Islam is today the fastest growing faith in the Western world, and nearly 20 million inhabitants of the European Union are self-avowedly Moslems. If present trends continue, by 2020 Moslems will account for 10% of the overall population of Europe, and exceed ten million in America. This population is expanding by immigration and an enormous birth rate that far exceeds that of the indigenous population.

What is happening today is nothing like the wave of immigration to America that took place in the 1880’s and 1890’s. That was not clandestine, and it was not based on the presumed right of the newcomers to bully the citizens of the United States into submitting to their religion and killing them if they proved reluctant to do so.

There was never any act of any Western legislature inviting, let alone urging illegal Moslem immigrants to come.

“What occurred was not an immigration, it was more of an invasion conducted under an emblem of secrecy--a secrecy that’s disturbing because it’s not meek and dolorous but arrogant and protected by the cynicism of politicians who close an eye or maybe even both.” [1]

Most Moslem migrant workers initially expected to spend only a brief period of their lives in the industrial West. The old reluctance to submit to life under the unbelievers was overcome by the lure of economic opportunity. In 30 years, the Moslem population of Great Britain rose from 82,000 to two million. In Germany there are four million Moslems, mostly Turks, and over five million across the Rhine in France, mostly North Africans. There are a million Moslems each in Italy and the Netherlands, and half-a-million in Spain.

Almost a tenth of all babies born in EU countries are Moslem. With the expanding numbers and the creation of distinctly Moslem neighborhoods in Western, primarily European cities, the initial detachment of culture from territory has been reversed and the bold notion of conquest by demographic rather than military means entered the activists’ minds. The blueprint was developed over two decades ago, in 1981, when the Third Islamic Summit Conference of Kaaba adopted the “Mecca Declaration.” It stated:

“We have resolved to conduct Jihad with all the means at our disposal so as to free our territory from occupation."

“We declare that the oppression suffered by Moslem minorities and communities in many countries is a flagrant offence against the rights and dignity of man."

"We appeal to all states in which there are Islamic minorities to allow them full liberty."

“We are convinced of the need to propagate the precepts of Islam and its cultural influence in Moslem societies and throughout the world.”

In the ensuing two decades, a new mosque was opened somewhere in the Western world every week. As far as the activists in Mecca were concerned, this did not mean that the Moslems in those countries were not “oppressed,” however. In Islam, Moslem minorities are oppressed as long as they are not governed by sharia or Islamic law, which is the only “full liberty” possible. The signers of this Declaration openly oppressed non-Moslem communities in their own lands, or prevented them from being established at all.

The number of Moslems in the United States has grown threefold since the Mecca Declaration, to about three million. (We can disregard, for now, the inflated claims of six, seven, or even ten million, made by various Islamic activists.) That number is rising, overwhelmingly through immigration rather than conversion. Already at the time of the first WTC attack in 1993, it was obvious that belligerent Islam had a firm foothold within the Moslem diaspora in the United States. That foothold has grown in numbers, power, and political savvy over the ensuing decade.

Nevertheless, over the years the U.S. government had been unfathomably lax in allowing entry not only to hundreds of thousands Moslem immigrants – many of them from countries considered risky or openly unfriendly to U.S. interests – but also to supporters and propagators of radical Islam, or agents of terrorist regimes and organizations. It allowed many terrorists and their supporters to enter the United States on fraudulently obtained student visas that camouflaged their true purpose. Others come and go for shorter periods, including clerics and leaders of radical Islamic groups who come to attend conferences organized by militant groups in the U.S. but whose real purpose is to recruit new members, raise funds, coordinate strategies with other militant leaders, indoctrinate new ‘foot soldiers’ and even participate in training sessions.

A decade and several thousand American lives later, President Bush restated the failed orthodoxy during a visit to a mosque on September 17:

“America counts millions of Moslems among our citizens, and Moslems make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country.”

Two days later, he added that,

“there are millions of good Americans who practice the Moslem faith who love their country as much as I love the country, who salute the flag as strongly as I salute the flag.”

Perhaps Mr. Bush should see the popular Iranian film Not Without My Daughter, in which an immigrant “dad” assures his little girl that he is as American as an apple pie, yet he could revert at any moment to as strict a Moslem as any Ayatollah. Mr. Bush chooses to believe the Western fantasy that all human beings are fundamentally consumers – tame, materialistic, shallow in religion and ready to brought to political cooperation by the standard system of hand-outs that is the modern liberal state – a proposition contradicted by almost all of human history prior to the last two generations of Westerners.

The consequences of this delusion have been grave. By early 2000, the United States and Canada had become the home for a wide spectrum of international Islamic terrorist groups as well as indigenous groups, which are the primary threat of international terrorism on American soil. They have set up fundraising operations, political headquarters, military recruitment, and sometimes even command and control centers. [2] The entire spectrum of Islamic terrorist groups operated on American soil, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Algerian Armed Islamic Group, the Egyptian Al Gamat Al Islamiya, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Liberation Party, the Marxist Kurdish PKK and Al-Qaeda. They all share the outlook frankly stated during his FBI interrogation by Siddiq Ibrahim Siddiq Ali, one of the suspects in the first World Trade Center bombing:

“Of course, don’t forget God said in the Koran, in times like this, everything is lawful to the Moslem, their money, their women, their honors, everything… Infidels must be killed… and the Moslem when he dies it is the way to heaven. He becomes a martyr. A Moslem will never go to hell by killing an infidel.” [3]

The pattern was set over the preceding decade, and has its model in the tawheed – the Moslem conquest of Arabia – and the fatah, the early Moslem conquests.

It was then that the concept of “dodging the threat,” al-taqiya, was developed. It encouraged Moslems to use subterfuge to defeat the enemy. They were ordered to infiltrate the enemy’s cities and plant the seeds of discord and sedition. Taqiya in our own time is reflected in the attempts by Moslem activists in the West to present Islam favorably replete with tolerance and peace, faith and charity, equality and brotherhood. The “misunderstood Moslems” tell us that jihad is really the “striving for Allah” and “inner struggle.” They quote the abrogated Meccan verses and keep quiet about the later, Medinan ones. They lie.

Ismail Al-Faruqi, a Palestinian immigrant who founded the International Institute of Islamic Thought and taught for many years at Temple University in Philadelphia, was also the first contemporary theorist of the Islamic Caliphate of America. He declared in 1983 that “nothing could be greater than this youthful, vigorous, and rich continent [North America] turning away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar.” In December 1989 several extremist leaders attended a rally at Chicago, including Bashir Nafi, the funding member of Islamic Jihad, and Abdul Aziz Odeh, its spiritual leader.

After meeting with that noted Moslem “heretic” Louis Farrakhan in 1996, Libyan president Muammar Kaddafi said: “We are used to facing the United States as a fortress from the outside. Now we are finding a breech to penetrate the country and confront it from within.” [4] When the leader of the Nation of Islam visited Iran on the anniversary of the fundamentalist revolution, he declared that,

“God will destroy America by the hand of the Moslems. God will not give this honor to Japan or to Europe. It is an honor that He will reserve for the Moslems.”

One year later in Harlem, Farrakhan declared,

“A decree of death has been passed on America. The judgment of God has been rendered and she must be destroyed.” [5]

The visitors who arrive on visas issued by the U.S. embassies and consulates are as bellicose as the resident Moslem activists. Ahmad Nawfal, a Jordanian who was a frequent speaker at Islamic rallies throughout the United States in the 1990s, drew cheers for saying that America has “no thought, no values, and no ideals” and declaring that if Moslems stand up, “it will be very easy for us to preside over this world once again.” In June 1991 the innocuously named United Association for Studies and Research, based in Virginia and operated by Musa Abu Marzook, one of the top three officials of Hamas, co-sponsored one of the largest gatherings of Islamist militants ever held in the US. It included Kamal Hilbawi, the leader of the Moslem brotherhood of Egypt, who openly advocated terrorist attacks. [6] Bassam Al-Amoush, a top pan-Islamist leader and MP from Jordan, who used similar rhetoric in Chicago in 1994, subsequently had meetings at the State department and on Capitol Hill - courtesy of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

The list goes on, and justifies the conclusion of a witness at the House of Representatives hearing on terrorism and immigration in January 2000,

“As water seeking its own level, terrorists will gravitate to those areas that give them the greatest freedom to maneuver. Unless choked off and stopped along the different points of entry – ranging from the visa granting process overseas to the hundreds of unmanned border crossing points between Canada and the United States--terrorists will continue to come to the United States.” [7]

The unpleasant truth is that mosques throughout America and around the Western world are being used to teach hate. In the first instance they promote the most outwardly visible form of Islamic piety, the one that focuses on Islamic ritual and practice in the immigrants’ daily lives.

Radical Moslems dominate the Islamic life in the United States, to the point that moderates, even if they exist, hardly have a voice. They control every major Moslem organization, including the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Islamic Circle of North America, the Islamic Committee for Palestine, the Islamic Society for North America, the Moslem Arab Youth Association, the Moslem Public Affairs Council, and the Moslem Students Association. They also control a growing majority of mosques, weekly newspapers, and communal organizations.

They are funded by the Iranians, Libyans, and Saudis, who have for years helped the most extreme groups. The moderates do exist, but they tend to go out into the world and to avoid confronting the fanatical “community leaders.” Islamist groups found they could manipulate the American public and politicians hiding under non-profit ‘religious charities,’ self-defined religious umbrellas and the politically correct buzzword of human rights. [8] Their friends and allies have even managed to join the armed forces of the United States, and continue their subversive activities not only from within America but also from within its defense establishment. [9]

Corruption attracts corruption: Moslem leaders are courted by politicians – primarily those belonging to the Democrat camp - who are no more squeamish about their client-base as Unocal executives. On at least two occasions Hillary Clinton hosted receptions organized by Moslem Public Affairs Council, a group that has promoted the activities of Hamas, Turkey’s fundamentalist Welfare Party, and the Moslem Brotherhood. Its officials have defended Hezbollah, while publicly insisting that they condemn terrorism. They raise tens of millions of dollars a year, much of it through 501-c-3s, and much of that money is then funneled to overseas radical Islamic groups. Ms. Clinton had to return $50,000 received from MPAC – the Jewish vote in New York was at risk – but she justified her contacts by claiming that she was trying “to promote a framework for peace,” that included “lines of communication to many different groups and many different individuals.” [10]

Perhaps this is just the post-modern way of expressing the old delusion that in a dangerous world, one can be friends with everybody if one only practices goodwill.

Notes

[1] "Anger and Pride" by Oriana Fallaci, Corriere della Sera, September 29, 2001

[2] United States House of Representatives: House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, Hearing on International Terrorism and Immigration Policy, January 25, 2000, Testimony of Steven Emerson.

[3] UPI, August 23, 1993.

[4] Le Monde, February 26, 1996.

[5] New York Amsterdam News, August 14-20, 1997.

[6] commdocs.house.gov/committees/judiciary/hju64355.000/hju64355_0.htm.

[7] House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, Hearing on International Terrorism and Immigration Policy, January 25, 2000, Testimony of Steven Emerson.

[8] www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/3450/terrorists.html

[9] www.newsobserver.com/monday/front/Story/831377p-821059c.html, October 21, 2001, "Al-Qaeda terrorist duped FBI, Army."

[10] "Hillary's Outreach" by Steven Emerson. Jewish World Review, November 6, 2000.

*****

Robert Locke is Associate Editor of Front Page Magazine.

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Serge Trifkovic received his PhD from the University of Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past journalistic outlets have included the BBC World Service, the Voice of America, CNN International, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is foreign affairs editor of Chronicles.

His books about Islam are:

The Sword of the Prophet: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and
Defeating Jihad: How the War on Terror May Yet Be Won, in Spite of Ourselves

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The Trifkovic Series:

Part 1.           The Golden Age of Islam is a Myth
Part 2.           Islam's Other Victims: India
Part 3.           Islam's Wretched Record on Slavery
Part 4.           Islamism's Other Victims: The Tragedy of East Timor
Part 5.           Do Moslems, Christians & Jews Believe in the Same God?
Part 6.           Islam's Nazi Connections
Part 7.           The Moral Problem of Islamic Ethics
Part 8.           Islam: the Folly of Appeasement
Part 9.           Islam's Other Victims: Wars Against Christians
Part 10.         Saudi Arabia, False Friend
Part 11.         The Stupidity of Dialogue With Islam
Part 12.         Pakistan, A Questionable Friend
Part 13.         Islam's Immigrant Invasion of Europe
Part 14.         Jihad's Fifth Column in the West
Part 15.         Islam's Love-Hate Relationship with Homosexuality
Part 16.         Realism About Turkey
Part 17.         Islam's Other Victims: Africa

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