Three cheers for the Wall Street Journal this morning for publishing Sadanand Dhume’s excellent op-ed on the new jihadist tactic of bombing international luxury hotels, the latest being the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta. Dhume makes a slew or important points, most especially: (a) that many jihadists — he calls them “Islamist radicals” – are pursuing fundamentalist ends by nonviolent means (as I stressed in “Beyond Terrorism,” in the April 20 issue of NR, merely refraining from violence does not make a Muslim a “moderate”); (b) the jihadist goal is the imposition of shari’ah law, which regulates all aspects of life, including financial life (which is why it is an act of insanity for government and U.S. financial institutions to be promoting Shariah Compliant Finance); and (c) the way to combat jihadism in the arena of ideas is to emphasize its incompatibility with fundamental American liberties. A sampling:

From a radical Islamic perspective … an international hotel is much more than merely a convenient target of opportunity. It also represents, in microcosm, the antithesis of the world that radical Islamists, both violent and nonviolent, seek to create. Nor would any international hotel dream of privileging one faith over another. By contrast, under the radical Islamic worldview Muslims are entitled to special privileges…. True, a hotel in, say, Jakarta, may place a Koran by the bedside table, and mark the direction of prayer to Mecca on the ceiling. But these are innocent gestures, designed to convenience Muslim guests rather than to inconvenience, much less to actively discriminate against, those of different backgrounds. For Islamic radicals, who seek to order all aspects of 21st century life—from banking to burqas—by the medieval precepts enshrined in Shariah law, the secular nature of a hotel is galling enough. But perhaps this would not matter as much if it weren’t appealing to local elites. In a place like Peshawar or Kabul, and to a large degree even in Jakarta or Mumbai, a five-star hotel represents an island of order and prosperity in a sea of squalor. It hints at the prosperity promised by free markets and a culture of individual liberty. It is living proof that the worldly can successfully be split from the divine. It also acts as a bridge to the West. For example, star players of Manchester United, the British soccer club, were scheduled to stay at the Ritz-Carlton before the attacks forced them to cancel their visit to Indonesia.

Read it all, here.