President Barack Obama last week assured Moslems and told the world that the United States is not now at war with Islam and, moreover, we will never be. Let’s be sure what our president means—or must mean. While the United States certainly is not at war with Islam nor will we ever, surely, be at war with any religion per se (as a religion), Moslems themselves carry the responsibility that we will never be at war with Islam in effect.

It is tremendously important this is understood. Moslem, both foreign and domestic, must understand. Foreign nations that strongly favor Islam and those nations that are officially Islamic must understand. President Obama and his administration must understand. We citizens must understand. Those of us who concern me most are those many activists of political correctness.

We know it is a bedrock commitment of American democracy that religion and state are separate. We have not nor will we ever wage war for a religious purpose—neither to support nor oppose any religion, whether Islam, Judaism, Christianity, or other. However compromised national purpose may become by religious issues, it is not the religious issues on which we act.

This is true even if we should ever be at war with one or more of those several nations that have made themselves officially Islamic. These include, but are not confined to, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Yemen. I don’t confine the recognition of Islamic governments to these nations that have proclaimed themselves Islamic. Several others are Islamic in effect. If they ever make their Islam an issue, they will act as will these others. Additionally, several African countries are ruled by Islamic law. If war develops with any of them, their internal laws will cause them to act as Islamic nations in foreign conflicts.

This is to say, while the United States constitutionally and behaviorally separates religion and state, these nations are legally and behaviorally committed to religion. It isn’t these nations fail to separate religion and state, they consciously and intentionally conjoin them. Whenever and wherever a nation that separates state and religion is confronted by a nation that conjoins them, war as religious in effect is inevitable.

If, then, we should need to wage war on any of these for any reason, that nation will choose to make it a war on Islam. Try as, surely, we would, they would refuse to recognize or accept the actual nature of our purpose. If any such nation should wage war on the United States, if its purpose might not be specifically religious, religious issues will predominate and prevail.

We must be fully clear in our thinking and strategic planning about this terrible reality. At a minimum, we must recognize the reality of the current political concepts. More than this, there are reasons to fear this as an actual eventuality. Say whatever the president will, we are already headed in this direction.

Americans are so viscerally opposed to government involvement in religion, we are politically vulnerable to those from among our own ranks who would impose an invalid and unrealistic political correctness upon our national purpose. They would have us restrain from necessary military or coercive political action just because it might appear to be religiously motivated. If the action itself did not suggest this, and we must ensure it would not, they would themselves rush to make the allegation. So would the Islamic nations. Such of our citizens would, thus, aid and abet those who have made themselves our enemies.

The Obama administration, and all the follow it, must act positively to confine any war to political necessity. Negatively, they must prepare themselves to resist the intimidation of political correctness—from without, but especially from within. If ever we become involved in a war with Islamic nations, it must be by specific political necessity not intimidated by charges of religious purpose.

President Obama must understand that if a war perceived as against Islam is not inevitable, it is a distinct possibility. The less we understand this, the more probable it will become.