"Our brothers
and sisters in the West have a great mission," Sheikh Yussef
al Qardawi has said several times on alJazeera; the mission was to "prepare for the spread
of the mission and also perform jihad in the ways they can." This sentence
can be read in two ways: spiritual or political. Islamist and Salafi
spokespersons in the West state that the spread of religion is a right not only
recognized by the international declaration of human rights, but also protected
by the legal systems in the western world. And on that, they are right: Proselytism
and evangelization are indeed part of religious freedoms. That Islamic centers
proselytize for Islam as a religion is perfectly normal under any democratic
system. But that is not what the Islamists and Salafists are calling for, or
what they are strictly practicing. The strategies of the jihadists in the West
are clearly outlined in the declarations made on the websites of Islamists,
Salafists and other radicals. They have an international body, even if they
follow different paths, depending on their timetable and country of action.
(Evan Kohlman, Al Qaida's Jihad in Europe, 2004).
Not to long ago there was the case of professors Abdallah al Shallah and Sami al Arian in south Florida that showed the
concept that members or alleged members of terrorist organizations can hide
under faculty status. But that is not unique to universities-it could also be
true to all other institutions and agencies. It is widely believed that a main
source of information on sensitive areas related to defense matters can be
obtained from universities, especially the ones that are contracted by the
Defense and Homeland Security departments. Some believe that this is an area of
natural interest for terrorists to infiltrate. But even beyond finding refuge,
fund raising, building cells, or acquiring scientific knowledge for their
enterprises, a much higher objective could be reached by actual infiltration of
the university system: that is, to send "graduates" to the market of
their interest: government, security, or military agencies. The presence of
jihadists hidden behind the robes of academics could produce a fundamentalist
madras sa within a secular madrassa-that is, college.
Instead of recruiting them after graduation, indoctrination would be part of
their educational process, and afterward would accompany them into whatever
sphere of interest they migrated to. This would be the habitat par excellence
of the second generation of American and western al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and
future integratedjihadists.
In his book on the
subject and on his website, professor Martin Kramer describes with accuracy the
tidal wave that took over the teaching of Middle East studies in America,
Canada, and Europe. Arabist, Islamist, and apologist influence has covered the
teaching and research in political science, international relations, history,
sociology, economics, geography, and all related fields of art, literature, and
subfields such as peace studies and film. The ensemble is under the auspices
of the Middle East studies.
For example, at the
annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association of America, the national
vehicle used by the apologists, the anointment of new generations of Middle
East studies graduates put even more teachers in the classrooms. The travesty
was not without catastrophic consequences for the largest democracy on the
planet. The criticism of MESA's "Arabist" policies were the subject
of ten years of lecture series and panels organized by the Florida Society for
Middle East Studies based at Florida Atlantic University. (1994-2004). MESA was
also accused of obstruction of academic material relating to the Jihadi
persecution of Middle East minorities, by the academic and congressional panels
held by the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights in the Muslim world
Washington, a umbrella organization representing 42
US-based ethnic and religious groups including: Coptic, Assyrian, Sudanese,
Lebanese, Berber, Hindus, Humanist Muslims, etc.
On the one hand,
Saudi oil power and American business partners, opened a space for Wahabi
influence inside the United States. Through these gates, ideological
penetration, political mollification, terrorist infiltration, and control of
foreign policy progressed year after year, until the time al Qaeda charged in
head on.
In defended the
jihadists by claiming that those who describe them as terrorists were distraught
defense planners in need of a new enemy, presumably one that would justify
their ample budgets. The blurring process is systematic: Lebanon's war, which
started in 1975, is only blamed on Israel's invasion of 1982 and not on Syria's
occupation since 1976. Osama bin Laden is described as a "Saudi businessman
who served as an Islamic recruitment agent for Afghanistan and maintains an
office in Sudan."
Evidently, the size
of Muslim communities in the West is also important to the jihadists, because
it is the environment in which the Islamists can work. Their literature and
websites explicitly call for "re- Islamized" communities to advance
their strategies. (See Robert Baer, Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington
Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, p. 187.)
Once inside the
national tissue, dominating the brains and blurring the people's vision, the
infiltrators can use the arms of this large body to execute their policies. The
mother of all ironies is when the recipient of your national security and
foreign policies becomes finally able to dictate them. Or as Walid Phares
stated it in his book subtitled “Terrorist Strategies against America”; For
decades, antiwestern and antidemocratic regimes and
organizations in the region have been shrieking about American control. They
screamed it so loudly that it became the soul of what Edward Said tried to
shape for half a century: The public conviction that the West in general and
the United States in particular, even after the end of colonialism, are
responsible for all the ills and disasters that have stricken the Middle East.
(Phares, Future Jihad, 2005, p.149.)
Curricula, programs,
and related activities and teaching philosophies are still the dominant ones in
most Middle East studies centers and departments. Thus yes, the "political
culture" developed by Wahabism and company still prevails wherever the
stream spreads. But gradually (end Dec.2005) also academic, opposition to
jihad-in-residence is on the rise. Other views, unable to be expressed through
existing programs, are developing in their own fields, such as homeland
security studies, terrorism studies, and conflict studies. It will be a while
however before the general student population has access to the larger picture
hence presented here for the first time on the internet (E.P.W. International
Research).
The political
influence of the opponent, backed with (Saudi and other) money, can blur the
vision of the political establishment and paralyze its ability to become
conscious of the mounting threat. The jihadist strategy aimed at anesthetizing
the political establishment of Europe and the United States in order to
achieve its long-term objectives. According to Harvey Kushner and Bart Davis in
Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United
States (New York, 2004) two lines were followed:
1. Reassure the
public and leaders that the worldwide movement is not a threat.
2. Promote the idea that the movement inside Europe and the United States
is part of the political culture.
Hence, in the absence of public knowledge (due to ideological penetration),
jihadism was normalized. In fact the public has only recently learned that
those very teachings are also being spread within, Europe and America.
Or as Kushner and
Davis describe, once Jihad advocacy groups built significant ties with members
of the legislative branch, and obviously once a network of entities backed by
fundamentalist regimes from the outside is able to become part of the political
system, it can paralyze the capacity of institutions to identify the threat.
Simply put, when western governments turn to the jihadists for information on
jihadism, the resistance to jihad terrorism is doomed.
All four major forces
out of the Middle East- have been involved with this:
1. Salafists-neo-Wahahis such as al Qaeda and its sister organizations
2. Wahahis within the Saudi regime (not
necessarily the entire monarchy)
3. The Khumeinist line of the radical Mullahs in
Tehran and Hezbollah
4. Radical Pan-Arabists such as the Baathists recently, when they operate
in alliance with one of the other three currents
Then, as I suggested recently in the case of
France there is another
little recognized strategy of world jihad in the west. This was first indicated
by bin-Laden when he announced that he will create a coalition against the
“white man” (see his recently published “Messages To The World”). This
proposition by bin Laden in fact was unusual and not in conformity with
earlier, mainstream jihadist thinking. But a thorough analysis of the jihadist
strategies, shows an intelligent adaptation to the infidel challenge. For, to
defeat the kuffars, jihadism indeed can adopt tactics
and strategies at will.
For example The
Nation of Islam in the U.S.A (see 1), is an ethnically centered movement. It
follows the teaching of a nonorthodox brand of Islam. Its prophet is Elijah
Mohammed, in addition to the seventh-century Messenger of Allah, Mohammed, who
received the Qu'ran. On that ground, mainstream
Muslims consider Nation of Islam's dogma heretical. But it is the political ideology
of the group that is sought by the jihadists. For example in the 1990s, Muammar
Qadhafi of Libya promised to deliver $1 billion to Louis Farrakhan in support
of his struggle. The grant did not go through, but indicates how radical
regimes and organizations fantasize about the existence of an American-born
ideological group that would undermine the United States from the inside.
Farrakhan was on a tour that took him to, among other destinations, Libya,
Sudan, and Iran, three regimes that have a record of massive human rights
abuses. Sudan's National Islamic Front is responsible for the genocide against
the Blacks in the south. Yet the Nation of Islam stood firmly with the Khartoum
regime against the campaigns aimed at exposing that genocide. Farrakhan went as
far as to deny the existence of slavery in Sudan and Mauritania in the 1990s,
lining up with projihadist lobbies such as CAIR in
Washington and pitting his group against the black victims of jihad in Africa.
In fact prisons offer fertile ground for Islamist recruitment in
Europe, but especially in the U.S.A., where one out of four African
Americans joins the Nation of Islam there.
Thus the jihad
lobbies and the overseas regimes see radical Islamic groups within the African
American community as precious allies in their attempts to weaken interethnic
relations in the United States. The more powerful these radical groups are, and
the more supportive they are of the grand jihadist designs, the deeper the
jihadist lobbies can insert their influence within the African American
community. The ultimate objective of the wider jihadi strategy is to use the
racial factor to protect their agenda. Hence any political criticism against
Nation of Islam is denounced as a political attack against the African American
community. One of Nation of Islam's most ironic attempts to defend the Sudanese
regime was to stand against the issue of liberation of Black slaves in Sudan.
Farrakhan's group went so far in its alliance with the Islamic fundamentalist
regime in Khartoum that it found itself defending the "Arab masters"
against the "Black slaves"-at least, until former Sudanese slaves
showed up in the African American community starting in the mid 1990’s and
told their stories directly to American Blacks. One major launching event I
attended (and was a speaker at) was at Columbia University in 1994. There, for
the first time in modern history, Black Sudanese confronted Arab lobbyists and
Nation of Islam militants face to face.
When bin Laden and
other jihadists speak of the worldwide battle against the "white
man." their discourse strangely, is sometimes similar to that of Louis
Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam's leader. Both talk about the world's 17 percent
"white Europeans," against whom the rest of the world should unite.
But al Qaeda and its allies have an attitude toward the "white man"
that is full of contradictions. For example, they fail to mention that
jihadism is also attacking other ethnic and racial groups around the world on
religious grounds. As mentioned, the National Islamic Front of Hassan Turabi
has conducted "Arab" ethnic cleansing against the blacks of southern
Sudan, massacring about a million people. So the Islamists are also racists
themselves. And at the same time, the Wahabis support white, blue-eyed Muslim
Slavs against nonMuslim members of the same ethnic
group (the Serbs). So the jihadists will support white Europeans, as long as
they are Muslims. In West Africa, the jihadists support Blacks against Blacks,
siding with the Muslims against the Christians and animists. In America, the
jihadists would support the Nation of Islam against the White Christians, but
they would also support Farrakhan against Black Christians. Had Farrakhan's own
community been located in Darfur, the jihadists would have sided with the
northern Arab (read White) Muslims against these Black Muslims.
The tactic has its
own logic. First, all non-Europeans should unite against the "Whites."
But meanwhile, the Islamists would support the White Muslims versus the
non-Muslim Whites. Afterward, as the Whites are defeated or Islamized, the
turn of the non-White non-Muslims will come at the hands of all Muslims, both
White and non-White. So, at some point we can expect the jihadists to use
blue-eyed White Muslims to attack non-Muslim Blacks.
And bottom line is
that when the infidel has a perceived weakness, it is permissible to use their
weakness to defeat the greater power of the infidel. Including when a country's
ethnic makeup can serve as an instrument for strife as was recently the case
with France, jihadism will seize on it as a weapon.
Another example of
how to defeat the kuffars, jihadism indeed can adopt
tactics and strategies at will was also recently illustrated by the fact that
even
Thus although there
is the circle of religious conversion, there is also the circle of ideological
recruitment. One high-profile example is Jose Padilla, the alleged dirty bomb
maker. With Padilla, the first seed was planted at the early stage of
conversion. Once the ideological seed was planted, political recruitment
followed. A dilemma now is, how to distinguish between a normal religious
conversion into Islam-one protected by freedom of religion-and recruitment for
jihad terrorism. One side of the debate states that all conversions are
protected by the law and terrorists should be tracked on evidence of
preparations for violence; the other side states that all conversion to Islam
are basically a mobilization by Wahabi-like groups. In fact, the situation is
more complex, depending on who oversees the "conversion." If a
moderate cleric-such as a Sufi-is in charge of the process, the convert usually
is not submitted to jihad indoctrination. But if a Salafi or Islamist imam is
in charge, the convert is taught a version of Islam jihad terrorists could use
at a later stage.
Jihadist interest has
also developed within other immigrant ethnic groups, such as Asians, with a
particular emphasis on ethnicities from Muslim areas such as Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Indonesia, the southern Philippines, and so on. Interest is also
focusing on Europeans, especially from the Balkans, such as Bosnians and
Kosovars.
Jihadists also use
the ethnic warfare system to incite white extremists against the government and
other groups, such as the Jews. Forging a new version of the old Nazi-Islamist
alliance of the mid-twentieth century, the white extremists and the jihadists
have recognized common goals: a few visits to websites can show you the
convergence of interest between the two tendencies. The white supremacists do
not have to be converted into Islam and indoctrinated into jihadism; they
already hate the authorities. Interestingly enough, the jihadists could and are
building ties to extremist groups that are archenemies of each other. Consider
that they are able to ally themselves with white supremacists and with black
Islamists as I pointed out three years ago. (1)
And while the erosion
and then collapse of America's ethnic makeup was already hoped for with the
9/11 attack although it didn’t happen, if September 11 had taken place seven
years later, the jihadists might have had enough time and tools to provoke a
widespread ethnic civil unrest a foretaste that could be seen during the
flooding of New Orleans this year.
Because of the takiya tactic (simulation and deception) however, the
jihadists can afford to remain inactive for a long period, until the right
moment for jihad comes. The aim of this first generation of jihadist
infiltration is spying, limited sabotage, and development of a wider network of
jihadism within the system. Ultimately, these groups can participate in a large
operation like September 11 but with wider scope, as projected in a previous
chapter. Some argue that because these types of operatives have no regimes to
coordinate with, they would be easily noticed and suppressed if they attempted
to act collectively. That is a rational argument, but I believe the penetration
is not necessarily organizational: The hundreds of jihadists do not have to be
connected. Because of their ideology and their easy access to outside sources
and guidelines (including from the jihadist media and websites), a general call
for action, not necessarily a direct order, could trigger their attack.
Jihadists would engage in action in response to a fatwa or a call by their
leaders; no special mission order would be needed. This is indeed the most
difficult challenge the U.S. and western intelligence agencies have ever had to
address. But there is an even more dangerous threat: the second generation,
whose members believe in the ideology but are part of the national culture.
This type of jihadist
would be born in Europe or the United States as recently seen with a spate of
al-Qaeda arrests in Europe, speak the local language with no accent, know the
culture and be part of it, and grow up within the system-but would be
indoctrinated by jihadists early in life. This is the ultimate weapon that
Islamists, Salafists and Khumeinists are dreaming of
and waiting for. Inserting cadres into an immigrant country is one thing;
recruiting individuals who grew up within the social fabric is something else.
Thus al Qaeda's next generation is more sophisticated. It will be the product
of a patient process of recruitment by existing networks. The long-term
objective would be to place these proto-jihadists deeply within the
institutions, in positions of power. This second generation would be able to
practice takiya with efficiency. And its ultimate
objectives would be to have access to the highest type of information affecting
the country's strategic security: weapons of mass destruction, operational
plans, and members of high command. Short of tangible data, no one can say how
far jihadist networks have penetrated US. or/and a European intelligence
community today however.
But while the
ultimate scenario of al Qaeda and sisters are for western cities to look more like
Sarajevo, Beirut, and Belfast at the peak of urban wars, there is one more
piece of evidence that can be presented, the Quran, the word of God to all
Muslims be it Sunni or Shi’ite, indeed allows for slavery.
In 1989 a coup d'etat brought to power a group of Islamists, both military
and militants, in Khartoum. Drawing mostly from the ideological influence of
the Muslim Brotherhood, the new regime was under the control of Islamist
officers like Dr. Hassan Turabi who frequently was on an academic visits in the
U.S.
Flyers put out by
WISE, a think tank associated with the university of Florida, and promoting an
"exchange of ideas and academic projects with the Muslim world"
introduced Turabi, as a "prominent Muslim thinker” in 1991. The
"prominent" Turabi had indeed toured U.S. campuses for years, talking
about "dialogue and coexistence and the negative effects of
colonialism." Smooth and polished, Turabi was at the same time
"prominent" in engineering the largest ethnic cleansing and genocide
in Africa's modern history: 1.5 million Africans were exterminated by a regime
whose central figure was called a "man of intellectual renaissance"
by the Middle East studies elite in the United States and western countries.
But in Sudan, the
jihadists developed yet another new weapon, slavery. By the tens of thousands,
tribal populations were transformed into twentieth-century slaves and sold
around the Arab world. This ultimate mass abuse of human rights indicated the
kind of governments the jihadists want to establish in the region and beyond.
With ethnic cleansing, religious persecution, slavery, oppression, and
terrorism, the new jihadists of the 21e century have no limitation to its
vision and use it to further the power of terror in international relations.
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