Adelman believes it must be dealt with seriously and forcefully.

Ken Adelman: Well the number one issue is how do you combat an Islamic fundamentalism? And not just fundamentalism, but a totalitarian approach so that we all have to be believers, and Muslim beliefs in Allah. And otherwise we’re infidels. Otherwise, we should be slain. Otherwise we have no way to get to heaven. Otherwise we’re just cannon fodder for their beliefs. And that is a terrible threat. And it’s a terrible threat because there are people that are willing to die for that view, and willing to use weapons of mass destructions to get that view across. And that is . . . I think that’s awful.

In the past in history, when you had monsters in history – God knows we had the Hitlers, the Maos, the Stalins – they had to take over a state to really wreak their havoc. Nowadays with weapons of mass destruction, you don’t need to take over a state. To take over a state is very hard. So it keeps a lot of these psychopaths out of getting any power. But now the psychopaths like that can get weapons of mass destruction. Destruction in that sense has been privatized. And that is very frightful.

You have to defeat them.

So you make sure that . . . in two ways. Number one is a kind of military or forceful way that those who are convinced of this are defeated. They’re not reasoned with. They’re not negotiated with, but they’re just defeated. And number two is the new crop out there that show the error of the way of forcing these beliefs on other people. And the value of, you know, life. And that life is wonderful. They have to flower and prosper by themselves, and not in the basis of suicide bombing or anything like that.

Recorded on: 7/2/07