Letter to a young jihadi.

So you're a young Muslim who has decided fundamentalism rocks and your hard-working parents made a big mistake when they moved here, got jobs, worked like dogs, and bought a big suburban home where you sit in your bedroom brooding about sluts and infidels and getting jiggy with the jihad. I sympathize. I really do.

Every day you're surrounded by people who don't get you. Just look at the first sentence of this column. "Worked like dogs"? Doesn't this guy know dogs are considered unclean animals in Islam? That's a big-time insult but if you cut his head off, the police will call you a criminal. Not cool.

Anyway, let's forget about that "dog" thing. It was just an illustration. Don't cut my head off, bro. LMAO!

Seriously, I understand how hard life can be when you're young, healthy, educated, prosperous, free and a total religious fanatic. For one thing, there's the sex.

The e-mails of Momin Khawaja and other home-grown terrorists are peppered with references to it. Omar Khyam, the young Brit at the centre of the London terrorist cell linked to Khawaja, talked about bombing a nightclub. He wanted to kill "slags." That's British slang for sluts.

Look, it's about evolution. Yes, I know evolution is a Satanic lie. But never mind. You're 19 and all the programming instilled in you by 3.5 billion years of evolution screams "get some!" But you've embraced a moral code the Puritans would have found a little uptight and you're outraged at the sight of a woman dressed in anything but a potato sack.

Further complicating matters, you live in a country where it's impossible to keep pitches for "hot chickz in nasty action" out of your e-mail inbox. So it's really not surprising you are outraged almost as often as you are horny.

Then there's the problem of that nice suburban home you live in. Your parents don't think of it as a problem. They think it's a blessing. They worked -- ahem -- very hard for it. But sitting in your bedroom, you think, what's it all for? All this prosperity. All this materialism. There's got to be something more to life than working hard, making money, and buying stuff.
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Lots of other 19-year-olds who've never known anything but prosperity feel the same as you. Like being horny, idealism is natural for 19-year-olds.

But they're not Muslim. They're not recruited by networks of extremists. They aren't offered a comprehensive package of beliefs -- Stop Israel! Restore the Caliphate! Virgins in paradise! -- that includes everything from an idealistic political cause to orgies in the afterworld.

When other 19-year-olds want to find themselves, they spend a few months backpacking around Europe and sleeping with German girls. Or maybe they do some volunteer work with Oxfam. But you? You're memorizing all the nastiest bits of the Koran and planning to spend next summer learning bomb-making techniques in Waziristan.

Have you ever been to Waziristan in the summer? Yeah. And no air conditioning, my friend.

And for what? You think you're going to accomplish something by blowing up innocent people? Not likely. Well, you may get yourself killed, which would mean you're off to the orgy, but aside from that nothing good will come of it. (Of course, killing innocent people is also evil but you're a clever little fanatic and rationalizing evil is a breeze for clever little fanatics. So I'll keep this on your level.)

Look, you say you're sickened at the thought of Crusader soldiers in Muslim lands. You want Western interference in the Muslim world to end. Well so do I! And so do lots of other western infidels. But you're not helping. In fact, the case for even more western interference in Muslim countries gets stronger every time a Muslim trained in Waziristan blows up something in the West.

Dude, there's a reason why the Bush administration made that ridiculous connection between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq. It's the same reason why that al-Qaeda loon endorsed John McCain.

Right-wing westerners who get their kicks bombing foreigners have a symbiotic relationship with jihadi terrorists who get their kicks bombing foreigners. They feed off each other. They need each other. You want another Republican president sending tanks into a Muslim country? Then please, blow up a shopping mall or something.

Otherwise, drop the jihad. At least the violent part. Then there's no problem. The nice thing about living in a western society is that it's perfectly acceptable to be a bug-eyed religious fanatic as long as you don't go around decapitating people.
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Maybe you should spend some time with some real hardcore Christian fundamentalists. They're bug-eyed religious fanatics too but you don't seem them cutting heads off. Seriously, you should talk. You're more alike than you think. You're a nasty, irrational bigot; they're nasty, irrational bigots. You could chat for hours. And think of all the fun you could have arguing about which of you will be sent to hell by God the Merciful to be tortured for all eternity.

Personally, I'm an atheist. I think you're all deluded freaks. But then, one thing you and the Christian fundamentalists can agree on is that atheists like me are going to spend eternity roasting on a spit. See? You have so much in common!

But the key to this happy relationship is accepting the other guy's right to be barking mad. Believe it or not, that -- not the ready availability of pornography -- is the cornerstone of western civilization.

See, once upon a time in Europe, Catholics and Protestants slaughtered each other by the hundreds of thousands. It was jihad, big time. Unfortunately, Europeans are a bit thick so it took them centuries to realize this was totally futile. They couldn't eradicate the enemy. Holy war only produced misery, poverty and death.

Out of this realization came liberalism. Some might describe it as a live-and-let-live philosophy but it's really more of a live-and-let-the-other-guy-burn-in-hell thing. You can still believe that yours is the one true faith and all who fail to embrace it will be consigned to eternal torture by your beloved deity. You just leave the condemnation and torture to the afterlife. In this life, you say hello to your heathen neighbours and we all go about our daily business in peace.

The swell thing about liberalism is that it works. Europe during the holy wars was a mess. You really wouldn't want to live there. Europe today may have pornography and all that other stuff you hate but millions of devout Muslims want to live there so it can't be so bad.

And another thing? Consider getting laid.

I'm kidding! I'm an infidel kidder!

Seriously, get laid.

You can contact Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen.
E-mail: dgardner@thecitizen.canwest.com

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