Update on the Freedom House Report

Remember this? Specifically, do you remember this report from Freedom House' Center for Religious Freedom?

Here's an update: Nina Shea, the author of that report, appeared tonight on Laura Ingraham's radio show. She makes clear that moderate Muslims put her and her group wise to the flooding of American mosques with the kind of violence-inciting literature that Freedom House found in those mosques. That statement implies two corollaries:

1. That moderate Muslims, definable (I assume) as those who do not interpret jihad literally, do exist and in some numbers, and
2. that they are not happy campers.

In fact, says Shea, they resent the "takeover" of mosque after mosque by those peddling Saudi Arabia's radical message. At immediate issue is the Saudi-hosted "terrorism conference" now taking place--you know, the one to which they did not invite Israel, and the one where a Saudi official said that Osama bin Laden was sent by the Jews. Shea's larger point is that the Saudis were caught with their robes down on this one, and are engaging in spin doctoring. Bill O'Reilly, call your manager.

My message to "moderate" Muslims remains essentially the same: the Saudis are right and you are wrong when it comes to what Islam really demands. You need to get your minds right (in Greek, metanoeo I am changing my mind, which is the word usually translated as "I repent") about the real meaning of Islam, and start looking for the Truth.

That said, I am no longer prepared to say, as I once was, that anyone who described himself or herself as "a moderate Muslim" was ipso facto to be dismissed as a liar. No, they're not lying--else why would they seek out an outfit like Freedom House to give them such an inflammatory tip as they gave about the Saudi pamphlets? What they are, is naive, and dangerously so--dangerous to themselves, that is. The danger is at once temporal, from Saudi and Saudi-inspired fellow travelers, and spiritual--from God Himself, Who will hold Court some day and will not accept "I was sincere in my beliefs" as an excuse for getting such a basic thing wrong as His Divine Nature and that of His Son Jesus Christ. Look it up in Revelation 20. I didn't say it; God Himself did, through His servant John the Apostle.

Ms. Shea also spoke about Saudi diplomats who have been expelled from the USA in serveral instances after being caught with these pamphlets. Well, now, that makes me feel better. The FBI are paying appropriate attention to this matter, but they're being awfully quiet about it. They turn up appropriate evidence, and the State Department, whose personnel are not complete fools, quietly declare the diplomats involved personae non gratae (PNG) and ask them to leave.

But it's going to take more than that. This has to stop--and I can think of no surer way to make it stop than to stop buying their chief economic export. It turns out that they are exporting more than oil.