Rowan Scarborough
Human Events
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Robert Spencer [whose “Jihad Watch” is featured weekly in HUMAN EVENTS] has been a one-man warning system against radical Islam.
A scholar who has spent most of his professional life studying Islam, his string of books dissects the world's largest religion as a bastion of intolerance and hate, justified by the teachings of spiritual leader Mohammed and various holy men. As one of his previous titles, the "Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam," suggests, Spencer does not buckle in fear of the type of backlash that can materialize as a death-threatening fatwa against a critical author.
Now comes a new warning from Spencer. In "Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs," Spencer factually outlines how Muslim radicals are methodically undercutting American values of individual freedom, quoting leaders of this anti-American movement who say their ultimately goal is the creation of an Islamic state right here in the good old U.S.A.
Say it can't happen? Just look at our kinsmen in Europe. Their guilt, and tolerance for anything anti-Western have nurtured a growing population of fanatics. Mosques have sprung up where firebrand clergy preach hate and violence. Some Muslim neighborhoods have become no-go zones for non-believers who dare not trespass where harsh Sharia law reigns.
"Such segregated Muslim communities are spreading throughout Europe at an alarming pace," Spencer writes.
The author travels back a decade to Toledo, Ohio, site of an Arab youth conference. One speaker is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The decades-old Brotherhood here, and abroad, has been a spawning ground for Jihadists, both outwardly violent or stealthy converters.
"We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America," Qaradawi told the young. "Not through sword but through Da'wa [Islamic proselytizing]."
Spencer interprets: "This is the Brotherhood's agenda for Western countries to conquer them by stealth."
Not all Islamists want to wait for the fruits of a stealth Jihad. Seven years ago, 19 Islamic fanatics struck this country. Al Qaeda cells still plan to attack American again.
That's why Spencer's findings are more important than ever. Americans should be as vigilant as ever. But, in fact, Muslim radicals are beginning to achieve victimhood status. It's not only the pages of the ultra liberal New York Times, Hollywood and various Islamic activists that are anointing the newly aggrieved. Even within the supposedly hard-line Bush Administration, bureaucrats are pushing to end the phrase "war on terror" and to vanquish such terms as "Islamic terrorist."
Look at the sympathies our popular culture bestows on horrible Muslim regimes, such as the one in Sudan. In 2007, a British school teacher, Gillian Gibbons, was a jailed for "insulting religion." Her crime: She allowed students to name a teddy bear "Mohammed."
On ABC's "The View," you might expect the collection of liberal hosts to come to the teacher's defense. But here's what Whoopi Goldberg said: "I find that maybe we are not -- and I say 'we' just as European and Americans -- we're not as anxious to learn the customs before we go places. It's just one of the reasons we're called the ugly Americans."
This, of course, falls right into the hands of the likes of Osama bin Laden, who view such debates as sure signs of Western weakness and ultimate defeat. He is counting on our guilt.
How is "Stealth Jihad" revealing itself in the U.S.? Spencer lists the ways: There was, for example, the notorious case of Islamic lawyers’ filing a law suit to punish a group of airline passengers who dared to question the suspicious behavior of some fellow travelers. Thankfully, Republicans in Congress came to the rescue, forcing Democrats to go along with them in passing legislation to protect passengers from such frivolous, and intimidating, law suits.
The list goes on. Muslim cab drivers suddenly discover that some passengers actually carry alcohol. The cabbies refuse service. How do local town fathers react? They try to reach an accommodation rather than doing the right thing and pulling the drivers' permits.
Then there's the case of Lina Morales, whose crime was to eat a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. Her company's CEO, a Muslim, fired her for eating pork in the work place. "Our point of view," he said, "is to respect the laws of the land and the laws of the land as I understand it is to accommodate people's right to practice their religions if you can."
In California, seventh graders get to read "History Alive! The Medieval World and Beyond." This is how the book describes Jihad: "Muslims should fulfill jihad with the heart, tongue, and hand. Muslims use the heart in their struggle to resist evil. The tongue may convince others to take up worthy causes, such as funding research. Hands may perform good works and correct wrong."
Spencer went through the book and reports, "It gives no idea that Muslims have ever viewed jihad as involving, in whole or part, warfare against unbelievers, or have ever waged war on that basis."
At the center of "Stealth Jihad" in this country, Spencer argues, is CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. With chapters across the U.S., CAIR has emerged as a sort of American Civil Liberties Union -- but just for Muslims.
The author make the case that the organization is really a front for hardened Islamists who want the destruction of Israel and the end of Western democracies.
Of course, CAIR fetches sympathetic treatment from the New York Times and other liberal publications. But what is most troubling are the sympathies that lie within federal and local governments. The FBI uses CAIR representatives to teach agents about Islam. So do state and town law enforcement agencies.
This alliance comes even while the Justice Department labeled CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in its prosecution of a Dallas charity it says is a front for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group.
Spencer offers a way to stop this creeping Islamization of America. But his proposals seem unlikely to take hold. For example, he urges Americans "to take pride in our own culture" at a time when the political left, which thrives on blaming-America-first, is about to take control of Washington.
He suggests that we "end Muslim immigration into the United States" -- a measure not likely to be endorsed by Republicans, much less Democrats.
Spencer leaves readers with a dire scenario unless some action is taken.
"If Western Europe does become Islamized, as demographic trends suggest, before too long America will be facing a world that is drastically different and more forbidding than today. And the same process of Islamization will proceed here -- unless enough people wake up in time to head it off."
Mr. Scarborough is a national security writer who has written books on Donald Rumsfeld and the CIA, including the New York Times bestseller Rumsfeld's War.
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