Jack Thomas was "just an average Aussie," a sometime cabdriver and chef who enjoyed watching movies and playing pool. That is, until he converted to Islam, changed his first name to Jihad, forsook Foster’s Lager, and journeyed to Pakistan — where he is now under arrest on suspicion of terrorist activities and ties to al-Qaeda. Pakistan’s Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat asserts that "there is more than credible evidence" to establish Thomas’s terrorist activity.

His friends and family say he did it for love. His beloved Maryati, an Indonesian Muslim, was adamantine: no conversion, no marriage. Jack embraced Islam, and he and Maryati were married in 1999. Generally those who join any Faith solely in order to marry are far from fervent. In Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh has uproarious fun with Rex Mottram’s superficial, perfunctory, and romance-motivated conversion to Catholicism. But Jihad Thomas is no Rex Mottram. The reasons lie hidden within Thomas’s heart, but at very least he took his new religion seriously enough to shove off for Pakistan — according to his family, to study to become an imam.

Thomas fits the profile of other Western converts to Islam such as John Walker Lindh and a fellow Australian, Camp X-Ray detainee David Hicks. These converts somewhere along the line became convinced that Allah was to be obeyed when he said in the Qur’an, "Those who believe do battle for the cause of Allah; and those who disbelieve do battle for the cause of idols. So fight the minions of the devil" (Sura 4:76). They might have read Qur’anic verses such as Sura 9:5 and heard them as a personal call from almighty God: "When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush."

Whoever taught these men radical Islam no doubt used these verses and others to establish the importance of jihad fi sabil Allah — jihad in the way of Allah, a term of traditional Islamic theology that refers to the taking up arms for the sake of Allah and his prophet. Were they taking these Qur’anic verses "out of context," which is the intellectually vacuous, one-size-fits-all response made by American Muslim groups to non-Muslims who quote them today? Hardly: these verses have been understood (and acted upon) to be commanding war against non-believers as part of the responsibility of the House of Islam throughout Islamic history. Muslims (such as the great Indian reformer Sayyid Ahmad Khan) began to spiritualize the concept of jihad in the nineteenth century, in order to make Muslims in the Indian Raj more attractive employees for the British colonials. Thus the radicals of today can and do maintain that the older, traditional, and true Islamic concept of jihad involves none of this materialistic pusillanimity: indeed, it not only allows for, but requires warfare.

Almost all we know about Jihad Thomas is that he’s a middle-class Australian and that he’s serious about Islam. But we can be sure that his motivations for turning to terrorism — if he is indeed a terrorist — didn’t spring from any of the inspirations that have become fashionable to explain away the problem of Islamic terror. Like Lindh and Hicks, he didn’t grow up poor and resentful. He didn’t suffer with Muslims in Palestine, or Saudi Arabia (trodden down by infidel armies, to Osama bin Laden’s rage), or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or anywhere.

The one constant between him and Hicks and Lindh is the Qur’an and Islamic theology. Religion, not class or culture, motivated them to become terrorists. To insist that their reading of the Qur’an was "out of context" or even just plain wrong is beside the point: the unpleasant fact we have to face is that the Qur’an is being used by terrorists to recruit and motivate terrorists on a large and indeed worldwide scale.

Americans, bamboozled for decades with false ideas of what constitutes "prejudice," "bigotry," and "racism," are often reluctant to acknowledge this fact. Many try to dismiss or neutralize it by asserting or that the Bible and all other holy books can be used to justify or even provoke violence. Unfortunately for this argument, there is simply no worldwide terrorist network today that finds its justification in the words of the Bible or the Bhagavad Gita or the Book of Mormon or Science and Health. It is not bigotry to note that the Qur’an is inspiring terrorists; it is simple realism in the face of an enormous threat to our nation.

That makes Daniel Pipes’ recent call for pragmatism in dealing with Muslims and mosques all the more urgent. Pipes says what most fear to say: that "while most Muslims are not Islamists and most Islamists are not terrorists, all Islamist terrorists are Muslims." He calls, among other common sense suggestions, for increased monitoring of mosques for seditious activity.

Contrary to the hysteria of the Left, heightened scrutiny of Muslims doesn’t require any suspension of civil liberties whatsoever. It doesn’t prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedoms of speech, press, or assembly. It doesn’t mandate or justify unreasonable searches and seizures. It doesn’t compel anyone to bear witness against himself, nor does it deprive anyone of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. It doesn’t even compromise a Muslim American’s right to bear arms. All it requires is getting real about exactly who is waging war against the United States — and it isn’t the gray-haired grannies selected by airport security for extra screening.

Nonetheless, the Council on American Islamic Relations has reacted predictably, posting Pipes’ column at their website under the heading "Incitement Watch" and directing its supporters to contact MSNBC (where Pipes was scheduled to appear last week) to protest "the appearance of a person with such a long history of Muslim-bashing."

One would think that CAIR would welcome efforts to root out the terrorists operating under cover of their religion. The story of Jack Jihad Thomas — and David Hicks, John Walker Lindh, and millions of their fellow Muslims worldwide — vividly illustrates the need for just the kind of scrutiny that Pipes proposes. Shouldn’t CAIR applaud efforts to identify and halt the activities of the imams whose version of Islam is radical enough to make an average young Aussie and other middle-class types around the world get involved with terrorism? Shouldn’t they not only applaud, but assist?

American Muslims who are loyal to their country are already doing this: witness the Muslims in Lackawanna, New York who cooperated with the FBI’s investigation of a suspected al-Qaeda cell in their mosque. But CAIR has chosen instead simply to smear Daniel Pipes and to cry "bigotry" whenever anyone raises uncomfortable facts about Islam and violence. As such they’re not only an obstacle to success in the war on terror. They’re American Muslims’ worst enemy.