Srdja Trifkovic: Fighting Jihad at Home

[BINGO!!!...Mr. Trifkovic nails it...you want answers?...here are some friggin' answers!...God!..somebody make this man President.- jtf]

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/
Thursday, October 19, 2006


To be operationally useful, the notion of “Fighting Jihad at Home” demands a clear definition of Jihad, the evidence that the activity thus defined is present in the United States, and a set of policy recommendations to counter it.

Jihad is the application of divinely mandated violence by Muslims against non-Muslims with the objective of (a) converting, (b) killing, or (c) subjugating and taxing the latter. The doctrine of jihad was Muhammad’s only significant original contribution to history.

Muhammad’s followers and successors were prone to war by custom and nature, accustomed to living by pillage and the exploitation of settled populations. Theirs was an “expansionism denuded of any concrete objective, brutal, and born of a necessity in its past” (Ibn Warraq), but Islam provided a powerful ideological justification for those wars—a justification that was inherently global in scope and totalitarian in nature. It shifted the focus of attention of the tribesmen from their internecine feuds to the outside world. The enormous aggressive energy and hunger for loot was henceforth to be directed outwards.

Jihad is not so much the means of spreading Muslim faith, as the means of spreading the rule of Islam. The view of modern Islamic activists, that “Islam must rule the world and until Islam does rule the world we will continue to sacrifice our lives,” has been solidly rooted in traditional Islam ever since the early divine sanction of violence that came to Muhammad in Medina: “O Prophet! Rouse the Believers to the fight,” the Kuran orders, and promises that a hundred Muslims would vanquish a thousand unbelievers (Kuran, 8:65). In dozens of verses Allah orders the faithful to fight the unbelievers,(9:123) “and slay them wherever [they] catch them.”(2:191) The end of the fight is possible only when “there prevail justice and faith in Allah” in the whole world.

Such scriptural basis made Islam different from all other major religions, in creating the foundations for a theocratic universal state with unlimited aspirations. From Muhammad’s second year in Medina on, Islam combined the dualism of a universal religion and a universal state and jihad became its instrument for carrying out the faith’s ultimate objective by turning all people into believers. Islam postulates the fundamental illegitimacy of the existence of non-Islam, and mandates permanent “rejection of the Other”—to use a fashionable term—by every bona fide Muslim as a divine obligation. To a Muslim Jihad does not necessarily mean permanent fighting, but it does mean a permanent state of war.

All jihad is “defensive” by definition: the legal formulation of the relationship of Muslims to others is based on the principle that Islam is a universal message to the whole of mankind which the whole of mankind must accept, or else submit to. Since no political or material power may hinder Allah’s will, any such “hindrance” is an act of aggression and Islam has no recourse but to remove it by force. All conquered lands are the House of Islam where ummah had been established, while the rest of the world belonged to the House of War inhabited by Harbis. The House of Islam is in a state of permanent war with the lands that surround it. It can be interrupted by temporary truces, but true peace comes with the completion of global conquest.

The reality of militant jihad as a centuries-long religious and legal institution of Islam has a rock-solid rooting in its scriptures, traditions, and jurisprudence. The most prominent Islamic jurist of all time, Ibn Khaldun, summed up the consensus valid to this day when he defined the holy war as a religious duty based on the universalism of the Muslim mission and the obligation to convert all men to Islam by persuasion or force. He readily concedes that “Islam is under obligation to gain power over all nations.”

The apologists assert that Muslims are called by the Kuran to strive for peace, but the “peace” that is called upon believers to implement is impossible unless it is established under an all-pervasive Islamic rule. Such “peace,” resulting from jihad, does not only have the negative meaning of the absence of war, it is also a positive state of security that is attainable once Islam kills, converts or subjugates all infidels, and conquers their lands. This is exactly the same definition of “peace” as that used by the Soviet empire in the period of its external expansion (1944-1979): it is the objective, but it is fully attainable only after the defeat of “imperialism as the final stage of capitalism” and the triumph of the vanguard of the proletariat in the whole world.

Like communism and fascism, Islam offers a vanguard ideology; a complete program to improve man and create a new society; complete control over that society; and cadres ready, even eager, to spill blood—and all that thanks to the doctrine of Jihad. It breeds a gnostic paradigm within which the standard response to the challenge presented by non-Muslim cultural, technological and economic achievements is hostility and hatred. The alleged distinction between “extremists” and “moderates” is a Western construct—the difference between them may concern the methods to be applied but not the final objective: to rekindle the glory that was Islam under the prophet and his early successors.

The revival of the model of early Islam in a modern form mandated the reaffirmation of uncompromising animosity to non-believers and the return to violence as a means of attaining political ends. Terrorism offered the final release from tension by democratizing jihad, making it individualized. The theoretical basis was provided by Sayyid Qutb, the ideologue of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood executed by the Nasser regime. Since all non-Islamic states were illegitimate, Qutb concluded, an Islamic “vanguard”—obviously inspired by the Bolshevik model—is needed to wage jihad both locally and globally. His impact is reflected in al-Qaeda’s own theological justification for its actions. The US is waging an offensive war against Islam and terrorist operations were therefore Kuranically ordained defensive measures to protect the Muslim community from outside aggression.

The apologists for terror invoke sources and principles that are independent of any capricious or dubious interpretations of the Kuran or the Hadith. Even if the “moderates” genuinely disprove of al-Qaeda’s methods, as some among them probably do, they would be hard-pressed to reject the fundamental claim of the theorists and practitioners of terror: that their guidance as well as their methods are rooted in the orthodox Islamic sources and practices. The terrorists may differ from other Muslims in the exact command for action that they derive from the Kuran and the hadith, but they all speak the same language, literally as well as legally and theologically.

Unlike the civilization based on Christianity, to which warfare represents a departure from normality, Islam is devoid of any reasoned principle of justice or moderation. Unlike the “just war” theory rooted in Christian thinking, which has evolved into a secular concept instituted in international laws and domestic codes, Islamic jihad is an institution and a mindset, religious and political, that is inherently conducive to terrorism. It creates among its adherents the paradigm of a permanent cosmic war that breeds the terrorist Weltanscahuung. Antagonism towards the demonized “infidel” is rooted in the conviction that Islam is not only the true faith but the only faith with any truth. No matter how much a believer has been exposed to Western or secular thought, no matter which passport he carries or what clothes he wears, his instinctive first priority on meeting a stranger is to establish which side of this divide that person belongs.

Even the cornerstone statement, “there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet,” goes beyond a declaration of monotheism and implies the radical division of the world into two camps. Antagonism towards non-Muslim religions, societies and cultures, is certainly not the trait shared by all Muslims, but it is an attitude mandated to all true Muslims and prevalent among most. Through jihad Islam has emerged as a quasi-religious ideology of cultural and political imperialism that absolutizes the conflict with other than itself, and knows no natural limits to itself.

In conclusion of this sketchy definition of jihad, let me say that it is not the jihadists who are “distorting” Islam; the would-be reformers are. Islam, in Muhammad’s revelations, traditions and their codification, threatens the rest of us. It is the religion of war and intolerance. It breeds a peculiar mindset, the one against which Burke warned when he wrote that “intemperate minds never can be free; their passions forge their fetters.” Until the petrodollars support a comprehensive and explicit Kuranic revisionism capable of growing popular roots, we should seek ways to defend ourselves by disengaging from the world of Islam, physically and figuratively, by learning to keep our distance from the affairs of the Muslim world and by keeping the Muslim world away from “the world of war” that it seeks to conquer or destroy.

As for the danger of Jihad here at home, a Muslim immigrant to the United States, or an American-born convert to Islam, is literally millions of times more likely to plot terrorist acts against his fellow citizens than a member of any other religious creed or political ideology (and Islam is both). It is not possible to wage a meaningful “Global War on Terrorism” without considering the technical, legal, moral, and cultural implications of this problem.

Yes, for the time being, America is in a better shape than Europe. It would be dangerous to assume that this is so because Muslims have better assimilated into this country’s culture. It would be an even greater folly to hope that America’s economic, political and cultural institutions act as a powerful source of self-identification that breeds personal loyalty and commitment to the host-society that is so evidently absent among the Muslims in Europe. There is ample evidence that Muslims in America share the attitudes and aspirations of their European coreligionists.

That things are not as bad in America is due to three factors. First of all, Muslims do not account for much more than one percent of the population of the US, in contrast to Western Europe where their share of the population is up to ten times greater. They like to pretend otherwise, and routinely assert that there are between 4.5 and 9 million Muslims in the United States, but impartial studies place the number at 3 to 4 million.

The second difference is in the fact that Muslim enclaves in Europe are ethnically more homogenous. Most Muslims in France, Spain and Benelux came from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. In Germany and Austria they are mostly Turks. In Britain they are overwhelmingly from the Indian Subcontinent. Their group cohesiveness based on Islam is therefore reinforced by the bonds of ethnic, cultural and linguistic kinship. In the United States, by contrast, neither Arabs nor Sub-continentals enjoy similar dominance within the Muslim community, which is therefore not equally monolithic.

And finally, there are proportionately fewer U.S. citizens among Muslims in America. In France and Britain, by contrast, most Muslims are citizens of those countries and feel free to act assertively or criminally without fear of deportation. But as Citizenship & Immigration Services officials are well aware (and some readily admit off-the-record), the attitudes of Muslims coming here also tend to change once their status in America is secure: as soon as they gain citizenship, many rediscover the virtues of sharia and jihad.

Muslims in the United States don’t have different attitudes to their coreligionists in Europe. On the contrary, the image of America in the Muslim world is far more negative than that of any European country: 81 percent of Pakistanis dislike America while only 10 percent have a favorable image of it. That baggage comes to America with the Muslim immigrants and it is transmitted to their American-born children. In a survey of newly naturalized citizens, 90 percent of Muslim immigrants said that if there were a conflict between the United States and their country of origin, they would be inclined to support their country of origin. In Detroit 81 percent of Muslims “strongly agree” or “somewhat agree” that Shari’a should be the law of the land.

The picture becomes even more disturbing if we look at the incidence of terrorist threats America faces from the ranks of that one percent of its citizenry. The evidence is overwhelming, voluminous and unsurprising. On the basis of various surveys both in Europe and here it is reasonable to expect that, among a hundred Muslims, 250 sympathize with the motives of the terrorists and 5 are ready and willing to join their ranks and actively participate in their activities. The sense of hostile detachment from any recognizably American identity and values that breeds terrorist intent is not confined to any single group of Muslims. Doctors, musicians, students, and truckers have been convicted of it; it transcends class and affects students, doctors, criminals, soldiers and arty bohemians equally.

The problem is not limited to those Muslims who come to the United States as adults. In December 2003 Mukhtar al-Bakri, a naturalized citizen, and five U.S.-born youths from upstate New York were convicted of aiding Al-Qaeda and plotting attacks on Americans. The seven, known as the Lackawanna Cell, lived in a tight-knit Arab community, but to an uninformed outside observer, “most were all-American teenagers who played soccer together and enjoyed going to parties.” These “all-Americans” went to the Al Farooq training camp in Afghanistan in the summer of 2001; all but one returned to the U.S. They received sentences of between seven and 10 years in prison.

A similar sentiment of hostile detachment from America that ends in treason can be found among some American-born converts to Islam, both white and black. The tone was set in 1996 by Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, an NBA player, who refused to obey the League’s demand that players stand in a “dignified posture” when the national anthem is played. Look at al-Qaeda’s official spokesman, American-born convert Adam Yahiye Gadahn, white, born and raised in California. In 2003, Sergeant Asan Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division threw grenades into tents with fellow soldiers in Kuwait, killing an officer and wounding 13 others. He declared at the time of his arrest, “You guys are coming into our countries, and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.” Akbar was born in the US to American parents, but once he became a Muslim, other Muslim countries became his countries, and Muslim women and children became his women and his children. The Americans, by contrast, became “you guys.”

In addition to various ad-hoc groups and self-motivated individuals who opt for do-it-yourself jihad, America is now home to the offshoots of international Islamist groups that have a long and distinguished pedigree, such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Defense is impossible for as long as the American elite class refuses to accept that Islam as such, traditionally interpreted, poses a threat, and not some allegedly aberrant variety of it. The enemy is well aware of the opportunity provided by this failure. It sees the liberal mindset as his most powerful secret weapon, while despising it at the same time.

The outcome of the war will depend on our ability to halt this ongoing invasion. The precondition is to accept that a practicing Muslim who comes to the United States cannot be “absolutely and entirely” loyal to the United States by definition. The basis of the social and legal order and source of all obligation in Islam is the Kuran, the final revelation of Allah’s will that is to be obeyed by all creation. His divine sovereignty is irreconcilable with popular sovereignty, the keystone of democracy. Politics is not “part of Islam,” as this would imply that, in origin, it is a distinctly separate sphere of existence that is then eventually amalgamated with Islam. Politics is the intrinsic core of the Islamic imperative of Allah’s sovereignty.

The result of that imperative is that among some three million Muslims in the United States of America there are sufficient numbers of terrorist sympathizers and active human assets to justify expenditure of some $300 billion annually in direct and indirect homeland security costs, excluding military operations abroad. That money would not need to be spent if America had been prudent enough to devise a sane immigration policy back in the days of Lyndon Johnson. The tangible cost of the presence of a Muslim man, woman and child to the American taxpayer is at least $100,000 each year. The cost of the general unpleasantness associated with the terrorist threat and its impact on the quality of our lives is, of course, incalculable.

Off the record, anti-terrorism experts, law-enforcement and intelligence professionals will readily concede that the existence of a multi-million-strong Muslim presence in the Western world is the biggest problem they face in trying to battle terrorism. That diaspora is essential in providing the terrorists with the recruits who hold target-country passports, the infrastructure, the mobility, and the relative invisibility without which they would not be able to operate. And yet in polite circles, mentioning immigration, identity, loyalty, and common culture as a possible area of legitimate concern is verboten. The result is cloud-cuckoo land in which much of what is said or written about terrorism is not about relevant information that helps us know the enemy, but about domestic political agendas, ideology, and psychology.

It is especially noteworthy that the terms of the debate, as currently structured, reject the notion that religious faith can be a prime motivating factor in human affairs. Having reduced religion, literature and art to “narratives” and “metaphors” which merely reflect prejudices based on the distribution of power, the elite class treats the jihadist mindset as a curable idiosyncrasy. Its upholders are supposedly decent but misguided or else mistreated people who will change their ways if we give them more asylum visas, prayer-rooms at colleges and workplaces, and pork-free menus in schools and jails, more welfare, public housing, and taxpayer subsidies for Islamic social and cultural societies.

The belief that the problem can be legislated away or neutralized with public money goes hand-in-hand the elite class’s evident fear of an anti-Muslim backlash among the majority host-population. As the threat grows graver by the day, the elite class insists ever more stridently that counter-terrorist policies must not be pursued at the expense of liberal values, since any alternative would “play into the hands of terrorists.”

With the Rushdie affair an ominous pattern was set in the early 1990s, and now we see that it has crossed the Atlantic. It has two key ingredients.

The Muslim diaspora will condone religious justification for acts that challenge the monopoly of the non-Muslim host-state on violence, and it will use a highly developed infrastructure of mosques, Islamic centers and Muslim organizations either in open support of terrorists’ goals or else as a means of deception and manipulation in order to diminish the ability of the host-society to defend itself.

On the other hand the non-Muslim establishment—public figures, politicians, academic analysts—will try to appease the Muslim diaspora by insisting that “true Islam” is peaceful, and by ignoring or openly misrepresenting the problem of the immigrants’ attitudes and impact.
The same spirit of appeasement and pretense manifest in London in the early 1990s prevails in today’s Washington. The 9-11 Commission, the White House in its own Progress Report a year earlier, and a host of special reports and research papers published by various think-tanks and academic research centers, all opted for the path of pretense by ignoring the current significance and future dynamics of the Muslim diaspora in the United States.

If the elite consensus is not challenged and stopped, Islam will continue to be deployed by the promoters of postmodern liberalism as a tool in the destruction of traditional culture and institutions. The tool will subsequently escape all control, of course, but those seeking to exploit Islam’s destructive force fear such calamity less than they hate the old order they want to see dead. Their new global order requires hybrid identities that are expected to flourish once the old ones are eradicated. They seek to co-opt Muslim immigrants into the project, first as the means of eradication of the native communities and then as an ingredient in the new melange devoid of any clear cultural identity, group coherence, or historical memory. Being dysfunctional, it will supposedly provide millions of grateful recipients of their welfare, compassion, non-discrimination, inclusiveness, affirmative action, etc. The dynamics and legitimacy of the liberal society will be maintained indefinitely.

The proponents of co-opting jihad as a means of revolutionary change do not realize that the unassimilated and unassimilable Muslim multitudes pouring into Europe and North America from the greater Middle East, North Africa, and the eastern and western edges of the Sub-Continent, do not want to be their pliant tools. Being untouched by the self-loathing of the Western elite class, contemptuous of their hosts, they will never be passive subjects in a post-national, post-religious Utopia. They sense that they can become actors in their own right, supplant the enfeebled natives, and gradually take over this “candy store with a busted lock.”
The defense demands having no Muslims—practicing, believing followers of Muhammad—inside the walls. There is a direct, empirically verifiable correlation between the percentage of Muslims in a country and the increase of terrorist violence in that country (not to mention the general decline in the quality of life and civilized discourse).

Those Americans and Europeans who love their lands more than other lands and who put their families before other people, are normal people. Those who tell them that their attachments should be global and that their lands and neighborhoods belong to the whole world are sick and evil. The elite class has every intention of continuing to “fight” the war on terrorism without naming the enemy, without revealing his beliefs, without unmasking his intentions, without offending his accomplices, without expelling his fifth columnists, and without ever daring to win. It is up to the millions of normal Americans and their European cousins to stop the madness, and to win this war. The victory will come, as I’ve written in Chronicles, not by conquering Mecca for America but by disengaging America from Mecca and by excluding Mecca from America. It is time to start fighting Jihad at home by treating all forms of “Islamic activism” as an inherently seditious political, rather than “religious” activity, and, accordingly, to exclude the adherents of Muhammad from these shores—all of them, regardless of race, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation.

The traitor class will scream blue murder, of course. It wants us to share its death wish, to self-annihilate as people with a historical memory and a real identity rooted in Europe and Christendom, and to make room for the monistic Utopia spearheaded by the jihadist fifth column. Their crime can and must be stopped. The crime of which Jihad’s Shabbos-goyim here at home are guilty far exceeds any transgression for which the founders of the United States overthrew the colonial government.

This article was first presented at the 17th annual meeting of The John Randolph Club in Rockford, October 15, 2006.
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