Posted on 09/23/2004 2:51:20 AM PDT by kattracks
The hardest thing for Westerners to understand is not that a war with militant Islam is underway but that the nature of the enemy’s ultimate goal. That goal is to apply the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) globally. In U.S. terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur’an.
This aspiration is so remote and far-fetched to many non-Muslims, it elicits more guffaws than apprehension. Of course, that used to be the same reaction in Europe, and now it’s become widely accepted that, in Bernard Lewis’ words, “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.”
Because of the American skepticism about Islamist goals, I postponed publishing an article on this subject until immediately after 9/11, when I expected receptivity to the subject would be greater (it was published in November 2001as “The Danger Within: Militant Islam in America”). I argued there that
The Muslim population in this country is not like any other group, for it includes within it a substantial body of people—many times more numerous than the agents of Osama bin Ladin—who share with the suicide hijackers a hatred of the United States and the desire, ultimately, to transform it into a nation living under the strictures of militant Islam.
The receptivity indeed was greater, but still the idea of an Islamist takeover remains unrecognized in establishment circles – the U.S. government, the old media, the universities, the mainline churches.
Therefore, reading “A rare look at secretive Brotherhood in America,” in the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 19 caused me to startle. It’s a long analysis that draws on an exclusive interview with Ahmed Elkadi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader in the United States during 1984-94, plus other interviews and documentation. In it, the authors (Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe, and Laurie Cohen) warily but emphatically acknowledge the Islamists’ goal of turning the United States into an Islamic state.
Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Koran and discuss events of the day. But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well. …
Brotherhood members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day—perhaps generations from now—a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law.
This Brotherhood approach is in keeping with my observation that the greater Islamist threat to the West is not violence – flattening buildings, bombing railroad stations and nightclubs, seizing theaters and schools – but the peaceful, legal growth of power through education, the law, the media, and the political system.
The Tribune article explains how, when recruiting new members, the organization does not reveal its identity but invites candidates to small prayer meetings where the prayer leaders focus on the primary goal of the Brotherhood, namely “setting up the rule of God upon the Earth” (i.e., achieving Islamic hegemony). Elkadi describes the organization’s strategic, long-term approach: “First you change the person, then the family, then the community, then the nation.”
His wife Iman is no less explicit; all who are associated with the Brotherhood, she says, have the same goal, which is “to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state.”
In addition to Elkadi, the article features information from Mustafa Saied (about whose Muslim Brotherhood experiences the Wall Street Journal devoted a feature story in December 2003, without mentioning the organization’s Islamist goals). Saied, the Tribune informs us, says
he found out that the U.S. Brotherhood had a plan for achieving Islamic rule in America: It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office. “They’re very smart. Everyone else is gullible,” Saied says. “If the Brotherhood puts up somebody for an election, Muslims would vote for him not knowing he was with the Brotherhood.”
Citing documents and interviews, the Tribune team notes that the secretive Brotherhood, in an effort to acquire more influence, went above ground in Illinois in 1993, incorporating itself as the Muslim American Society. The MAS, headquartered in Alexandria, Va. and claiming 53 chapters across the United States engages in a number of activities. These include summer camps, a large annual conference, websites, and the Islamic American University, a mainly correspondence school in suburban Detroit that trains teachers and imams.
Of course, the MAS denies any intent to take over the country. One of its top officials, Shaker Elsayed, insists that
MAS does not believe in creating an Islamic state in America but supports the establishment of Islamic governments in Muslim lands. The group’s goal in the United States, he says, “is to serve and develop the Muslim community and help Muslims to be the best citizens they can be of this country.” That includes preserving the Muslim identity, particularly among youths.
Notwithstanding this denial, the Tribune finds MAS goals to be clear enough:
Part of the Chicago chapter’s Web site is devoted to teens. It includes reading materials that say Muslims have a duty to help form Islamic governments worldwide and should be prepared to take up arms to do so. One passage states that “until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful.” Another one says that Western secularism and materialism are evil and that Muslims should “pursue this evil force to its own lands” and “invade its Western heartland.” [links added by me, DP]
In suburban Rosemont, Ill., several thousand people attended MAS’ annual conference in 2002 at the village’s convention center. One speaker said, “We may all feel emotionally attached to the goal of an Islamic state” in America, but it would have to wait because of the modest Muslim population. “We mustn’t cross hurdles we can’t jump yet.”
These revelations are particularly striking, coming as they do just days after a Washington Post article titled “In Search Of Friends Among The Foes,” which reports how some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials believe the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence “offers an opportunity for political engagement that could help isolate violent jihadists.” Graham Fuller is quoted saying that “It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world. It’s something we can work with.” Demonizing the Brotherhood, he warns, “would be foolhardy in the extreme.” Other analysts, such as Reuel Gerecht, Edward Djerejian, and Leslie Campbell, are quoted as being in agreement with this outlook.
But it is a deeply wrong and dangerous approach. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood is not specifically associated with violence in the United States (as it has been in other countries, including Egypt and Syria), it is deeply hostile to the United States and must be treated as one vital component of the enemy’s assault force.
Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and author of Miniatures (Transaction Publishers).
Ditto!
IMHO, this is the big picture President Bush and his Cabinet see and its down right frightening for Americans not to believe these Muslims have deep pockets, patience, left wing naive American supporters and the ability to infiltrate our Country in the name of freedom.
Right on when you say WAKE UP AMERICA!
"I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights or any other element of this society that is held sacrosanct by the ill-informed peoples that make up this charade of a society. . . ." Cat Stevens talking about the USA ---- these people are very very dangerous --- even if they pose as pacifists. They mean to destroy this country.
ISLAMERICA
"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.
"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."
-- Winston Churchill
Well said.
There are more practicing Muslims than practicing Anglicans today in England. France is a basket case, and Germany, with high unemployment, is being overrun with their Turkish "arbeiters," who were brought into Germany when they needed workers, now do not want to go back to Turkey even with financial incentives because they know that they live better in a Christian country than in Turkey.
That is okay according to Islam, though. Blasphemy in Islam is not smearing Allah, but it is smearing Mohammed. Punishment is death.
Thought provoking article. Thanks for posting it.
It would seem that the true purpose of Islam is dedicating itself to imposing its laws on everyone everywhere and turning every place it goes into a blooming rock pile -with bored militant men blowing up those rock piles and making even smaller rock piles and women dressed like crows smothering in the sweltering heat scurrying furtively about those little rock piles dodging the bored men and the explosions they create. Paradise!
A good book I'm reading . . "Onward Muslim Soldiers" by Robert Spencer clears it up if you're still confused.
The God I know is definitely not the spiteful, angry, vengeful, mean, hateful God worshipped by those bored terrorists fascinated by their terror. The bit of Koran I've seen has no affinity for those of us who love a God who dies for US. This is just the lie they want us to fall for.
"I'd be in favor of banning the practice of Islam in America. Simply tell the people that they've got sixty days to find another religion, or another country."
Uhm. . last time I looked that would be unconstitutional. The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion and I'm not willing to give that up.
Yes...and?
[Moderate] Voices of Islam
by Daniel Pipes
New York Post
September 23, 2003
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1255
"You will sooner or later pay for your pack of lies," read one threatening message last week to the author of The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-up Call for Honesty and Change.
In that book, just released in Canada, Irshad Manji, 34, explores such usually taboo themes as anti-Semitism, slavery and the inferior treatment of women with what she calls an "utmost honesty."
"Grow up!" she scolds Muslims. "And take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam."
Although a TV journalist and personality, Manji - a practicing Muslim - brings real insight to her subject. "I appreciate that every faith has its share of literalists. Christians have their Evangelicals. Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For God's sake, even Buddhists have fundamentalists. But what this book hammers home is that only in Islam is literalism mainstream."
For her efforts, Manji has been called "self-hating," "irrelevant," "a Muslim sellout" and a "blasphemer." She is accused of both "denigrating Islam" and dehumanizing Muslims.
This outpouring of hostility prompted Manji to hire a guard and install bullet proof glass in her house. The Toronto police acknowledge "a very high level of awareness" about her security.
Manji's predicament is unfortunately all too typical of what courageous, moderate, modern Muslims face when they speak out against the scourge of militant Islam. Her experience echoes the threats against the lives of such writers as Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen.
And non-Muslims wonder why anti-Islamist Muslims in western Europe and North America are so quiet?
Anti-Islamist Muslims - who wish to live modern lives, unencumbered by burqas, fatwas and violent visions of jihad - are on the defensive and atomized. However eloquent, their individual voices cannot compete with the roar of militant Islam's determination, money (much of it from overseas) and violence. As a result, militant Islam, with its West-phobia and goal of world hegemony, dominates Islam in the West and appears to many to be the only kind of Islam.
But anti-Islamist Muslims not only exist; in the two years since 9/11, they have increasingly found their voice. They are a varied lot, sharing neither a single approach nor one agenda. Some are pious, some not, and others are freethinkers or atheists. Some are conservative, others liberal. They share only a hostility to the Wahhabi, Khomeini and other forms of militant Islam.
They are starting to produce books that challenge the Islamists' totalitarian vision. Abdelwahab Meddeb of the Sorbonne wrote the evocatively titled Malady of Islam, in which he compares militant Islam to Nazism. Akbar Ahmed of American University wrote Islam Under Siege, calling for Muslims to respect non-Muslims.
Other outspoken academics include Saadollah Ghaussy formerly of Sophia University in Tokyo, Husain Haqqani of the Brookings Institution, Salim Mansur of the University of Western Ontario and Khaleel Mohammad of San Diego State University.
Journalists such as Tashbih Sayyid of Pakistan Today and Stephen Schwartz (who has written for The Post and The Weekly Standard, among others) are on the front lines against militant Islam in the United States, as is the writer Khalid Durán. Tahir Aslam Gora has the same role in Canada. The ex-Muslim who goes by the pseudonym Ibn Warraq has written a series of books intended to embolden Muslims to question their faith.
A number of organizations are anti-Islamist, including the Islamic Supreme Council of America, the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, the American Islamic Congress and Shi'ite organizations, such as the Society for Humanity and Islam in America. A number of Turkish organizations have a determinedly secular cast, including the Atatürk Society and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations.
Some anti-Islamists have acquired public roles. Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Holland, who has called Islam a "backward" religion, is a member of the Dutch parliament. Naser Khader in Denmark is also a member of parliament and a secularist who calls for full Muslim integration with the Danes.
The weak standing of anti-Islamist Muslims has two major implications.
For them to be heard over the Islamist din requires help from the outside - celebration by governments, grants from foundations, recognition by the media and attention from the academy.
Those same institutions must shun the now-dominant militant Islamic establishment. Moderates have a chance to be heard when Islamists are repudiated.
Promoting anti-Islamists and weakening Islamists is crucial if a moderate and modern form of Islam is to emerge in the West.
Excellent Valin....Daniel Pipes also has another article concerning Tariq Ramadan.
The problem is that when Daneil Pipes posts an article on radical Islamists, it's usually taken out of context to mean all Muslims. Unfortunately it's not people like Pipes who want us to think all the Muslims are the same, but people like Osama Bin Laden, Zaqhawi, the ranking Mullahs in Iran, and other Islamists. People like Pipes have consistently said to the contrary.
Eurabia
> Cat Stevens proves his lack of intelligence. The God in Christianity and the Allah of Islam are the same God.
I agree he's not very intelligent. However, the God of Christianity is the triune Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit. Islam actually blasphemes and reviles Jesus Christ by saying He was not God, was not crucified, and was not resurrected. Jesus is Lord and God. The god of Islam is a figment or a demon.
What can Muslims in Britain and other non-Muslim countries do to re-establish the Khilafah?
The Prophet said: "Al Muslimoon Ummatun Waahida Bilaadahum Waahida wa Harbahum Waahida" ("The Muslims are one Ummah, their land is one land and their war is one war.")
O Muslims in Britain and Muslims in the West, we must take heed from these words of Rasuululah . We must realise that we are part of the global Muslim Ummah and not British Muslims or Western Muslims. We should not localise our vision and forget the problems of the Muslims worldwide whether they are in Palestine, Chechnya or Pakistan. We should not become integrated into the corrupt Western society and accept their diseased notions of democracy, freedom and Capitalism.
Allah (swt) warned us in the Quran, "Wa lan tarda ankal yahuudu walan nassara hata tatabi' millatuhum" ("The Jews and the Christans will never be pleased with you until you follow their Millah (their way or their Deen)"}
So what can the Muslims of Britain and the West do to aid the work for the re-establishment of the Khilafah and the resumption of the Islamic way of life? No-one is seriously attempting to re-establish the Khilafah in the UK. The role of the Muslims in Britain and other Western countries is to support the work of the Muslims in the Muslim lands. There are a number of things we can do to facilitate the dawah.
1) The Prophet said, "Baligu ani walaw ayah" "Even if you know one verse (ayah), propagate it"
So one of our main tasks is to propagate this Da'wa for Khilafah to all Muslims that we know.
If we are teachers we must convey it to our students.
If we are writers or journalists we must write to the Muslim media and explain how the solution to the problems facing the Muslims is the re-establishment of the Khilafah which will return the implementation of Islam to the globe.
If we are Ulema and Imam's of the Masaajid then we should speak the Haqq on the minbar and not detach Islam from politics as the Kuffar want us to.
If we are mothers we must groom the Islamic vision and mentality within our children and families.
No matter who we are, we all have a part to play in this noble work to rid the world from the shackles of kufr and to implement Islam.
2) Allah (swt) said, "Wa anzir asheeratakal akrabeen" "And warn your tribe of nearest kindred"
So we must convey the call for Khilafah and the necessary Islamic concepts to our families, and many of us have families in the Muslim world whether in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Turkey or any of the Muslim lands. The Muslims of Britain often go to the Muslim lands to visit relatives, for holidays, for marriages, for special occasions.
We can directly aid the da'wa in the Islamic lands by contacting our relatives abroad and carry the message to them. You can send the leaflets, magazines, books and various publications in order to aid their understanding.
We must contact our families whether they are in the army, whether they are politicians or whether they are farmers. The voice of all the Muslims count. We should not forget this.
Indeed Muslims of Britain have already participated in helping the work for Khilafah in many Muslims countries including Pakistan, Egypt and Syria just to name a few.
3) We must contact all transient people coming from the Muslim world and carry the message to them
Thousands of Muslims from all over the globe visit this country and the Western world every year to study in universities, to train with British companies, to attend military exercises, to visit their relatives, or as tourists.
Indeed when some of them hear of the Da'wa for Khilafah in Britain through literature, circles and public talks, it has an effect on them as they are shocked to see people calling for the re-establishment of the Islamic system from the heartland of kufr. It even makes them question Western society which is painted in such a golden way in the Muslim world.
You never know who's going to walk in and attend. It could well be a visitor who may never have come into contact with Islam in general or the call for Khilafah while he was back home. When he goes home and tells his people that "in London, the Muslims were talking about re-establishing the Islamic state!" this raises the profile of the dawah tremendously.
We must initiate discussions with these people whether they are simple tourists, leaders of Islamic groups or Pakistani politicians.
When we are with such people, we can preform the dawah just as though we are in the Muslim lands. There are few differences. It is not as though the Muslims here are totally a separate case from those in Saudi or Syria or Pakistan or Turkey. Especially if they are here for a short time with a view of re-entering the Muslim lands.
So, by talking to the Muslim in the mosque in Britain, you are giving him ideas, thoughts, a vision which he may naturally convey to his family and friends either here in the UK or in the Muslim lands. So, indirectly, by making dawah to the contacts of people in Muslim lands, you are making dawah to the Muslim lands.
For doing these, we can write book, leaflets, make videos, websites, etc. to carry the dawah to the return of the Khilafah (i.e. the Second stage, as described above), just as though we were in the Muslim lands. There is no limitation in this respect by virtue of not being in Muslim lands.
4) We can contact Muslims who are in positions of technological knowledge, so that they may understand their role when the Khilafah is re-established.
5) The dawah (in the Muslims lands and in the West) requires money. A lot of it. The dawah carriers calling from Khilafah must be free from the current governments, NGOs, agencies etc. and all the money must be generated by the dawah carriers themselves.
The Prophet said, "Man mata laysa fi uniqihi bay'ah mata maytan Jahilliya" "Whosoever dies without a bay'ah on their neck dies the death of Jahilliya (ignorance)" So it is Fard for all Muslims whether young or old, male or female to work to re-establish the Khilafah so that we can give the bay'ah to the Khalifah and not die in a state of sinfulness. And this Fard cannot be achieved only by an individual working by himself. Rather this Fard requires a group to establish it.
As Allah (swt) said in the Quran: "Waltakunminkum Ummatun yad'uuna ilal khair wa ya maruuna bil ma Roof wa yanhawna anil munkar wa ulaaika humul muflihoon" "Let there arise from you a group, who calls to the khair, enjoins the Ma' roof (goodness) and forbids the Munkar (evil). They are the ones who are successful." [TMQ 3:104]
Dear brothers and sisters we invite you to work with Hizb ut-Tahrir and participate in achieving its noble aim of liberating the Ummah from the shackles of colonialism and implementing Islam. I hope you can see that there is a lot we can do to support the work to re-establish the Khilafah and that being here is not life in the slow lane, or a marginal role in the dawah.
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