Why did terrorists attack America on September 11, 2001? We’re a nation of 310 million freedom-loving Americans, protected by the greatest military the world has ever seen. Did Osama bin Laden really think he could conquer the U.S.A. with nineteen jihadists, wielding boxcutters?

Yes. And he may very well be right. America is under siege from an enemy who doesn’t need the blitzkrieg tactics of tanks, infantry, artillery and air power. These enemy combatants use bursts of violence to terrify us; then, they smile and overwhelm us with floods of radical asylum seekers, hate preachers and Ph.D. students. When the time is right, they unleash bare-knuckled threats and intimidation, demands for special privileges, decimation of our free speech, cooption of our ruling class, and relentless legal warfare, in which they turn our own laws against us. Right now, they’re winning.

We’ve ceded so much ground so fast, it’s almost impossible to understand how small the terrain has become on which we can stand for freedom. At least two American citizens now live underground in fear of their lives: Dr. Wafa Sultan, a California psychiatrist who publicly taunted the loathsome Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi and then vanished after a fatwa was put on her head, and Molly Norris, a Seattle cartoonist who’s “gone ghost” after whimsically dreaming up “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

These women’s stories are teeming with drama, repugnant to everything our Constitution stands for, and unprecedented in American history. Yet, their names are almost unknown to the public. Why? Because we’ve got a pantywaist media too squeamish to tell the truth and draw attention to Wafa’s and Molly’s politically incorrect plight. Special kudos for cravenness go to the American Society of News Editors, last seen cowering under a chair, instead of saying a word on behalf of the cartoonist formerly known as Molly.

Meanwhile, Janet Napolitano, director of Homeland Security, took time from her busy schedule of subjecting three-year-old travelers to full body searches, to swear in Mohamed Elibiary to her Advisory Council. Elibiary, who bills himself as a “de-radicalization expert,” played a starring role at a 2004 event honoring Ayatollah Khomeini. I suspect Elibiary’s de-radicalizing could use some fine-tuning. After Elibiary’s extremist affiliations were exposed by a Dallas Morning News reporter, Elibiary sent the reporter this charming threat: “expect someone to put a banana in your exhaust pipe.” Hey, keep on strip-searching those grannies, nuns, and toddlers, Big Sis Janet! That’ll keep us safe.

Some days, it feels like the whole country is writhing under the thumb of these bull goose loonies. In Irvine, Muslim students at the University of California have harassed and attacked Jewish students for years with impunity; an independent task force advised Jewish students to enroll elsewhere, since the UC administration was content to let the Muslim students keep running amuck, defacing Holocaust memorials and assaulting Jews.

In Minneapolis, blind people are left to stand around the airport, helpless and adrift, because Muslims cabdrivers won’t pick them up. Naturally, it’s the blind people’s fault, since they insist on traveling with seeing eyes dogs that the poor put-upon cabbies consider “unclean.”

In Boston, a group of concerned citizens sounded the alarm about the radical leadership of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), including its Al Qaeda-lovin’ founder, now serving 23 years for terrorist pranks. The reward these plucky citizens got was a lawsuit for defamation, efficiently designed to shut them up while the ISB built a $22-million, Saudi-funded mega-mosque – excuse me, “Cultural Center” – in Roxbury, whose opening ceremony was jam-packed with groveling politicians.

In San Jose, screeching Muslim students showed off their democratic values by forcing the Israeli Consul to abandon his speech and be escorted off stage by a phalanx of security officers. In New Haven, Yale University Press published a book about the Danish cartoon riots, conspicuously missing just one thing – images of the cartoons, which might provoke riots uncomfortably close to the quad.

In Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army doctor and self-proclaimed jihadist, gunned to death twelve soldiers and one civilian and wounded thirty others. The Department of Defense politely avoided all mention of the word “Islam” in its official report, demurely describing his rampage as “workplace violence.”

And then there’s New York – the ultimate assault. Americans reacted viscerally, painfully, and loudly to the attempted desecration of the sacred national site at Ground Zero. They intuitively understood what the politicians did not: If a foreign-funded mega-mosque is erected in the 9/11 killing zone, we’ve passed the symbolic point of no return.

At least the Ground Zero Victory Mosque debacle had the advantage of clarifying the terrain. It was instructive to watch a star-studded cast of politicians fling themselves at the feet of the two grifters who run the Victory Mosque con job, and compete for who could pander to them more. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi threatened to investigate the mosque’s critics, saying, “I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded. How is this being ginned up?” Mayor Bloomberg publicly wept for the Victory Mosque, calling its opponents “un-American,” and refusing to meet the families of the fallen to hear their anguished views. President Obama, former President Clinton and retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens all trumpeted their support, lecturing the great unwashed who oppose the mosque – 68% of Americans – from their respective Mt. Olympuses.

The objects of their tender concern are the mosque’s “spiritual leader,” Imam Rauf, a notorious slumlord whose neglected properties just went into receivership, and its developer, Sharif el-Gamal, a former waiter who sports a mile-long rap sheet that includes punching his brother’s tenant so hard he broke his nose. These hapless gentlemen couldn’t find the time to pay $224,270.77 in back taxes on the mosque’s site. Admittedly, Rauf was otherwise engaged, helping to organize the Gaza flotilla attacks against Israel, and writing his book, What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America, which was released in Malaysia under the more candid title, A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa (i.e. Proselytizing) in the Heart of America Post-9/11.

With each new headline, each new shrieking insult to the mosque’s opponents, Americans found it tougher to shake the distinctly unsettling feeling our ruling class favors Islam. Perhaps our noble leaders are being intimidated or paid off or flattered or, in some other unknown way, appeased. Perhaps they just want to show off their moral superiority to us redneck dweebs. But whatever their motives, the path is being plowed silky smooth for the Ground Zero Victory Mosque, against the will of the people. But for what? What is the prize?

The prize is Shariah – the brutal, all-encompassing system of Islamic law every Muslim must obey. Shariah is the Hotel California of religious law – you can check in, but you can never check out. Allah has mandated every jot and tittle of Shariah into one big take-it-or-leave-it package – only there’s no leaving. If you’re Muslim, you follow it till you drop; if you’re an infidel living under Muslim rule, Shariah shoves you into official second-class status as a dhimmi, in which your nightmarish role is to kowtow to your masters and fork over your money to support them.

Shariah should come with a warning label: it’s poisonous for women, children and other living things. It encourages female genital mutilation, polygamy, wife-beating, forced marriages for girls, and “honor killings” of recalcitrant females. It orders all Muslims to wage jihad, either through stealth or violence, and recognizes no man-made laws, customs, or national borders.  To Shariah adherents, our Constitution is a human construct, not Allah-given, and, therefore, not worth the parchment it’s penned on. All that matters is the ceaseless struggle to bring the world under Allah’s rule.

So let’s all rejoice at the news that the Ground Zero Victory Mosque will house the Shariah Index Project. A cherished dream of the great Imam Rauf, the Shariah Index Project will calibrate the state of Shariah compliance around the world, and diligently labor to spread and enforce it. It’s kind of like Santa’s list of who’s been naughty and who’s been nice; only Shariah’s view of nice means public hanging of 14-year-old gays.

And someday soon, if President Obama has his way, dawn will break with the amplified call to prayer booming across the Ground Zero killing fields from the top of the 15-floor Victory Mosque. Imam Rauf will rub his sleepy eyes, roll up his sleeves, touch his IPad and get to work.

Hmmmm…Switzerland still has too many women showing strands of hair. Poland is in desperate need of more 9-year-old brides. Norway allowed an editorial that was disrespectful of the Prophet. France is threatening to withdraw welfare payments to the children of the fourth wife. Germany refuses to ban pork. Brazil is stalling on adding public washbasins for feet. Israel still exists. So many threats to make, fatwas to issue, misinformation to spread. Will his work never end?

Then Imam Rauf will study the facts and figures of Shariah in America, and break into a contented, sly smile. Ah yes. Things are going well, very well indeed. Couldn’t be better, in fact. Why, these infidels are falling into line ahead of schedule! It just goes to show; never underestimate the gullibility of the infidel, especially the ones with a Harvard degree.