The Worldwide Jihad: The Truth About Islamic Terrorism

by Robert Spencer

  Instead, we get more finger-pointing. And that means we will also get more jihad.

  As Jihad Plots Multiply, DHS Slumbers On

  Last week, a Muslim in Alabama shot out shop windows in an attempt to provoke a shootout with police, in order, he said, to “draw attention to Islam.” Another Muslim in Florida was arrested for plotting to bomb nightclubs and other locations for Islam; he explained: “We all have to die, so why not die the Islamic way?” A third Muslim, a convert to Islam who had served in the U.S. military, was arrested for attempting to make his way to Somalia to join the jihad terror group al-Shabaab. He said that he was “looking for dying with a gun in my hand” and wanted to die defending Islam. And in North Carolina, three Muslims were given prison sentences ranging from fifteen to forty-five years for plotting attacks on targets they deemed “un-Islamic.” One of them cried out in court: “You’re prosecuting Islam.”

  The fact that all this unfolded within one week’s span illustrates yet again the obvious fact that Islamic jihadists are waging war against the United States. A sensible response to this undeniable fact would be for law enforcement agents to study Islam and jihad, in an attempt to discover what it is about Islam that leads some Muslims, including American converts to the faith, to regard their native land as the enemy and decide that they have a responsibility before God to take up arms against it.

  Instead, the Obama Administration has succumbed to pressure from Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the United States and has promised to scrub all training materials for the FBI and other agencies of any reference to Islam or jihad in connection with Islamic terrorism. That means that law enforcement officials are now effectively forbidden to study the motives and goals of the Alabama shooter, the Florida and North Carolina plotters, the former military man, and so many others like them, for to do so would necessarily involve study and discussion of the texts and tenets of Islam.

  It cannot be said, however, that the Obama Department of Homeland Security is lying down on the job. Recently it has come to light that for over a year, DHS agents have been monitoring a large number of websites. The purpose of this monitoring, according to a DHS report, is to “collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”

  Situational awareness? A common operating picture? It’s hard to tell whether this wretched English is intended to obfuscate deliberately, or if it was simply written by someone whose thoughts barely rise above the level of incoherence. Either way, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But this bureaucratic gobbledygook apparently means that the DHS is watching the sites in question in order to become aware of situations involving terror plotting, and that DHS agents will share this information with other agencies so that they won’t be working at cross purposes.

  So far so good—if the DHS were monitoring jihadist websites, which proliferate on the internet. But it isn’t. Instead, it is watching sites where it is extremely unlikely ever to encounter a jihad plotter saying anything to indicate that he is up to no good. To be sure, the monitored sites are all over the map ideologically: they include Live Leak, Vimeo, Youtube, and Flickr, as well as the Huffington Post,Newsweek Blogs and the New York Times Lede Blog—along with the Middle East Media Research Institute, the global intelligence site Stratfor, and many, many others, including my own website, Jihad Watch. Nonetheless, given the Obama DHS’s stated emphasis on “right-wing extremism,” it is much more likely that when they visit Jihad Watch and other counter-terror sites, agents are on the hunt for dangerous conservatives, not hoping to learn anything about jihadist beliefs, motives or activities.

  The plots and attacks of the past week illustrate how foolish that is, as well as ominous for loyal citizens who oppose the administration and its policies, and are being watched despite having no intention of ever engaging in any illegal activity whatsoever. The DHS’s slumber will not come without a cost—for as administration officials continue to make good on their promise to embrace willful ignorance about the Islamic jihad threat, agents will grow ever less equipped to spot and to stop plots such as the one uncovered last week in Florida. To do so will be inexcusably “Islamophobic,” DHS agents will tell each other, as they sip coffee and monitor those crazy right-wingers at Jihad Watch.

  What Now for Iraq? Jihad

  As he closed the door on American military involvement in Iraq, Barack Obama said: “Everything that American troops have done in Iraq—all the fighting, all the dying, the bleeding and the building and the training and the partnering—all of it has landed to this moment of success.” He avoided declaring victory outright, but he did say: “Iraq’s not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people.”

  At the beginning of December in that stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government, I received a chilling message from an Assyrian Christian in Iraqi Kurdistan. He wrote: “Today after Friday prayers, Muslim Kurds in Zakho (near Dohuk) attacked and besieged liquor shops, salons, hotels, massages that are owned by Christians. The security didn’t do anything and the rampage has continued till now!” Several hours later he wrote again: “The attacks haven’t stopped, and I just got the word that they are attacking a Catholic Diocesan office. The security is standing still and watching as I am writing this to you. Christian homes are being fired upon as well.”

  As captured on video, the Muslim mob shouted “Allahu akbar,” “jihad” and anti-Christian slogans as it rampaged. One Christian liquor store owner reported that the mob did half a million U.S. dollars’ worth of damage to his businesses—and stole $300,000 from his safe. Another Christian sent me pictures of a small club, destroyed in a fire the mob set, and explained: “This was a small social club for us Christians that we spend our nights. As you see, we live very poorly and humbly. They had no reason to attack us. All we want is to enjoy a beer after a hard day of work. Is that too much to ask? Are Muslim minorities in the West treated like this?”

  No, they aren’t, but with all the media hand-wringing about “Islamophobia,” and Hillary Clinton’s closed-door meeting with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation last week to discuss strategies on how to outlaw criticism of Islam in a society that ostensibly protects the freedom of speech, one might be forgiven for getting the idea that Muslims in the U.S. were living in a virtual state of siege. The only besieged people are actually Christians and other non-Muslims in places such as the new, stable and self-reliant Iraq and the new, democratic “Arab Spring” Egypt.

  The plight of Christians in Iraq is just one aspect of the chaos we leave behind there. In April 2003, when U.S. troops had been in Iraq for less than two weeks, I wrote in Insight in the News that the “primary opponents” of democratic government in Iraq would be those who held “that no government has any legitimacy unless it obeys the Sharia. Even if they lose in the short run, they will not disappear as long as there are people who take the Koran and Islamic tradition seriously. And that spells trouble for any genuine democracy.”

  That has proven true. Post-American Iraq is dominated by Islamic hardline factions, each vying to impose its vision of Sharia upon its recalcitrant fellow countrymen. Just days after the jihad mob attack on Christian-owned businesses and churches, three bombs exploded in a crowd celebrating the Shi’ite feast of Ashura, murdering twenty-two.

  That attack will most likely be avenged before too long, and bloodily, for the Shi’ites in Iraq have the long arm of Iran behind them—and Iran has been working for years to establish a Shi’ite client state in Iraq. With a president in the White House who appears incapable of doing anything to impede their plans, the Iranians have their best chance yet to establish such a state on a firm footing.

  Nothing appears likelier in Iraq’s future than more jihadist persecution of Christians and other religious minorities, more Sunni-Shi’ite jihad, and more jockeying for power by Iran as it continues it
s jihad to become the leader of the Islamic world. Yet in Washington the level of analysis hasn’t improved since Condoleezza Rice said in 2007 that the Sunnis and Shi’ites were just “going to have to overcome” their centuries-old animosity.

  That was and is about as likely as Iraq truly becoming a “stable and self-reliant” nation with a “representative government.”

  Underwear Bomber Disproves Conventional Wisdom About Terrorism

  Bravo for life’s little ironies. Last Monday, Bill Clinton attributed the recent jihad violence in Nigeria to poverty. Referring obliquely to the attacks that the jihadist group Boko Haram (A group that preaches that Western education is sin) had carried out, Clinton ascribed them to the large disparity between the rich and the poor in Nigeria: “You can’t just have this level of inequality persist. That’s what’s fueling all this stuff.” Then on Thursday, the son of one of Nigeria’s richest men was sentenced to life in prison for an attempt to commit jihad mass murder in a jetliner.

  The idea that poverty causes terrorism is a familiar assumption on both the Left and the Right; it is, ultimately, the guiding assumption behind the U.S. Military’s making itself busy in Afghanistan building roads, schools and hospitals. The fond belief is that a sufficient amount of money will transform Kabul into Kansas City, and then all shall be well. Ten years of American blood and treasure squandered in Afghanistan should have paid for this fantasy long ago, but of course it hasn’t.

  Besides integrity, the scarcest commodity in Washington is accountability, and so none of the learned analysts who so confidently predicted that all this infrastructure would raise the Afghan standard of living and win Afghan hearts and minds, thereby destroying the impetus for terrorism, are ever called to account for the obvious howling failure of everything they attempted, and the falsehood of all they predicted. Nor are the reputations rehabilitated of those whose predictions proved true that none of this would work, and that the Afghans would continue waging jihad against all outsiders and against each other, as they have done from time immemorial. They are, as ever, “Islamophobes,” “extremists,” not to be trusted. Washington doesn’t operate according to the canons of reasoned discourse. It operates by the rule of clubs and clans; if you’re in with the group in power, your ideas will be accepted and implemented. Failure is not an impediment to continuing to exercise power.

  So it is that Bill Clinton, laden with honors, lauded, respected and adulated everywhere, almost certainly didn’t think that he was saying anything remotely controversial when he said that “inequality” was “fueling” the Nigerian jihad. He probably has no idea that the Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for trying to light a bomb hidden in his underwear and blow up a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, was one of the nation’s wealthiest young men. Abdulmutallab’s father is Dr. Alhaji Umaru Abdul Mutallab, a former government minister and former head of Nigeria’s largest bank.

  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab did not know hunger. He did not turn to jihad to redress social inequalities. Like other fantastically rich men such as Osama bin Laden and Aymen al-Zawahiri, as well as the jihadist physicians in Glasgow, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab turned to jihad because he believed that it was his responsibility before Allah to wage war against Infidels, and that Allah would reward his killing large numbers of them. When he pled guilty in October, Abdulmutallab said to the court: “In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever you find them, some parts of the Koran say, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

  Would a redress of “inequalities” have dissuaded Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from waging jihad against the United States? Not likely. For even though he couches his actions as a matter of fighting those who fight you, in Islam there is also an imperative to fight against those who “believe not in God and the Last Day and do not forbid what God and His Messenger have forbidden,” including, specifically, Jews and Christians (Koran 9:29). No amount of American largesse will ever dissuade a believing Muslim from considering that a divine responsibility.

  This is a lesson that official Washington should have learned again and again, since every jihadist speaks the way Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab does, belying the non-Islamic explanations for jihad that pour endlessly out of Washington’s think tanks. But it won’t be learned this time, either.

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  III.

  Sharia

  The Necessity of Anti-Sharia Laws

  Louisiana, Arizona, and Tennessee have already passed legislation restricting the use of foreign law in state courtrooms, and twenty-one other states are considering similar laws. These statutes are designed to halt the use of Islamic law, sharia, by American judges—a measure that many see as necessary, since sharia has already been involved in cases in 23 states. Many see this as an alarming encroachment upon First Amendment protection of religion; however, anti-sharia laws do not actually infringe upon religious freedom at all, and they become more urgently needed by the day.

  In the March issue of “First Things”, law professor Robert K. Vischer equates anti-sharia laws with recent intrusions upon the religious freedom of Christians, such as laws that now require "pro-life pharmacists to dispense the morning-after pill" and "Christian adoption agencies to place children with same-sex couples, and religious entities to pay for their employees' contraceptives." He asserts that "[t]he recent spate of 'anti-Sharia' initiatives is just the most politically popular example of such threats" to religious freedom.

  This is a widespread misapprehension. The Associated Press recently noted that critics of anti-sharia laws view the drive to pass them as an "unwarranted campaign driven by fear of Muslims." In criticizing an anti-sharia amendment to the Oklahoma state constitution that gained seventy percent of the vote in a state referendum but was later struck down, Daniel Mach, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said:

  “This amendment did nothing more than target one faith for official condemnation. Even the state admits that there has never been any problem with Oklahoma courts wrongly applying religious law. The so-called 'Save Our State Amendment' was a solution in search of a problem, and a blatantly discriminatory solution at that."

  Ryan Kiesel of the ACLU's Oklahoma branch declared: "No one in Oklahoma deserves to be treated like a second-class citizen. This proposed amendment was an affront to the Constitution and everything it stands for." The Muslim writer Reza Aslan hysterically and inaccurately charged that "two-thirds of Americans don't think Muslims should have the same rights or civil liberties as non-Muslims.”

  In reality, the properly formulated anti-sharia laws neither infringe upon Muslims' civil liberties or religious freedom nor address a nonexistent problem. Vischer correctly states some of reasons why Americans are concerned about sharia when he says that "proponents of this legislation tend to focus on manifestations of Sharia overseas: the stoning of adulterers, cutting off of the hands of thieves, and the denial of basic freedoms for women in some Islamic countries," and that "there are many schools of interpretation among Islamic legal scholars, and some interpretations stand in tension with the rights that we have come to take for granted in liberal democracies, including the rights of women, homosexual persons, religious minorities, and religious converts."

  Vischer clearly means to imply that Muslims in America have no intention, now or ever, of bringing "the stoning of adulterers, cutting off of the hands of thieves, and the denial of basic freedoms for women" to America, and that there are schools of interpretation among Islamic legal scholars that do not "stand in tension with the rights that we have come to take for granted in liberal democracies." In reality, however,
there is no school of Islamic jurisprudence among either Sunnis or Shi'tes that does not mandate stoning for adultery, amputation of the hand for theft, and the subjugation of women. Stoning adulterers is in accord with the words and example of Muhammad, whom the Quran holds up as the supreme example of conduct for believers (33:21); amputation of the hand for theft is mandated in the Quran itself (5:38); and the oppression of women in numerous ways is amply attested by the words of both the Quran and the prophet of Islam.

  And while there are individual Islamic legal scholars who have crafted interpretations of the Quran and Sunnah that are more compatible with Western pluralism and liberal democracy than is sharia in its classic formulations, these have never gained any significant traction among Muslims. Wherever Sharia has been the law of the land, throughout Islamic history and in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other areas of the Islamic world today, it has had largely the same character—one that has never resembled liberal democracy by any stretch of the imagination. Sharia polities throughout history and today have denied the freedom of speech and the freedom of conscience, and they have mandated discrimination against women and non-Muslims.

  Vischer says that "fears about the most extreme applications of Sharia need not prompt a categorical ban on Sharia," but the world has never seen a form of sharia that has not been "extreme." Many non-Muslims mistakenly believe that relatively free and Westernized majority-Muslim states—principally Turkey, as well as, up until recently, Tunisia and Egypt—demonstrate the compatibility of sharia with understandings of human rights that are otherwise universally accepted. This is, however, a fundamental misapprehension: Turkey and other relatively Westernized Muslim countries have been governed by sharia not at all, but instead by legal codes imported from the West. In fact, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk established the modern-day Turkish republic as a defiant rejection of sharia and an explicit determination to establish a Western-style state, free from the strictures of Islamic law. Such states don't have a different, more expansive version of sharia; they don't have sharia at all (and today their freedoms are rapidly eroding, as the "Arab Spring" is bringing sharia back in force).