Missing The Salafi Forest & The War Of Ideas Through Pam Geller's Trees

Seth Leibsohn: I want to get to . . . the appropriateness . . . of [Pam Geller's "Draw Mohammed" contest] on Sunday even before the shooting began. . . .

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser: Well, I do think, the analogy I like to use is a drunk who's walking through the streets and has anger and violent tendencies. Then someone decides to go up and poke him in the eye and . . . where is the problem? The problem is in the drunk. Why is he drinking, why does he have a substance problem and why is he violent. And that's what I'm dedicated to. Now, was it smart to poke him in the eye? I guess yes. He's running fifty-six countries and a quarter of the world's population, and he's distributing in an organized fashion that toxin that I call political Islam through a draconian form of Shariah [law] that needs reform, I think it's relevant . . .

Russ Douthat said it the best, in the NYT of all places, in January when he wrote a piece on the "blasphemy we need." He wrote that, if a large enough group . . . is willing to kill you for saying something, then it is something that certainly needs to be said. . . .

The greatest blasphemy in Islam is denying God, and these people aren't killing atheist conventions. . . . If you go to the Supreme Court in [Washington, D.C.], there are busts of people who have contributed to Western law. There is a bust in the Supreme Court . . . of Mohammed - at our Supreme Court. No one is having a big deal out of that. So the issue is Islamo-nationalism. The criticism of the Prophet Mohammed through a caricature is like burning the Islamist flag, and that's why they get all enraged. It's nothing about major theological offense. Yes, we can't have images of the prophet because of fear of deification of Mohammed, but it's all about theo-politics and not about, necessarily, theology. . . .

Seth Leibsohn radio interview of Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, 5 May 2015.

. . . Salafism robs young Muslims of their soul, it turns Western communities against them, and it can end in civil war as Muslims attempt to implement shari'a in their host countries. A peaceful interpretation of Islam is possible, but the Salafi establishment is currently blocking moderate theological reform. The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.

Tawfiq Hamid, Egyptian born physician, former terrorist and now author, 2008, Interview in the Jerusalem Post

Pam Geller's 'Draw Mohammed' contest does not raise a legitimate issue of freedom of speech. No one can contest that, under the First Amendment, she has a right to hold such a contest. That is a no brainer. The argument that has been raised by some on the left is that Geller's speech is likely to cause violence by those who are perpetually outraged. Anyone who knows the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence knows that such is not a legitimate ground to stop Ms. Geller's speech. What is really going on here is that our neo-Stalinist left would like to shut down any speech that they don't agree with or that in any way criticizes one of their victim's groups. Give them the finger and move on; their arguments are not worthy of anything more than ridicule.

Update: Megyn Kelly, Alan Dershowitz and others agree with my assessment of Constitutional law on this issue:



Everyone seems to be missing the far more important issue - that what is going on here is a "war of ideas" in Islam and our government has ceded that war to the enemy. Pam Geller's contest demonstrated it. Dr. Jasser explains what is actually happening -- that the Salafists' who demonstrate murderous outrage over the Draw Mohammed contest have no moral standing and their outrage is not theological in its nature, it is political. It is the murderous outrage that comes from Salafist Muslims bent on stopping any criticism of their toxic, triumphalist, and politicized interpretation of Islam and bent on preventing any reform, even as they spill blood by the tons around the world in an effort to impose a caliphate. Countering that requires engaging in the war of ideas.

There is little doubt that Obama has - and continues to - completely mishandle of our engagement in the Middle East. But even more harmful has been his utter retreat from any engagement in the war of ideas, to the point, one, of refusing to call Islamic terrorism by its name, and two, by excusing Islamic terrorism on the grounds of moral equivalence with the Crusades of near a millennium ago.

As I wrote in 2009 and as still very much applicable today:

The physical war on terror is necessary to stop the [threat] of immediate [attacks to our nation]. But it is in the war of ideas that the true battle lies, for if we do not stop the radicalization of Muslims, then the war on terror will never end. Ultimately, as Tom Friedman recently opined, this is a battle that must be fought within the four corners of Islam itself. But that said, we have an existential motivation to insure that the "good side" wins. This is made all the more critical because the good side, if you will, is not winning. The ideology at the heart of [ISIS,] al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups is very much still on the advance.

The threshold issue in the war of ideas is to identify who, as a group, constitutes “radicalized Muslims.” Islam, like Christianity, is subdivided into numerous different sects, many of which, such as Sufi for example, are peaceful and counsel coexistence. Individually, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world, most of whom would make good citizens, good friends, good neighbors and good family members in the West. Only a portion of them become “radicalized” whether as members of al Qaeda, [ISIS,] or some of the other radical Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and Jamat-I-Islami to name but a few. Those who belong to these groups do in fact share a common thread – virtually all are adherents to the Salafi/Wahhabi school of Islam or a school, such as Deobandi, that has been heavily influenced in all relevant respects by Salafism.

There was a time when Salafism was confined to the back waters of Arabia. That changed when the tribe of Saud, in partnership with the tribe of Waahab, conquered Arabia in the 1930's. Within decades, the Sauds became incredibly wealthy on oil. Now, they spend billions annually exporting Salafi clerics, schools and textbooks to the four corners of the world. Consequently, Salafism is becoming the dominant form of Islam and is effecting every major school of Islam. As I wrote in a prior post:

According to official Saudi information, Saudi funds have been used to build and maintain over 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges, 210 Islamic Centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. The North American Islamic Trust - a Wahhabi Salafi organization, owns between 50% and 80% of all mosques in North America. And Salafists are, in many cases, taking over existing Mosques throughout the world. Some very informative expamples include Belgium, Somalia, and Indonesia. And indeed, the Saudi Salafi Islam now exerts significant influence on our educational system, all the way from grade school to university. . . .

The West's premier orientalist, Professor Bernard Lewis - the man who coined the term "clash of civilizations" half a century ago and who predicted the rise of Islamic terrorism years prior to 9-11 - writes in his book "The Crisis of Islam" that the ideology of [Saudi Arabia's] Wahhabi / Salafi Islam is many times worse than that of the“KKK” in terms of bigotry and violence (p. 129). . . . The NYPD, in a 2007 report, “Radicalization In The West” documented Salafism as the common thread and motivating force behind terrorist attacks in the West. Zhudi Jasser, a Muslim reformist, writes on the dangers of Salafism and the efforts to engage it in the war of ideas here. The Center For Islamic Pluralism, a "a think tank that challenges the dominance of American Muslim life by militant Islamist groups," maintains a section on their website called "Wahhabi Watch." Perhaps the most cogent description of Salfism goes back a century, to the observations of Winston Churchill:

A large number of Bin Saud's followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars.

The Wahhabis profess a life of exceeding austerity, and what they practice themselves they rigorously enforce on others. They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahhabi villages for simply appearing in the streets.

It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette and, as for the crime of alcohol, the most energetic supporter of the temperance cause in this country falls far behind them. Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Salafism has remained virtually unchanged since Churchill's observations. It was only a few years ago that the Saudi courts, applying Salafi Sharia law, ordered the victim of a brutal gang rape to suffer 200 lashes and six months in jail for being outside of her home without the escort of a male family member. To this day, hunting witches and breaking spells are the top duties of the Salafi religious police and, when witches are "caught," they are ritually slaughtered. In the Salafi culture of Saudi Arabia, it has been less than 20 years since the kingdom's senior cleric, the Grand Mufti issued a fatwah declaring "the earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment." And then there is the well known Salafi edict that anyone who converts from Islam is to be slaughtered.

As I pointed out in a post here, Islam, unlike Christianity, is a religion that has never gone through a Rennisance, a Reformation or a Period of Enlightenment. And while the mechanism - itjihad - exists that could lead to such an event, the reality is that Salafists are fighting any change to their interpretations of the Koran and Sunnah with every tool at their disposal, up to and including "slaughtering the takfirs." Moreover, they are using the UN to push for blasphemy laws that would shut down all criticism of Salafism in the Western world.

The vitriol, bigotry, and triumphalism of Salafism are taught to students in schools and madrassas across the world – including in American Islamic schools and Salafi prison ministries. Salafi Islam teaches that its adherents can freely murder non-Muslims or enslave them and rape them. Moreover, Salafists hold that challenging their existing Salafi Koranic interpretations are "redda (apostasy) punishable by death . . ." And indeed, for specific references to these doctrines being taught in a Saudi school in Virginia, read the USCIFR report here.

Salafism is the religion of [ISIS], the religion of [al Qaeda], the religion of all the 9-11 hijackers. That said, nothing that I write here is to suggest that all or a majority of Salafists should be stigmatized as radical. But the simple reality we ignore at our peril is that it is from the wellspring of Salafism that virtually all the radicalism of the Muslim world arises.

In the war of ideas, one of the most important steps that Obama could take would be to publicly shine a light on Salafism, both as the feeder for radical Islam and for the barbarity of some of its dogma. That would go very far to starting the type of discussion that could actually bring some semblance of evolution and peaceful change to Salafism. Ignoring Salafism - which, according to ex-CIA agent Bob Baer we have done ever since the 1970's when the Saudi's first began to buy influence in the American body politic - allows it to metastasize in the dark. And it is metastasizing at rapid speed today on the back of Saudi petrodollars. That is a recipe for disaster.

No one should be asking, as a result of Pam Geller's "Draw Mohammed" contest, whether anyone has a First Amendment right to criticize, in any way, shape or form, Saudi Arabia's Salafi Islam. They should be asking why our President is not engaging Islamists in the war of ideas and why he is ceding that ground to the Salafists. It is a mistake that our children and their progeny will be paying dearly for in the decades to come.

Update: Pat Condell discusses a related Mo-toon incident in the UK. It is an exceptional rant.

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The Al-Sisi Interview

Bret Baer: How do you, and how do America's other Arab allies view U.S. leadership in the region now?

Egyptian President al-Sisi: [Pause] . . . Difficult questions . . . .

Fox News Special Report, Interview of Egypt's President al-Sisi, 9 March 2015

The exchange above tells you everything you need to know about Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East. In the language of diplomacy, that is the equivalent of saying "it is completely screwed." And it is.

The Arab nations are under attack from the Wahhabi purists who dream of a caliphate as well as Iran's mad mullahs who dream of exporting the Khomeinist revolution throughout the Middle East and the world. Everything the Obama administration has done has, on one hand, allowed the growth of the Wahhabist Sunni threat, and on the hand, strengthened the hand of the mad mullahs. Morevover, as to Egypt, Obama has suspended most, if not all, military support, including equipment transfers, since the radical Muslim Brotherhood regime of Morsi was overthrown in 2013.

According to Fox News, in another portion of the interview, not shown in the portion posted below, President Sisi "addressed the need for what he called a religious "revolution," urging moderate Muslims around the world to "stand up" against terrorists twisting their religion." It bears repeating that President al-Sisi is the only national leader to call for Islam to reform itself, to do away with the doctrines that are today inspiring Islamic terrorism. (You can see his speech to the clerics at al Azhar University here.) President al-Sisi deserves our full support, not the back of Obama's hand.

Here is the portion of the interview already posted to the net:



Update: Much more on President Sisi's attempts to change how Islam is taught in Egypt at American Thinker.

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Wahhabi Islam & A Muslim's Plan For The War Of Ideas

The war of ideas is the war that matters in regards to Islam. That is the one we need to win or our children's children will still be fighting the radical Islamicists long after we are gone. As I have pointed out for at least a decade, and contrary to what Obama has continuously claimed, the Muslims we are fighting are not motivated by some anamolous interpretation of their religion. They are the true believers in Wahhabi Islam and the schools of Islam Wahhabism has infected. And if that is to end, then we must support reformers who would bring their religion from the 7th century into the 21st.

This today from Zaid Nabulsi, a lawyer writing in the Jordan Times [reprinted in full]:

Enough is enough. It is time to speak out.

“Islam is innocent” is an incomplete sentence. Introspection is needed, for, if we shy away from reality, the alternative will be more images like those we witnessed last Tuesday night, when brave Lt. Muath Al Kasasbeh was burnt to death in a cage.

The inconvenient truth that is overlooked or willfully ignored by apologists for the indefensible is the fact that Wahabism, the cult of mediaeval austerity founded by Ibn Abdul Wahab (1703-1792), has over the last half century been exported to every mosque and school throughout the Muslim world until it completely enveloped mainstream Sunni Islamic teachings.

Wahabism has entirely replaced, and become, Sunni Islam; the two cannot be told apart anymore.

Some Wahabist teachings, which have permeated the air we breathe in the Muslim world, are simply irreconcilable with decent human values, especially the ones that declare that every non-Wahabist is a disposable body whose bloodletting is unproblematic.

So enough of this burial of our heads in the sand. It has become tiresome to keep hearing the unproductive cliché that Islam is innocent after each atrocity committed by devout fanatics who did nothing except execute the exact letter of their textbooks, which order them to slaughter the infidels.

The escapism that mainstream Islam has nothing to do with those atrocities does not hold water anymore because Wahabism and Islam have become indistinguishable.

To understand the crisis of Muslims today, one has to remember that Wahabism exists in several textbooks containing the alleged sayings of the Prophet Mohammad, or books of “Hadith”, revered by so many.

What we must confront is the undeniable fact that it is from many stories found in these books that the unprecedented cruelty of groups such as the so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Al Nusra emanates.

The problem today has nothing to do with the original spirit of Prophet Mohammad’s message. Nor has it anything to do with the tumultuous history of Muslims over 14 centuries, parts of which were no doubt glorious and enlightened.

The catastrophe today is with the visible manifestation of Islam in the modern world, as demonstrated by the prevalent beliefs and practices of many people who call themselves Muslims.

This negative image of Muslims is not all just smoke and no fire. This is what those 120 Islamic scholars who sent a letter to Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi last year could not fathom.

IS did not invent a new Islam. On the contrary, its followers are strict adherents of the same textbooks quoted in that long letter (bizarrely addressed to “Dr Ibrahim Awwad Al Badri”, Baghdadi’s real name, bestowing intellectual respectability upon this mass murderer, as if one were writing a letter to the mayor of Copenhagen).

In fact, the scholars’ letter was a misguided attempt to disinfect Wahabism, to cleanse it from itself, by claiming that IS simply misinterpreted texts that are otherwise compatible with human decency.

In that sense, the letter squabbled over the semantics of the alleged instructions by the Prophet to spread Islam by the sword, but it did not dare renounce the authenticity of those same sayings.

Instead, the scholars argued that IS has simply taken those instructions out of context, and so they addressed the devotees of Ibn Taymiyah (the mentor of Wahabism, 1263-1328) with counterarguments based on those same problematic Ibn Taymiyah texts that IS employed to justify its barbarity.

The truth of the matter is that, faced with the IS and Nusra atrocities, Muslims cannot afford to give Wahabism a facelift.

If we truly want to defend Islam, we need to perform a much more invasive surgery.

Take the Muslim Brotherhood as an example of the prevalence of the Wahabist teachings among Muslims today.

The Brotherhood is the virtual womb that incubated all the current jihadist groups, including Al Qaeda itself (Al Zawahiri hailed from the Egyptian MB offshoot that murdered president Anwar Sadat).

Yet, when Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was killed in 2006, the three most senior leaders of the MB in Jordan brazenly visited the condolence house in Zarqa and announced to the media that Zarqawi was a martyr in the eyes of God, despite Zarqawi having blown up three hotels in Amman the previous year, killing scores of Jordanians going about their lives or celebrating a peaceful wedding.

We need not go too far back.

More recently, former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi, of the MB, committed much worse deeds than his Jordanian counterparts while he was briefly in office, using his pardon prerogatives to release the murderers who carried out the 1997 Luxor massacre of 62 elderly European tourists.

Not only that, Morsi even appointed the leader of that group as a governor of Luxor itself.

The MB in Jordan, despite their token condemnation of the immolation of Kasasbeh, still refuse to describe him as a martyr.

Some may counter that it is poverty and economics, not Wahabist doctrine, that explain why so many Muslims are supportive of such murderous trends. This simply defies the facts.

The orgy of decapitations in Syria over the last four years was promoted by very rich Sunni clerics such as Yusuf Al Qaradawi and Mohammad Al Uraifi, aided by the countless satellite stations openly calling for the murder of Alawites and Shiites, and financed by billions from extremely wealthy but hateful Muslims.

So, enough with the denials. It is time to raise the alarm. We have a problem!

It is not a coincidence that for over a decade we, Muslims, dominated the world record in mindless televised massacres.

There is obviously a propensity towards eliminating “the other”, imbedded deep within Wahabist ideology.

It is not only foolish to deny this fact, it is also dangerous, for we would be covering the cancerous tumour with a bandage.

What we cannot deny is that many of the Wahabist textbooks are the same operating manuals that Islamist butchers use to justify their savagery.

For example, very few people know that while Muath was being set on fire in that macabre video, the voiceover was a recitation of an Ibn Taymiyah fatwa deeming the incineration of unbelievers a legitimate act of jihad.

Ibn Taymiyah is not some obscure scholar on the fringe of Sunni Islam. In the Sunni world, he is universally venerated with the title “Sheikh of Islam”, elevating him to an almost infallible clerical status.

If we really want to defend Islam as a religion of mercy, if we really want to be believed when we proclaim the innocence of this religion, we need to do more than just repeat this meaningless mantra about us having nothing to do with IS.

We have to muster the courage to identify the specific texts that actually defame Islam, denounce them and permanently cleanse Islamic tradition of them.

Amen. This is what our nation's government should be giving its full throated support. Obama's claim that Islamic terrorism is separate and apart from Islam is not merely wholly at odds with reality, it works against people such as Mr. Nabulsi who would reform their religion in a war of ideas.

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Islam & The Battlefield Of Ideas

"[Obama] is insulting, I think, to many millions of reform-minded Muslims who are trying to reject and push back theocracy," he told Fox News on Wednesday. "And the leader of the free world in the meantime is saying, 'Well, these terror groups are sort of coming out of thin air and it's just sort of a crime, education and a job problem' -- which is absurd and oversimplifying."

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, quoted in Obama accused of skirting Islamic extremist threat, at ‘summit without substance’, Fox News, 19 Feb. 2015

In what has to qualify as the understatement of the year, George Condon at the National Journal writes that Obama and his administration are "struggl[ing] with the language of terrorism." Actually, they're not struggling. They are, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, in "pathalogical denial" of the fact that mainstream Islam is motivating terrorism.



To put this in perspective, the U.S. had decimated al Qaeda by 2008. But in the aftermath, ISIS popped up. And assuming we deal with ISIS, you can rest assured that another alphabet Wahhabi or Twelver Islam organization will rise to take their place. (And do note, while ISIS is a threat, it pales in comparison with the threat posed by a nuclear armed Iran.) We will forever face an increasingly existential threat from Muslims unless and until the Islamic religion is torn out of its 7th century roots. That requires engaging in a war of ideas. But, as the WSJ Editorial Board points out, the "war of ideas" is one "the West refuses to fight."

Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Boko Haram and other jihadist groups are waging more than a military conflict. They are also waging an increasingly successful ideological war for the soul of Islam and its 1.6 billion followers.

Their version of jihad is gaining adherents precisely because it is motivated by an idea that challenges the values and beliefs of moderate Islam, the West and modernity. The free and non-fanatic world won’t win this deeper struggle if the Obama Administration refuses even to acknowledge its nature.

The 9/11 Commission Report put this front and center. Its second chapter, “The Foundation of the New Terrorism,” traces what it calls “ Bin Ladin ’s Appeal in the Islamic World.” It discusses the late al Qaeda leader’s faith in “a return to observance of the literal teachings of the Qur’an and the Hadith.” It underscores bin Laden’s reliance on Muslim theologians, from Ibn Taimiyyah in the 14th century to Sayyid Qutb in the 20th. And it explains how bin Laden turned Islam into a licence for murder. . . .

None of this is denied in the Muslim world, which is well aware of the increasingly radical bent of mainstream Islamist theology. Not for nothing did Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi recently visit Cairo’s al-Azhar university, Sunni Islam’s premier center of religious learning, to warn leading clerics of where Islam is heading: “Let me say it again, we need to revolutionize our religion.”

That’s exactly right, but it’s hard to see how such a revolution might take place—much less who might carry it out—if Islam can barely be mentioned in the context of a conference on “violent extremism.” In his speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama acknowledged that “al Qaeda and ISIL do draw selectively from the Islamic texts,” and he called on Muslim leaders to reject grievance narratives against the West.

But the President also insisted that the West must never grant al Qaeda and Islamic State “the religious legitimacy they seek” by suggesting they are Muslim religious leaders rather than mere terrorists. That’s a fine sentiment, but it elides the fact that the two categories aren’t mutually exclusive. The Islamic State may speak for only a minority of Muslims, but it is nothing if not Islamic in its beliefs, methods and aims. Ignoring that reality for the sake of avoiding injured feelings helps nobody, least of all Islamic State’s many Muslim victims or Islam’s would-be reformers. . . .

To this, add the sentiments of UAE's Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba:

[W]hile ISIL may be the most visible menace, it is not the only threat. Across the region, violent extremists of all stripes have demonstrated their intent to roll back modernity and impose a reign of terror. . . . While military force is necessary, the key to success over the long term will be what happens off the battlefield. . . . . . [M]ilitary might and obstructing funders and fighters will not be enough. ISIL, al Qaeda and other groups are sophisticated modern organizations that use media and social networks to disseminate their ideology of hate and fear. More than provocative propaganda, these messages are nothing other than assassin recruitment ads and digital death threats that must be disrupted. In one of the most effective approaches in this battle of ideas, Muslim leaders are directly confronting and discrediting the extremists who cloak their radical ideas and violent actions in the language of Islam. While often drowned out in US and European media, influential clerics are forcefully speaking out in the region for moderation and tolerance, developing new religious texts and helping to train a new generation of imams. . . ."

And on a final note, there is Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who would define the threat we face not as terrorism, but as "theocrats," getting far closer to reality than the Obama administration:

Terrorism is not an ideology; we are not merely fighting terrorists, we are fighting theocrats.

…If we start to define ourselves as in a war with theocrats, however, then I believe we can begin the process of delivering the military, political, economic – and maybe even the social – policies to counter this threat together, as we have in the past. In the last century, the world faced a series of overwhelming threats: fascism, totalitarianism, cold-war communism. They were studied, however, as concepts, understood and clearly defined. We addressed them, clinically, as ideologies.

So what do we call this new form of ideology, how do we identify it and how do we define it? We must agree the specific terminology and identified characteristics to take us to the very root of the problem we face. For one group alone, we already struggle with an absurdity of titles including Isis, Isil, IS and Da’ish. We see the likes of al-Qaeda and its various offshoots. We have al-Shabab and Boko Haram and that’s before contemplating yet unformed groups of their type that may develop in the future. In each case, however, we continue to hop blindly and haphazardly from one tactical threat to the other, without strategically understanding or categorising our foe. . . .

The Prince's choice of "theorcrats" as the identifying characteristic of the evil we face is subtle indeed. While the various organizations the Prince identifies above are aspirational theocrats, there is only one theocracy extant today, and it happens to be one that has spent the better part of the last thirty years attempting to destabilize Bahrain. That would of course be Iran.

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Benghazi Matters

Finally, 8 months after the murder of four Americans in Benghazi and six months after the election, the media is grudgingly becoming interested at least one leg of the Benghazi scandal - whether the administration lied to the nation in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack. The Obama administration succeeded in their number one priority, running out the clock on Benghazi prior to the election, and since has taken the dual positions that this is all a "political witch hunt" and, in the case of Hillary, that their potential misdeeds or stunning incompetence do not "matter." Reason's Nick Gillespie does a very good short response listing the reasons why it matters:

That is a good summary, but in at least one respect, it provides nowhere near enough emphasis. The worst thing our government has done, under Bush and now exponentially more so under Obama, is to obfuscate the dangerous problems with Islam, and in particular, the dogma and tenets of Wahhabi Islam - the most radical, xenophobic, triumphalist and retrograde force in the world today. It is not that al Qaeda or the brothers Tsarnaev and their ilk are following a perversion of Islam, it is that they are true believers in all the dogma of Wahhabi Islam. Obama - and indeed, most on the left, want to pretend that radical Islam is a rare outlier rather than the single most dominant form of Islam today. I've pontificated on this til I am blue in the face, but suffice it to say, until the problem is addressed honestly and openly, it will not go away, far more Americans will die, and Wahhabi Islam will continue to metastasize throughout the world.

Within that rubric, the causes of the attack in Benghazi, as well as the criminal refusal to provide security commensurate to the threat, matter very much indeed. It goes to the heart of the national security issue of our time - the threat to our nation and our lives from radical Islamists. If Benghazi was merely a rogue movie review conducted with violence that could not be predicted, then the administration really cannot be faulted. If, however, Benghazi represents a failure to accurately see and gauge the threat, than the Benghazi attack is the canary in the coal mine - the warning that, over a decade on from 9-11, we are still not on the track. And that is the most important reason Benghazi matters.

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A Moment Of Perfect Clarity - The Centrality Of Political Islam Is To Conquer All

If there is a recurring theme within political Islam it is the permanent jihad to wipe out any trace of non-Muslim civilization. Once you appreciate that you’ll begin to see the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Mosque built over the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the persecution of Christians in Muslim lands and the spread of “no-go” neighborhoods in Europe in an entirely new light.

What a brilliant observation. It gets to the very centrality of "political" Islam. The observation was made by "Dan From NY" commenting at Doug Ross's site on the Islamist's burning and looting of the famous L’Institut d’Egypte but a few days ago in Cairo. His observation brings perfect clarity. It boils down the real threat of political Islam to the world in a few short sentences. Islam cannot co-exist. It's adherents have little to no time to waste with engaging in the realm of ideas to spread their message. They seek to impose Islam on everyone, and they keep all adherents in line with the very real threat of the sword. Islam must conquer - and part and parcel of that effort is to "wipe out any trace of non-Muslim civilization." And it explains why, if there is no moderation of Islam, then it will never be compatible with the rest of the world. It presages death, murder and mayhem on a grand scale forced upon us before an eventual winner take all.

Unfortunately, it seems all too common in the West, where Christianity dominates, to project a benign nature on Islam, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary. And our political leaders have long encouraged that view, refusing to be honest and engage in the war of ideas. It is a dangerous and suicidal game that we play in the West with "political" Islam. I would note as an aside that at least one of the Republican candidates for the nomination understands that. Whether or not he wins the nomination, I hope that he becomes our "Geert Wilders," willing to speak out much more on this reality. On a final note, consider Dan from NY's paradigm for analysis of political Islam as you read this from today's news:

Islamists kill dozens in Nigeria Christmas bombs

Islamist militants set off bombs across Nigeria on Christmas Day - three targeting churches including one that killed at least 27 people - raising fears that they are trying to ignite sectarian civil war.

The Boko Haram Islamist sect, which aims to impose sharia law across the country, claimed responsibility for the three church bombs, the second Christmas in a row the group has caused mass carnage with deadly bombings of churches. Security forces also blamed the sect for two other blasts in the north.

St Theresa's Catholic Church in Madala, a satellite town about 40 km (25 miles) from the centre of the capital Abuja, was packed when the bomb exploded just outside. . . .

Boko Haram - which in the Hausa language spoken in northern Nigeria means "Western education is sinful" - is loosely modelled on the Taliban movement . . .

It has emerged as the biggest security threat in Nigeria, a country of 160 million split evenly between Christians and Muslims, who for the most part live side by side in peace.

Its low level insurgency used to be largely confined to northeastern Nigeria, but it has struck several parts of the north, centre and the capital Abuja this year.

Last Christmas Eve, a series of bomb blasts around Jos killed 32 people, and other people died in attacks on two churches in the northeast. . . .

The White House condemned "this senseless violence and tragic loss of life on Christmas Day."

"Senseless violence?" That is why we invite ever greater violence from the political Islamists. The violence was not senseless at all. It was purposeful.  Our President - not this one, because that is not possible, but the next - needs to stands up and repeat Dan From NY's observation.  That is step one in ending the violence before it eventually escalates to cataclysmic proportions.

Update: You will find memorialized many more acts of violence and persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslims during this month at Powerline. Update: Linked by Theo Spark, home of the best hot toddy's on the net.

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Islamism, Socialism, Freedom & The War Of Ideas

Former Navy Cdr. and present day Islamic reformer, M. Zhudi Jasser, has written an essay on the Muslim Brotherhood, socialism Islamic style, and the American left's insane embrace of Islamists. His most important points:

. . . The transformation we are witnessing in Egypt may get us to finally develop a long enough attention span to develop a long term strategy on the ground to counter the ideologies of Islamism and its Islamic socialism. Read about political Islam, shariah and the goals of Islamist groups. Engage Muslims on Islamism. If the United States is truly dedicated to the Freedom Agenda our soldiers are risking their lives for in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is time to begin to vigorously promote genuine free markets, property rights, and the universal inalienable rights of individuals endowed by their Creator as the only antidote to Islamic socialism domestically and abroad.

If we continue to stay out of the debate raging within the House of Islam, Islamism and its inherent Islamic socialism will march across Muslim majority countries starting now with Egypt. It is time for America and all liberty-loving people to clearly take sides in this civil war of ideas within the Muslim consciousness. It is time for us to lift up reformist Muslims who separate mosque and state and believe in western democracy over the illusion of the Islamic state and its inherent Islamic socialism.

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What It Will Take To Win The War Of Ideas

Aaron Elias, at PJM, has done an article on Muslim reformer Zhudi Jasser in light of the Ground Zero Mosque issue. But the article delves far beyond that into the much larger issue of the war of ideas for the future of Islam, the existential stakes of that war, and how we should, as a nation, be engaging in it. As Jasser notes, we are losing it at the moment.

Jasser's first point is that Islam is not a monolithic entity. Understanding that is the first step America need's to take in order to be able to distinguish its friends in the Muslim community from those who wish, whether by peaceful or violent means, to destroy Western civilization. This is equally as critical for America as it is for Muslims and the future of Islam:

Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D., president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), is one of these devout yet patriotic Muslims. A former U.S. Navy lieutenant commander with 11 years of service as a medical officer under his belt, . . .

Jasser founded AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in order to provide a Muslim American voice that would genuinely advocate and defend the founding principles of the U.S. Constitution. He has taken the fight against radical Islam to heart and sees it as a responsibility of all "true" Muslims. Where many U.S.-based Islamic organizations, such as CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America, claim to support the U.S. Constitution but provide dodgy answers and shoddy excuses for terrorism when the rubber meets the road, Dr. Jasser's AIFD is based on the founding principles of the United States. Where CAIR's rhetoric tends to create a tension between Americans and its Muslim members, the rhetoric of Jasser and AIFD refers to Americans as an "us" and not a "them."

"I have always looked upon myself, long before 9-11, as a Jeffersonian Muslim, if you will," Dr. Jasser answers when asked about his identification as a Muslim. "Along with the ideas of liberty as embodied in the works of our founding fathers, naturally emanating from that is a deep antipathy for Islamism (political Islam), salafism, jihadism, governmental sharia, and the global collectivist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood."

Terms such as "moderate," "secular," and "radical" are innately controversial as any group is able to contort them to mean what they want. For example, Jasser posits, the term "moderate" has become synonymous with being non-violent or anti-terrorism. But this is an oversimplification that blinds Americans to the very political ideologies - which he identifies as "Islamism" - that are the cogs and gears of terrorism.

"I know everyone is looking for an easy label to know the 'good Muslim' from the 'bad Muslim,'" Jasser continues, "but … I believe that the 'anti-Islamist' or at least 'non-Islamist' Muslims are on our side and the pro-Islamist Muslims, those who believe in the Islamic state and governmental sharia, are not on our side but on the side of political Islam."

The issue is far more complex than that as far as Muslims are concerned, as you get into issues of itjihad and Koranic interpretation, etc., but from a non-Muslim perspective, understanding the above concepts would go a long way towards putting America on the proper footing, both to defend itself against the Islamists who threaten the Western world from within and without and to support those Muslims who wish to, in the words of Zhudi Jasser, modernize their faith. Unfortunately, it is in this regards that Bush did a very poor job and Obama is doing an existentially horrendous job.

As I have pointed out many times on this blog, Obama has set America on a full scale retreat from the war of ideas. Obama, treating Islam as a monolithic entity while pretending that the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology practiced by militant jihadists and Muslim Brotherhood alike is not "true" Islam is the most dangeorus and harmful of fantasies. It will create an indiscriminate backlash against Muslims in America and only plays into the narrative of the Islamists who wish to destroy Western civilization. Further, it squanders what is now a true opportunity to influence the outcome of the war of ideas.

And indeed, Mr. Jasser goes on to make the same points in his interview:

Islamists naturally target America because its innate principles allow them to fabricate an external enemy to unify all Muslims, Dr. Jasser goes on. At the Oslo Freedom Forum, Jasser laid out why Americanism and the ideas of liberty are the only weapons against political Islam. He discussed how the Muslim world has become trapped in a war of ideas between secular nationalist fascism (i.e., Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and Qaddafi) and militant Islamism (Iran, the Taliban, and the Muslim Brotherhood and its army of offshoots).

"America is really the only laboratory in the world that gives us the freedom to create a third alternative," Dr. Jasser states with certainty. "That is, an Islam based in modernity that separates mosque and state and celebrates universal religious freedom and liberty."

In that vein, Jasser puts forward the explanation that Americans' perceptions of Muslims will never change until they feel Muslim Americans are spending our own resources on issues more pressing than gargantuan and ostentatious religious structures that overshadow the ruins of a still-raw wound for Americans. Focusing on counterterrorism and reform centers built with the goal of countering the hostile ideologies of political Islam within the United States are two paths Jasser offers that will improve Islam's PR with America. Most importantly of all, Muslim Americans should show America that many of them have a completely different idea of what it means to give back to the country that has given them so many freedoms, and take a personal responsibility in combating the ideas of radical Islam and its root causes.

For now, the possibility of the Ground Zero mosque coalescing from idea into structure presents not only the insult to the millions of Americans who experienced true horror on September 11, 2001, nor the threat of a new mammoth gateway for radical Islamic ideas to slip into the U.S., but the threat of sending a message of weakness to Islamists the world over.

"It will be used by Islamist leadership around the world to say, 'despite the violence that al-Qaeda perpetrated on the American population, political Islam will always be victorious and from its ashes has risen the largest religious Muslim structure in the United States,'" Jasser warns. "As the administration continues to move backwards, [outlawing] the use of any specific religious Islamic terms like jihad, Islamsim, and salafism, the Islamists continue to make unopposed headway in the contest of ideas. We are losing the war of ideas."

Recent polls have revealed that an increasing number of Americans are developing negative views of Islam. Immediately after 9/11, the numbers sat at 39 percent negative. A 2006 study provided by Dr. Jasser discovered the numbers had risen to 46 percent negative, nearly half the country's population. The same study also found out that the number of Americans who associate Islam with acts of violence had nearly tripled from 13 percent to 33 percent in the same five years. Dr. Jasser blames these numbers in great part on the majority of Muslim organizations in D.C. who are "victim-mongering front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood."

"Until we treat the affliction of Islamism and separate mosque and state and begin a palpable movement against political Islam, those opinion polls will only worsen," Jasser points out. "If the organizers [of the Ground Zero mosque] were truly moderate, they would not be building mammoth structures like this but rather investing in spreading the ideas of liberty into the Muslim community against the ideas of political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood. They would be teaching American Muslim youth to reach out by joining our military and homeland security efforts en masse rather than allowing Islamist organizations in D.C. like CAIR to brainwash young Muslims that our military and FBI are anti-Muslim and the U.S. is anti-Islam."

Jasser iterates that he believes the most effective method possible for Muslims to reach out to Americans would be to organize a movement to hold the 57 Organization of the Islamic Conference nations accountable for all their violations of human rights as well as demand they shift from Islamism and state sponsored sharia towards more liberty-minded governments that allow more freedoms to their citizens.

"Don't let the Islamists set the agenda," Dr. Jasser says. "Yes, we will not let up against their agenda. But that's defense. We need to generate an offense to preempt the Islamists within Muslim communities domestically and abroad.

"At AIFD our offense in countering the Muslim Brotherhood Project is our Muslim Liberty Project," Jasser goes on. "We will be rolling that out over the next year and it is patterned after Jeffersonian principles of universal religious freedom and principles of liberty targeted to devout Muslims. We target Muslim youth and young adults in giving them an alternative framework for government and society that is based on our U.S. constitutional principles and the Establishment Clause. … [Our goal is to] inoculate them against the potent ideas of political Islam."

Do read the entire article, as there is much more on the Ground Zero mosque. But the mosque is only a microcosm in the much bigger picture. And with a tide of political Islam rolling over Europe uncontested at the moment, this is an issue that we deal with now, or our grandchildren's grandchildren deal with at much greater cost in blood and gold in the future.

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The Ground Zero Mosque & Our Government's Mishandling Of "Islamic Radicals"

The Ground Zero project to erect a monument to sharia overlooking the crater where the World Trade Center once stood, and where thousands were slaughtered, is not a test of America’s commitment to religious liberty. America already has thousands of mosques and Islamic centers, including scores in the New York area — though Islam does not allow non-Muslims even to enter its crown-jewel cities of Mecca and Medina, much less to build churches or synagogues.

The Ground Zero project is a test of America’s resolve to face down a civilizational jihad that aims, in the words of its leaders, to destroy us from within.

Andy McCarthy, NRO, Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble, 24 July 2010

Islam presents America and the West with a unique challenge. One of the founding principles of our nation is freedom of religion. Yet at least a portion of the Muslim population seeks to use that freedom - along with the rest of our freedoms - to attack our nation both from within and without. Call them Islamic radicals, political Islamists, or what you will. The flip side of that coin is that the majority of the Muslim population is benign, they have no desire to be at war with America, nor do they desire to live under the heavy hand of Sharia law. Distinguishing between those two sets of Muslims is, for most Americans, impossible thanks to our government's refusal to educate America and identify our enemies.

As it stands today, Obama is pretending that nothing about Islam is implicated in the terrorist attacks against us. It is a risible canard that invites disaster. It is not fooling any American with a pulse. Unfortunately, while Americans can understand that some Muslims are in a religious war against us, most are in no position to distinguish anything beyond that. As Muslim reformer Dr. Zhudi Jasser recently stated, it is past time for our government "to take sides" and stop treating Muslims as a single entity.

With that in mind, we have today a series of mosques proposed for building throughout America, the only one of which should be controversial is Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf's Cordoba Initiative to build an Islamic Center overlooking ground zero. Polls today show that a vast majority of New Yorkers - a majority that crosses all religious, ethnic and ideological lines - do not want that mosque built. And indeed, many Muslims are also speaking out against this proposal - see Zhudi Jasser, Stephen Schwartz and other Muslims, including those who lost family members in the 9-11 attacks. As Robert Avrech points out at Seraphic Secret, the Mayor, the left, and Islamic supremicsts who want to see the Islamic Center built are attacking their opponents by labeling them religious bigots. It is not but a variant on the race card used to delegitimize opposition. And like the race card, it is not working now. But it is raising the ire of all fair minded Americans who oppose the Islamic Center not on grounds of bigotry, but on grounds of decency and a refusal to be subservient.

Unfortunately, the proposal to build that mosque has raised public ire that is not just being directed at the Ground Zero project, but is also overflowing into opposition to the building of mosques throughout our nation. In what could be a very bad turn of events, some Americans are striking out against Islam generally, not discriminating between radical or political Islamists and those who are benign. If this is not addressed, it will be of far more importance than the Ground Zero Islamic Center. It is a problem our government needs to address with honesty.

Almost from my first post on this blog, I have repeatedly said that our government needs to identify our enemies within the Islamic world and differentiate them from the rest of the Islamic world. The reasons are fourfold.

One, we as a nation need to understand the nature of the threat so that we can recognize and defend against its danger. This is so obvious that it borders on the criminal that our government still refuses to do it. One cannot cannot treat a cancer if one refuses to diagnose cancer as step one.

Two, identifying the threat will allow us to harness the greatest force our republic can muster, public opinion. It will allow our nation to collectively shine a light upon - and bring pressure for reform to bear upon - those in the Islamic world who practice forms of Islam that give give rise to religiously inspired violence and terrorism. Indeed, if Americans fully understood some of the incredibly racist and violent dogma of Salafism, they would be horrified and moved to action. Or to restate it in the words of former Salafi terrorist Dr. Tawfiq Hamid:

The civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology.

Three, defining the threat would allow us to identify and support those in the Islamic world who seek to reform their religion. There are many, but they are voices in the wilderness today, lacking large scale support and up against all the petro-dollars of Saudi Arabia. Theirs is an existential battle for the heart and soul of Islam.

Fourth and lastly, if we fail to identify our enemies, then we lump into the same camp with our enemies those who would reform Islam and those who do not embrace "political Islam." This virtually insures that we will be misled by those who seek to forward the cause of political Islam, that we will make enemies of the majority of Muslims otherwise predisposed to supporting our nation, and that we will wholly undercut those who would reform Islam.

To be specific, our "enemies" are the practitioners of the veleyat-e-faqi in the Shia world, and in the Sunni world, practitioners of Salafi / Wahhabi schools and other schools of Islam influenced by Wahhabi / Salafi dogma, including Deobandi Islam. And unfortunately, Wahhabi / Salafi Islam is coming to influence many of the other schools of Islam. I document these realities in detail here.

Having said all of that, it is surprising that Feisal Abdul-Rauf, the man driving the Cordoba Initiative, is nominally a Sufi Muslim. Sufism is a mystical sect of Islam and largely benign. But Rauf certainly shows attitudes unusual for a Sufi, including his embrace of Hamas, his belief that America was to blame for 9-11, and a long association with Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is all the more surprising since Sufis are hated by ideologically pure Salafists and, indeed, were recently the subject of brutal attacks at the hands of Salafists in Pakistan. Author Steven Schwartz, himself a Sufi Muslim, noted in a recent article in the NY Post that none of these traits displayed by Rauf are in keeping with Sufism.

As Andy McCarthy states, in the quote at the top of this post, the case against Rauf's Ground Zero Islamic Center has nothing to do with freedom of religion and everything to do with facing down an existential threat to our way of life. For Bloomberg and the left to jam this down the throats of New Yorkers in particular and Americans as a whole - including American Muslims - is a boundless display of left wing arrogance and criminally negligent ignorance about the threat we face.

With the rise of the Ground Zero mosque issue, there has also been a significant growth in opposition to the building of mosques throughout our country. Dr. Zhudi Jasser addresses that anomaly in a recent article. Before going to his article, let me tell you about Dr. Jasser.

Dr. Jasser is a patriot. The son of immigrants from the Middle East, he has served our country as an officer in the military. He is a devout Muslim who has embraced the freedoms of America. He is also an articulate and implacable opponent of Sharia law and political Islam. When I speak of Muslim reformers, his is the first name that comes to my mind. He regularly engages Salafists and other proponents of "political Islam" in debates in order to educate Americans. Indeed, if you have not seen one of his debates, by all means, go here. It is a debate all Americans should see in full. Dr. Jasser has also established an organization, the American-Islamic Forum For Democracy, to push for reform of his religion and to fight against "political Islam." He was quoted in a recent AP article on the rise in general anti-Islamic feeling directed at Islam as whole in respect to the building of mosques in various parts of the US:

Muslims trying to build houses of worship in the nation's heartland, far from the heated fight in New York over plans for a mosque near ground zero, are running into opponents even more hostile and aggressive.

Foes of proposed mosques have deployed dogs to intimidate Muslims holding prayer services and spray painted "Not Welcome" on a construction sign, then later ripped it apart.

The 13-story, $100 million Islamic center that could soon rise two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks would dwarf the proposals elsewhere, yet the smaller projects in local communities are stoking a sharper kind of fear and anger than has showed up in New York.

In the Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer. They are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

"They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group," said Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area. . . .

In Temecula, Calif., opponents brought dogs to protest a proposed 25,000-square-foot mosque that would sit on four acres next to a Baptist church. Opponents worry it will turn the town into haven for Islamic extremists, but mosque leaders say they are peaceful and just need more room to serve members. . . .

Mosque leader Essam Fathy, who helped plan the new building in Murfreesboro, has lived there for 30 years.

"I didn't think people would try that hard to oppose something that's in the Constitution," he said. "The Islamic center has been here since the early '80s, 12 years in this location. There's nothing different now except it's going to be a little bigger."

Bagby said that hasn't stopped foes from becoming more virulent.

"It was there before, but it didn't have as much traction. The larger public never embraced it," he said. "The level of anger, the level of hostility is much higher in the last few years." . . .

Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, a nonprofit that advocates for reform and modernization of Islam, said opposing mosques is no way to prevent terrorism.

Neighbors didn't want his family to build a mosque in 1979 in Neenah, Wis., because they didn't understand who Muslims were.

"If the Wisconsin mosque had not been allowed to be built, I, at 17, might have put up walls and become a different person," he said. "If we start preventing these from being built, the backlash will be increased radicalization." . . .

If that doesn't frighten you, it should. The war of ideas is the most important battlefield in the war against Islamic extremism. Unless we engage in and help reformers to win the war of ideas, our grandchildren's grandchildren will still be fighting this war - and likely doing so at great cost in blood and gold. And indeed, it is only the reformers who can ultimately win the war of ideas. We can only help them or hurt them.

Unfortunately, the craven tack of our government in its treatment of Islam is starting to show predictable results. Americans are not fools, and when they feel under attack, as they have been since 9-11 and now with the Ground Zero mosque, they will push back - hard. Unable to distinguish the good from the bad, it is no surprise that some are doing so indiscriminately. If we begin to lose the young Zuhdi Jassers of our nation, then we will have completely lost the war of ideas against radical Islam. That would be an existential disaster.

Update: DO WATCH THIS VIDEO. It is from a moderate Muslim who does not merely come out against the Ground Zero Islamic Center, but who notes how efforts at reform in Islam are being harmed by the left who throw their support to radical Islamic elements. She highlights most of the points I was attempting to make above.



(H/T Hot Air)

Update: And then there is Fox's Greg Gutfeld who feels that if Rauf can show magnanimous tolerance, so can he.

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The War Against Radical Islam & The Battlefield of Ideas

Andrew McCarthy, writing at NRO, is effuse in his praise for Newt Gingrich's remarks concerning our war against "radical Islam" in both its militaristic and 'fifth column' forms. Gingrich, he says, is that exceedingly rare combination of a politician who both understands the nature of the threat and is willing to speak out about it honestly. This from Mr. McCarthy:

. . . Gingrich grasps that there is an enemy here and that it is a mortal threat to freedom. He knows that if we are to remain a free people, it is an enemy we must defeat. That enemy is Islamism, and its operatives — whether they come as terrorists or stealth saboteurs — are the purveyors of sharia, Islam’s authoritarian legal and political system. . . .

The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic, and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome.

Second, that outcome is the death of freedom. In Islamist ideology, sharia is deemed to be the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society — for Islam is not merely a religious doctrine, but a comprehensive socio-economic and political system. As the former speaker elaborated, sharia embodies principles and punishments that are abhorrent to Western values. Indeed, its foundational premise is anti-American, holding that we are not free people at liberty to govern ourselves irrespective of any theocratic code, that people are instead beholden to the Islamic state, which is divinely enjoined to impose Allah’s laws.

Sharia, moreover, is anti-equality. It subjugates women and brutally punishes transgressors, particularly homosexuals and apostates. While our law forbids cruel and unusual punishments, Gingrich observed that the brutality in sharia sanctions is not gratuitous, but intentional: It is meant to enforce Allah’s will by striking example.

On this last point, Gingrich offered a salient insight, one well worth internalizing in the Sun Tzu sense of knowing one’s enemy. Islamists, violent or not, have very good reasons for the wanting to destroy the West. Those reasons are not crazy or wanton — and they have nothing to do with Gitmo, Israel, cartoons, or any other excuse we conjure to explain the savagery away. Islamists devoutly believe, based on a well-founded interpretation of Islamic doctrine, that they have been commanded by Allah to kill, convert, or subdue all who do not adhere to sharia — because they regard Allah as their only master (“There is no God but Allah”). It is thus entirely rational (albeit frightening to us) that they accept the scriptural instruction that the very existence of those who resist sharia is offensive to Allah, and that a powerful example must be made of those resisters in order to induce the submission of all — “submission” being the meaning of Islam.

It makes no sense to dismiss our enemies as lunatics just because “secular socialist” elites, as Gingrich called them, cannot imagine a fervor that stems from religious devotion. We ought to respect our enemies, he said. Not “respect” in Obama-speak, which translates as “appease,” but in the sense of taking them seriously, understanding that they are absolutely determined to win, and realizing that they are implacable. There is no “moderate” sharia devotee, for sharia is not moderate. . . . Islamism is not a movement to be engaged, it is an enemy to be defeated.

Victory, Gingrich said, will be very long in coming — longer, perhaps, than the nearly half-century it took to win the Cold War. . . .

Debate over all of this is essential. The crucial point is that we must have the debate with eyes open. It is a debate about which Gingrich has put down impressive markers: The main front in the war is not Afghanistan or Iraq but the United States. The war is about the survival of Western civilization, and we should make no apologies for the fact that the West’s freedom culture is a Judeo-Christian culture — a fact that was unabashedly acknowledged, Gingrich reminded his audience, by FDR and Churchill. To ensure victory in the United States we must, once again, save Europe, where the enemy has advanced markedly. There is no separating our national security and our economic prosperity — they are interdependent. And while the Middle East poses challenges of immense complexity, Gingrich contended that addressing two of them — Iran, the chief backer of violent jihad, and Saudi Arabia, the chief backer of stealth jihad — would go a long way toward improving our prospects on the rest.

Most significant, there is sharia. By pressing the issue, Newt Gingrich accomplishes two things. First, he gives us a metric for determining whether those who would presume to lead us will fight or surrender. Second, at long last, someone is empowering truly moderate Muslims — assuming they exist in the numbers we’re constantly assured of. Our allies are the Muslims who embrace our freedom culture — those for whom sharia is a matter of private belief, not public mission. Our enemies are those who want sharia to supplant American law and Western culture. When we call out the latter, and marginalize them, we may finally energize the former. . . .

These are points that I have been making ad infinitum on this blog. For but one example, see National Security At The End Of Obama's First Year (its a long post - scroll half way through to get to the section on 'war of ideas'). The bottom line is that we have to engage in the war of ideas or the Islamist's war against the West will still be being fought by our grandchildren's grandchildren. Moreover, given the push of radicals for weapons of mass destruction, the far too widespread support for radicals throughout the Islamic world, and the continued push of Salafi Islam into the West on the back of Saudi petrodollars, the chances are very high that the war will likely become far more bloody and expensive as time goes on, as well as ever more threatening to the fundamental freedoms of Western civilization. This is a war that we could indeed lose if we fail to engage.

Step one in the war of ideas is to identify the enemy. We have to expose Wahhabi / Salafi Islam and shine a light on it in to engage the strongest force in any democracy - public opinion. Bush never did this. Obama is exponentially worse, pretending that there is no threat to the West originating out of Islam. It is not merely an incredibly dangerous falsehood, it is treasonous. Gingrich is the first major politician of either party to step up.

Dafydd ab Hugh at Big Lizards has done two recent posts on this topic, both of which should be required reading. In Brilliance At Midnight, Dafydd notes that the threat from radical Islam to Western society is really two fold:

The take-away from the massive dumping of leaked U.S. military documents on WikiLeaks, documents related to the conduct and progress of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is this: The putative "rift" between Islamist terrorists on the one hand, and radical Islamists who "reject terrorism" (at specific times and places) on the other hand, has nothing to do with any ultimate goal of Islamism.

The rift reflects only a difference of opinion about the precise strategies and tactics for achieving that goal. Islamist victory conditions are the same in both groups: a pure, radical Islamism dominant across the globe, with sharia the final law in every country. . . .

Our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq are involved in the physical war against this threat, but in the long run, it is the war of ideas that matters more. In Brilliance at Midnight - the Dawn, Dafydd flushes out the tools available to us to engage in the war of ideas:

. . . The most important task before launching into a war of ideas is to fully arm and equip our "soldiers" -- in this case, our soldiers comprise all Americans willing and able to defend Western values of individual liberty, property and Capitalism, freedom of speech and religion (not merely freedom of worship, as Obama would have it), actual rule of law, and governance by the consent of the governed. Bluntly, I mean educating the masses about the Grand Jihad, its goals, its methods, and the existential danger it poses. . . .

Do read both of his posts. We fail to engage in the war of ideas at our own existential peril.

Lastly, as to Gingrich himself, I wrote recently that I consider him the best candidate for President the Republicans could field in 2012. His above remarks on the threat we face from Islamism merely increase my conviction exponentially.

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Krauthammer On Obama's Complete Withdrawal From The War Of Ideas

Charles Krauthammer used his Wasington Post column last week to address the Obama administration's refusal to identify those with whom we are at war - what should be step one if we are to engage in and win the war on terror. This from Mr. Krauthammer:

The Fort Hood shooter, the Christmas Day bomber, the Times Square attacker. On May 13, the following exchange occurred at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee:

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.): Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?

Attorney General Eric Holder: There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions. . . .

Smith: Okay, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?

Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people --

Smith: But was radical Islam one of them?

Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious-based.

Potentially, mind you. This went on until the questioner gave up in exasperation.

A similar question arose last week in U.S. District Court when Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square attacker, pleaded guilty. Explained Shahzad:

"One has to understand where I'm coming from . . . I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier."

Well, that is clarifying. As was the self-printed business card of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, identifying himself as SoA: Soldier of Allah.

Holder's avoidance of the obvious continues the absurd and embarrassing refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge who out there is trying to kill Americans and why. In fact, it has banned from its official vocabulary the terms jihadist, Islamist and Islamic terrorism.

Instead, President Obama's National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy -- how else do you define those seeking your destruction? -- "a loose network of violent extremists." But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize and kill.

Why is this important? Because the first rule of war is to know your enemy. If you don't, you wander into intellectual cul-de-sacs and ignore the real causes that might allow you to prevent recurrences. . . .

I am glad to see a major columnist finally address this issue. It is simply amazing to me that in the U.S., nine years after 9-11, we still have our government pretending that Islam generally is unrelated to terrorism, let alone the real facts, that it is Wahhabi/Salafi Islam and the sects it has heavilly influenced, including Khomei Shia'ism, that are the driving forces behind Islamic terrorism. I have been driving this point home for years, including most recently in National Security At The End Of Obama's First Year:

The physical war on terror is necessary to stop the immediate attacks. But it is in the war of ideas that the true battle lies, for if we do not stop the radicalization of Muslims, then the war on terror will never end. . . .

The threshold issue in the war of ideas is to identify who, as a group, constitutes “radicalized Muslims.” Islam, like Christianity, is subdivided into numerous different sects, many of which, such as Sufi for example, are peaceful and counsel coexistence. Individually, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world, most of whom would make good citizens, good friends, good neighbors and good family members in the West. Only a portion of them become “radicalized” whether as members of al Qaeda or some of the other radical Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and Jamat-I-Islami to name but a few. Those who belong to these groups do in fact share a common thread – virtually all are adherents to the Salafi/Wahhabi school of Islam or a school, such as Deobandi, that has been heavily influenced in all relevant respects by Salafism. . . .

. . . In the war of ideas, one of the most important steps that Obama could take would be to publicly shine a light on Salafism, both as the feeder for radical Islam and for the barbarity of some of its dogma. That would go very far to starting the type of discussion that could actually bring some semblance of evolution and peaceful change to Salafism. Ignoring Salafism - which, according to ex-CIA agent Bob Baer we have done ever since the 1970's when the Saudi's first began to buy influence in the American body politic - allows it to metastasize in the dark. And it is metastasizing at rapid speed today on the back of Saudi petrodollars. That is a recipe for disaster.

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This is a critical issue that will mean losses in American blood and gold until we begin to engage in the war of ideas. The tack taken by the Obama administration is 180 degrees of wrong.

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A Further Retreat From The War Of Ideas - To The Detriment Of The U.S. & The Islamic World

We are in an existential war with not merely terrorists, and not merely Islamic terrorists, but terrorists motivated by the Salafi sect of Islam and those sects heavilly influenced by Salafism. The single most important thing that Obama could do in the war on terror - to the benefit of not merely us, but the Islamic religion - is to honestly identify our enemy and distinguish between Salafism and other sects of Islam. Allowing Salafism to metasticize in the dark, out of the realm of public scrutiny, is to insure that far more Muslim and American blood will be spilled in the future.

Yet Obama has decided not merely to refrain from honestly identifying the source of Islamic terrorism, but he has decided to lead us into a retreat even further into fantasy land, now removing from the government lexicon all words that would describe the threats we face as even arising out of Islam. You can read the report from Fox News here.

This is not merely funamentally wrong, it is very dangerous. I have previously blogged on this at length. To repeat:

The physical war on terror is necessary to stop the immediate attacks. But it is in the war of ideas that the true battle lies, for if we do not stop the radicalization of Muslims, then the war on terror will never end. Ultimately, as Tom Friedman recently opined, this is a battle that must be fought within the four corners of Islam itself. But that said, we have an existential motivation to insure that the "good side" wins. This is made all the more critical because the good side, if you will, is not winning. The ideology at the heart of al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups is very much still on the advance.

The threshold issue in the war of ideas is to identify who, as a group, constitutes “radicalized Muslims.” Islam, like Christianity, is subdivided into numerous different sects, many of which, such as Sufi for example, are peaceful and counsel coexistence. Individually, there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world, most of whom would make good citizens, good friends, good neighbors and good family members in the West. Only a portion of them become “radicalized” whether as members of al Qaeda or some of the other radical Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Taliban, and Jamat-I-Islami to name but a few. Those who belong to these groups do in fact share a common thread – virtually all are adherents to the Salafi/Wahhabi school of Islam or a school, such as Deobandi, that has been heavily influenced in all relevant respects by Salafism.

There was a time when Salafism was confined to the back waters of Arabia. That changed when the tribe of Saud, in partnership with the tribe of Waahab, conquered Arabia in the 1930's. Within decades, the Sauds became incredibly wealthy on oil. Now, they spend billions annually exporting Salafi clerics, schools and textbooks to the four corners of the world. Consequently, Salafism is becoming the dominant form of Islam and is effecting every major school of Islam. As I wrote in a prior post:

According to official Saudi information, Saudi funds have been used to build and maintain over 1,500 mosques, 202 colleges, 210 Islamic Centers wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia, and almost 2,000 schools for educating Muslim children in non-Islamic countries in Europe, North and South America, Australia and Asia. The North American Islamic Trust - a Wahhabi Salafi organization, owns between 50% and 80% of all mosques in North America. And Salafists are, in many cases, taking over existing Mosques throughout the world. Some very informative expamples include Belgium, Somalia, and Indonesia. And indeed, the Saudi Salafi Islam now exerts significant influence on our educational system, all the way from grade school to university. [On a related note, see the last half of this PJTV video in which Bill Whittle discusses the degree to which radical Islamic organizations have infiltrated law enforcement in America. The second half of the video is here.]

The West's premier orientalist, Professor Bernard Lewis - the man who coined the term "clash of civilizations" half a century ago and who predicted the rise of Islamic terrorism years prior to 9-11 - writes in his book "The Crisis of Islam," that the ideology of Wahhabi / Salafi Islam is the equal of the“KKK” in terms of bigotry and violence (p. 129). Dr. Tawfiq Hamid, a former Salafi terrorist, has written that "the civilized world ought to recognize the immense danger that Salafi Islam poses; it must become informed, courageous and united if it is to protect both a generation of young Muslims and the rest of humanity from the disastrous consequences of this militant ideology." The NYPD, in a 2007 report, “Radicalization In The West” documented Salafism as the common thread and motivating force behind terrorist attacks in the West. Zhudi Jasser, a Muslim reformist, writes on the dangers of Salafism and the efforts to engage it in the war of ideas here. The Center For Islamic Pluralism, a "a think tank that challenges the dominance of American Muslim life by militant Islamist groups," maintains a section on their website called "WahhabiWatch." Perhaps the most cogent description of Salfism goes back a century, to the observations of Winston Churchill:

A large number of Bin Saud's followers belong to the Wahabi sect, a form of Mohammedanism which bears, roughly speaking, the same relationship to orthodox Islam as the most militant form of Calvinism would have borne to Rome in the fiercest times of [Europe's] religious wars.

The Wahhabis profess a life of exceeding austerity, and what they practice themselves they rigorously enforce on others. They hold it as an article of duty, as well as of faith, to kill all who do not share their opinions and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahhabi villages for simply appearing in the streets.

It is a penal offence to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette and, as for the crime of alcohol, the most energetic supporter of the temperance cause in this country falls far behind them. Austere, intolerant, well-armed, and blood-thirsty, in their own regions the Wahhabis are a distinct factor which must be taken into account, and they have been, and still are, very dangerous to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Salafism has remained virtually unchanged since Churchill's observations. It was only a few years ago that the Saudi courts, applying Salafi Sharia law, ordered the victim of a brutal gang rape to suffer 200 lashes and six months in jail for being outside of her home without the escort of a male family member. To this day, hunting witches and breaking spells are the top duties of the Salafi religious police and, when witches are "caught," they are ritually slaughtered. In the Salafi culture of Saudi Arabia, it has been less than 20 years since the kingdom's senior cleric, the Grand Mufti issued a fatwah declaring "the earth is flat. Whoever claims it is round is an atheist deserving of punishment." And then there is the well known Salafi edict that anyone who converts from Islam is to be slaughtered.

As I pointed out in a post here, Islam, unlike Christianity, is a religion that has never gone through a Rennisance, a Reformation or a Period of Enlightenment. And while the mechanism - itjihad - exists that could lead to such an event, the reality is that Salafists are fighting any change to their interpretations of the Koran and Sunnah with every tool at their disposal, up to and including "slaughtering the takfirs." Moreover, they are using the UN to push for blasphemy laws that would shut down all criticism of Salafism in the Western world.

The vitriol, bigotry, and triumphalism of Salafism are taught to students in schools and madrassas across the world – including in American Islamic schools and Salafi prison ministries. Salafi Islam teaches that its adherents can freely murder non-Muslims or enslave them and rape them. Moreover, Salafists hold that challenging their existing Salafi Koranic interpretations are "redda (apostasy) punishable by death . . ." And indeed, for specific references to these doctrines being taught in a Saudi school in Virginia, read the USCIFR report here.

Salafism is the religion of bin Laden, the religion of Zawahiri, the religion of all the 9-11 hijackers. That said, nothing that I write here is to suggest that all or a majority of Salafists should be stigmitized as radical. But the simple reality we ignore at our peril is that it is from the wellspring of Salafism that virtually all the radicalism of the Muslim world arises.

In the war of ideas, one of the most important steps that Obama could take would be to publicly shine a light on Salafism, both as the feeder for radical Islam and for the barbarity of some of its dogma. That would go very far to starting the type of discussion that could actually bring some semblance of evolution and peaceful change to Salafism. Ignoring Salafism - which, according to ex-CIA agent Bob Baer we have done ever since the 1970's when the Saudi's first began to buy influence in the American body politic - allows it to metastasize in the dark. And it is metastasizing at rapid speed today on the back of Saudi petrodollars. That is a recipe for disaster.

The chance of Obama taking such a necessary and bold step seems nonexistent. The reality is that it has taken Obama a year and three terrorist incidents before he even explicitly acknowledged an act of terrorism as terrorism. Further, in his Cairo speech, Obama chose to address the mythical “ummah” - the entire Muslim world as if it were a single entity. Rather than acknowledge the problems of Salafism and the danger it poses to the rest of the Muslim world , Obama portrayed al Qaeda as “violent extremists” who have “exploited . . . tensions in a small but potent minority of Muslims.” That is false. They are not "extremists," they are true believers in all of the Salafi/Wahhabi dogma. [Update: Indeed, a DOD analyst makes precisely that same point in a recent PJTV interview with Bill Whittle.] [Update 2: Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of the founder of Hamas, a Mossad agent and a convert to Christianity, also makes this point.]

Moreover, Salafism is well on its way to dominating Islam When Obama said at the Ft. Hood memorial service "no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts" he sounded poetic, but factualy he could not have been more disingenuous. This not only leaves Americans in the dark, it does a tremendous disservice to that large portion of the Muslim world that is not implicated in the violence of al Qaeda. Worse yet, it makes it that much harder for would-be Islamic "Martin Luther's" to develop the international voices they need to bring change to their religion.

Obama wants to ingratiate himself with Muslims by being nice, by attacking Israel, and by pretending that there are no issues of existential importance brewing within Islam itself. His policies are 180 degrees of wrong. What the Islamic world needs is a strong dose of reality and honesty. This fantasy Obama is engaging in is just as potentially deadly for the Muslim world as it is for us.

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