Intelligence agencies have been warned that al Qaeda may be planning to attack air and rail travel in Europe in actions that may occur during the busy holiday travel season, CBS News has learned exclusively - from this news item

The unsettlement, the fear, the expense of monitoring at every step, the expense incurred by non-Muslims who must show up at the airport an extra hour (at least) early for every flight, and sometimes two, at an airport where the passenger's experience is as a result full of wasted time, an experience unpleasant in all respects, all this is just one small aspect of a problem that will not go away, and cannot.

Look at Qur'an, look at the hadith, look at the biography of that Perfect Man Muhammad. Look not only at the tenets of Islam, but at the attitudes that naturally arise, in Muslims who grow up, whether in a Muslim country or in Europe, in societies or families or just groups suffused with the attitudes and atmospherics of Islam. One need not have attended a madrasa. One need not have gone to a particular mosque or even to any mosque. One may have grown up in a largely secular environment. But if, for any number of reasons, one now feels that one "is a Muslim" and therefore, it (il)logically follows, one must "behave as a Muslim" and suddenly, all those commands in Qur'an, glossed and elaborated upon by the Hadith, and the apparently mesmerizing figure of Muhammad, take on meaning, and the new-born or re-born Muslim is now following, not Christ, but quite a different figure, with quite a different set of commands.

The inability of large numbers of people to understand this, because it is too frightening and too painful for them, and does not fit what they think makes sense, what they think should be, is understandable. They have been idiotized by everything around them. It is asking so much. But so much must be asked, if they are to not only save themselves, but not stand in the way of the clear-eyed who do not share their problems and their mental makeup, and have no reason to continue to suffer and pay for the comforting pieties (here's one: "all people want freedom"; here's another: "all religions teach the same thing") and received un-wisdom of so many.