THE TERRORISM THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME: ADRIAN MORGAN
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7460/pub_detail.asp
Janet Napolitano has made a statement on terrorism, nine years after 9/11. We have reproduced it for you to read here. Some parts of her speech are reassuring, indicating that the administration is acknowledging that America is under threat of terrorism, and that it is trying to do something about this threat.
That is the good news. The bad news comes from the politically correct bias that infuses the whole document. The statement itself seems to be inappropriately late, considering its title is “Nine Years After 9/11: Confronting the Terrorist Threat to the Homeland.”
Why was this statement not made sooner, and closer to the anniversary of 9/11? Why wait 11 days before releasing it? Had it not been written at the time of the anniversary, or was the administration trying so hard to dissociate Islam from terrorism?
The document is almost 4,000 words long. But how many times is the word “Islam” mentioned? The word is mentioned only once and then, bizarrely, Napolitano says that Islam has nothing to do with Islamist terrorism (not that she mentions Islamism either):
It is clear that the threat of al Qaeda-style terrorism is not limited to the al-Qaeda core group, or organizations that have close operational links to al Qaeda. While al Qaeda continues to threaten America directly, it also inspires its affiliates and other groups and individuals who share its violent ideology and seek to attack the United States claiming it is in the name of Islam – a claim that is widely rejected.
Napolitano fails to state just WHO widely rejects the claim that al-Qaeda is inspired by Islam. Has she read the Koran, or the Hadiths? Has she studied the history of Islam? Or is she just parroting the Muslim-Brotherhood inspired baloney that is currently being promoted by White House staff and advisers? Or is this some personal weakness on her part?
Back in March 2009, when she was a newly appointed Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, she was interviewed by German magazine Der Spiegel. She had just given her first testimony before Congress, and was asked she had never mentioned the word “terrorism” in this address. She had replied:
I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.
Family Security Matters’ contributors gave their scathing responses to this deliberate pussyfooting around terminology. Changing the name of an object or ideology is dishonest, and not mentioning the problem at all is equally dishonest. It may be politically correct, so that no-one is offended, but such ventures are catastrophic.
Now, eighteen months after she tried to describe terrorism as “man-caused disasters”, Napolitano has progressed far enough to actually mention the word “terrorism,” but she is still trying to put sugar-frosting onto something very unpleasant. On issues of national security and the safety of innocent civilians, it is important to be honest about the nature of the threat. Unless there is some information we are not aware of, the majority of terrorist threats – as Napolitano admits – share the same violent ideology as “al-Qaeda.” In other words, the participants see themselves as inspired by Islam.
In her speech, Napolitano states:
“And the profiles of Americans who have been arrested on terror charges, or who we know are involved in terrorism overseas, indicate that there is no “typical” profile of a homegrown terrorist. While we work to address violent extremism, we must acknowledge that there is much we do not know about how individuals come to adopt violent extremist beliefs.”
This much is true, in a technical sense. Formerly, Islamist terrorists were regarded as ill-educated, based on the sort of people recruited by terror-masters in Palestinian regions, or the people traditionally used by the JMB, Jamaat ud-Dawa, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups to carry out terror attacks. Simple people with no hope could be persuaded to blow themselves up, safe in the hope of the embraces of 72 virgins after their “martyrdom.” Those recruited to become Hamas suicide bombers in Palestinian territories would do so. Safe in the knowledge that their families would be rewarded with payments from charity groups such as the Bethlehem Orphans Fund.
That traditional image of the dead-end suicide bomber – destined to fail in life, but able to be a hero of Islamic jihad by killing – was turned on its head by the events of 9/11. Many of the 19 terrorists who took part in the bombings were intelligent, and were students. On June 30, 2007, an attempt to drive an incendiary car bomb into the gates of Glasgow International Airport was made by two doctors. One of these, Bilal Abdullah, was an Iraqi-born doctor who worked at a Scottish hospital.
Most Muslims are not violent terrorists who are out to destroy Western society. However, those who do carry out terrorist attacks tend to be extremely devout Muslims who adopt a literalist approach to their faith. Salafists (who try to emulate the actions of the “Salaf” or companions of the Prophet Mohammed) are extreme literalist Muslims, but even then, only a few will commit jihad.
There are groups such as Tablighi Jamaat that has been associated with “missionary” work among disaffected young Muslims. In France, Tablighi is particularly active in prisons. John Walker Lind, the American Taliban, was indoctrinated by Tablighi Jamaat. Mohammed Sidique Khan, the head of the 7/7 cell of suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London in 2005, used to visit the Markazi Jamaat in Savile Town, Dewsbury. This is the headquarters of the British branch of the Tablighi movement. Kafeel Ahmed, who was one of the two doctors who tried to blow up Glasgow International Airport in 2007 and died of burns a month later, was a Tablighi Jamaat member.
On August 10, 2006, a plot to blow up airliners bound for America was foiled. Some of the individuals who had plotted to use liquid explosives to blow up transatlantic planes were members of Tablighi Jamaat. Of these, Waheed Zaman, who was a student of biomedical science, was convicted and jailed in July this year, and Assad Sarwar admitted his part in the plot in July 2008.
Tablighi Jamaat was founded in Mewat in India in 1927, and its ideology is based closely upon the Deobandi movement. The Deobandi movement is connected intimately with the Taliban of Afghanistan and Pakistan. When Tablighi Jamaat held a conference in Waziristan in 2006 in Pakistan’s tribal regions, the Taliban arranged a ceasefire to allow safe passage for attendees. In Britain, 600 of the nation’s 1400 mosques are affiliated to the Deobandi movement.
The Deobandi movement, which believes girls should not be educated, and which encourages Muslims not to mix with Jews or Christians, could easily be considered to be an ante-chamber of terrorism. Its ideology of literalist Islam, much as that of the Salafist movement, aims to recreate the behavior of the first companions of Mohammed. In Pakistan, Deobandis run 8,350 of the nation’s 13,000 madrassas. Considering the fact that most of the Afghan Taliban’s leaders were educated at Sami ul-Haq’s Haqqania madrassa in northwestern Pakistan, the potentially pernicious influence of Deobandism cannot be ignored.
American mosques that preach and support Deobandi tenets, and those that preach Wahhabism, must be seen as part of the problem in terrorism indoctrination. The notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, where Anwar al-Awlaki was an imam, was visited by at least one of the 9/11 terrorists. It was built on land purchased in 1983 by NAIT (North American Islamic Trust, a Muslim Brotherhood front group, classed recently as a co-0conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial), and the mosque itself was completed with Saudi government money.
Superficially, a terrorist can appear normal in dress and manners. Few terrorists in the West conform to the cartoon image of a bearded fanatic dressed in Arabic-style clothing. Mohammed Atta, supposed leader of the 9/11 hijackers, was clean shaven and wore Western dress. Such “Takfiri” (apparent apostates from ‘true’ Islam) agents are the most successful terrorists because they draw little attention to themselves as they develop their deadly missions.
The issue of terrorism is complex, and ideologically, Islamic terrorism is exceedingly hard to quantify. Superficially, the deeds of the Muslim Brotherhood are not “violent” but their form of Islam aims (as does that of al-Qaeda and “related groups” who follow a “violent ideology”) to sabotage the West and to ultimately overthrow democracy and replace it with a Muslim Caliphate. But even the Muslim Brotherhood, which claims to be non-violent in its successful mission to gain acceptance in the White House and other Western institutions, is not free from the taint of terrorism. Hamas is a terrorist group, and is also a wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.
So, even though Secretary Napolitano is technically right when she states that “there is much we do not know about how individuals come to adopt violent extremist beliefs,” there is much that can be known about extremist beliefs, and it is through extremist beliefs that devout Muslims can become terrorists.
It is possible that the statement on terrorism has appeared late, in its bowdlerized form, omitting mention of Islam, because of the circumstances surrounding the Ground Zero mosque. America is said to have become deeply Islamophobic recently, and this is a problem.
However, the blame for this problem must partly lie in the hands of the administration (including Janet Napolitano) for not identifying the problem of Islamism accurately. The White House has openly supported Imam Rauf and even paid for him to be an envoy of the government. Yet for many Americans, Rauf is not the tolerant character that everyone states. When there is a disconnect between what people are told and what they can see, they become angry.
When people in the establishment take so seriously the silencing of a pastor from Gainseville, Florida, in case his proposed Koran-burning caused violence, they admit that Islam is potentially violent. When everyone sees that Muslims in Muslim countries make violent protests anyway, and need precious little excuse to burn flags and bibles, to deny that there is a serious flaw at the heart of Islam is of itself a problem.
Islam was founded on violence, and that is an ugly fact that even moderate Muslims deny. There is a need to either reform Islam or to confront it head-on. It is not in anyone’s benefit to appease extremists in an attempt to protect moderates. If the nation cannot discuss the violence at the heart of Islam, it will always remain as a problem.
Take the example from the book of Islamic jurisprudence, “The Reliance of the Traveller.” This book was written by Shafi’i scholar Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, who lived from 1302 to 1367. His book was recently translated from Arabic into English, and this was given approval by the Al Azhar University. Al Azhar is the largest Sunni institution in the world. Only the Darul Uloom in Deoband, northern India (home of Deobandi thinking), approaches it in size. With Al Azhar authorizing this book, it has been legitimated as “mainstream” Sunni thought. It contains numerous highly disturbing passages.
It states that jihad is compulsory, and that every able-bodied man must engage in it. The “Objectives of Jihad” are described as: “The caliph makes war upon Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians until they become Muslim or else pay the Muslim poll tax. The caliph fights all other peoples until they become Muslim.”
Justification for acts of war are said by al-Misri to derive from the Koran (2: 216, 4: 489, 4:89, 4: 95, 9:29) and from various Hadiths. The book was produced by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), based in Hendon, Virginia. The IIIT was founded with money from the Muslim Brotherhood and still maintains close links with Muslim Brotherhood members.
As I wrote earlier, the current administration is already far too close to the Muslim Brotherhood, having not learned from the Clinton administration’s experiences with Muslim Brotherhood member and terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi.
Janet Napolitano is short-changing the American people when she refuses to mention Islam in a discussion of American terrorism. She admits that there is an increase in terrorism that is “home-grown”, but again, these terrorists are indoctrinated by extremist Muslim groups. The Muslim Brotherhood may dress in suits, but their role is that of “good cop” to the “bad cop” of Al Qaeda – their ultimate aims are the same.
America needs to wake up, and not to condemn all Muslims. Most Muslims are pawns and victims of the machinations of the Muslim Brotherhood members and their Saudi paymasters who pose as “representatives”.
Islam could thrive in America, but only if it is a revised Islam, where the violent jihadist texts are officially abrogated. Literalist forms of Islam – supporting polygamy, wife-beating and hatred of Jews and Christians – are never going to be compatible with American values.
It is time the administration acknowledged that there is a world of difference between genuinely moderate Muslims who accept the primacy of democratic law (who are probably seen as “apostates” by most official Muslim representatives in the USA right now), and those who wish to see Sharia law overthrow democracy.
Adrian Morgan
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