There are peaceful Muslims but...

...The director of a think tank dedicated to telling the truth about Islam says even though French President Jacques Chirac has been a friend of Islam for many years, France will continue to be a target for Muslim violence. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch says it is interesting that despite France's recent history of anti-Americanism and tolerance toward the Islamic faith, it will not be immune from terrorist attacks -- particularly in light of a French newspaper publishing cartoons of Muhammad as a terrorist. "Jacques Chirac has been a great friend of the Islamic. They have quite a lot of business ties, quite a lot of cultural ties with the increasingly large Islamic population in France," says Spencer. "At the same time, there was a French paper that published these cartoons. So for France to be targeted [by Muslim militants] is no more surprising really than for any of the other countries." According to Spencer, Chirac and other European leaders do not understand the true nature of the Islamic threat. "One of the problems that he as well as so many other leaders suffer from is that they don't recognize that this is a cultural-societal challenge and not just a military one -- and it's not just going on in Iraq or Afghanistan," he says. "It's going on in France. It's going on elsewhere in the Western world." Those leaders, he adds, have yet to come to grips with the reality of the problem. "The violent elements of Islam that Jihad terrorists use to justify their actions are deeply imbedded within the core of the religion," Spencer asserts. "[T]here are peaceful Muslims -- but there is no peaceful Islam." [Chad Groening]