Presents of death from the religion of peace.

Two years ago as two-hundred eighty-nine people sat on a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit studying their watches, flipping through their Kindles and hoping they would make it home in time, among them sat a devout Muslim with a packet of Pentaerythritol tetranitrate sewn into his underwear.

At his trial Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab said,

“In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them.”

On Northwest Airlines Flight 253, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab “found” hundreds of people returning home for the holidays. Had he spent more time studying explosives and less time memorizing verses of the Koran, his plot to murder them might have succeeded. But had he spent less time reading the Koran perhaps he would have never tried to carry out his act of religious mass murder.

Next year at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon, tens of thousands of people crowded around a massive Douglas fir tree decked with lights. Waiting with cell phone in hand was Mohamed Osman Mohamud.

Earlier that year Mohamud had urged a friend of his traveling to Mecca to pray “that I will be a martyr in the highest chambers of paradise.” Mohamud’s plan was to attack Americans “in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays.”

While fathers lifted up their children on their shoulders and music filled the air, Mohamud was smiling for a different reason. “You know what I like, what makes me happy?” he had told undercover agents. “You know, what I like to see? Is when I see the enemy of Allah, then you know their bodies are torn everywhere.” As American families were enjoying the moment, Mohamud was picturing their bodies ripped to shreds by his bomb.

Choosing a spot next to a light rail terminal, Mohamud waited for a train to arrive in order to inflict the maximum number of casualties on the families arriving at the ceremony. But instead of murdering thousands of people at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, he was arrested and dragged away while screaming, “Allahu Akbar.”

Muslim Christmas terror predates September 11, the War on Terror, the War in Iraq, or any of the other excuses used to justify Muslim violence.

The Christmas Market has been held in Strasbourg, France for over four hundred years. A year before Al-Qaeda flew planes into the World Trade Center, European Muslims began scouting the site for a terrorist attack. Salim Boukari filmed the market, remarking at the people passing by outside the Strasbourg Cathedral. “Here are the enemies of Allah as they stroll about. You will go to hell, Allah willing.”

While that attack never came to pass, on Christmas Day that same year thirty-eight bombs exploded in churches across towns and cities in Indonesia wounding over a hundred people and killing nineteen. Cathedrals, convents and schools were all targeted. Jemaah Islamiyah, the Congregation of Islam, was responsible for the attacks on Indonesia’s Christian congregations.

The man behind the Congregation of Islam, Abu Bakar Bashir, a leading Muslim cleric, was tried twice for his involvement in the Christmas Day bombings and the Bali bombings, and got a slap on the wrist both times. When an interviewer asked him what America could do to bring peace, Bashir told him. “Islam must win and Westerners will be destroyed…If they want to have peace, they have to accept to be governed by Islam.”

“Muslims who don’t hate America sin,” the cleric said, “There is no iman [belief] if one doesn’t hate America.”

Unsatisfied with those atrocities, the Congregation of Islam plotted a 2005 wave of pre-Christmas bombings that was averted only when Dr. Azahari bin Hussein, the mastermind of the previous bombings, was surrounded and killed in a safe house along with his Jihadist associates.

And now another year, another Christmas and another round of Christmas bombings. This time in Nigeria where Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad or “Community Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad” bombed churches in five Nigerian cities. This came after similar Christmas bombings by the same group last year.

The “Community’s” statement after last year’s church bombings read in part: “In the name of Allah the mighty who has power over everything, who made fighting the disbelievers an obligation until justice is established on earth.” Justice being synonymous with Islamic law and power.

But Christmas terror is not limited only to Christians. Muslim violence has a way of coinciding with the holy days of the religions of their victims.

In 1991, Muslims targeted Diwali celebrations in Toronto’s India Center Cinema and Vishnu Hindu Temple. The temple would have been filled with thousands of people attending the Hindu festival of lights. Jamaat Al Fuqra, the terrorist group responsible for the plot, was led by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, founder of the Muslims of the Americans organization. While that attack failed, the Delhi Diwali bombings did not.

When Middle Eastern Arab Muslim made their final major bid to exterminate Israeli Jews, they did so on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. And one of the worst terrorist attacks in recent memory was the Passover Massacre of senior citizens at the Park Hotel. On December 29th, 2005, an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber plotted to strike a children’s Chanukah pageant, but was stopped at a checkpoint and detonated there killing one Israeli soldier and several Muslim civilians.

On Rosh Hashana 2003, a knock came on the door of a Jewish family at a holiday dinner. On the other side was another Islamic Jihad terrorist. The father of the house opened the door and was shot, but managed to close the door and keep him out before dying. The terrorist nevertheless managed to murder a seven month old baby on her swing before he was shot and killed.

In 1996, Hamas carried out multiple attacks during the holiday of Purim. Bombs studded with nails tore into the bodies of men, women and children celebrating the holiday. And Purim was all but cancelled that year. On hearing the news of the terrorist attacks, in the West Bank, Muslim crowds cheered and cried out, “Allahu Akbar.”

From Christmas to Diwali to Purim, it is hard to ignore the fact that Islamic terrorists are fighting a religious war against Christians, Hindus and Jews. It is not only a war driven by religion, it is a war against other religions, and its ultimate goal is Islamic supremacy over all religions. From North America to Africa and from Asia to the Middle East, the wounded moan, the dead are silent and the cry of “Allahu Akbar” comes from the mouths of the murderers.

There is no path toward peace but through honesty. Unless we address what is happening, we cannot hope for anything but more of the same. It is not only Nigerian or Indonesian Christians who must be on alert as they go to church. The same terror that has struck in Asia and Africa has come to America and Europe as the revival of an ancient religious war written in blood in the pages of the Koran. And there can be no peace during Christmas or Chanukah or Diwali or at any other time of the year until we confront it for what it is.

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