According to a fatwa issued by Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and several other extremists in February 1998, “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it . . .” Just a few weeks ago, a Bosnian ISIS jihadi named Jasmin Keserović renewed this threat, urging on listeners in much more specific detail, calling on followers to “arise and kill the Christians and their servants. Kill them in their cities and countries. Place explosives under their cars, in their homes and their offices, kill them with snipers and with silencers. Kill them any way you can,” Within a matter of weeks, Mohamed Lahouailej-Bouhel killed over eighty people on a seaside promenade in Nice.

Clearly, this is a danger we are going to be confronting for many years into the future and the effort to confront and defeat militant Islamism is going to be just as intellectually challenging as were the democratic world’s efforts to defeat fascism and communism. But there is one thing we can be certain of—if our leaders don’t have the courage to tell the truth about the nature of the threat we are facing, they won’t have the courage to fight the fight.

Gordon N. Bardos is president of SEERECON, a strategic advisory and political risk analysis firm specializing on southeast Europe.

Image: A mosque's domed roof. Pixabay/Public domain