Several of my colleagues at What’s Wrong with the World have begun a hard-hitting series of posts entitled “Disinviting Islam.” Why “disinviting”? Because our country, having already rashly invited Islam, now faces a grueling challenge: will we or will we not allow the Jihadist faction to consolidate and expand within growing sphere of Islamic influence? Even under the supposedly hawkish anti-terror warmongers of the Bush administration, Islamic immigration increased and Islam influence waxed ever stronger.

By now it is evident to all but the most brassbound liberals, incorrigible in their refusal to face hard facts, that Islam contains within it a sizeable faction of determined men whose politics derive from the warmaking doctrines of the Jihad. Wherever Islam is, this faction will be also. Virtually every time a Jihadist is arrested (as one recently was in Portland) for conspiring to bring fire and slaughter to unarmed American civilians, we are treated to a mass of all-too-familiar reporting to the effect that almost no one suspected that this quiet kid who kept to himself could possibly turn to Jihad. Indeed, in several recent cases it appears that the division between the Jihadist and the elusive moderate Muslim drives all the way down to the household level. So wherever Islam is, the Jihad will be.

Perhaps nothing demonstrates the folly of liberalism on this matter more clearly than that its adherents persist in laying hold of the old idiom of racism in abusing their interlocutors, when it is evident to anyone with a modicum of curiosity that this is chiefly a doctrinal and cultural, not a racial matter. Speaking from personal experience, it’s now been almost five years since I spent a portion of an evening at an event at the University of Georgia arguing (quite civilly) about the Jihad with a Muslim of Swedish extraction and American heritage.

So we have foolishly invited Islam into our country, without ever taking a moment for objective historical analysis of what is entailed in that invitation. We have brought the menace of the Jihad to our shores, and it is absolutely vital to recognize the manifestly domestic threat in poses. It has long been convenient for conservatives to pretend that it is purely a foreign threat, but the evidence belies this illusion. Thus it is high time we began the hard work of discussing how Islam can be disinvited.

Part I in the series, by Lydia McGrew, lays out in detail all the points of baleful influence that our folly has exposed us to, from honor-killings to Jihadist conspiracies. Part II, by Jeff Culbreath, discourses (with a boldness that will surely shock many readers) on possible policies responses. Part III, addressing the question of how Christian charity should apply to this problem, will appear Friday. I invite all Redstaters to join the conversation.