THE SPECTER OF JIHAD IN AMERICA

Number 16 in a Series on the Middle East Crisis

By Mike Scruggs

For The Tribune

 

With the Koran in one hand and a terrorist banner in the other, a speaker with his face veiled in a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh, stood to speak. In anticipation, the crowd roared its approval with shouts of “Allahu akbar walillahi’l-hamd!” (“Allah is great and to him we give praise.”) This is the slogan of the Muslim Brotherhood.

 

The speaker was a Hamas commander. After extending his thanks for the support of the organizations represented in the crowd, he reported in detail on the methods and results of recent terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israeli soldiers and civilians in Israel and Palestine. He became exuberant as he described how a Hamas driver steered a bus into a ravine killing sixteen Israeli soldiers and seventeen civilians. The crowd responded with a tumultuous and continuing chorus of “Allahu akbar.” (Allah is great.”)

 

The Hamas commander closed his speech with the words, “I call on my brothers to take up arms with us…to take up arms and arms alone.”  The crowd saluted him with thunderous applause and several minutes of chanting “Allahu akbar.”

 

This incident did not take place in Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, or Saudi Arabia. It took place at a hotel conference center in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1989. The participants were residents of the United States, but they had one thing in common among themselves and the speaker. They believe in the dream of Islamic religious and political dominance over every nation in the world.

 

Many Americans and Europeans make the tragic mistake of thinking that Islam is a religion like Christianity or Judaism. But from the first days of Muhammad’s leadership, beginning in Medina in 622 AD, Islam has been both a religion and a political and ideological system. As I have noted in past articles, Islam is not a religion of peace as many of our self-deceived political leaders believe, and it offers very little tolerance for non-Muslims. When Islam becomes politically dominant in a nation, the choice for non-Muslims, according to the Koran and the teachings of Muhammad, is conversion to Islam, a degraded and exploited semi-slavery, death, or flight. Muhammad personally participated in the beheading of over 600 Jews in Medina and ordered the assassination of over thirty of his critics. All this is from the best respected texts approved by Muslim clerical scholars.

 

Jihad (or Holy War against unbelievers) is an essential teaching of the Koran and Muhammad. Islam is not a wonderful religion that has been hijacked by terrorists. Jihad, vengeance, and terrorism are inherent in the founding documents of Islam: the Koran, and the teachings and example of Muhammad. There are “peaceful” verses in the Koran, but they must be understood in the context and systematic theology of its sacred texts. Under the Islamic doctrine of “abrogation,” early peaceful verses of the Koran revealed in Mecca are subordinate to later Medina verses that contradict them. Although Muslims believe that the Koran was written by Allah and always existed in heaven and is therefore without error, to Westerners, there seem to be many contradictions. Liberal American and British academics depend on the abrogated verses to make their case for a peaceful Islam. This is in absolute contradiction to both the texts of Islam’s sacred writings and Muslim scholarship. It also severely conflicts with the reality of Muslim history and current events. So-called “Radical Islam” is really the fundamental Islam of the Koran and Muhammad.  In Alvin J. Schmidt’s recent book, The Great Divide, he lists 35 references to Holy War in the Koran. Donald Richardson’s book, Secrets of the Koran (2003) lists 109. There are many more in the Hadiths (next to the Koran, the most sacred of Muslim texts), which contain the teachings and deeds of Muhammad.

 

It has been estimated that about ten percent of Muslims worldwide embrace the full-fledged Islam of the Koran (sometimes referred to as “Radical Islam” or “Islamo-Facism”), but the other ninety percent generally DO NOT reject it. They may be secularized in many senses or areas of their lives, but the vast majority accept the principle of Holy War at various lesser levels or priorities. In our generation we have seen a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism. It is growing at an alarming rate and has become a religious and political phenomenon throughout the world, including the United States, Canada, and Europe.

 

There are at least three to five million Muslims in the United States, and some estimates run as high as eight million. Sunni and Shia Muslims consider the home-grown African American version of Islam, the Nation of Islam (or Black Muslims), to be heretical, but they are quite willing to use their heretical African-American brothers in their goal to make the United States a Muslim nation subject to Islamic law (Sharia). Sharia is much broader than judicial law. It covers all aspects of government, society, and culture.

 

Since the 1989 conference in Kansas City, American Muslim support for Jihad has increased exponentially. The first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993 should have been a wake-up call. The United States was very lucky. The terrorists also had plans to blow up the United Nations Headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and the Federal Office Building in New York. In 1997, New York City Police foiled the plans of Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer to blow up the subway system. On September 11, 2001, the destruction of the World Trade Center and death of nearly 3000 people finally made Muslim terrorism a serious national security concern.

 

Yet today there are over 1200 mosques in the United States. Most of these have been financed by Saudi Arabian oil money. One moderate cleric has estimated that over eighty percent of these mosques are teaching the extreme fundamentalist doctrines of the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam. It is from this Saudi Arabian based sect that Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden grew. Saudi Arabia is the principal financier of terrorism around the world. In the United States, the Saudis finance the Council for American-Islamic Relations, a major propaganda front that has been very successful in portraying Islam as a religion of peace and tolerance, while at the same time supporting numerous U.S. front groups supporting international terrorism. They are also a major contributor to several large Ivy League colleges.

 

The Palestinian based Hamas (an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement, meaning “zeal”) is probably the largest terrorist organization in the world and has as a primary objective the destruction of Israel, but their terrorist goals are international in scope. It was formed in 1987 as a spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood and is most famous for it s suicide bombings.  Hamas recently captured a majority of legislative seats in the areas under the Palestinian National Authority in Israel.  It is extremely well entrenched in the United States, which is a major fund-raising source. The Hamas basic training course includes not only religious instruction but also how to plant car bombs. It is viciously anti-Semitic.

 

Besides Hamas, a number of other Islamic terrorist organizations have active cells in the United States, including Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, which have always had close ties to Hamas. In addition, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite terrorist group active in Palestine and Lebanon, has a presence in New York, Washington, Detroit, and Charlotte, North Carolina.  Islamic Jihad has a presence in Tampa, Florida, and Raleigh, North Carolina. The most prominent terrorist front groups in the United States are the American Muslim Council, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the American Muslim Alliance, the Islamic Society of North America, and the already cited, richly funded Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

 

The most frequent means of immigration to the United States for Islamic activists are student and H-1B work visas, especially in technology, but both our Mexican and Canadian borders are little challenge to them. They are well trained in traversing our borders with manpower, weapons, and supplies. The cells are typically centered near major universities. The greatest friends to Islamic terrorism in the United States have been political correctness, diversity pressures, and multiculturalism.

 

Some anti-terrorist experts have theorized that American Jihad is being delayed so as not to provoke the American public until strategic Islamic victories have been achieved in Israel, Iraq-Afghanistan, and Europe. Their timing is also sensitive to U.S. elections. Terrorists and bullies find it easiest to prey on nations weakened by multiculturalist ideology and appeasement prone political leadership. 

 

Because of our complacency, frequent moral confusion, and misguided understanding of the true nature of Islam, our nation stands in immanent mortal danger.