Posted on 01/02/2002 3:51:34 PM PST by Wallaby
Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.
Why the media doesn't warn about the threat, lies and hatred of Islamic terrorists (Speech) Steven Emerson Canadian Speeches; 10(9) January/February, 1997 ; pg 3-17 Canadian Business and Current Affairs; February, 1997
One afternoon in June 1994, several hundred worshippers gathered at a mosque to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran. Inside, the crowd sat on the carpeted floor facing two huge portraits --one of Khomeini and the other of Sheik Abbas Musawi, an Iranian Hizbollah leader killed by Israeli forces. One speaker spoke of the Jews who control the U.S. The imam of the mosque, Sheik Mohammed al-Asi, spoke reverentially of the revolutionary legacy left by Ayatollah Khomeini and of the need to confront the "Great Satan" -- the term used by Iran to refer to the United States.
These topics were nothing new for Sheik al-Asi, who has frequently talked about the evils of the Jews and Western civilization. Another speaker, Ahmed Huber, a Swiss neo-Nazi Muslim, spoke about the "evils of the Jews" in the same language used by the Nazis and Hitler, whom Huber has defended as victims of "Zionist propaganda." This commemoration would not have been unusual except for the fact that it took place in Potomac, Maryland, just a few miles from the White House in Washington, DC.
In the grandest deception of all, earlier this year the Clintons welcomed this group in the White House under the facade of a "mainstream" Muslim group. Comparatively speaking, CAIR is about as moderate as the Ku Klux Klan.
Inside this mosque, there have been various commemorations for the Islamic fighters who have attacked the United States, Jews, Christians and moderate Muslims. The mosque's bookstore has featured publications and children's books demonizing the West and Jews in hateful propaganda rarely seen these days, let alone in the United States. It is a place which has disseminated the original fatwa -- religious death sentence -- against the writer Salman Rushdie. I suppose we shouldn't find this surprising since Sheik al-Asi and his mosque are representatives of Hizbollah in the nation's capital area.
As this example shows, militant Islam has now relocated to the heart of the West. Radical Islamic groups, including Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb al-Tahrir and others, have established offices and headquarters here, created fund-raising apparatuses and networks, set up propaganda and political centres, and in some cases, have even established command and control centres to direct terrorist operations in the Middle East.
The process by which militant Islamic groups and communities have moved into the United States -- and Canada, for that matter -- started about 15 years ago. Today, I would like to show you a subterranean world into which most of you, with few exceptions, hardly ever venture. It is the world of militant Islamic extremism. Yes, most of us think we know this world -- by the infamous terrorist acts we have seen on television screens or on the front pages of newspapers. After all, who is not cognizant of the decade and one half of car bombings, hostage takings, suicide attacks and other forms of violent terrorist mayhem directed against Western and pro-Western targets by terrorist groups originating in the Middle East? Yes, I'm sure we all remember the images -- seared into our memories -- of the bombings of the American Marine barracks, the kidnapping and killing of Western hostages, the assassinations of moderate Muslims leaders, the World Trade Centre bombing in New York, the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Centre killing 100 civilians, the bombings in Paris, and the bombings against U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Yet today, the reach of militant Islam is a lot closer than the perceived safety of your televisions sets. Militant Islam not only extends far beyond the borders of the Middle East, its infrastructure is far larger and more sophisticated than the conventional framework of terrorist cells and groups holed up in far away places. For today, the West is facing a proliferating extremist movement, deliberately hiding under mainstream religious protection in its own backyard.
It is an extremist ideological movement that is increasingly anchored in the heart of the West, yet whose values and goals are totally antithetical to Western values of pluralism, separation of church and state, and the unacceptability of terrorism and violence to achieve political goals. I am referring to the world of militant Islam -- an extremist force that claims to represent Islam the religion but in reality no more represents Islam than the Ku Klux Klan represents Christianity. For the overwhelming majority of Muslims believe in peace and freedom just as much as you and I do.
But the reality, unclouded by political correctness or an intellectual cowardice, is that today, militant Islam has captured much of the established hierarchical leadership of Islamist organizations in the United States and Canada, not to mention the Middle East. Although these militants do not represent the views and interests of the vast majority of Muslims, they have been increasingly successful in attempting to seize the reins of political and informational power. As such, these extremists have been able to inject virulent anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and anti-moderate Muslim literature and dogma into the contemporary Muslim world. They have tarred the great religion of Islam by falsely associating this peaceful faith with doctrines of hate and violence. Most dangerously and problematically, they have succeeded in sending a message of poisonous paranoia through various Islamist publications, from which portions of the Muslim public gets information. And as the arbiters of the message that goes out, these militants keep alive their paranoid view that the West, the Jews, the media, and other "enemies" are involved in a so-called conspiracy against Islam. At the outset, I would like to state clearly that, by way of defining the problem of extremism and terrorism, it is vital to point out that militant Islam does not hold an exclusive monopoly on worldwide political extremism or violence. In the United States, radical right-wing militias carried out the ghastly terrorist attack in Oklahoma City. Christian anti-abortionists have murdered doctors who perform abortions in the belief that God has given them the right to take away human life. In England, the IRA has carried out attacks against civilians. And in Israel, there are fanatical right-wing terrorist Jews -- those that carried out or supported the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin or the massacre of innocent Palestinians in a mosque in Hebron by a fanatical Jewish settler named Baruch Goldstein. Those Jewish terrorists, respectively, are the mirror equivalent of the radical fundamentalist groups, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
It also bears repeating that militant Islamic fundamentalism is not synonymous with the Islamic religion. The vast majority of the world's Muslims condone neither terror nor violence. Islam is a fascinating, vibrant religion. It is the fastest growing religion in the world. Its adherents around the world are interested in bettering their lives and improving the opportunities and conditions for their families, like you and I. Moreover, throughout its history, Islam has expressed itself in many forms -- from a pragmatic, tolerant and inward looking approach to a militant, expansionist one. Islamic groups that claim to foster the pure fundamental theological doctrine of Islam represent nothing more than a modern totalitarian interpretation of Islamic theology. As in other religions, only a small minority of Muslims advocate militancy. Islam the religion is glorious and peaceful. In the distorted way it is practiced by militants, radical Islamic fundamentalism is a dangerous movement, fueled by intolerance, paranoia and hatred.
Yet in analyzing the reasons for the rise of militant Islam within the larger world of Islam, perhaps it would be fruitful to look at several theological differences between Islam and Christianity -- differences that do not make one religion better than the other but differences that make us different. Whereas Christianity is primarily a religion of faith, Islam is a religion of deeds, complete with a set of divine edicts (the Shari'ah) which rule the life of the believer from cradle to grave. Westerners may see only hardship in such a demanding faith. What they may fail to see is the comfort it gives in life's hardships, by explaining every turn of fate with an all-inclusive divine vision and prodding the believer ever onward with specific instructions for daily conduct. Because of Islam's sweeping impact on its adherents, the slightest tremor in the religion's cohesion can impact upon Islamic society as a whole. So when a battle rages within Islam, the world community feels it. Militant Islamic fundamentalists seek to impose 7th and 9th century Islamic doctrine (the earliest formative era) -- as revealed by Allah to the prophet Mohammed -- upon contemporary life.
The rise of militant Islam in the West is a logical outgrowth of the rise of militant Islam worldwide. During the past decade and one half, radical Islamic fundamentalist movements have proliferated beyond the regions and cities where they have been simmering since the 1940's and 1950's. What's behind the extremist ideology of radical Islamic fundamentalists?
In 20th century Islamic history, the failure of Arab nationalism, corruption of Arab elites, and repression of authoritarian regimes increasingly drove the masses to embrace Islam as a refuge and a source of comfort. Because secularism had been imposed from above by illegitimate authoritarian modern regimes, the public and intelligentsia overwhelmingly rejected it. (In the West, the opposite occurred, as secularism became a mass movement religion was rejected because it was identified with the ruling elites.)
The final, and perhaps most important, factor perpetuating the legitimacy of militant Islam has been the absence of a religious "reformation" in Islam, unlike the experience of Catholicism and the Protestant Church. One of the major problems faced by Muslim reformers, like Sheik Mahmud Taha of the Sudan, is that their brand of moderate Islam has been categorically rejected by leading traditional Islamic theologans. In 1985, at the age of 87, Taha himself was executed for "apostasy."
The West is not prepared to meet this threat. Modern democracies are justifiably unwilling to engage in the type of conflict that characterized religious wars of previous ages. Failure to perceive the nature of the conflict stems from the Western tendency to errantly apply a Judeo-Christian frame of reference to Islam. Christianity and Judaism, in their history, have undergone reformation, separating church from state and giving up the use of violence in the name of God. Islam, by contrast, has not yet undergone the same historical evolution. In the contemporary world of militant Islam, there is no separation between mosque and state, between the realms of the sacred and the secular, or between religion and politics. Rather, they are all one and the same. Which means, in practice, that the militant Islamic cleric is also a political and military leader, and his mosque -- or any organization he heads -- may serve as a venue for violent jihad activities. The noted Palestinian author and now member of the Palestinian Parliament, Zaid Abu Amr, has noted in his landmark study of Hamas and Islamic Jihad how the mosque was the pivotal organizational centre for religion, politics and military strategy for those respective radical organizations. We in the West have a hard time accepting the fact that the groups who come to the United States still harbor the same ideological beliefs and adherence to the same radical, violent agenda they held in the Middle East. In late October, 1995, a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah declared in Damascus, Syria that he was the new head of Islamic Jihad. In his maiden speech, he vowed to avenge the death of his predecessor, Fathi Shekaki, who was assassinated on the island of Malta, presumably by Israeli agents.
Mr. Shallah had the unique credentials to assume the post of one of the most violent terrorist groups in the world. Since 1991, Shallah had lived in the United States where he served as a professor at the University of South Florida at Tampa and also directed a "research centre"- affiliated with the University of South Florida-called the World Islamic Studies Enterprise. He worked closely with Sami Al-Arian, another professor who was not only the corporate founder of Mr. Shallah's research facility but also the head of a non-profit charitable organization called the Islamic Concern Project.
Together, both men secretly built and operated a clandestine command-and-control headquarters for Islamic Jihad with the unwitting blessing of the University of South Florida in Tampa and the U.S. government, which had granted non-profit religious status to another branch of the Islamic Jihad in Tampa.
From the safety of their Tampa offices, Mr. Shallah and Mr. Al-Arian operated a terrorist organization, raising funds, recruiting terrorists and bringing them into the country, devising terrorist strategies, and actually directing specific terrorist attacks -- all the while being invited to the U.S. military's intelligence headquarters at nearby McDlll Air Force Base to give assessments on the Middle East.
Despite their innocent-sounding names, these centres of academic inquiry and religious faith were operational fronts for one of the most violent terrorist groups in the world. In the end, it was the university -- despite a series of warning signs and clear evidence that both Islamic groups were engaged in activities very different from what they claimed -- which helped the militants gain the respectability and legitimacy they needed.
Like the gendarme in the movie Casablanca who professed "shock" at the discovery of gambling in the casino, various university officials claimed they were "betrayed" by Mr. Shallah. But in fact, the university's "mistake" was the result of a combination of willful self-denial, extraordinary naivete, bordering on recklessness, and the efforts of several USF professors who shilled for the militants. Contrary to university claims that it had been unwittingly used by terrorists, university officials systematically downplayed and ignored relevant evidence.
Today, Islamic terrorist groups are active throughout the world, in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and North America. Yes, the same groups that carry out the horrific bombings that you see from the comfort of your television sets are here in your backyard, throughout Canada and the United States. Top officials of both the FBI and CIA have stated publicly that radical Islamic groups represent the number one international threat to Western interests, and that these groups have established networks and headquarters in the United States. CIA Director John Deutch stated the following just two months ago:
"The intelligence community has been predicting growth in the lethality of international terrorism for some time. The principal sources of the threat are radical Islamic fundamentalist groups.... We must anticipate new attempts against American citizens, against our troops and facilities, both here and abroad."1
Earlier this year, John O'Neil, head of the FBI's counter-terrorism program, stated that Islamic terrorism is "The greatest threat coming to us domestically in the United States. ...What we've seen in the United States is that almost every one of these groups has a presence in the United States today."2
Although various Islamist leaders complain that the Muslim reputation has been unfairly tarred by unfounded associations with terrorism, listen to the words of a Kuwaiti writer, in al-Watan, June 22, 1995:
"The activities of Arab-Americans have not made it easier for them to become assimilated in America. Their assimilation became more difficult, especially after American cities were turned into conflict centres used by Islamic movements and some Arab regimes for rallying supporters and recruiting activists. These Islamic movements then proceeded to establish various fundamentalist associations, leagues and organizations. All this will inevitably be disastrous for Arabs and Muslims in the United States and in the Arab and Islamic worlds as well."
"How can a Muslim, Arab-American be accepted in American society when he hates his country, condemns its culture, and declares its imminent demise? Is a Muslim, Arab-American expected to be a good American and a good citizen of his country, or is he expected merely to be a rebellious politician or a radical fundamentalist who uses his U.S. citizenship as a shield and his U.S. material and political freedom as armor?"
"... The time has come for Arabs in the United States to realize that it is dangerous to be driven by national and religious fanaticism. The time has come for those Arabs to realize that movements such as the ones they have in the United States would not be tolerated in the Arab and Islamic countries themselves."
Yet surprisingly, as clearly as the militants have articulated their agenda, the West still suffers from an inability to recognize these movements for what they are. It is this blindness, this naivete, political correctness -- call it what you will -- that is at the core of a great deception now taking place. A few weeks ago, The Toronto Star reported the presence of a major international Islamic conference held here in Toronto. The paper cited the appearance of leading Muslim intellectuals from around the world at a closed-door conference called "Islam and the West: Towards Dialogue and Understanding." The theme of the conference was that Muslims in North America are wrongly associated with terrorism because of racism and stereotypes. Ahmad Sakr, identified as president of a group called Foundation for Islamic Knowledge, stated his frustration in the Star: "There are so many misunderstandings.... Muslims are Arabs. Muslims are terrorists. Muslims are fundamentalists. Muslims are camel riders. Muslims do everything wrong." Sakr decried this racism, prevalent in Western society, against the "most peaceful people on the continent," claiming that people "write and say Muslims are terrorists, [which] allows Christians and Jews to hate the Muslims."
Sakr's words were strong and the message virtuous. Here was a Muslim leader reaching out for inter-religious understanding. Unfortunately, The Toronto Star did not tell you the whole story nor did it tell you the real beliefs of Mr. Sakr. In an earlier book Mr. Sakr authored and published in the U.S. in 1982, called Islamic Fundamentalism, this is what he had to say about the extermination of six million Jews at the hands of the Nazis:
"The present generations of Europe and America have forgotten that young Hitler became a casualty of Jewish Orthodoxy and its monetary control of Germany. While the poor German Christians suffered, the jewry amassed wealth for Zionism and exploited the poverty-ridden Gentile women in Europe. They used all possible means to cause massive inflation and the economic breakdown of Germany. Adolph Hitler's early impressions never disappeared and he considered the Jews as traitors to the fatherland. When he came to power, his immense hatred was directed toward the elimination of Jews from Europe because he considered them as the filth of mankind."
Or consider how Mr. Sakr views the Hindu religion. "Hinduism is probably the only religion out of all the major world religions that proclaims hatred not only against mankind in general, but against its own adherents. ...Hinduism is a pagan religion devoid of morality."
And listen to Mr. Sakr on Christianity: "It appears, therefore, that the barbaric character of the Romans never disappeared, and intolerance is a continuing phenomenon of the Western world in the name of their religion, namely: Christianity. ...The Popes were instruments for shedding blood in the name of Jesus... Christian dogmas are empty of the spirit of that which is normal and natural."
The fact that Mr. Sakr harbors thoughts and beliefs profoundly different than those he expressed to The Toronto Star unfortunately is emblematic of a much larger phenomenon: the attempt by radical Islamic fundamentalists to deliberately deceive Western audiences, often through unsuspecting media, by transforming their extremist ideology into the politically-correct veneer of self-victimization.
In his interview with The Toronto Star prior to the commencement of the Islamic conference, Mr. Sakr explained the alleged hostility of Jews and Christians toward Muslims as induced by racist linkages drawn between Muslims and terrorists. The explanation played well in a society conditioned to accept the legitimacy of "hate crime" accusations by minorities. But to truly understand Mr. Sakr's core beliefs, all we have to do is read his earlier writings before the advent of "hate crime" victimology in explaining the hostility by Jews and Christians toward Muslims. "The non-believers (Christians and Jews in particular) do not wish to lose or to give away their lust for power, wealth and sex, and their rule over the under privileged," Mr. Sakr wrote in his book Islamic Fundamentalism. "This makes them hostile towards Islam."
I dare say that Mr. Sakr is clearly aware, like other extremists, that openly expressing contempt and revulsion for Jews and Christians would not exactly be well received in Western society. So Mr. Sakr simply inverted the moral equation: instead of the purveyor of racism, he anointed himself the victim of racism, thus instinctively compelling our sense of justice.
To be sure, there is plenty of racism in Canada and the United States toward religious and ethnic minorities -- and this includes Muslims who have been victimized by racists. But the agenda of Islamic extremists like Mr. Sakr is not to eradicate racism, but to smear and tar those willing to stand up and confront Islamic militants who falsely invent the charge of racism. As Professor Khalid Duran, a noted Muslim authority on Islamic movements, has observed, the real minority that Mr. Sakr seeks to protect is the minority of Islamic extremists and terrorists, not the Muslim population at large under whose umbrella he seeks false legitimacy.
The absurdity of Mr. Sakr's claim would be laughable were it not for the tragic and dangerous consequences. The "mainstream" groups that now dominate American Muslim organizational hierarchy include the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Council on American Islamic Relations. Whether we want to recognize reality or not, the incontrovertible evidence shows that these groups have championed the politics of international terrorist leaders and movements while simultaneously pressing the "hate crime" button in American society to intimidate critics of militant Islamic fundamentalism. The ADC has lauded the violent Hizbollah as a legitimate "resistance" organization. The Muslim Arab Youth Association sponsors talks by known terrorists calling for the death of Jews. The Council on American Islamic Relations has championed the imprisoned leader of Hamas as a "political prisoner" and contended that the convicted leader of the World Trade Centre bombing was, according to The Washington Post, the subject of "religious persecution." In the name of Muslim "civil rights," the Council on American Islamic Relations attacks journalists and reporters for merely writing about militant Islam or for offering their interpretations of the history of the Prophet Mohammed, which may differ from the versions propagated by the militants. The Muslim Public Affairs Council not only applauds "Islamist movements" -- i.e., radical Islamic fundamentalist groups -- but has championed a known terrorist who drove his car into a crowd of Israeli civilians in an effort to kill as many Jews as possible in Israel earlier this year. The Islamic Circle of North America frequently lauds the most violent anti-Western terrorist groups in the world today. The Islamic Society of North America so despises the existence of the Jewish state of Israel that in 1996 -- nearly half a century after the founding of the state -- it felt compelled to refer to Israel as the "Zionist entity."
You in Canada are not immune to the presence and growth of these groups. In fact, a leading international radical publication is disseminated from Ontario. Nearly every week this publication, called the Crescent, publishes racist and violent ideological tracts against the United States, Christians, Jews and pro-Western Muslims. The Crescent repeatedly publicizes the perfidy of Jews, the United States, the West and other enemies of Islam. It repeatedly invokes the need to wage jihad (holy) war against the infidels and, true to form, praises the dastardly acts of terrorism against innocent civilians as a religious good deed and obligation of all Muslims.With a worldwide reach, the Crescent is a magazine that purports to represent the interests of Muslims but deliberately subjects its readers to a virulent, paranoid view of the world, creating an environment in which violent acts of terrorism become legitimate and acceptable.
Listen to the words of Sheik Mohammed al-Asi, the Islamic religious cleric from Washington, DC whose mosque was the site of the opening vignette I first recounted to you. The words in his column in the October, 1996 issue of the Crescent, as you will now hear, could be taken verbatim from the rantings of a world madman some 55 years ago.
"What the Jews refer to as 'anti-semitism' does not happen out of the blue! When the masses turn their wrath against the Jews it is not because the Jews are 'minding their own business.' It is rather because the Jews literally own all the gentiles' businesses.... Gentile kill gentile, and the Jews sit comfortably in their executive suites and make a killing out of it! After so much bloodshed, the gentiles finally realize that the Jew thrives on regional and world wars so these gentiles turn their wrath against the Jew."
Sheik al-Asi continues:
"The Jew has been at a low intensity but sustained antagonization of the Germanic peoples. If a German publicly articulates (and Germans have a penchant for speaking their mind) his brusque and blunt opinion about the Jewish lobby, conspiracy or banking machinations he is found guilty of some serious "hate crime"... German legalisms, after the second world war, are custom-made to appease and accommodate the 'survivors of the Holocaust.'"
Finally, Sheik al-Asi talks about the attempts by Jewish groups to determine the amount of funds sequestered in Swiss bank accounts from the days of Hitler:
"And as if the Jews have not received due compensation from Germany and the troubled-conscience of the Christian murderers of the second world war, now they have their golden-calf eyes set on Swiss banks." I wish that the Crescent's dissemination of this genocidal hatred were an aberration, but it is not. Listen to the Crescent's views on the conviction of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, mastermind of the World Trade Centre bombing conspiracy:
"The conviction of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other Muslims on trumped up charges of seditious conspiracy and terrorism is no surprise.... The purpose of the trial was to warn all Muslims in the West that their activism in the cause of Islam would lead to a similar fate that the U.S. would not tolerate even 'moderate' preaching of political Islam not only in the West but anywhere in the world."
It would be one thing if the Crescent were an exception in the West. Unfortunately, it is not. The same anti-Western and anti-Semitic delusional paranoia is often replicated -- though not as graphically -- in self-described Islamist publications throughout the United States that reach hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of readers.
At an Islamic conference held recently in the United States, listen to the words of the Voice of Islam, a publication widely disseminated by the Islamic Institute of Minnesota, championing the cause of Chechnya:
"Chechenia is Muslim land and used to be part of the Islamic state. The Russlans seized it before the collapse of the Ottoman state and annexed it to the Russian state."
"...The Muslim people of Chechenia resisted this horrific onslaught, just as heroic believers would, and just like the Mujahideen in the way of Allah would."
"...The main concern of the rulers is to fight Islam, hinder its return to worldly life and to ruler ship, serve their paymaster the kuffar and safeguard their interests and their grip on authority by fighting those who carry the Islamic message, to the point where during their summits and ministerial meetings, the top item of their working agenda is the fighting of Islam and their conveyors, the blessing of the treacherous peace with the Jews, and the work towards achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace, as well as the normalization of their relations with the Jews."
That same type of paranoia has been spread in the United States by the Council on American Islamic Relations and its head, Nihad Awad, who was featured in the Islamic conference held here in Toronto last month alongside Mr. Sakr. To the unsuspecting public, Mr. Awad's group -- the Council on American Islamic Relations -- sounds about as innocent as you can get.
In fact, as public documents and materials show, and law enforcement officials confirm, this group is actually a propaganda front for the militant terrorist group Hamas and other militant Islamic extremists. Its specializes in smearing critics of militant Islamic fundamentalism -- a concept it claims does not exist -- as "anti-Islam."
Surely you, as a member of the public, have the right to know this critical background, or that the organization's head previously served as a senior official of the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a Dallas-based organization that has issued Hamas communiques taking credit for bombings and terrorist attacks in Israel, produced terrorist training videos, and disseminated numerous articles championing terrorist activities. In the grandest deception of all, earlier this year the Clintons welcomed this group in the White House under the facade of a "mainstream" Muslim group. Comparatively speaking, CAIR is about as moderate as the Ku Klux Klan. Surely you as a member of the public should know that Mr. Awad has stated openly -- on video, no less-that he is "in favor of Hamas." Proponents of radical Islam have discovered that they can advance their cause by inverting their message, invoking the politically correct charges to which Western society has become vulnerable: human rights violations, racism, and denial of civil rights. In an egalitarian culture appropriately sensitive to its historical and ongoing mistreatment of minorities, the charge of discrimination has an intrinsically popular appeal. But in the case of militant Islam in the West, the extremists have shrewdly parlayed their minority status into that of being a victim of religious and ethnic repression.
This deception is dangerous in a free society whose protection depends upon -- indeed, requires -- the honest exchange of ideas and information. The deception is dangerous because it chills free speech and prevents society from learning about the dangers within. And it is dangerous most of all because in the end, it is the overwhelming majority of peace-seeking Muslims whose image is unfairly tarred by a fringe which hides under the legitimacy of the majority.
The question for us today is whether we are prepared -- or even able -- to recognize the existence, let alone the danger, of militant Islam. Stripped of its veneer, the message of militant Islam is no different than the language used by other extremist groups and leaders such as the Ku Klux Klan or Louis Farrakhan. Yet while we instantly recognize the racism of the latter groups, we have trouble recognizing the extremism of militant Islam.
Indeed, with some exceptions, the extremist language and action of indigenous white American terrorist groups and home-bred racist leaders have become largely-but not entirely-recognized exactly for what they are. We as a society have recognized the need to marginalize, ostracize, and exclude these home-grown militant groups from the mainstream of political thought. Of course, there is still much more to be done, as evidenced by the ongoing violent conspiracies hatched by radical right-wing militias. But look at how the Ku Klux Klan was finally defeated in the United States: it was not only the work of law enforcement, but society's deligitimization of these groups. And that, in large part, was brought about by exposing the militants' raw message of hate and vitriol.
These groups, like radical Islamic groups, built up their organizational movements under the protection of the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution and our Western heritage of democracy and freedom of speech. Radical groups-especially if they hide under the protection of religious status-can operate freely as long as they don't violate the laws. In democracies, nearly 99% of extremism is protected, rendering law enforcement agencies powerless to stop these terrorist movements until after a violent act occurs.
Still, I do not believe that we in the United States or anyplace else in the West need to curtail our freedoms. The main challenge and obligation is on our media to do what they have done best in the past expose the radical and duplicitous undercurrents of society in keeping with the media ethos of exposing wrongdoing and racist movements masquerading falsely.
In recent years, we as a society have become afflicted with an inability to decipher a message of militant Islam wrapped in packaging that we ourselves helped manufacture. Changed under society's new expansive view of multiculturalism which, carried to its logical extreme, sees terrorist groups as simply part of the world's cultural rainbow. Changed by the new rules of moral relativism and moral equivalency where radical movements masquerading as oppressed movements -- particularly those outside the Western tradition -- are uncritically accepted and afforded the same moral standing as the very ethnic or political groups they seek to kill. Changed by the rules legitimizing anti-Western movements as emancipating self-determination movements. And finally, changed under a great intellectual hubris that pretends it cannot be deceived by a simple chicanery.
The deception is evident in newspapers, television, radio, universities, think tanks and even the most esteemed seats of power.
Emboldened by the near total license given to them by society, radical Islamic groups have increasingly used the great religion of Islam for their own parochial purposes. For example, the Council on American Islamic Relations has openly made the claim that merely citing the term -- Islamic extremists -- remember, now, this is a group that originated from Hamas propagandists -- is an attack on Islam, which in turn leads to "hate." In what surely will go down as one of the great deceptions of the last decade in American society, this organization has released reports -- relayed uncritically by the media -- alleging numerous "hate crimes" and "violations of political rights" against Muslims. But in scrutinizing the "evidence," however, something rather curious was discovered: many of the hate crimes were found to fabricated, misrepresented, exaggerated, or without external substantiation. Does society really want to expand its definition of "religious persecution" -- as the Washington Post described the findings of the Council -- to include the arrest of Musa Abu Marzuk, the Hamas chieftain, now awaiting extradition to Israel, who is responsible for scores of murderous terrorist attacks? Does society really want to legitimize a group that touts as religious persecution the conviction of Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the mastermind of the World Trade Centre bombing and other conspiratorial acts so horrendous that the sentencing judge declared that his planned acts of mass murder would have killed more Americans on U.S. soil than any event since the U.S. Civil War 130 years ago?
In releasing their reports of "hate crimes," the militant groups must have been surprised as anyone when the media blindly reported their conclusions without looking at the fine print. The New York Times and the Associated Press, for example, respectively considered the premier newspaper and wire service of record, published the equivalents of press releases for the radical Muslim groups. For example, CAIR released a report in September 1995 claiming the occurrence of scores of "hate crimes" following the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995. But, upon closer inspection, it turns out that many supposed hate crimes were either fabricated, exaggerated or highly suspect due to the convenient impossibility of verifying them.
Now it must be stated, of course, that hate crimes have indeed been committed against Muslims, as they have been against other minorities, be they Sikhs, blacks, native Americans, Hispanics and Jews, to name just a few. Yet as we acknowledge the existence of religious persecution, we cannot at the same time allow groups that engage in religious persecution to invert reality and hide under the same crime they are guilty of. Similarly, we cannot give Louis Farrakhan a free ride merely because he claims that blacks have been the victims of racism. Nor can we give a free ride to Jewish terrorists like the assassin of Prime Minister Rabin, who claimed that his action was designed to protect the Jewish people. To the extent the media deliberately ignores the ulterior agenda of groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations, they are only building a societal monster that will soon turn on its master.
Other newspapers and respectable media outlets, such as The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe deserve special mention today. They have not only disseminated demonstrably false information to the public, but have gone one step further: they have falsely portrayed these militant Islamic groups as moderate, withholding from the public the real record of these groups, their source of funding, their ideological origins and the racism of their other publications and statements.
As a journalist, I must confess to being ashamed of the deliberate dishonesty of National Public Radio, which has consistently disseminated false, self-censored and inaccurate information to the public while simultaneously participating in one of this decade's greatest and most dangerous deceptions. For the past three years, NPR has portrayed Hamas as a wonderful social organization, has interviewed known Islamic militants and misreported their backgrounds, has tried to re-interpret the concept of jihad as a 1960's-style movement to clean up the environment, and has profiled radical organizations as innocent civic groups similar to the Rotary Club. Having participated in building up the credentials of violent radical Islamic organizations, National Public Radio will ultimately discover that it only sowed the seeds of its own disaster. The problem, of course, is that National Public Radio's recklessness and deliberate falsehoods have implications beyond that network. It has repercussions for other journalists and for the American public at large. It is indeed quite strange to see journalists and media outlets, who deemed the threats against Salman Rushdie horrific assaults on our freedoms, come to the defense of organizations who have similarly tried to suppress free speech.
Emboldened by their successes in having their propaganda blindly parroted, militant Islamic groups proceeded to the next logical step: intimidating and threatening journalists and writers whom they deemed "enemies of Islam." For the first time ever, the North American continent has experienced the application of the Rushdie Rules the attempt to suppress Western free speech by smearing and tarring writers and journalists as "defaming Islam" and "blasphemous" for merely writing critically aboutmilitant Islam.
In an act demonstrating that the U.S. would never cave in to this type of threat, President Bill Clinton personally met with Mr. Rushdie at the White House one year into his Administration. The Muslim group that lead a bitter protest against President Clinton "for insulting more than a billion Muslims" was the American Muslim Council its director, Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, intimated in a television interview that Rushdie's book itself was comparable in offense to the Holocaust. Four years later, this same group -- which has since become a champion of radical Islamic extremist groups -- was warmly welcomed into the White House by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Militant Muslim groups are threatening American-based writers on American soil for writing in American-based magazines things that foreign-based extremists deem offensive. The past two years have witnessed a quantum proliferation of this new chilling form of intimidation. For example, both U.S. News and World Report and The New Republic magazines have been subjected to fierce threats by militant Muslims led by the Council on American Islamic Relations. The magazines' crime? They had "defamed Islam" by publishing articles that were deemed blasphemous. "We demand that you apologize," declared Mr. Awad of CAIR, as he stood outside U.S. News one day. "You Jews are the scum of the earth," one letter writer wrote to The New Republic, in a message that seemed somewhat moderate in comparison to others received.
Three months ago, the editor of Current Events, a subsidiary of the Weekly Reader -- a periodical distributed to young kids across the United States -- was subjected to an unremitting stream of attacks from Muslim groups around the world. His offense? Muslim groups claimed that the magazine had "defamed Islam" by publishing an article discussing terrorist acts against the United States which included the bombings of the World Trade Centre and of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabla. Although the article also discussed the Oklahoma city bombing, which was carried out by radical white militias, the Muslim groups complained that the mere inclusion of attacks such as the World Trade Centre bombing and those against our troops in Saudi Arabia was "anti-Islam" and would induce "hate crimes" against Muslims.
This raw intimidation is nothing less than an effort to rewrite history by threats of violence and intimidation. Yet this is also more than just an effort to rewrite history it is an effort to impose by threat the anti-democratic totalitarian values of militant Islam in the West. Absent any effort to condemn this violation of our most precious freedom, radical Muslim groups will continue to undermine our basic freedoms.
The Journal of the American Medical Association -- a magazine that does not deal in any way with religion -- was attacked this year by Muslim groups as "anti-Islam" because of an article about victims of Hamas terrorism. In Dallas, Texas, two courageous reporters for The Dallas Morning News were subjected to daily picket lines where they were demonized and vilified in language that rendered them legitimate targets of violent attack. The reporters' crime? The two -- Steve McGonnical and Gail Reaves -- had authored an impeccably documented story revealing the vast operations of the Hamas terrorist group in Dallas operating under cover names and "charitable" designations. Even Hollywood studios -- for whom I usually have no sympathy -- have been attacked for films that have featured radical Islamic terrorist groups carrying out terrorism against the United States. Imagine that. A radical Islamic terrorist group waging jihad against the United States. Oh, those perfidious Hollywood studios. Where could they ever think of such a thing? Yet, various American Muslim groups protested the film True Lies. Why? Because, CAIR claimed, the name of the mythical group in the film had the word "jihad" in it. Still another film, Executive Decision, was attacked because a protagonist invoked the cry "Allahu Akbar" before carrying out a terrorist attack.
To quote the legendary gendarme in the movie Casablanca, "I'm shocked!" A militant Islamic group using the word Jihad in its title. And an extremist yelling "Allahu Akbar!" Will the West never cease its cunning slander of terrorists?
Even more troubling are the inroads made by the Islamic militants into venerable institutions, like the Council on Foreign Relations. Oh, I know that the Council has a reputation for being a symbol of established corporate America. But by presenting radical Islamic propaganda masquerading as straightforward "analysis" or as legitimate "human rights surveys," the Council on Foreign Relations has provided a prestigious platform for extremists seeking to legitimize their aims. Although the Council says that it "seeks to counter misperceptions" about Islam, in fact, with a few minor exceptions, every article under the Muslim Politics Report has presented "Islamist" perspectives in language soothing to Western ears. This includes justifying the discrimination of women under the charge that Western standards of human rights for females are culturally unacceptable to the Muslim world, legitimizing militant Islamic terrorist groups as democratic political parties, and intimidating critics of radical Islam.
As they say in television, let's go to the videotape. In an article (Issue Number 2, Summer 1995) "analyzing" the attempted assassination of Nobel Laureate Nagib Mahfouz, the writer, Hassan Hanafi, says, "Nagib Mahfouz is a victim of terror and violence. The assailant is also a victim of conservative, historical and unilateral version of Islamic tradition. There are two victims, two threats [emphasis added]." Equating both Mahfouz and his would-be assassin as "two victims" and further representing Mahfouz as "threat" is, to say the least, mind-boggling. This was an act of abject terrorism. Period. It was carried out by a terrorist group that intimidates and kills intellectuals, secularists, writers, and actors in Egypt as part of their campaign against all critics of their interpretation of Islam.
The real agenda of Mr. Hanafi was revealed a few sentences later when he called for the "official recognition of the Islamic trend as a socio-political periphery to the centre......"
Stripped away from its pseudo-academic claptrap, the message is clear. Imagine, if you will, a respectable institution publishing an article labeling the late Dr. Martin Luther King and his assassin James Earl Ray as "two victims, two threats." Imagine calling the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his assassin Ylgal Amir "two victims, two threats." Or imagine equating the Oklahoma bombers with the victims they killed and then calling for the government to treat the extremist right-wing militia as no different than the League of Women Voters.
Of course, it goes without saying that free speech and academic freedom guarantee the right of all extremists, no matter how odious, to be heard. There is nothing wrong with presenting the views of Hamas or Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi or even neo-Nazis or radical Jewish fundamentalists who supported the killing of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But the open exchange of ideas requires first and foremost, honesty and truthfulness in identifying the background and affiliation of those who present their respective views. Extremists (or anyone else) should not be allowed or helped to conceal their identity and disguise their message.
Surely, the Council or The New York Times would deem it pertinent to identify David Duke as a past leader of the KKK if it were to publish an article of his in which he identified himself only -- hypothetically speaking -- as "the head of the Council on Christian-American Relations, a group dedicated to fighting bigotry."
The assault on our basic values by radical Muslims will only continue unless and until the media does its job. Do we really have to wait before a journalist or writer is killed until before the media wakes up to the danger?
I personally have had to endure major changes in how I live my life because of the threats against me. In November, 1994, in the first of a series of journalistic projects resulting from my ongoing investigations, I served as the executive producer and correspondent for a PBS documentary entitled Jihad in America. The film documented the hitherto unknown infrastructure of radical Islamic networks on American soil, featuring leaders of the most militant movements in the world today. In language clear and unambiguous, in speeches not distorted for Western audiences, in secret proceedings and conferences never intended to come to the light of day, and in terrorist training camps, the hatred of jews, Christians and moderate Muslims could not be mistaken. For the first time ever, the ulterior agenda of radical Islamic groups -- many operating secretly -- had been exposed for the world to see. The picture was both horrifying and frightening.
The reaction of numerous American Muslim organizations was to condemn the film as an "attack on Islam." The equivalent reaction would have been to condemn an expose of the extremism and racism of the Ku Klux Klan as an attack on Christianity. Or an expose of the fanaticism of right-wing Jewish fundamentalists as an attack on Judaism. Of course, such hypothetical condemnations would be ludicrous.
Worse yet, various Islamic groups, particularly those which have been embraced by the White House -- notably the American Muslim Council and the Council on American Islamic Relations -- denied that any of the terrorist groups profiled in the film were in fact terrorist. In fact, in the mindset of a militant Muslim -- who does not accept the legitimacy of moderate Islam -- my film did attack the totality of his world, a world divided between Dar al-Islam -- the House of Peace, or that portion of the world under Islamic Sha'aria rule, and Dar al-Harb -- the House of War, where Islam does not reign and which must be taken over by the Islamic militants.
This is the bedrock doctrine of militant Islam: any territory or, for that matter, any world political system operating under non-Muslim sovereignty is considered an aggression against Islam. Indeed, anything that stands in the way of the resurrection of doctrinal Islam is perceived as part of the millennium-old conspiracy by the infidels to strike at Islam. Like the Persian Gulf War against Iraq, or the creation of the State of Israel, the broadcast of the film Jihad in America was presented as a continuation of the Crusader attacks against Muslims. Indeed, I remember someone pointing out the headline of a Chicago Muslim newspaper a month after the film was broadcast: THE CRUSADES CO NTINUE -- JIHAD IN AMERICA AIRS ON PUBLIC TELEVISION.
It bears repeating again and again that for the vast majority of Muslims, the Islamic militants do not represent their interests and that the majority of Muslims do not support in any way the politics of the extremists. Nevertheless, to deny the existence of radical Islam (as some Islamic groups have asserted recently in the United States) is tantamount to equating militants and peace-seeking moderates as one and the same. This fallacy, rather than protecting moderates from being tarred by the extremist brush, only paints them further. For the militants, of course, the deliberate blurring of the distinction between militant and moderate Islam enables them to hide under the protection of mainstream Islam.
In the same manner, denial that a militant White supremacist movement exists in the United States would be tantamount to defending its existence. For the Muslim world, the stakes may be higher. The battle for the heart and soul of Islam in recent years is really at the core of a violence which continues to spiral out of control: as militant Islamic groups attempt to impose the Sha'aria by force, destroy regimes they have deemed heretical, or assassinate those who are considered enemies of their interpretation of Islam, violence once contained within the Middle East has proliferated throughout the world.
This can no longer be considered just a Middle East problem. Nor is it a problem facing only the Jews. It is a problem for the West and for mainstream Islam. It is an obligation of the West to protect and strengthen moderate Muslims. The tragic irony, of course, is that many Muslim immigrants came to the West to seek greater opportunities and freedoms only to find themselves caught in the same violent vortex from which they sought to escape.
As a society, we must recognize that however strange and morally repugnant, many of the groups that come to the United States turn around and hate us for the very freedoms they are exploiting. Still, it does not mean that the media should stay away from exposing these radicals, let alone participate in the dangerous charades they carry out.
Looking into the next century, it is all but certain that militant Islam will increasingly focus its anger on the West -- for its Western values, for its secularism and yes, we must admit, for the double standards in which it treats authoritarian pro-Western Arab regimes and those that are poised to be taken over by radical Muslim movements. Because unless and until these radical Islamic movements -- which profess democracy only as a tactic in permanently taking over genuinely demonstrate that they respect pluralism -- I see no reason why Western governments are going to feel compelled to enlarge the noose around their necks. Contrary to what some have called a clash of civilization between Islam and the West, the clash is really between moderate Islam and radical fundamentalist Islam.
Canadian Speeches February, 1997
THE SPEAKER
Steven Emerson is a terrorism analyst, specializing in Middle East terrorism groups, now completing an investigative book on the activities on American soil of radical Islamic groups and their ties to affiliated organizations in the Midle East. Mr. Emerson has delivered testimony on terrorist activity before the U.S. House International Relations Committee as well as lectures before U.S. federal and local law enforcement agencies and federal intelligence organizations concerning the modus operandi of radical Islamic extremist groups.He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic and an award-winning documentary journalist. He is the producer of Jihad In America, which has become standard viewing for law enforcement and counter-terrorist professionals throughout the United States.
Notes
1)Speech by CIA Director John Deutch, September 5, 1996
2) Quoted in the Washington Times, April 28, 1996."
Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a Dallas-based organization that has issued Hamas communiques taking credit for bombings and terrorist attacks in Israel, produced terrorist training videos, and disseminated numerous articles championing terrorist activities. In the grandest deception of all, earlier this year the Clintons welcomed this group in the White House under the facade of a "mainstream" Muslim group.Is this the Dallas organization that the FBI raided, as we learned from Blue Dog Demo on the weekend before September 11?
I like to read pieces by people who have done their research, as this guy obviously has. I imagine making Jihad in America put this fellow on a few enemies lists, so he speaks from experience.
He should be heeded.
The assault on our basic values by radical Muslims will only continue unless and until the media does its job. Do we really have to wait before a journalist or writer is killed until before the media wakes up to the danger?Apparently, we'll have to wait longer than that.
Journalists, listen up: report to us, don't patronize us. Deliver the simple truth and you won't need to balance it with any PC hand wringing. Do your job correctly or quit, if you want to help the world be more tolerant, leave journalism and work at a soup kitchen.
You, again? You do NOT belong on Free Republic!
GO AWAY
Several things pop from this...
"Pot...this is kettle...things look black here!"
"There is a children's rhyme about rubber and glue..."
"And just how does a gullible poor Muslim with a bomb strapped to himself differ from Sakr's view of the Pope?"
So tell us--if 3000+ dead are not enough to make this an American problem, what would be enough?
Emerson has been warning us about this for several years. We should pay some attention to what he has to say.
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