Frontpage Interview's guest today is Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is 
Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs.



FP: Robert Spencer, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

Spencer: Thank you.

FP: What inspired you to write Stealth Jihad? And define the term for our readers please.

Spencer: Primarily I was inspired to write this book by the continuing focus, on the part of government, law enforcement, and the mainstream media, on “terrorism” as the sole threat in reference to jihad. In the 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 that is also advancing by means of non-violent initiatives. Those non-violent initiatives, which are often presented to the public as something quite different from what they actually are, are what I mean by “stealth jihad.” The goal of these initiatives is the imposition of Islamic law, Sharia, over the world – over their fellow Muslims and non-Muslims alike. 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.

FP: In what ways in this book unique and what is your main thesis?

Spencer: The book is unique in that there is no other book that I know of that is devoted entirely to detailing the full extent and magnitude of stealth jihad initiatives. Its main thesis is that those who are working to advance the hegemony of Islamic law here are doing so in innumerable ways, including by introducing it, bit by bit, into American society and demanding that Americans accommodate it; by shouting down any and all who dare to discuss the supremacist impulse within traditional and mainstream Islam; and by engaging in efforts to transform and control Western economies. All these and more constitute the stealth jihad – a full-scale effort to transform pluralistic societies into Islamic states, and to sweep away Western notions of legal equality, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and more.

While they may never attain their goals, the stealth jihadists have already made significant inroads into American life. They are well-funded, well-organized, and persistent. They will not be pacified by negotiations, compromises, or concessions; they cannot be bought off. And every day, they are advancing their agenda -- while most Americans don’t even know they exist.

It is happening right now, under our noses.

FP: How would you define and measure the terrorist threat now?

Spencer: Most would define the terrorist threat as the efforts by Islamic jihadists to destroy American installations here and abroad, and to terrorize the American public by means of such attacks. But Osama bin Laden and other jihadists around the world have been clear and consistent in explaining that their goal is not undifferentiated havoc, but the imposition of Islamic law over the world. That initiative is advancing in many ways, all of which should be understood as part of the “terror threat” – if that imperfect designation must be retained at all.

FP: What is the stealth jihad plan? Tell us a bit how the stealth jihadists are operating and the victories they've already achieved.

Spencer: The stealth jihad plan was enunciated by a top Muslim Brotherhood operative in this country, Mohamed Akram, who explained that the Brotherhood “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

Akram’s directive came in a Muslim Brotherhood memorandum from May 22, 1991 entitled “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” In the memorandum, Akram lays out a plan to do nothing less than conquer and Islamize the United States. The Brotherhood’s success in America would ultimately further the even larger goal of establishing “the global Islamic state.”

Akram seems to be aware of how fantastical his goal might sound – even to his fellow Muslim Brothers. He claims his plans are not “abundant extravagance, imaginations or hallucinations which passed in the mind of one of your brothers, but they are rather hopes, ambitions and challenges that I hope that you share some or most of which with me.” He refers to an earlier Muslim Brotherhood blueprint, dating from 1987, that was designed to bring about the “Enablement of Islam in North America” by means of a six-point plan:

l. Establishing an effective and stable Islamic Movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood.

2. Adopting Muslims’ causes domestically and globally.

3. Expanding the observant Muslim base.

4. Unifying and directing Muslims’ efforts.

5. Presenting Islam as a civilization alternative.

6. Supporting the establishment of the global Islamic State wherever it is.

In America, Islam would not be “enabled” through terror attacks. Rather, explains Akram, the Brotherhood’s priority would be to “settle” Islam and the Brotherhood movement in the United States, so that the Islamic religion will be “enabled within the souls, minds and the lives of the people of the country in which it moves.”

How will this be accomplished? Through the establishment of “firmly-rooted organizations on whose bases civilization, structure and testimony are built.” That is, these organizations would implant themselves within American society, and begin to work to change the direction of our society, so that ultimately American civilization will give way to Islamic civilization; Islamic law will supplant the American Constitutional legal structure; and from these new bases Muslims in the United States will bear testimony to Islam, in order to bring more Americans into the faith itself.

This initiative has met great success so far, because most Americans are unaware that any such initiative is taking place at all. Obviously such initiatives do not announce themselves as such. In one notable incident, Muslim taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport were refusing passengers who carried alcohol or were even suspected of carrying alcohol. Justifying their Islamic supremacist behavior, the cab drivers insisted that this was a matter of religious principle, and that they accordingly would not bend. By January 2007, Muslim cabbies had denied service to 5,400 passengers because of alcohol.

Airport officials were initially accommodating, drafting a plan to color-code the taxis so that passengers would be able to distinguish an alcohol-carrying cab from a Sharia cab. But that didn’t satisfy anyone. Airport officials were criticized for kowtowing to the spread of Sharia norms in the United States, and non-Muslim cab drivers at the airport complained that the color-coding would confuse passengers and discourage them from using cabs at all. The Metropolitan Airports Commission held a hearing on the matter in February 2007; there, a Muslim activist, Abdifatah Abdi, warned that this was a matter of religious freedom, and as such would not be quickly or easily resolved: “This is a religious freedom issue, and it will not end here. It will go to the courts, even the Supreme Court. The drivers will not relinquish their rights to be protected under American law.”

Neither Abdi nor any other defender of the cab drivers, however, explained why the controversy had begun in the first place, since Muhammad’s curse on those who transport alcohol had never been an issue in the United States before this incident. So why did the cab drivers start this campaign in the first place?

The answer lies in a June 6, 2006 religious ruling, or fatwa, published by the “fatwa department” of the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which is the Muslim Brotherhood’s chief front group in the United States. According to this fatwa, “Islamic jurisprudence” forbids cabbies from picking up passengers who have alcohol with them, because to do so would involve “cooperating in sin according to the Islam.” MAS, according to investigative journalist Katherine Kersten, was also playing the role of mediator between the cabbies and the Metropolitan Airports Commission.

One non-Muslim who attended a Metropolitan Airports Commission hearing on the matter in February 2007 put his finger on the stealth jihad aspect of the Sharia cab controversy: “I don’t have a problem with people practicing their religion,” he explained. “I don’t even have a problem with people who want everyone to believe what they believe. But I do have a problem when a majority is being forced to observe other religions and customs.”

The problem with the Sharia cabs was not one of religious freedom at all. No one was preventing the Muslim cab drivers from practicing Islam. But their refusal to carry passengers with alcohol was an assertion of Sharia norms over non-Muslims. Had the precedent been established, it would have been entirely conceivable to expect that non-Muslims would then be expected to conform to other Sharia norms also. Would cab drivers then refuse to carry passengers with pork products? Would a man with a salami sandwich have to take the bus? Would the cabbies refuse to carry an unmarried man and woman in the same cab? Would a cabbie initially take such a couple, but stop the cab and force them to get out if they held hands or kissed?

There is always more Sharia to accommodate. And the outcome of this “reasonable accommodation” was shown in September 2008, in an incident at the Swift Meat Packing Plant in Greeley, Colorado. After the company agreed to demands by Somali Muslim workers to change the work schedule to accommodate their Ramadan fast, around one hundred non-Muslim workers protested at the plant. One Swift employee, Brianna Castillo, declared, “They have no respect for the Spanish or white people. Many times we are forced to pull extra count [i.e., work longer while Muslims go on break]. . . . I don’t feel that is right . . . .Somalis are running our plant. They are telling us what to do.”

Castillo framed the controversy in racial terms, but it really wasn’t about race at all; the core issue was the extent to which U.S. companies and institutions will change their practices and denigrate non-Muslims in order to assuage Muslim demands. And ultimately a court ruled in favor of the Muslim workers, thus reinforcing the possibility that non-Muslim workers will simply have to put up with being discriminated against. The incident shows how measures that seem like “reasonable accommodation” have much larger implications. Most likely when Muslims at Swift began demanding changes in their break times, many reacted with indifference, thinking, “What’s the big deal? So they go on break an hour or two earlier. It doesn’t mean we’re on the road to becoming an Islamic state.” But the Muslims’ insistence on accommodation even at the expense of their non-Muslim co-workers reflect the belief among pious Muslims that Islamic religious imperatives take precedence over the needs or wants of unbelievers. In other words, there can be no compromise with Sharia provisions: they must be adhered to in full, and once the precedent of accommodation is set, there is no logical end to the demands short of a full Sharia regime.

Each stealth jihad incident may be a small accommodation in itself, but it reinforces the precedent that American norms must give way to Muslim ones whenever they clash. Once that precedent is set, it naturally leads to the steady Islamization of American society, unless at some point non-Muslims draw the line and refuse any further intrusions of Islamic practices. That line will never be drawn, however, as long as Americans continue to fail to see the larger implications and cumulative effect of these individual incidents.

FP: Why are our public officials prostrating themselves before Islamists and their demands?

Spencer: Ignorance, political correctness, multiculturalism, fear.

FP: What are the chances that Americans will soon be not allowed to analyse Islam in a free and honest way?

Spencer: It’s a very real possibility. After a great deal of pressure from Islamic nations, the UN this week has passed an anti-blasphemy measure. Although it is non-binding at this point, it is part of a larger and long-term effort to restrict speech that Islamic authorities dislike, including honest examination of the motives and goals of jihad terrorists. The UN measure moves the West one step closer to submitting to the hegemony of Islamic norms. And it is not inconceivable that the Obama Administration would agree to “hate speech” laws in order to build bridges with the Islamic world.

FP: How do we stop the stealth jihadists?

Spencer:

• Enforce existing laws. Section 2385 of the federal criminal code states that “whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government…shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.”

If this already existing law – revised as of January 2, 2006 -- were enforced against Islamic groups in the United States, the stealth jihad could be stopped in its tracks.

• Reclassify Muslim organizations. Any Muslim group in America that does not explicitly renounce, in transparent and manifest deed as well as word, any intention now or in the future to replace the Constitution of the United States with Islamic Sharia should be classified as a political rather than a religious organization, and should be subject to all the responsibilities and standards, which political organizations must adhere. Or it should be closed. Likewise, mosques and Islamic schools should be closely monitored, and any that preach Islamic supremacism in the United States summarily closed.

• End Muslim immigration into the United States, as a simple matter of national security. Immigration policy must work toward the integration of all immigrants, but the all-encompassing societal program of Sharia makes integration of pious, serious, informed Muslims ultimately impossible. While there is no doubt that there are many millions of Muslims who have no interest in jihad either by violence or stealth, no Islamic authorities anywhere in the world have declared heretical or in any way unacceptable the idea that unbelievers must be fought against by various means and subjugated under the rule of Islamic law. Unless and until that begins to happen, no one can be sure of the sentiments of any individual believer. Consequently, simply to protect ourselves, there should be an end to Muslim immigration, combined with a clear notice to Muslims in the United States that any action on behalf of Sharia supremacism is unacceptable.

• Take pride in our own culture. Reject the revisionism and self-hatred that dominates the textbook view of American history and Western civilization today, and recognize that Western culture and civilization are threatened in many, many particulars that we take for granted, and that they are worth defending. American citizens should stop spending so little time on the history of their own country, and on the civilization of the Western world, and so much more on a mishmash of practically everything -- which, in the case of Islam, also has become (as we have seen) a carefully-devised method to impart misinformation on the part of those who calculatedly employ the rhetoric of inclusion and multiculturalism to attain for themselves the right of final edit, as it were, of discussion of Islam in American history textbooks. We must re-learn our own history, and to take pride in much of it, and to revere, not find new ways to deride, those who built the political and legal institutions of this country, with its unrivalled freedoms and solicitude for the individual.

FP: Robert Spencer, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

Spencer: Thank you Jamie.

Robert Spencer’s Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs, is available from Amazon.com for $18.45, more than one-third off the cover price.