by Aaron Klein
Faheed's short beard complimented his brown turban, long white robe and a green military sweater with Arabic writing on it.
"We are Muslims," he shouted. "[The U.S.] is going to attack us! It is us versus them! Truth against falsehood! The colonizers and masters against the oppressed, and we will burn down the master's house!"
Continued Faheed to a supportive audience: "The U.S. is not strong. Vietnam, they lost. Somalia, they ran away from. America hasn't won anything since World War II. We can defeat America."
"Eventually there will be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of shariah!" he declared.
I didn't happen upon this speech during one of my visits to the terror-ridden West Bank or Gaza Strip. Faheed wasn't calling for the downfall of America from a classroom in Afghanistan or Iraq. This Muslim gathering wasn't taking place in France or Britain, which have well-known problems with Islamic extremists. Faheed was speaking in New York City. That's right. New York City.
It was March 2003. I was attending a closed (as in Muslim students only) meeting sponsored by the Muslim Student Association at Queensborough Community College in Queens, New York, just across the bridge from Manhattan, where I lived at the time. The MSA is an international organization of Muslim college students that boasts chapters in over a thousand colleges across America and Canada. It has been accused of promoting Islamic fundamentalism and inviting speakers who spew violent antiAmerican rhetoric.
I thought I'd check things out for myself. I had been fascinated with terrorism and with Muslims who live on American soil but seek the destruction of our values and institutions. Those in attendance at the New York speech likely thought I was a Muslim student, but no one asked. My Middle Eastern features allowed me to get away with that.
The event at Queensborough featured a lecture about Iraq by two American-based leaders of Al-Muhajiroun, a British Islamic fundamentalist organization that supports the ideology of Osama bin Laden, and whose worldwide leader, Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, has long been suspected of ties with al-Qaida. In 2005, after Muhammad traveled abroad and was not allowed back to the U.K., Al-Muhajiroun's American branch changed its name to the "Islamic Thinkers Society."
Make no mistake about it. Islamists who want to replace our constitution with the Quran and who are urging on another September 11 live amongst us.
Another speaker at the MSA-sponsored event, Abu Yousuf, explained to me he speaks at many colleges throughout the New York area, and that most of his speeches are arranged by the MSA. In fact, Yousuf invited me to a speech he was giving the very next day petitioning for Islamic takeover; the speech was sponsored by the MSA at Marymount College in Manhattan.
There are other Muslim organizations and Islamic personalities in the U.S. that have petitioned for the replacement of the American government with an Islamic entity that would impose shariah law. In Europe, where the problem is more pronounced, Muslims make no bones about the way they want their societies run. In a poll conducted in September 2006 and broadcast on Britain's Channel 4 TV, 30 percent of the U.K.'s Muslims stated they would prefer to live under strict Islamic sharia law rather than be ruled by Britain's democratic system.
And of course we have the Middle East, where prominent terror groups like al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas have declared war on everything our great country stands for. These groups want to impose their way of life on all of us. For them, Islam is on the rise just as it was during the days of Saladin, the Islamic conqueror. Terror leaders state openly they are fighting for one thing and one thing only-they want the world dominated by Muhammad's laws.
"Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world," said Hamas's Gaza leader and former foreign minister Mahmoud al-Zahar, at a March 2007 rally.
Actually, the terrorists told me they believe America is well on the road to becoming an Islamist entity.
"We see already in America a nucleus of Islam, a base for Islam. This will become bigger, stronger, more important, until Islam will take control and will seize the power in America and the world," said Sheik Saleh Faraj, one of the main leaders of the Islamic Liberation Party in the West Bank.
The Party, also known as Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami, acts in dozens of countries worldwide, including in Europe and Asia, to unite the entire ummah, or Islamic world community, into a single caliphate with the goal of Islamic domination of Planet Earth.
It took major convincing for Faraj to talk to me. He was sure I was a plotting Zionist agent sent to infect him with my venomous Judaism, but he finally agreed after a protracted argument with my translator, Ali.
Sheik Yasser Hamad, a cleric and a Hamas leader in the northern West Bank, told me he too sees Islam gaining a major foothold in America. He pointed to the ascension to power of Keith Ellison, who became the first Muslim elected to Congress when he won an open seat for Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District in 2006. Ellison has many times publicly allowed his supporters to shout "Allah Akbar," or "Allah is great," and has confirmed to reporters that "in terms of my political agenda, my faith informs these things."
Hamad commented:
In the West there is a huge spiritual emptiness and thirst for truth and it is not new that there is a growing phenomenon of thousands of people who convert to Islam.
In the U.S., Keith Ellison, a Muslim, became governor and was sworn in using a Quran. This is proof of the spread of Islam and that Islam will one day dominate. We believe that this process will become bigger, stronger and larger.
Prophet Mohammad, may Allah bless him, said that the sun will shine from the west. This will physically happen as part of the signs of Judgment Day and it will spiritually and practically happen as part of a big revival of Islam. Islam will grow in America and it may start its new campaign from the West.
Muhammad Abdel-El, a spokesman and leader for the Popular Resistance Committees terror group, affirmed, "America will be overthrown. We are seeing more and more signs that prove that the process had already started."
The Committees, one of the most active terror groups in the Gaza Strip, is responsible for scores of kidnappings, shootings, and rocket attacks, and was accused of bombing a U.S. convoy in Gaza in 2003, killing three American contractors.
Abdel-El pointed to the model of Europe, where he said Muslims are "taking over" without the need to resort to violence to acquire power. "In Europe there is no need for war because if people keep on joining Islam in these countries then Islam will become the majority, which I think is the process that is taking place now, so there will not be any necessity to have war with [non-Muslims]."
When Abdel-El said Muslims in Europe don't use violence to gain power he must have forgotten about mass Muslim protests in France and Britain that turned violent or the London transportation bombings in July 2005 and attempted bombings in June 2007, or the 2004 Madrid train bombings, among so many other examples of Muslims in Europe using violence.
Conversations like these convinced me that the terrorists believe Islam will soon dominate America. But if Islam takes over, then what? What would life be like for Americans?
Faraj told me, "Your former defense minister, Donald Rumsfeld, once said that Islam doesn't allow and doesn't accept any partnership with any idea or principle about how life should be ruled and governed, and I must admit that he was right. This is the first and only time that I must admit that Rumsfeld was right. Islam cannot tolerate any idea or principle or any way of life that does not go with its laws and its vision and its rules."
Sheik Abu Saqer, a prominent Gaza-based preacher, a founder of the Sword of Islam terror group and a subscriber to the ideology of al-Qaida, explained if Islam controls the U.S., all American women, whether Muslim or not, must cover their hair.
"Sharia rules are clear, and according to these rules women need to be covered. This is the demand of our religion. Being and walking naked doesn't mean that you are enjoying more freedom; it means that you are going against Allah's laws and you are serving the enem
ies of Islam who want to empty our Islamic society from its values. Uncovered heads is a form of nudity."
Saqer is close to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups and is considered a sharia law expert. His Sword of Islam group has taken responsibility in Gaza for bombings of Internet cafes, pool halls, and secular music stores and is suspected of attacking a United Nations-funded school in Gaza accused of allowing girls and boys to play sports together.
Hamas's Sheik Hamad explained Islamic law enforcers would at first try to persuade American woman to cover their heads, but eventually females would be forced. Those women who refuse may be stoned.
"The women who will not cover themselves will be punished for not respecting the law. It could be jail. It could be stoning her. It could be whipping her. It depends on the circumstances of the sin she made," Hamad said.
I expressed to Hamad my stance that forcing his beliefs on others is inhumane, but he objected:
"If you don't respect the local law in America, if you don't pay taxes, if you drive on a red light, aren't there sanctions used against you by your government? Of course there are and it's okay with you. Why is there a problem when it comes to the Islamic state that wants to impose its rules?"
The problem is that I'm not a Muslim and I wouldn't want to live a life dictated by sharia. Neither would my American female friends who don't want to cover their heads. America enforces a separation of church and state specifically to ensure against the imposition of religious ideologies and laws on those who don't subscribe. But the terrorists seeking to defeat our way of life have no problem forcing Islam down our throats.
"Once Islam dominates, anyone living inside the Islamic state must abide by our rules. There is no choice. You will abide or face the punishment," said Abdel-El.
Knowing full well he was talking to a Jew, Abdel-El said he would prefer that Jews vacate all lands taken over by Islam:
I think there will no problem of Christians staying. Of course I do not mean those who were involved in killing Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. As for the Jews, for the safety of the state and I mean in the first place for the moral and social safety, and then the political safety, we prefer not to have them.
Abu Saqer agreed:
As a principle we believe that Jews and Christians will always do everything in order to keep Muslims far from their religion. As long as they will not try to do so they can live in peace, but if they, especially the Jews, who are known for their bad character, will try to hurt Islam and Muslims, they will be treated harshly and may be killed.
I get frustrated and am pained by the terrorists' willful blindness every time a terrorist tells me Jews and Christians can live in peace in Muslim lands. Are they forgetting the Christians who live in so-called "peace" in the West Bank, Lebanon, Pakistan, Indonesia, or Kosovo, where they face regular Islamic persecution? Or all the Jews who lived under such "peaceful" circumstances in the Arab world they had to flee following widespread abuse after the establishment of the state of Israel?
I personally experienced the warm hospitality of the Arab world toward Jews when I was banned from entering Syria because, according to officials from Syrian embassies on the U.S. and Jordan, I was Jewish.
I am an American citizen whose family has resided in the U.S. for many generations. In December 2005, I attended a wellplanned trip to co-host the John Batchelor Show, a nationally broadcast radio program then syndicated by ABC Radio Networks. We wanted to broadcast for two days from Damascus.
Batchelor, producer Lee Mason, and I made arrangements with the Syrian embassy in the U.S. in advance of our trip. We were told by Ammar al-Arsan, the press attache for the Syrian embassy in Washington, that the applications for all of our visas were approved, and that Damascus had sent an approval letter that would permit us to enter the country from Amman, Jordan. Syria's embassy in Washington was informed I am a Jerusalem-based American reporter; Syria doesn't allow entry to visitors with Israeli stamps on their passports, but the State Department issued me a second passport so that I could go on these kinds of trips. Jerusalem-based non-Jewish reporters have traveled to Syria.
But when we arrived in Amman, we were told by Eyad Alarfi, assistant to Syria's consul general in Amman, that visa approvals were granted for Batchelor and Mason, but not for me.
I spoke by phone to an official from the Ministry of Information in Damascus who declined to provide his name. At first he refused to suggest why I had been singled out and prevented from entering the country. Later in the conversation, however, he asked: "What religion are you?"
I refused to answer.
"You know what you are," said the official.
Mason, who made the initial arrangements for visas with Syrian media representative al-Arsan, said a red flag was immediately raised when my name was mentioned as one of the participants in the trip. He reportedly told her it would be better if I did not go. She asked if it was because I am Jewish. Al-Arsan replied: "Yes, it is." The third question on Syria's visa application asks for religion.
In protest of my denial, Batchelor and Mason refused their visas, and we broadcast instead from the terror-ridden Grand Hyatt Hotel in Amman. Leaders of the anti-Syrian government in Lebanon slammed Syria for not allowing me in. The droll, reliable Walid Jumblatt, largely considered one of the most prominent anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians, called Syria's refusing me "absolutely ridiculous. Syria is out of control. There is no reason in the world Klein should be denied entry into Syria. He should sue the Syrian government."
During our stay in Amman, we allowed Syria's ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha, to explain to our radio audience why I was rejected.
"We are a sovereign country and we have the right to decide who enters and who does not," was all Moustapha would offer.
He refused to answer the one question I had for him: "Will you issue me a journalist visa to enter Syria?" Moustapha attempted to change the subject, but I persisted.
When Moustapha still refused to answer, Batchelor interrupted, "Mr. Ambassador, will you issue a journalist visa to Aaron Klein, yes or no?"
Moustapha's "That's not the question" drew a sharp response from Batchelor who told Moustapha he took his refusal as a no and terminated the call.
Speaking to reporters about my visa denial, Batchelor said, "It seems like its 1938 and Czechoslovakia all over again."
Aaron told me to go on to Syria and broadcast. But I told him that if I was to leave him behind, the enemy has won a victory. What we represent to the people of Jordan and Syria is that we don't separate people on the basis of race, color or creed.
In the end, after they were thoroughly exposed, Syria quietly apologized to me and offered to grant me a visa. Syrian officials even went out of their way to grant me a few interviews.
But don't be fooled by the Syrians or the conversations I had with terrorists. Just because they talked to me doesn't mean they like Jews. Palestinian leaders and terrorists regularly claim during English-language interviews they have no problem with Jews; it's only "Israeli occupiers" they despise, they say. What better way to drive home that lie than to treat an Orthodox Jewish reporter like royalty? But their deep-rooted anti-Semitism came up time and again.
Jews and Christians who are not actually thrown out if Islam takes over America must live as second-class citizens. According to sharia law, non-Muslims are considered inferior; they cannot own land; no new synagogues or churches can be built in the Islamic state. Existing houses of worship may remain, but services cannot be conducted loudly or in any public fashion. The ringing of church bells or blowing of the ceremonial Jewish shofar are forbidden. Muslims are told to respect other religion's pre-existing holy sites, but for all those who want to know just how well Islam treats the holy sites it takes over check out the next chapter.
Non-Muslims living in the Islamic caliph are referred to as dhimmis, or protected persons. Defenders of Islam as a liberal religion claim since dhimmis are protected therefore Islam treats nonMuslim
s well. But think about it. The very use of the word dhimmi implies non-Muslims must be protected from something, and that non-Muslims are of such a different status they require protection. But protection from whom? The general population. The Muslims.
To merit "protected status," non-Muslims must pay special taxes, including higher commercial and travel taxes, and special taxes for the right to cultivate (but not own) land. All nonMuslims must pay the special poll-tax, or jizya, which basically is the non-Muslim's payment for his right to exist. The jizya is assessed at three rates according to the economic conditions of all males above the ages of puberty. Reminiscent of the yellow stars Jews had to wear in Nazi Germany, several times in history nonMuslims living in the Islamic state had to wear at all times a special necklace that proved they paid their jizya taxes. Some Islamic scholars and clerics insisted the jizya be paid at a public ceremony that would include the humiliating act of striking the nonMuslim on the head or neck.
Think this jizya stuff is outdated? Think again. The few Jews who remain in Yemen must pay the jizya and other special taxes for protection. And they still are harassed. The Yemeni Jews fled their villages several times, such as in January 2007, after receiving death threats from local Islamic groups accusing the country's tiny Jewish community of serving as agents for "global Zionism."
When it comes to the legal system, in practicality Muslims take prominence over non-Muslims. A Christian or Jew cannot testify against a Muslim. Punishment for crimes committed by a Muslim against non-Muslims can be reduced; while crimes committed by a non-Muslim are judged harshly.
Sharia law is very clear about crime and punishment. "For every sin and crime there is a sanction," explained Hamad. "Prostitution: one hundred whippings; if the prostitute was married, he or she will be stoned until death; for a thief, his hand will be cut. But before enjoying the primitive nature of Islam and before you express how much you are shocked by our rules, I must say that these are not immediate sanctions, but they are used only if the person was warned."
