December 17, 2025: Islam is a religion as well as a form of government complete with a set of laws defined in the Sharia. Many of these laws explain why Islamic terrorism continues to flourish in many parts of the world.

Sharia has caused many problems when Moslem people, generally Arabs or Afghans, migrate to Western countries. Islam insists that sharia supersedes any local laws. When enough Moslems have arrived to be the majority in towns or provinces, there will be demands to allow sharia to coexist with local laws. Western countries try to accommodate their new Moslem, citizens but are discovering that Moslems consider sharia superior to Western laws and will observe sharia in secret if they have to. A growing number of Western nations are reconsidering their policy of allowing Moslems to become residents and citizens. In some cases, extremist Islamic preachers or leaders have been expelled. The more Moslems you let in, the more difficult that is going to be. The Moslems vote, often as a block at the direction of their leaders. Just another reason to keep Moslems out. In small groups Moslems can be friendly, but when their numbers will eventually reach the point where a local or imported Islamic cleric, or Imam will see

Another problem is that Islamic scripture mandates that a non-believer be killed if he refuses to become a Moslem. This is the justification for large scale massacres of infidels. It also encourages Moslem warriors to rape infidel women and girls. This still happens in areas where Christian, or other minorities reside near Moslem communities. The non-Moslem women usually avoid rape or unwanted attention by dressing in clothing similar to what Moslem women wear. Despite that, these crimes continue to occur in areas where Moslem and non-Moslem populations mix. This is often the case in India, where such crimes are prosecuted and widely and vividly reported in local media.

There is some good news. Worldwide, deaths from Islamic terrorism are down, with about 2,800 deaths in 2025.In 2014 there were 35,000 deaths, 19,000 in 2017 and 14,000 in 2018. Five nations Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria and Pakistan account for most of the Islamic terrorism deaths. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is a major source of these deaths and associated mayhem. Since the 1990s, 90 percent of terrorism related deaths have been caused by Islamic terrorists. Most of the remaining ten percent are caused by Maoist militias in eastern India and various other similar groups in the region.

Moslems, particularly Arabs, have other problems. Islam does not encourage scientific study or seeking to create a major engineering, academic or technical advance. This can be seen by the fact that Israeli Jews obtained 33 Nobel prizes for achievements in those areas compared to one awarded to an Arab. There are 80 times as many Arabs as Jews. The problem is that Moslem Arabs do not seek education or achievements in those technical areas. When Islam was founded 1,500 years ago, the emphasis was on conquest and forcibly converting others to Islam. This effort left over a hundred million infidels/non-Moslems dead as Islam was established throughout the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe. Later Islam spread to Southeast Asia via Moslem traders. Southeast Asian and East Asian Moslems are much easier to get along with than Arab Moslems.

Arab countries suffer from an abundance of corruption and a lack of economic, educational, and political progress. Arabs have fallen behind the rest of the world largely because of the Arab tendency to blame outsiders and to avoid taking responsibility. Tolerating tyranny and resistance to change doesn't help but those attitudes are slowly shifting.

The exact nature of this lethal cultural situation can be described by detailing the major components. Let’s start with the fact that most Arab countries are a patchwork of different tribes and groups, and Arab leaders survive by playing one group off against another. Most Islamic scholars oppose the concept of interpreting the Koran, which considers the word of God as given to His prophet Mohammed. This led to Arabs looking down on Westerners who will look something up if they don't know. Arabs prefer to fake it and pretend it's all in their head.

Another problem with Arabs is their attitude towards leadership. Arab government, political or municipal leaders treat people as leaders or followers. There is no effort to bridge the gap with what the West calls middle management. The people are treated harshly. Work accidents that would end the careers of Western managers, are ignored in the Arab world and nobody cares. This is slowly changing, with the steady growth of a proper NCO corps and middle management, plus better management attitudes towards their subordinates. But the old ways often return, with disastrous effects on the morale and effectiveness of the average Arab.

Not surprisingly, in Arab cultures, the ruling class is despised by their subordinates, and this does not bother the leaders. Many Arab leaders simply cannot understand how treating the subordinates, unless they are family, decently will have any benefit. This is another old tradition that dies hard.

Paranoia prevents adequate training. This is made worse by the habit of Arab tyrants insisting that their subordinate organizations have little contact with each other, thus ensuring that no subordinate leader can become powerful enough to overthrow the senior leadership. Subordinate organizations are purposely kept from working together or communicating on a large scale. Arab leaders don't have as broad a knowledge of what their subordinate leaders do, whereas Western leaders tend to know what subordinates do. Arab promotions are based more on political reliability than proficiency and efficiency.

Arab leaders prefer to be feared, rather than respected, by their subordinates. This approach leads to poorly trained populations and low morale. A few rousing speeches about Moslem Brotherhood before a national emergency boils over does little to repair the damage. Many, if not most, Arab leaders now know that the paranoia and parochialism are bad but ancient traditions are hard to abandon.

Arab leaders often do not trust each other. While an American manager or officer can be reasonably confident that the others they work with will be competent and reliable, Arabs in similar situations seriously doubt that their peers will do their job on time or accurately. This is an inefficient and sometimes fatal attitude, especially for Arab militaries. It's been difficult getting Arab leaders to change when it comes to trust.

Arab leaders consider it acceptable to lie to subordinates and allies in order to further their personal agenda. This had catastrophic consequences throughout Arab history and continues to make progress difficult. When called out on this behavior, Arabs will assert that they were misunderstood. This is still going on.

While Western American middle managers and Westerners in general are only too happy to impart their wisdom and skills to others as teaching is the ultimate expression of prestige, Arabs try to keep any technical information and manuals secret. To Arabs, the value and prestige of an individual is based not on what he can teach but on what he knows that no one else knows. This destructive habit is still around, despite years of American advisors patiently explaining why this is counterproductive.

While Westerners thrive on competition among themselves, Arab leaders avoid this as the loser would be humiliated. Better for everyone to fail together than for competition to be allowed, even if it eventually benefits everyone. This attitude is still a factor in the Arab world.

Westerners are taught leadership and technology; Arabs are taught only technology and not nearly enough. Leadership is given little attention as Arab leaders are assumed to know this by virtue of their social status as leaders. The new generation of Arab leaders have been taught leadership, but for too many of them, this is an alien concept that they do not understand or really know what to do with.

Initiative is considered a dangerous trait in the Arab world. Lack of initiative makes it difficult for Arabs to maintain modern equipment. Arabs prefer to use easier to control central repair shops. This makes the timely maintenance of equipment difficult. Entrepreneurs, often non-Arab Moslems, often handle a lot of the maintenance. This is still a problem throughout the Middle East, where the oil rich nations have most of their non-government operations staffed by foreigners.

Security is maniacal. Everything, even vaguely military or government related, is top secret. While Western military and corporation promotion lists are routinely published, this rarely happens in Arab organizations. Officers and managers are suddenly transferred without warning to keep them from forging alliances or networks. Any team spirit among officials is discouraged.

Arab Moslems had other problems twenty years ago when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/ISIL banned the wearing of the burqa in some parts of northern Iraq where suicide bombers, dressed as women in the all-concealing burqa, used that disguise to attack ISIL forces. This is not the first time this has happened in Iraq. Some of the founders of ISIL had participated in the establishment of the Islamic State of Iraq in late 2006. This was an act of bravado, touted as the first step in the re-establishment of the caliphate, a global Islamic state, ruled over by God's representative on earth, the caliph. The caliphate has been a fiction for over a thousand years but still resonated with Islamic radicals. Many other Islamic terrorists opposed this move and some used burqas as disguises to move about or even make attacks on members of this 2006 Islamic State.

The original caliphate came apart after a few centuries because the Islamic world was split by ethnic and national differences. Various rulers have claimed the title over the centuries, but since 1924, when the Turks gave it up after four centuries, no one of any stature has stepped up and assumed the role. So when al Qaeda elected a nobody as the emir of the Islamic State of Iraq, and talked about this being the foundation of the new caliphate, even many pro-al Qaeda Moslems were aghast. But six years later many of those involved in the failed 2006 effort again declared the establishment of another caliphate. With that there was again a lot of fighting between Islamic terror groups, many of them routinely using the burqa as a disguise.

The burqa has frequently been used by Islamic terrorists, or even criminals, to just get past security. American troops in Iraq soon figured out how to defeat this by watching what burqa clad people were wearing on their feet. Large feet and footwear more common with men than women was a giveaway. Also revealing was how a burqa clad figure moved. Female American troops could detect a man in a burqa more easily than the male troops could and a list of tips was soon compiled and distributed. This sort of profiling also made it easier to detect female suicide bombers.

The subsequent ISIL burqa ban was directed at rival Islamic terrorist groups that are sometimes using burqas for suicide bombers, but are more frequently using the disguise to get close enough to use a pistol or assault rifle on ISIL checkpoints or throw a grenade.