

Can anyone turn the clock back and make the Muslim world great again?

When Trump was elected I wrote that it was unlikely that he would be successful in accomplishing the three objectives for which he was elected - peace with Russia, the return home of offshored US jobs, and effective limits on non-white immigration - because these objectives conflicted with the interests of those more powerful than the president.

I wrote that Trump was unfamiliar with Washington and would fail to appoint a government that would support his goals. I wrote that unless the ruling oligarchy could bring Trump under its control,Trump would be assassinated.

Trump has been brought under control by assassinating him with words rather than with a bullet. With Steve Bannon's dismissal, there is now no one in Trump's government who supports him. He is surrounded by Russophobic generals and Zionists.

But this is not enough for the liberal/progressive/left. They want Trump impeached and driven from office.

Marjorie Cohn, whom I have always admired for her defense of civil liberty, has disappointed me. She has written in Truthout that the House must bring articles of impeachment against Trump for his abuse of power and before he launches a new civil war and/or nuclear war.

This is an extraordinary conclusion for a normally intelligent person to reach. What power does Trump have? How does he abuse his non-existent power? The ruling Establishment has cut his balls off. He is neutered. Powerless. He has been completely isolated within his own government by the oligarchy.

Even more astonishingly, Marjorie Cohn, together with 100% of the liberal/progressive/left are blind to the fact that they have helped the military/security complex destroy the only leader who advocated peace instead of conflict with the other major nuclear power. Cohn is so deranged by hatred of Trump that she thinks it is Trump who will bring nuclear war by normalizing relations with Russia.

Clearly, the American liberal/progressive/left is no longer capable of rational thought. Hate rules. There is nothing in their lexicon but hate.

The American liberal/progressive/left has degenerated into idiocy. They think that they are fighting "white nationalism" in the White House and that Trump is a champion or symbol of "white nationalism" and that there will be no victory until Trump and all symbols of "white nationalism" are obliterated.

Little do they understand. Ajamu Baraka spells it out for them in CounterPunch. White Supremacy, he writes, is inculcated into the cultural and educational institutions of the West. Liberal and leftist whites are also white supremacists, says Baraka, and Trump and the "alt-right" are nothing but a superficial useful platform on which the white supremacist American liberal/progressive/left can parade its self-righteousness. Ajamu Baraka's conclusion is "that in order for the world to live, the 525-year-old white supremacist Pan-European, colonial/capitalist patriarchy must die." It is not difficult to see in this statement that genocide is the solution for the white plague upon humanity. Little wonder the "alt-right" gets exercised by the anti-white propaganda of Identity Politics.

Non-white immigration will finish off the shards of remaining European civilization. All current demographics indicate that all of Europe and North America will sooner than you expect be occupied by non-white majorities.

The problem is not so much the immigrants themselves as it is that they are taught to hate whites by white liberal/progressive/leftists. The destruction of statues will not end with Robert E. Lee's. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington are next. They owned slaves, whereas the Lee family's slaves were freed by will three years prior to the Lincoln's invasion of the South. The Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln memorials will have to be destroyed also as they, too, are momuments to racism. Indeed, according to the Identity Politics of the Liberal/progressive/left the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution are White Supremacy documents written by racists. This doubles the indictment against Thomas Jefferson and adds all of the Founding Fathers to the indictment. All are guilty of institutionalizing White Supremacy in America.

The uninformed insouciant Average American may think that this is a joke. But no. It is the orthodoxy of the white American intellectual class. It is taught in all the universities.

In Atlanta they are talking about erasing the heads of the South's generals carved into Stone Mountain. Mount Rushmore in South Dakota will be next. It has carved into it the heads of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. All racists, and Roosevelt was a colonialist and imperialist to boot. Lincoln was the worst racist of all.

Economist/historian Thomas DiLorenzo reminds us that "to his dying day, Lincoln was busy plotting the deportation of all the black people in America, including the soon-to-be-freed slaves."

The following statements are all statements that are in Abe Lincoln's Collected Works:

"I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation [of the white and black races] . . . Such separation . . . must be affected by colonization" [sending blacks to Liberia or Central America]. (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln vol. II, p. 409).

"Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime." (Collected Works, vol. II, p. 409).

"I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people" (Collected Works, vol. III, pp. 145-146).

How did Lincoln in the face of his own words and deeds get to be the hero who liberated blacks from slavery? The Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave, as Lincoln's Secretary of State complained. It was a war measure that only applied to slaves under the jurisdiction of the Confederacy in hopes of fomenting a slave rebellion that would pull Southern soldiers off the front lines to rush to the protection of their wives and children.

In 1861 the year the North invaded the South, President Lincoln said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so" (First Inaugural Address). In 1862 during the war, Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it."

Lincoln was elevated to the undeserved position of black liberator by the historical lies made up by white liberal/progressive/leftists who hate the South. They are so consumed by hate that they do not understand that the hate that they teach will also devour them. They should read Jean Raspail's book, The Camp of the Saints. People taught racial hate do not differentiate between good and bad members of the people they are taught to hate. All are equally guilty. As one Third Worlder wrote to me, "all whites are guilty," even those such as myself who speak out against the West's atrocities against the darker-skinned peoples.

The Amerian liberal/progressive/left has long been engaged in demonizing white people exactly as Nazis demonized Jews and Communists demonized capitalists. One would think that the liberal/progressive/leftists would be aware of what happened to the Jews and to the Russian, Chinese and East European capitalists and bourgeois middle class. Why do the liberal/progressive/leftists think they will escape the consequences of teaching hate?

What has Charlottesville taught us other than that the hate expressed by the liberal/progressive/left exceeds the hate expressed by the white nationalists themselves. When it comes to hate, the White Supremacists are out-gunned by the liberal/progressive/left.

Hate is the hallmark of the American liberal/progressive/left, and hate always ends in violence.

The Northern ruling economic interests had no interest in devoting resources to a war to free slaves. They wanted the Union held together so that there would be no competition for the lands west of the Mississippi and so there would be an agrarian sector to which to market northern manufactured goods protected by tariffs against lower priced British goods.

The northern work force didn't want any freed slaves either. The large number of recent Irish immigrants driven out of Ireland by the British starvation policy called Lincoln's war "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight." What freed slaves meant for the northern working class was a larger labor supply and lower wages. In 1863 when the Republicans passed the draft, the Irish in Detroit and New York rioted. The rioters took out their anger and frustration on northern blacks, many of whom were lynched. It is not clear to me whether more backs were lynched in the North during the war or in the South during Reconstruction. If there are any memorials to the Irish, those racist statues will have to be taken down also. Perhaps even the Statue of Liberty is racist.

And we haven't yet heard from Native Americans. In his excruciating history, The Long Death: The Last Days of the Plains Indians, Ralph K. Andrist describes the genocide of the Plains Indians by Lincoln's Civil War generals, William Tecumseh Sherman, Phillip Sheridan, Grenville Dodge and other of the first war criminals of the modern age who found it a lot easier to conduct warfare against Southern women and children than against armed troops. Against the Native Americans, Lincoln's generals now conducted a policy of genocide that was even more horrible and barbaric than Sheridan's destruction of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley.

Lincoln historian Professor Thomas DiLorenzo provides a synopsis of the genocide of Native Americans at this link.

During the eight year presidency of General Ulysses S. Grant, 1868-76, the Union generals conducted a policy of extermination against the Native Americans. Entire villages, every man, woman, and child, were wiped out. The Union Army's scorched earth policy starved to death those Indians who escaped fire and sword.

Professor DiLorenzo writes:

"Sherman and Sheridan's troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together. The U.S. Army's actions matched its leaders' rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier, Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians' chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods (the Indians even made fish hooks out of dried buffalo bones and bow strings out of sinews). By 1882, the buffalo were all but extinct."

Indian warriors who were captured were subjected to the type of trials and executions that the George W. Bush regime gave Saddam Hussein: "hundreds of Indians who had been taken prisoner were subjected to military 'trials' lasting about ten minutes each, according to Nichols (1978). Most of the adult male prisoners were found guilty and sentenced to death-not based on evidence of the commission of a crime, but on their mere presence at the end of the fighting." In other words, POWs were executed, for which the US executed German officers at Nuremberg.

The Union massacre of the Indians began before the Civil War was won. DiLorenzo reports:

"One of the most famous incidents of Indian extermination, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, took place on November 29, 1864. There was a Cheyenne and Arapaho village located on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. These Indians had been assured by the U.S. government that they would be safe in Colorado. The government instructed them to fly a U.S. flag over their village, which they did, to assure their safety. However, another Civil War 'luminary,' Colonel John Chivington, had other plans for them as he raided the village with 750 heavily armed soldiers. One account of what happened appears in the book Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars (1972) by the renowned military historian S. L. A. Marshall, who held the title of chief historian of the European Theater in World War II and authored thirty books on American military history.

"Chivington's orders were: 'I want you to kill and scalp all, big and little.' ( Marshall 1972, 37). Then, despite the display of the U.S. flag and white surrender flags by these peaceful Indians, Chivington's troops 'began a full day given over to blood-lust, orgiastic mutilation, rapine, and destruction-with Chivington looking on and approving' (Marshall 1972, 38). Marshall notes that the most reliable estimate of the number of Indians killed is '163, of which 110 were women and children' (p. 39).

"Upon returning to his fort, Chivington 'and his raiders demonstrated around Denver, waving their trophies, more than one hundred drying scalps. They were acclaimed as conquering heroes, which was what they had sought mainly.' One Republican Party newspaper announced, 'Colorado soldiers have once again covered themselves with glory' (Marshall 1972, 39).

DiLorenzo reports: "The books by Brown and Marshall show that the kind of barbarism that occurred at Sand Creek, Colorado, was repeated many times during the next two decades."

General Sherman, a war criminal far in excess of anything the Nazis were able to produce, wrote to his wife early in the Civil War that his purpose was "extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the [Southern] people."

His wife responded: Conduct a "war of extermination" and drive all Southerners "like the swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing" ( Walters 1973, 61).

DiLorenzo observes that Sherman did his best to take his wife's advice.

The extreme hatred and barbarity to which the Northern war criminals had subjected Southern non-combatants broke like fury over the Plains Indians. Distinguished military historians have described the orders given to General Custer by Phillip Sheridan as "the most brutal orders ever published to American troops."

Clearly, if we are taking down statues, we can't stop with Robert E. Lee. We will have to take down the Statues of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and all the rest of the Union war criminals who implemented what they themselves called "the final solution to the Indian problem."