Huma Abedin and the Saudi King's manifesto

A very interesting post from www.jihadwatch.org about Huma Abedin and Saudi Arabia. This follows this post about a different interpretation of Islam.  This follows this article about American energy independence and preventing money from going to hostile countries such as Iran and Venezuela. For more that you can do to get involved click HERE and read this very interesting book HERE.

Huma Abedin and the Saudi King's manifesto


In "Huma Abedin and the Saudi King's manifesto" at FrontPage, Jamie Glazov interviews Walid Shoebat, who offers some striking revelations:



FP: Walid Shoebat, welcome back to Frontpage. The interview we did last year, The Dark Muslim Brotherhood World of Huma Abedin, has become extremely relevant and I would like to discuss your new highly disturbing findings with you.



Shoebat: Thanks for having me again Jamie.



FP:Last Friday, President Obama voiced strong support for Huma Abedin during the Iftar dinner, saying the top aide to Secretary of State Hillary has been “nothing less than extraordinary in representing our country and the democratic values that we hold dear.”



Yet you have presented a 37-page dossier and WTC 1993 prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has linked the Abedins [here] and [here] to two terror supporting supervisors: al-Qaeda financier Abdullah Naseef and the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradwi. Moreover, you have now made a discovery that links the Abedins’ Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs enterprise to a sinister Wahhabist Saudi agenda called Muslim Minority Affairs.  Kindly share your new discovery with us.



Shoebat: President Obama needs to refute the facts and provide answers that are void of rhetoric. He can’t and he won’t. My findings all started as I was researching Huma’s father “Sayed Zaynul Abedin” in Arabic looking for further clues and suddenly there it was, an unbelievable document commissioned by the late King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz which can be downloaded [here] and [here]. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It had a long grandiose and fanciful title: The Efforts of the Servant of the Two Holy Places to Support The Muslim Minorities. It included Huma’s father and his work Muslim Minorities in the West published in 1998 as part of 29 works to construct this conspiratorial manifesto. (#11. P. 134) It explained the Muslim Minority Affairs (hereafter MMA) not simply as a title or as a religious or social entity but as a Saudi foreign policy of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.



It is an entire management system using MMA as the vehicle to catapult MMA to gain specific goals:



1—Recruit individual Muslims that live in non-Muslim lands and transform them as a collective unit by establishing centers, educational programs, mosques and organizations like ISNA and MSA in order to stop Muslim assimilation in non-Muslim host nations.



2—These then can influence the non-Muslim host nations by shifting the demographic scale due to their population growth in favor of the Saudi agenda.



3—A gradual implementation of Sharia will ensue by becoming a major revolutionary powerhouse.



4—This will tilt the host nation in favor of Muslims due to their increase as a population.



5—By this, a transformation then ensues in the host nation to gradually begin to implement a Wahhabi style Sharia.



6—The host state then will join the Muslim commonwealth.



Amazed, I began to research the Abedins’ Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs (hereafter IMMA) from historical accounts and testimonies. The two connected perfectly and what emerged was extremely troubling from a national security perspective: the Abedins for decades were actually serving a foreign entity, the government of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Islamic Affairs and not American Democracy as President Obama stated. The Abedins’ IMMA is a Saudi-based branch implemented, commissioned and stationed through the same entity that produced this policy to serve Saudi Arabia’s and not American interests.



FP: Ok, but how exactly can you connect the Abedins’ IMMA to the Saudi MMA?



Shoebat: Easily, we have:



[1] Testimonies.



[2] The hierarchical construct of the Abedins’ IMMA fits the Saudi manifesto MMA chain of command.



and



[3] We have historical references showing IMMA was officially under these authorized organizations that were set up by Saudi Arabia.



These make an ironclad case. Here is an example; the manifesto states that:



“It [MMA] will work under the umbrella of the Muslim World League (MWL) and International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY) and others” (P. 6, also see P. 23)



The Arabic Dictionary on Media Icons by Zarkali confirms the above plan fits IMMA:



“Sayed Z. Abedin is a specialist on Muslim Minority Affairs issues… In the early 1970′s, Sayed Z. Abedin went to Saudi Arabia for one year as a visiting professor. He was welcomed by King Abdulaziz University, which provided him the means to create a scholarly program regarding Muslim Minorities. Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef, the Dean of King Abdulaziz University then envisioned the creation of an academic entity called the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs (IMMA), under the management of Ahmad Bahafzallah, who was the General Trustee for the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). Professor Sayed Z. Abedin was encouraged to supervise the Muslim Minority Affairs and served as IMMA’s chief editor.” (Al-I’lam by Zarkali, is an encyclopedia on major figures in the Arabic-Muslim Media, P.p. 218)



Abdullah Ghazi, a graduate of Harvard University in Comparative Religion, provides additional testimony as he reminisces about how he met the Abedins:



“Later we shifted to Gary in Indiana State, 40 kms from Chicago. In 1976, I met Rabita (MWL) chief Dr. Abdullah Omar Naseef and Dr. Zainul Abedin of Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs. They encouraged me to take up this venture. The first book to come out was Our Prophet, an assignment from King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah at Dr. Naseef’s behest…”



The history of the Abedins’ IMMA and of the Saudi manifesto’s hierarchy for MMA perfectly match. As we see, it was the Muslim World League (MWL) with Abdullah Omar Naseef, a Wahhabist who created IMMA under Ahmad Bahafzallah of World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) to supervise the Abedins.



FP: What proof can you provide from the manifesto itself regarding the goals you mentioned?



Shoebat: We provided several snapshots from the manifesto itself:











This snapshot in English says:



“The Muslim societies in all continents of the world exist as either ‘Muslim Nation’ or ‘Muslim Minorities’. The assessment to determine what constitutes ‘state’ from a ‘minority state’ is done based on a number of measures. First the numbers scale, which is, if a nation has Muslims exceed half the population and its Constitution states that Islam is its official religion or that Islamic Sharia is its source of law, this state is then considered an Islamic state.” (p.29) “Since the number of Muslims has risen greatly in the last years where they became 1.3 billion Muslims. From these we have (900) million already in Muslim nations. The 400 million live as communities and as Muslim Minority” (p. 31) “… In Africa resides (250) million Muslims and in Europe resides (60) million Muslims and in North America and South America resides (10) million Muslims. So, according to these statistics it is expected that the number of Muslims will reach 2.6 billion six hundred thousand within a short span of time. The Muslims then will become a mighty and effective power in the world, of course, due to the increase in their numbers—then these will shift the demographic balance in their favor.” (p. 32).



It actually maps out with statistics and demographic analysis every nation where Muslim minorities exist. Remember, Huma’s mother is an expert on demography and world populations and contributed greatly to that effect in the JMMA journal. Regardless how small the numbers, these are expected to advance Wahhabist ideology.



FP: Ok, what about this “Wahhabist” link? Can you provide proof?



Shoebat: The document pulls no punches. It mentions “puritan Islam” as directed by “Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab,” the father of Wahhabism:







“Allah destined this region [Saudi Arabia] for a historic role. So He commissioned the two Imams—Muhammad bin Saud and Muhammad bin Abdul Wahhab, may Allah have mercy upon them. But the times have passed on Imam Muhammad bin Saud by the emergence of the reformer—Muhammad bin AbdulWahhab. So the two Imams cooperated together to judge by what Allah brought forth, to fight against heresy and to bring Muslims back to puritan Islam.” (p. 8 )



FP: Is the United States mentioned in the plan?



Shoebat: Indeed, all over it, it discusses accomplishments in ISNA, MSA, banking, centers and even names the mosques designated to fulfill the plan in the United States, except there are obstacles. The United States is the home of the main obstacle that hinders their agenda—the Jews. There the manifesto shifts, sounding more like an Arab version of Mein Kampf. Here I include the original snapshot from the document itself and translated it to English:







“The greatest challenge that faces Muslims in the United States and Canada are the Jews who take advantage of their material ability and their media to distort the image of Islam and Muslims there by spreading their lies and distortions in the minds of the people in these countries. The Jews employ their efforts and direct their material wealth and their high positions to serve Zionist interests in the Arab region. They [the Jews] take advantage of situations to distort the image of Arabs and Muslims. The Zionist organizations spend enormous efforts to obstruct the spread of Islam in these areas.” (P. 79-80)



FP: This is scary stuff, and our media and government are completely silent and blind.



Let’s continue: how can we know that the MMA is not some isolated issue or something simply on paper?



Shoebat: McCarthy’s The Grand Jihad perhaps can provide a better analysis as to the billions spent by Saudi Arabia in the U.S. to advance their agendas. I am here to provide missing links, the proclamations from the Arabic texts that westerners don’t review, things considered taboos to discuss and translate, an insight from a defector who switched sides. That’s what I do.



As to the MMA concept, it is not isolated to the Abedins or even the Saudis. Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood support the same concept, they even link to each other with the same title: “the Jurisprudence of Muslim Minority Affairs.”



In other words, the IMMA is not simply a name of an outfit; it represents a definition, a jurisprudence rooted in a sinister doctrine with short and long-term goals. Qaradawi has a similar manifesto for the Brotherhood. MMA scholars across the board have an obsession using this jurisprudence steering Muslims into this theocratic collective revolution.



FP: Give us some examples.



Shoebat: No problem. Take Europe’s Abdul-Majid al-Najjar, Assistant Secretary-General of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. While working on supposed building relations with the West, he adheres, in Arabic, to the same collectivist concept. In his “Creating a Fundamentalist Jurisprudence of the Muslim Minorities in the West,” he states:



“Islamic Sharia ruling is for every circumstance, time and place and in all circumstances… It was ordained that Islam was assigned the mission to inherit the globe. It is a mission possible through only the collective religious performance and mission impossible through individual religiosity.”



Let’s take Taha Jaber al-Alwani who is an ardent anti-Semite who, by the way, runs the United States Department of Defense program (out of all places) for training Muslim military chaplains in the U.S. military. This is the first time we translated this:



“… it [MMA] is a Jurisprudence for a group confined to its special circumstances which is allowed what others are not. Its exercise needs an understanding of social sciences, especially sociology, economics, political science and international relations… for the fundamentals of success for the Muslim Minority Jurisprudence it must adhere to the collective earth concept.” [here]



Alwani, a man commissioned by our government, even calls for a soon-to-be military conquest and provides an official fatwa permitting and preparing for the use of force:



“Commitment to the Quranic concept of Geography: The land belongs to Allah, his religion is Islam, and every country is already in the House of Islam—now in the present time—since they will be in the House of Islam by force in the near future. The whole of humanity is a Muslim Nation: it is either ‘the religion of the nation’ which has embraced this religion [Islam], or a ‘proselyte nation’ we are obliged to conquer.” (Alwani, The Jurisprudence of Muslim Minority Affairs. No. 7)



Read it all.

Posted by Robert

Radical Islam and the American left

An interesting book which describes why so much of the American Left gives the appearance of being sympathetic to Radical Islam! You can order it at the end of the article, or get it at your library here http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56192311

Unholy Alliance

By: Jamie Glazov

http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/

Frontpage Interview is joined today by Frontpage’s founder and editor-in-chief David Horowitz to discuss his new book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. One of the founders of the New Left movement in the 1960s, he is a best-selling author, a lifelong civil rights activist, and today the president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture.
This is the second and final part of our interview. To read yesterday’s first part, click here.

FP: Mr. Horowitz, welcome back to the final segment of our interview.

Horowitz: Thanks Jamie.

FP: You have stated that we “have to win” in Iraq. Hypothetically, let’s say that the Vietnam process is replayed all over again and we cave in to the anti-war movement, lose our backbone, withdraw and lose. The consequences?

Horowitz: The consequences will parallel those in Indo-china but for us will be much worse. In Indo-china when Kennedy, Kerry, Dean and the other antiwar activists (myself included) were able to prevail in the political argument, and America cut and ran, the result was a bloodbath in Southeast Asia in which the Communists slaughtered two and a half million people. If we were to lose in Iraq and be forced to withdraw, there would be a bloodbath of all those who fought with us, and who resisted the terrorists, and then all those in the terrorists’ path. It would not probably reach the proportions of the Vietnam and Cambodian catastrophes immediately, but it would spread to other Muslim states whose governments the radicals are seeking to overthrow and eventually come home to the United States, something that did not happen in the Cold War with Communism.

It may or may not happen immediately. But if the tide of radical Islam is not stopped in Iraq it will spread to other states, which are much larger and even nuclear -- Pakistan comes immediately to mind -- and then we will reap the whirlwind. Iraq as someone has said is not Vietnam, it is Guadalcanal. We are in a war with radical Islam which is seeking first of all to control the lives and resources of one and a half billion Muslims, and then to take on the “Crusader” west. The threat to us can decrease only if we stay on the offensive and keep winning and thus keep them losing and off balance and on the defensive. This is why the efforts of Kennedy and Al Gore and Jimmy Carter to repeat the disaster of Vietnam are infinitely more dangerous than what John Kerry and Ted Kennedy did in Vietnam. Communism, as we didn't fully realize at the time of Vietnam, was already a dying system and an unraveling creed. Radical Islam is not. Radical Islam is a far more fanatical religion than Communism (I never thought I would be saying this!) and – in the short run -- does not depend on the success of an actually existing utopian Mecca to sustain it as Communism did.

FP: You ask why people who think of themselves as "progressives" and champions of human rights would risk their lives to defend despotism – the “human shields” for Saddam, the Taliban etc. Mr. Horowitz, haven’t we seen this all before – i.e. the Western progressives who went to help build socialism in Russia after the Bolshevik revolution, only to be slaughtered by the Stalinist terror etc?

Not to get too heavy or deep here, but isn’t this all the same death wish, the yearning to sacrifice one’s life for a utopian idea? What else can explain leftist feminists going to anti-war rallies in the nude wearing Saudi headgear, when they know they would be extinguished within 30 seconds if they even showed an ankle under the regimes with whom they now side? Could you comment on this yearning for self-extinction on the part of the Left, or do you disagree with this interpretation?

Horowitz: Well I have drawn the parallels in Unholy Alliance and applied the same term that Trotsky used to describe the international progressive movement when he said they were "frontier guards" for the Soviet state. Since 9/11 the progressive left and its "international solidarity" units have acted as frontier guards for the terrorists and the terrorist states. They are once again a radical "fifth column" as they were for our Communist enemies in the Cold War, this time for Islam. As for the radical death cult, this parallel was noted before me, and quite eloquently by Paul Berman, a leftist himself, in his book Liberalism and Terror.

Progressives are best viewed as social redeemers, people deluded into thinking they can change the world and usher in a future in which there are no fanatics, Islamic or otherwise. On day one of the revolution in their unhappy minds, the Islamic lion will lie down with the Jewish, Christian and feminist lambs. People who believe that Palestinian suicide bombers are reasonable individuals acting out of political desperation and not sick enthusiasts of a religious death cult, are themselves partial believers in that cult. Their dementia is to believe that if only enough Israelis/Christians/neo-conservatives are eliminated, the world will become a livable and just place. This is the group psychosis that afflicts our time, just as the group psychoses of Communism and Nazism afflicted previous generations.

FP: As a former believer in the progressive faith, what advantages do you think you have to dissect the leftist mindset? Also, if you had remained a leftist you might have today been marching in an anti-Bush rally, cheering for the victory of our Islamist enemies. But that is not the case. What do you think it was in your character and outlook that made it impossible for you to continue along a journey in which you would have ended up doing what I just hypothetically described?

Horowitz: In Unholy Alliance I have shown the parallels between the thinking of secular radicals and Islamic radicals. Sayyid Qutb, the theoretical inspiration for Islamic Jihad has even written a book called Social Justice in Islam. The idea of "Social Justice," which is really a code for communism and a religious concept is the political left's sha'ria -- the divine law instituted on earth. The Islamic radicals want to impose sha'ria or God's law on the world as a way to redeem it from the corruption into which it has fallen and make it holy. Since God obviously is not going to have a say in this and what they are imposing is their own rule, and a rule that will be comprehensive and all pervasive, they are totalitarians in exactly the sense that Communists and Nazis were in the past. The revolutionary agenda of progressive leftists is to impose or bring about the similarly universal and all inclusive rule of "social justice," whose only practical meaning is to impose their will through the power of the state on the rest of us. This is the same totalitarian agenda (although some of the words they use to describe it have changed) that they supported in the century just past, and that cost 100 million innocent lives. Like the Bourbons, they never learn and they never forget.

Why am I no longer part of the totalitarian cult (even though I never for a second would have conceded that I was a part of it at the time)? Ultimately, I don't really know. What broke my faith, however, is that I could not close my eyes to the practical results of our efforts. We -- the anti-Vietnam left -- helped to kill two and a half million people in Indo-China. We supported (however "critically") a bankrupt socialist system or an impossible socialist future without regard for the consequences of the destructive acts we committed to make it possible. I don't know why it disturbed me that our efforts led to a slaughter in Southeast Asia and did not disturb others -- John Kerry for example. Tom Hayden seems to have been disturbed for a nanosecond while writing his memoir, before quickly shifting the “real” blame for the genocide in Cambodia to Nixon and Kissinger who tried to prevent it, while exonerating himself and Jane Fonda and John Kerry and Vietnam Veterans against the War who were so instrumental in bringing it about. I do not know why all those progressives (who are in fact reactionaries and who number in the millions) continue to go about their work of attacking and undermining the corporate order and the capitalist system when they haven't a clue as to the future that might replace it, but they do. The archetype of this casual insanity is probably Ralph Nader who has spent a lifetime railing against corporations without having the foggiest idea of how they work or what they do or how any other entities could do better.

FP: One of the greatest gifts you have given this country in its battle, internally and externally, against despotism is your knowledge of how to fight political war – as well as your own personal willingness and determination to do it. As you have shown in your work, Conservatives are extremely weak in fighting political war. Now we have someone from the other side who effectively uses leftist weapons right back against the leftists themselves.

So my question: if we are going to win this war against the Unholy Alliance, what tactics must we employ?

Horowitz: The most important element in defeating the left is understanding it -- who it is and what its agendas are. The assault on the war effort would never have gotten as far as it has if our political leaders had gone on the offensive early and not given the saboteurs of the war effort such a wide latitude. Ted Kennedy thinks nothing of implying that if and when there is a dirty bomb set off by the terrorists in this country, George Bush will be responsible. Ted Kennedy is already responsible for the deaths of Americans and freedom loving Iraqis in Iraq. The path on which Al Gore and Jimmy Carter have led the Democratic Party is a treacherous one and they should have been made to pay a political price early on in their sabotage effort.

A year and a half ago the Democratic Leadership began undermining the credibility of the commander-in-chief by calling him a liar over 16 perfectly true and relatively unimportant (if untrue) words in the State of the Union address. This assault was unconscionable and unjustified and has cost many American lives. It was a political war declared that the Democratic Party leaders on the President in the midst of a war, and it should have been fought as such. Instead, the White House apologized for the innocent words thinking that this would discourage the saboteurs. Since their agenda was to derail the war effort and unseat the President it did not discourage them. In fact it inflamed them. And we are paying the price with an election that should not have been this close and with a commander-in-chief gravely weakened in handling the threats not only in Iraq but from Iran and Syria as well.

Democrats pretend to be appalled that patriotism would be an issue. But of course patriotism -- understood as rallying to the defense of America's security -- is an issue. Al Gore understands that -- which is why he attacked the President as unpatriotic -- as betraying Americans. So does John Kerry and the Democratic political apparatus which is accusing Bush of encouraging the terrorists and making the world a more dangerous place. There is no way to avoid this issue. The task is to put the shoe on the foot that it fits.

We have not begun to fight the war at home properly. The coalition of so called civil liberties groups that is conducting a full-out assault on the Patriot Act is a coalition that includes terrorists like Lynne Stewart and Sami al-Arian and their political sympathizers. It is spearheaded by the same organizations and individuals who defended our Communist enemies for the same reasons during the Cold War and whose motivation is not the defense of the Constitution -- a worthy cause -- but the exploitation of the Constitution for their radical agendas (not a worthy cause).

Defending a democracy is always problematic. We must protect our Constitutional rights and democratic processes as vigilantly as possible. We must distinguish between earnest and loyal critics of our war policies and defense measures, and treacherous critics; and we must distinguish between treacherous critics and treacherous criticisms which are not always the same thing. I don't pretend to know what Ted Kennedy's motivation is when he makes remarks that are obscene and disloyal. I don’t know whether he's merely getting senile and allowing the bitterness of his personal failures and political defeats to run away with his judgment. But I do know how to assess their political impact. Analyzing the sources of Al Gore's bizarre outbursts would be a challenge for a professional. On the other hand, Michael Moore is a transparent and self-proclaimed member of the enemy camp.

Those who embrace and praise Michael Moore’s anti-American, jihadist propaganda undoubtedly do so from a multitude of inspirations, among them the ordinary mean spiritedness of partisan politics and the normal stupidities of the species (particularly its Hollywood genus). But the effects of these efforts to divide us internally in the face of our enemies and sabotage our efforts to defend ourselves are not so easily dismissed and should not be so readily forgiven. First we need to win the war; then we can forgive. The left likes to confuse the political argument with a legal proceeding. No one in the United States has been charged with treason (let alone convicted) since the Second World War. So take a deep breath and calm down. I am not suggesting anyone should be charged with treason now (though John Walker Lindh and Lynne Stewart would surely qualify). But this does not mean that we should not spell out the implications of political arguments and positions or assess the recommendations of those who oppose our war efforts. The Constitution is a sacred covenant, not a suicide pact.

FP: Thank you Mr. Horowitz, we are out of time. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

Horowitz: My pleasure as well. Thank you.

*

Get your copy of David Horowitz's new book, Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left, for only $18 from the FrontPage Magazine Bookstore.

Misunderstanding Islam?

A very interesting post from http://frontpagemagazine.com/ about Islam's Jihad doctrine.

Misunderstanding Islam?
By: Robert Spencer http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/

It is a unquestioned dogma of American policymakers and the mainstream media that Islamic jihadists have twisted and hijacked the authentic, peaceful teachings of Islam, and are motivated not by Islamic imperatives but by poverty exacerbated by ignorance and other factors. Yet from the words of the Islamic jihadists themselves, one gets just the opposite impression: recent statements by a variety of Islamic jihadists reinforce the fact that jihadists gain recruits and justify their actions within the larger Islamic community by claiming for themselves the mantle of Islamic authenticity. And while virtually all Western policymakers and analysts are convinced that they actually have no claim to that authenticity, self-proclaimed moderate Muslim groups have never yet formulated an Islamic response to these claims that is comprehensive and convincing enough to counter the jihadist challenge among Muslims worldwide.

Recent examples abound. New tapes have come to light this week, on which accused North Carolina jihad plot ringleader Daniel “Saifullah” Boyd saying, “The blood of Muslims has become cheap in the marketplace. It has become cheap because Muslims have abandoned the jihad….I love jihad. I love to stand there and fight for the sake of Allah.”

Meanwhile, a boy in Pakistan, one of a large group of pre-teens whom the Taliban recruited to become suicide bombers, explained that the appeal to them was purely Islamic: “They just told us that they (army) are against Islam, are against the Quran. They said wage jihad against them; we are waging jihad for the Quran.”

And on Al-Jazeera television on July 21, two representatives of the Lebanese branch of the Islamic supremacist group Hizb Al-Tahrir (which recently held a convention in Chicago) made statements about jihad that differed sharply from the “jihad is a spiritual struggle or at best a war of self-defense” line upon which Islamic apologists in the West insist. Salah Al-Din ‘Adhadhda of Hizb Al-Tahrir’s Lebanese press bureau declared: “We have come here to talk about the pinnacle of Islam – Jihad for the sake of Allah.” He said that jihad, “like other precepts of the Shari’a,” had been “subjected to distortion and perversion, due to the ideological and cultural invasion from which our nation continues to suffer.” But in this he didn’t mean that its true, peaceful or spiritual meaning had been obscured. On the contrary, he declared that Muslims must work toward “the conquest of the capitals of the world by the message of Islam, in order to save and liberate humanity, by pulling the people out of the darkness and tyranny of capitalism into the light and justice of Islam.”

In other words, he was calling for the imposition of Islamic Sharia. Muhammad Ibrahim, a member of the Hizb Al-Tahrir’s Lebanese advisory council, made this clear when he explained on the same program that “Jihad in Islam is two-fold. The first type is the offensive Jihad, in which the Muslims engage the infidels in fighting in order to bring the message of Islam to them, and to pull them from darkness and into the light.” This campaign to impose a system of laws that extinguished free speech and institutionalized the oppression of women and non-Muslims must go on, he said, even in the West: “The West has directed its arrows intensively against the Jihad, because it realized how dangerous Jihad is to Western civilization and culture.”

As a result of this, he said, the West “has distorted the true meaning of Jihad” – which clearly as far as he was concerned meant warfare against unbelievers, not spiritual struggle. He complained that some Muslims even “went as far as to repeat the claims of many Orientalists – that Jihad is a defensive war only, and that there is no truth in what is being spread about offensive Jihad or offensive war. Thus, they aligned themselves with Western culture. Worse are those who bleat like the enemies of Islam, and consider Jihad to be aggression and terrorism.” In reality, he maintained, “Jihad is an offensive Jihad, which was instated in order to spread Islam throughout the world.”

Yet according to Islamic spokesmen in the West, as well as non-Muslim scholars and analysts, there is no imperative to “spread Islam throughout the world,” and certainly no “offensive Jihad.” Indeed, those who, like Dutch politician Geert Wilders, point out otherwise are routinely dismissed as “bigots,” “hatemongers,” and “Islamophobes.” The cognitive dissonance is immense. As American Islamic jihadists such as Daniel Boyd continue to be active, it becomes increasingly imperative for government and law enforcement officials to confront the facts honestly. They need to face the fact that Islamic jihadists claim to represent true and pure Islam, and that “moderate” Muslims are not effectively countering this claim in Muslim communities. Then they must formulate policy accordingly. The longer they dismiss this as insignificant or even deny that it is happening, the longer it will continue, and once Islamic jihadists have had a few more years to advance their agenda, it will be all the harder for officials to take the steps that need to be taken to defend free people.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of eight books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs, is available now from Regnery Publishing.