I admit it. When I first saw the headline without a story at about 2:50 pm ET on November 5, my very first thought clustered around, “I bet the shooter is a Muslim.” Certainly, I hoped I was wrong, but deep down, my gut told me we were experiencing another visitation from Islamic violence. Sadly, the ensuing news stories proved my gut to be correct. Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, murdered thirteen of his fellow Americans and wounded thirty more at Fort Hood.

It may take weeks to find whether his exact motive hinged on his impending deployment to the Middle East, his own fragile mental health, or some desire to participate in global jihad with other assailants who employ the phrase, “Allahu Akbar.” Nevertheless, it seems more than reasonable to reach one obvious conclusion. Hasan is a Muslim and now joins the ranks of a long list of terror arrests and convictions in 2009 of persons in America who share his particular religious faith.

Since the arrests and the convictions now occur so often that it is hard to remember them all, a not so short list will refresh our minds as to the Muslim extremists who have been charged, convicted, or sentenced on terrorism charges in 2009 alone. The list (expanded in detail at the Anti-Defamation League's web site) does not include Muslim honor killings or murky circumstances like those surrounding the FBI raid and killing of Luqman Abdallah and his followers in Dearborn, even though Abdallah's stated desire was to establish a separatist Islamic state in America.

October 21 - A Massachusetts man is arrested for allegedly plotting to attack Americans malls among other targets
October 21 - Two U.S. citizens and one permanent resident are sentenced in Ohio for conspiring to recruit and train terrorists to attack American troops
September 29 - A New York man pleads guilty to terrorism financing
September 24 - A U.S. permanent resident with alleged links to Al Qaeda is indicted for an alleged plot to detonate explosives in the U.S.
September 24 - A Brooklyn resident is indicted for attempting to join a foreign terrorist group
September 23 - An Illinois resident who attempted to bomb the federal courthouse in Springfield is charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property
August 12 - A Somali-American pleads guilty in Minnesota to training with Al-Qaeda
August 12 - An American citizen is convicted in Georgia of supporting terrorists
August 7 - - A Houston man is sentenced to 54 months in prison for conspiring to join the Taliban
July 27 - Six U.S. citizens and a permanent resident are arrested for conspiring to carry out violent jihad overseas. An eighth suspect is still at large
July 27 - A Virginia man is sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to assassinate President George W. Bush and providing material support to Al Qaeda
July 13 - Two Somali-Americans from Brooklyn Park, MN, and Seattle, WA, are charged with providing material support to terrorists
June 10- A former Georgia Tech student is convicted of supporting terrorists
June 2 - Three American citizens and a Haitian native are indicted for plotting to attack two synagogues in the Bronx
June 1 - An American convert to Islam is charged in the shooting of two military recruiters in Little Rock, Arkansas
May 27 - Three American citizens are sentenced for funneling money to Hamas
May 12 - Four U.S. citizens and one Haitian national are convicted for plotting to attack U.S. buildings including Sears Tower in Chicago
April 29-30 - A U.S. citizen, a U.S. permanent resident and three others are sentenced for conspiring to attack Ft. Dix in New Jersey
April 3 - A former U.S. sailor is sentenced for leaking classified information to alleged terror supporters
March 6 - The leader of a terror cell that plotted to attack institutions in Los Angeles is sentenced
February 26 - An Ohio man is sentenced for planning terrorist attacks
January 28 - A Long Island man pleaded guilty to providing information to Al Qaeda for potential terrorist attacks
January 15 - Two Chicago cousins are convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists

Given that about 0.6% (1.3MM) of the American population is Muslim according to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey, that very small population clearly generates an enormous number of terroristic males. Muslims represent about the same portion of Americans as do Buddhists and Jehovah's Witnesses. In comparison, my recent Google search of terror arrests for those latter two religious groups turned up little information worth noting. The sheer length of the above list of Muslim arrests stands as a witness that we face a grave problem. We face an enemy who is rooted deep within our own borders and has been successful at producing a harvest of home-grown terrorists.

To deal with a hostile enemy, clear vision and frank speech are required. Our enemy is not terror but Islamic terrorists. Deep within the DNA of Islam lies a violent gene, initiated by Mohammed and his brilliant military leadership. Not all Muslims are violent to be sure, but it is important for us to note that violence has been a core characteristic of much of Islam since its inception. Only at major battles and historic turning moments have Muslim forces been repelled. At Poitiers in 732, Charles Martel finally repelled the Islamic aggressors from their European takeover, and at Vienna in 1683, the second Islamic surge into Europe was finally thwarted. The aggressive, relentless, militaristic dimension of Islam cannot be ignored.

So what is America to do? First and foremost, we must develop some kind of strategy for dealing with a clear problem. At present, we have little but politically correct platitudes and sensitivity training. Relying on those alone will lead to national suicide. For starters, here are four non-violent responses to the homegrown terror threat that we face.

1)End Muslim immigration into America immediately. Given the growing number of homegrown Muslim terrorists we are producing right now, America simply cannot afford to add fuel to the fire by artificially increasing the Islamic population through immigration. Muslim immigration should be ended for at least two generations until America has the opportunity to assess whether integration is an effective strategy for followers of a religion where religious freedom, sexual equality, and free speech are not regarded as virtues.

2)Require a world religions course, and offer Arabic as an elective foreign language in every public high school in America. Given that more than 1/3 of Americans are unfamiliar even with the terms Allah or Koran, we have a serious data gap in American understanding of Islam. Strategic education will produce future leaders with a working knowledge of the cultures with whom we are struggling to work.

3)Pray. Pray a lot. For Christian believers in America, the greatest gift we can offer to the problem of Islamic terror is to devote ourselves to intentional and regular prayer for our nation, our policies, and the faiths of the world. Pray for peace, and pray for love.

4)Resist the temptation to embrace separation or separatism as a cultural reality in America. We must find ways to intentionally integrate our society so that pockets of Islamic violence do not emerge in urban centers as they are already beginning to do as evidenced by the list of arrests above.