Posted on 12/21/2003 6:21:41 AM PST by miltonim
within the next 30 or 40 years we'll see Islamic states in western Europe
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Two years after 9/11, just how great of a threat is radical Islam to America? For answers to that question, Pat Robertson spoke with author Robert Spencer who has written extensively on radical Islam. His latest book is Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West.
PAT ROBERTSON: We are now at the second anniversary of the tragedy that took place on September 11th. Devastation, the World Trade Center taken out by Islamic jihadists. The Pentagon, the symbol of our military strength, the Pentagon bombed, if you will, by an airliner. People were suffering and bleeding. Well, not too long after that, the President of the United States hurried to the microphones to assure the world that Islam was a peaceful religion. I took issue with him, and our next guest has written a book called Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West, which I think takes issue with the whole concept that Islam is peaceful. His name is Robert Spencer, and Onward Muslim Soldiers is a carefully researched study of Islam. It's a pleasure to welcome Robert Spencer, with us now from New York. Do you think that jihad is still threatening America?
ROBERT SPENCER: There's no doubt about it, Pat, because, as you point out, the book Onward Muslim Soldiers is about how jihad actually is a violent doctrine that is a doctrine of theology, a tradition, and a legal system within Islam. It's very elaborate and it's very longstanding. It goes all the way back to the Muslim prophet Mohammed. This is something that American Muslim groups don't want to admit; this is something that the President doesn't seem to be aware of, at least in his public statements. And it underlies the motivations of a great many Muslims in the United States. Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, who is a Muslim himself, a Sufi sheikh, toured the American mosques in 1999 and he estimated that 80 percent of the American mosques are under the control of radical extremist Muslims who teach violent jihad.
ROBERTSON: You pointed out in your book about Mohammed. You say, if there is a doctrine, the way the founder of a religion practiced the doctrine should be an example of what we should expect, should be normative. Tell us about Mohammed and his view of jihad?
SPENCER: Absolutely. Mohammed taught that jihad was almost the highest duty that any Muslim could perform. He was very clear in no uncertain terms that it did not mean what you hear from a lot of people these days, the inner struggle, the spiritual struggle to resist sin and so on. He was very clear: this is about making war, and it's about fighting against non-Muslims until they either convert to Islam or submit as second class citizens under Islamic rule. And those were the choices that go all the way back to the Koran, Surah 9:29, and to the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed that are captured in many traditions and revered by Muslims today as second in authority only to the Koran itself, and which are believed by people like Osama bin Laden and other Muslims around the world who consider it's part of the Muslim's religious responsibility to make war on unbelievers in order to establish the supremacy and the hegemony of the Islamic political and social system, not just the religion.
ROBERTSON: You have a chilling passage in here about the life of Christians in an Islamic state. I believe it was under the Ottomans and the Caliph of, I don't know if it was Baghdad or whichever Caliph it was. But the obligations that they undertook were simply staggering. Could you elaborate on that?
SPENCER: Certainly. Pat, it wasn't just one Caliph, it was many of them. It's, as I said, a legal system that was elaborated very early in the life of the Islamic religion and is taught by all of the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence, that non-Muslims, in a Muslim state and under Muslim rule, must submit to regulations, including that they pay a special tax, the non-Muslim poll tax which is rooted in the Koran. And also that they have to wear different dress so that they can be distinguished from Muslims, and submit to an array of humiliating regulations of that kind that enforce that they are an inferior people, that they are renegades because they have not accepted Islam, and that they are not to be accorded the rights and dignity of ordinary Muslim citizens. They are not allowed, under classic Islamic law, to ride horses but had to ride mules and donkeys. They're not allowed to build new churches or repair old ones so that they are in a state of perpetual decline, legally enforced. And a number of other regulations of this kind that show that there is simply no idea of universal equality and dignity within Islamic law for all people, but only for Muslims.
ROBERTSON: You have an amazing premise in this book that the American Left has allied itself with radical Islam. Why?
SPENCER: To a great degree you find spokesmen like Noam Chomsky and other prominent American liberals. They will look at terrorist attacks, such as 9/11 and others, and say, "See, if America behaved differently, these things would cease." So it's funny how the people who are the preachers of multiculturalism and of universal respect for other cultures and other traditions, they are the ones who seem to consider that all of this is America's responsibility.
And so in effect, you have peace movements like the International Solidarity Movement and others that, in their all-consuming hatred for America and for American activity around the world, they have allied themselves… In the International Solidarity Movement, a very prominent terrorist was recently discovered in their offices in the Middle East. And you have these spokesmen like Chomsky that speak out against everything that America does, but are unwilling to go into the roots of what causes this kind of behavior within the Islamic world.
ROBERTSON: Is Europe ripe for a jihad do you think?
SPENCER: Oh, there's no doubt. It's a jihad, though, that may not even be necessary because of the demographic trends in Europe and the way that Europe has shown itself, particularly the governments in France and Holland, to be unwilling to face up to the threat radical Islam, it's very possible that within the next 30 or 40 years we'll see Islamic states in western Europe.
ROBERTSON: Should we, as the United States, move against Saudi Arabia? That seems to be the fountainhead of Wahhabis, the most extreme brand of Islam.
SPENCER: Yes, Wahhabi Islam is extreme and preaches violent jihad. I must emphasize that it is by no means the only sect of Islam that teaches these things. A lot of people think that if we just were to cut off the Wahhabis, then this problem would go away. Unfortunately, it's a more widespread problem than that. But certainly, if the President is ultimately going to achieve final victory in the War on Terror, he has to face up to the fact that the Saudis are leading sponsors of terror around the world, and we need to reconfigure our alliances in the Middle East so we don't end up on the side of terrorists in many cases.
ROBERTSON: Is this something that we can win? It looks like Iraq is now becoming, I hate to use the term "quagmire," but is there a chance of really achieving victory and having democratic principles? I just learned yesterday, for example, that Afghanistan has a draft constitution to introduce sharia law as the controlling law, what is this?
SPENCER: Sharia, I must point out, is what the Taliban was enforcing so strictly. A lot of people said when the Taliban had women in burqas, and women were not allowed to go to school, and these kinds of regulations, that these were the Taliban's own eccentric ideas. But actually, these are principles of classic Islamic law and wherever that law holds sway, wherever people enforce it in full, you will see regulations of a similar kind. So, it is going to be very difficult to win this because you have principles that are rooted in Islamic law and tradition, rooted in Islamic theology. People who are Muslims, they will say that if you try to come and say let's reform these principles, well "you're attacking our religion." And so it becomes a matter of defending their religion and what they see as something that comes from God, to defend these principles that are fundamentally opposed to ideas of democracy and universal human rights. That being the case, there is no easy answer to this. But I think there's no doubt that strength wins the day, and that a strong and principled response has shown itself. After all, there hasn't been a major terrorist attack, thank God, in the United States since September 11th, since the has President started on an aggressive response to it. But there were numerous attacks on American installations around the world before September 11th when the Clinton administration provided only a feeble response, and so it's something we may just have to tough out.
ROBERTSON: Robert Spencer, thank you for the insights. Ladies and gentlemen, the book is called Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West, a very insightful book about the enemy that we're facing in what seems to be a major culture war, a major religious struggle that's going on worldwide.
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