Table of Contents
To all those who recognize the danger of the stealth jihad and are ready to resist
INTRODUCTION
TERRORISM WITHOUT TERROR?
T he name of this book is Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam Is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs . For many people, the title itself will be nonsensicalit is tantamount to saying, How the terrorists are winning without terrorism. Most Americans regard the terror threat as one that necessarily involves guns and bombs, and anti-terror efforts as consisting solely in finding terrorist cells and foiling their plans to blow up buildings and kill Americans.
If the terrorists have an ideology, many Americans assume that it is an extreme and perverted version of Islam that twists the peaceful teachings of the Quran into a license to kill. They further suppose that the ideological component is minor; they believe that Islamic terrorism is an activity engaged in primarily by the desperately poor, the ignorant, and the manipulated, and that it needs to be countered with education, compassionate hearts-and-minds initiatives, and financial incentives as much as with military or law enforcement action. Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) summed up this point of view when he asserted that to compare terrorism with an all-encompassing ideology like communism and fascism is evidence of profound confusion.
Not only do many influential Americans deny the existence of, or minimize in importance, any common ideology that jihadists around the world may have, but they also have taken the recent disarray among terrorist groups (principally al Qaeda) as evidence that the jihad ideology is disintegratingdiscredited by those who once had been its foremost proponents.
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, fostered this perception in a lengthy New Yorker article, The Rebellion Within: An al Qaeda mastermind questions terrorism, in June 2008. In it, Wright relates that one of al Qaedas chief theorists has rejected terrorism. This news led to a cascade of both liberal and conservative voices rejoicing that the end of the war on terror is at hand.
Unfortunately, realityas is usually the caseis not quite so comforting. The subject of Wrights piece, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, also known as Dr. Fadl, does not reject the idea that Muslims must strive to subjugate unbelievers under the rule of Islamic law. He simply advocates a change in strategy: less terrorism, more stealth jihad. This revelation shouldnt make Americans go back to sleep; it should spur them to become aware of the ways in which the jihadist agenda of Islamic supremacism is advancing without guns and bombs.
In one key passage, Montasser al-Zayyat, whom Wright identifies as an Islamist lawyer, offends al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri by asserting that jihad did not have to be restricted to an armed approach. This is indicative of the wishful thinking that so many have brought to their reading of Wrights article. Zayyat didnt reject the necessity of waging jihad against infidels; he just denied that it had to be restricted to an armed approach. But many readers mistakenly assumed he was denouncing jihad altogether.
Zawahiri, says Wright, became increasingly isolated. He understood that violence was the fuel that kept the radical Islamist organizations running; they had no future without terror.
That may be so for some organizations. Others, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, get along just fine without violence. In fact, the Brotherhood, as we shall see, is the key force behind the stealth jihad agenda, which aims to establish Islamic law in the West.
In any case, the Brotherhood, according to Wright, wrote a series of books and pamphlets, collectively known as the revisions, in which they formally explained their new thinking. Wright met with the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, to ask him about this.
Wright calls Gomaa a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam. This description in itself shows the inadequacy of speaking only of terrorism, without recognizing the myriad ways in which the jihad agenda is advancing. Gomaa may indeed be a highly promoted champion of moderate Islam, but he has also expressed support for the terrorist group Hizballah.
In fact, Gomaa openly declares that all his revisions are only intended as temporary measures. He tells Wright, We accept the revisions conditionally, not as the true teachings of Islam but with the understanding that this process is like medicine for a particular time.
In other words, the true teachings of Islam include the mandate to wage violent jihad against unbelievers. But jihad violence can temporarily be set aside for strategic reasons, as medicine for a particular time. That is, different times call for different tactics, but the overall objective remains the same.
After outlining various reasons why, in Fadls new view, todays global jihad is illegitimate, Wright informs us that Fadl does not condemn all jihadist activity. To the contrary, Fadl says that jihad in Afghanistan will lead to the creation of an Islamic state with the triumph of the Taliban, God willing, and that if it were not for the jihad in Palestine, the Jews would have crept toward the neighboring countries a long time ago. As for September 11, Fadl asks, what good is it if you destroy one of your enemys buildings, and he destroys one of your countries? What good is it if you kill one of his people, and he kills a thousand of yours? ... That, in short, is my evaluation of 9/11.
In other words, it was not morally wrong, just tactically stupid.
This is no rejection of jihad; it is just a change in tactics. It should make us all the more aware of, and on guard against, the stealth jihad.
THE STEALTH JIHAD
In this book, I offer evidence for the proposition that terror attacks involving bombings and shootings are not the sum total of terrorist aspirations, but are just one component of a larger initiative. The goal of that initiative is the imposition of jihadists ideology over the worldover their fellow Muslims and non-Muslims alike. That ideology may be summed up by the phrase radical Islam, although that term is used in many different ways. Some use it to suggest that the core teachings of Islam are essentially peaceful, and that it is only radicalsthose who distort those teachings into radical Islamwho are responsible for violence committed in Islams name.
I am not using the phrase in that way. Rather, I have long contended that Islam is unique among the major world religions in having a developed doctrine, theology, and legal system mandating warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. There is no orthodox sect or school of Islam that teaches that Muslims must coexist peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis. I use the term radical Islam merely to distinguish those Muslims who are actively working to advance this subjugation from the many millions who are not, as well as to emphasize that the stealth jihad program is truly radical: it aims at nothing less than the transformation of American society and the imposition of Islamic law here, subjugating women and non-Muslims to the status of legal inferiors.
Those who are working to advance the subjugation of non-Muslims are not doing it solely by violent means. The common distinction between radical and moderate Muslims has generally been made between those who are engaged in blowing things up or are plotting to do so, and those who are not. However, the evidence presented in this book shows that the distinction ought to be placed elsewhere: between those Muslims who believe that Islamic law is the perfect system for human society and who are working by whatever means to impose that Islamic law, and those Muslims who support Western pluralistic governments and seek to live with non-Muslims as equals, under secular rule, on an indefinite basis.