The Clash Of Civilizations and the Great Caliphate

The essay below was written by Larry Abraham, January 29, 2004. Abraham is author of The Insider's Report.

The following is reprinted with permission of the author. He wrote a prelude to his essay:

Part I of this essay was written in January before the Democrat Party primaries settled anything and before the occupation of Iraq took a turn for the worse. However, it is now more obvious that what I wrote about the nature of the Third Great Jihad is all too true. The political picture has deteriorated in Europe and the U.S. to a great degree since then so Part II takes these developments into consideration. Again, I urge all of you to distribute this essay as far and wide as possible without any concern for copyright violation. Our fellow citizens need to know the true nature of what we all face. LHA

AS WE WATCH AND LISTEN to all the Democrat Party candidates running for the nomination of their party, it is tantamount to enduring the Chinese water torture. The blah, blah, blah goes on and nothing of value comes out except the pain of listening to the same nothingness over and over again. I won’t take the time or space to repeat what you have heard so many, mind numbing times over the past months but what you have not heard is crucial.
I must also fault President Bush and the administration spokesmen for not telling the American people what they really need to know about this “war”. If they don’t do that sometime between now and November it may cost them the election.

It Did Not Start on 9/11
The war we are now facing did not begin on September 11, 2001, nor will it end with the peaceful transition to civilian authorities in Iraq, whenever that may be. In fact, Iraq is but a footnote in the bigger context of this encounter, but an important one none the less.
This war is what the Jihadists themselves are calling the “ Third Great Jihad” and are doing so within the framework of a time line which reaches back to the very creation of Islam in the Seventh century and their attempts to recreate the dynamics which gave rise to the religion in the first two hundred years of its existence.
No religion in history grew as fast, in its infancy, than did Islam and the reasons for this growth are not hard to explain when you understand what the world was like at the time of Muhammad’s death in 632 AD. The Western Roman Empire was in ruins and the Eastern Empire was based in Constantinople and trying desperately to keep the power of its early grandeur while transitioning to Christianity as a de facto state religion. The costs to the average person were unbearable as he was being required to meet the constantly rising taxes levied from the state along with the tithes coerced by the Church. What Islam offered was the “carrot or the sword”.
If you became a convert, your taxes were immediately eliminated, as was your tithe. If you didn’t, you faced death. The choice was not hard for most to make, unless you were a very devoted martyr in the making. At the beginning, even the theology was not too hard for most to swallow, considering that both Jewry and Christianity were given their due by the Prophet. There is but one God-Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet, as was Jesus, and the pre-Christian Jewish prophets of the Torah (old testament). Both were called “children of the book”, the book being the Koran, which replaced both the Old and New testaments for Christians and Jews.
With this practical approach to spreading the “word” Islam grew like wild fire, reaching out from the Saudi Arabian Peninsula in all directions. This early growth is what the Muslims call the “first” great Jihad and it met with little resistance until Charles Martel of France, the father of Charlemagne, stopped them in the battle of Tours in France, after they had firmly established the religion on the Iberian peninsula. This first onslaught against the West continued in various forms and at various times until Islam was finally driven out of Spain in 1492 at the battle of Granada.
The “second great jihad” came with the Ottoman Turks. This empire succeeded in bringing about the downfall of Constantinople as a Christian stronghold and an end to Roman hegemony in all of its forms. The Ottoman Empire was Islam’s most successful expansion of territory even though the religion itself had fractured into warring sects and bitter rivalries with each claiming the ultimate truths in “the ways of the Prophet”. By 1683 the Ottomans had suffered a series of defeats on both land and sea and the final and failed attempt to capture Vienna set the stage for the collapse of any further territorial ambitions and Islam shrunk into various sheikhdoms, emir dominated principalities, and roving tribes of nomads. However, by this time a growing anti-western sentiment, blaming its internal failures on anyone but themselves, was taking hold and setting the stage for a new revival know has Wahhabism which came into full bloom under the House of Saud on the Arabian peninsula shortly before the onset of WWI. It is this Wahhabi version of Islam which has infected the religion itself, now finding adherents in almost all branches and sects, especially the Shiites. What this sect calls for is the complete and total rejection of anything and everything which is not based in the original teachings of The Prophet and it finds its most glaring practice in the policies of the Afgani Taliban or the Shiite practices of the late Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Its Ali Pasha (Field Marshall) is now known as Osama bin Laden, the leader of the “third Jihad."

Jimmy Carter sets the stage
The strategy for this “holy war” did not begin with the planning of the destruction of the World Trade Center. It began with the plans for toppling the Shah of Iran back in the early 1970’s and culminated with his exile in 1979. With his plans and programs to “westernize” his country, along with his close ties to the U.S. and subdued acceptance of the State of Israel, the Shah was the soft target.
Thanks, in large part to the hypocritical and disastrous policies of the Jimmy Carter State Department the revolution was set into motion, the Shah was deposed, his arm forces scattered or murdered and stage one was complete. The Third Jihad now had a base of operations and the oil wealth to support its grand design or what they call the “Great Caliphate."
The Great Caliphate
What this design calls for is the replacement of all secular leadership in any country with Muslim majorities. This would include, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, all the Emirates, Sudan, Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and finally what they call the “occupied territory” Israel.
As a part of this strategy, forces of the jihad will infiltrate governments and the military as a prelude to taking control, once the secular leadership is ousted or assassinated. Such was the case in Lebanon leading to the Syrian occupation and what was attempted in Egypt with the murder of Anwar Sadat, along with the multiple attempts on the lives of Hussein in Jordan, Mubarak of Egypt and Musharraf in Pakistan. Pakistan is a particular prize because of its nuclear weapons.
The long-range strategy of the Third Jihad counts on three strategic goals. 1. The U.S. withdrawing from the region just as it did in Southeast Asia, following Vietnam. 2. Taking control of the oil wealth in the Muslim countries, which would be upwards to 75% of known reserves, and 3. Using nuclear weapons or other WMDs to annihilate Israel. A further outcome of successfully achieving these objectives would be to place the United Nations as the sole arbiter in East/West negotiations.
Evidence of the Bush Administration awareness of this plan is found in the facts that immediately following the 9/11 attack, their first move was to shore up Pakistan and Egypt, believing that these two would be the next targets for al Qaeda while Americans focused on the disaster in New York. The administration also knew that the most important objective was to send a loud and clear message that the U.S. was in the region to stay, not only to shore up our allies but to send a message to the Jihadists. The attack on Afghanistan was necessary to break-up a secure al Qaeda base of operations and put their leadership on the run or in prison.

Why Iraq?
The war on Iraq also met a very strategic necessity in that no one knew how much collaboration existed between Saddam Hussein and the master planners of the Third Jihad or his willingness to hand off WMDs to terrorist groups including the PLO in Israel. What was known, were serious indications of on-going collaboration, as Saddam funneled money to families of suicide bombers attacking the Israelis and others in Kuwait.
What the U.S. needed to establish was a significant base of operations smack dab in the middle of the Islamic world, in a location which effectively cut it in half. Iraq was the ideal target for this and a host of other strategic reasons.
Leadership of various anti-American groups both here and abroad understood the vital nature of the Bush initiative and thus launched their demonstrations, world-wide, to “Stop The War”. Failing this, they also laid plans to build a political campaign inside the country, with the War in Iraq as a plebiscite, using a little know politician as the thrust point; Howard Dean. This helps to explain how quickly the Radical Left moved into the Dean campaign with both people and money, creating what the clueless media called the “Dean Phenomenon."
By building on the left-wing base in the Democrat party and the “Hate Bush” liberals, the campaign has already resulted in a consensus among the aspirants, minus Joe Lieberman, to withdraw the U.S. from Iraq and turn the operation over to the U.N. And, if past is prologue, i.e. Vietnam, once the U.S. leaves it will not go back under any circumstances, possibly even the destruction of Israel.
Should George W. Bush be defeated in November and a new administration come to power we could expect to see the dominoes start to fall in the secular Islamic countries and The Clash of Civilizations would then become a life changing event in all of our lives.
What surprised the Jihadists following the 9/11 attack was how American sentiment mobilized around the president and a profound sense of patriotism spread across the country They were not expecting this reaction, based on what had happened in the past, nor were they expecting the determined resolve of the President himself. I believe that this is one of the reasons we have not had any further attacks within our borders. They are content to wait, just as one of their tactical mentors, V.I. Lenin admonished…”two steps forward, one step back."
A couple of additional events serve as valuable footnotes to the current circumstances we face: the destruction of the human assets factor of the CIA during the Carter presidency, presided over by the late Senator Frank Church and Carter’s CIA Director, Admiral Stansfield Turner. This fact has plagued our intelligence agencies right up to this very day with consequences which are now obvious. Jimmy Carter is the one man who must bear the bulk of the responsibility for setting the stage of the Third Jihad. Americans should find little comfort in how the Democrat contenders constantly seek the “advice and counsel” of this despicable little hypocrite who now prances around with his Nobel Prize, while attacking President Bush with almost as much venom as his fellow Nobel Laureate, Yassir Arafat. Lastly, we should not expect to see any meaningful cooperation from Western Europe, especially the French.
Since failing to protect their own interests in Algeria by turning the country over to the first of the Arab terrorists, Amid Ben Bella, the country itself is now occupied by Islamic immigrants totally twenty percent of the population.
We are in the battle of our lives which will go on for many years possibly even generations. If we fail to understand what we are facing or falter in the challenge of “knowing our enemy” the results will be catastrophic.

PART II (May 1, 2004)
Since writing the above, we have witnessed some frightening evidence in support of our hypothesis both internally and in other parts of the world.
The al Qaeda bombing in Madrid has emboldened our enemy into believing it can use terror as an instrument for democratic regime change. Based on what happened there, they may be right.

Kerry and bin Laden on the same page
John Kerry and other leaders of his party constantly refer to the United States as “acting unilaterally.” They give no credit whatsoever to countries like Great Britain, Poland, Italy, Australia or even tiny Honduras for putting their limited armed forces in harm’s way to support the U.S. led coalition in Iraq. It is little wonder that some are considering doing what Spain has done—pulling out. The leaders in these countries have spent considerable political capital in this effort, and have little to show for it as it relates to fostering good will with the American public. Couple that fact with Osama bin Ladin’s latest offer of withholding attacks on those who “quit” the coalition and you have all the elements for a Democrat party fostered “self-fulfilling prophecy” where the U.S. will be totally alone in the pacification of Iraq. John Kerry and the Bush critics persist in the “lie” of the U.S. going it “alone” in Iraq but Osama bin Laden knows differently and will use the Kerry rhetoric to help isolate the U.S. The terrorists now see themselves as political “king-makers”. They may be right.
Another aspect of the “anti-Bush” political axis is how both his political enemies and the main stream media take ghoulish delight in “the body count,” just as they did in the later days of Vietnam. Oh sure, they pay incidental homage to the memory of the young Americans who gave their lives in the greatest threat this country has ever faced, but they do so with all the sincerity of Madonna making a vow of chastity. As the body bags grow in number, they believe, so grows their political prospects. They may be right.
If the Bush administration is further weakened in the months leading up to the November elections, we will witness a heightened al Qaeda offensive in all parts of the world, including our own country, and especially in Iraq and nations surrounding it ,i.e., Pakistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Events within the past few days in Jordan not only make this argument but also point to the possibility of “what happened to the WMDs.”
Iran and Syria are daily growing more overt and bold in their support of insurgents within Iraq, believing that Bush has been so hurt by internal politics that he is powerless to act against them in any meaningful way. They may be right.

The Leftwing initiative, Political Correctness and Our Will to Win
Within our own country we are witnessing and almost insane application of “political correctness.” As the barbarism of radical Islam grows more apparent in the streets of the Middle East from Gaza to Basra, we see a cultural suicide taking place within our own schools and communities.
Our children are being taught from the Koran, our professors are preaching intifadah in their class rooms, and Muslim “call to prayer” loud speakers are blaring out from city halls. The more precarious our very existence becomes, the more our liberal brethren embrace their enemies. It is a Stockholm Syndrome which can only lead to the recruitment of young Muslims who will be willing to duplicate in the West what their co-religionists are doing in the streets of Israel and the market places of Baghdad. The liberal P.C. crowd say nothing about the silence of the Muslim religious leadership as it relates to the carnage of innocents but couldn’t speak out fast enough against the inspiration supplied to tens of millions of Christians by Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. They were put off by the movie’s “violence” and its alleged “fostering of anti-Semitism”. Movies must represent their “reality” as the real thing moves them not at all. Among liberal Jews in America, hatred of George W. Bush is only surpassed by their contempt for Ariel Sharon…Let them explain it, I am at a total loss to do so. Maybe they just miss seeing Bill Clinton smooching Yassir Arafat in the White House Rose Garden.
The “Reverend” Jesse Jackson is now calling the U.S. “guilty of crimes against humanity” as he sets out to mobilize the non-Islamic Left. None of the Democrat leadership says a word in opposition to Jackson’s treason or Hillary’s attacks on the President and U.S. policy in an Arabic newspaper, while in London. You can bet that al Jezeera didn’t miss a beat in their reporting of both events.

The campaign takes its toll
The campaign is seriously hurting Mr. Bush’s leadership role in the War on Terror. While ducking every new book critical of his initiative or trying to counter the partisan nitpicking of the 9/11 Commission, he has persisted in the misbegotten insistence of “installing democracy” in Iraq. Our purpose for being in that beleaguered country should be restricted to one purpose and one purpose only, to stop the expansion of The Third Jihad and provide a base for doing same in the neighboring areas. This can be done by sealing the borders, attacking anything that moves in violation of same and by making it clear to Syria and Iran that any participation on their part will be considered an “act of war”. Let the country be governed by the local tribes, Shiite in the south, Sunni in the central and Kurds in the north with a U.S. pro consul overseeing the military. Oil revenues could be spilt by population allocation. How about installing a Republic…it worked pretty well here with diverse populations. The very idea that we should spend our sons and daughters blood or our tax dollars on trying to building a “democracy” in the region which has neither a history nor a desire for such, is sheer nonsense. The very essence of Islamic teaching speaks directly against this principle. Continuing on the current path can only result in fostering greater hatred for the “Great Satan”. Force is the only thing which is respected in that part of the world and this force need not be tied to “reform”. I suggest Mr. Rumsfled acquaint himself with a copy of Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Sun Tsu’s Art of War. All the tactics and strategies necessary to subdue the Iraqi insurgents can be found in those two military gems.

Please not the UN
Bringing the U.N. to the party will only compound the problem without adding any accountability. The U.N. has been accused of many things over the years, but being a “democratic” institution has never been one of them. Just the latest scandal of the “Oil for Food” program should provide any thinking person with all the evidence they need to keep the U.N. at bay. But this doesn’t seem to bother the likes of the John Kerry’s of the world who prattle on as if the scam doesn’t even exist.
Just one example will make my case; the UN mandate in Israel, which has been in place since 1948. One more salient point needs to be made on this subject. There is no such thing as “The International Community.” There are only individual countries, each with its own agenda which is always self serving. The myth of a higher level of “moral authority” coming out of the UN as been one of the greater lies of the past half century, but it is a lie which persists in spite of a bloody record of hypocrisy, graft, genocide and “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” I have a suggestion for the 9/11 Commission:.Why don’t they look into what the UN was doing before the attack on the World Trade Center? If they do, they will find that exactly one week before, the UN was holding a Conference on Racism in Durbin, South Africa where the delegates voted overwhelmingly to condemn Israel, as “racist and terrorist.” The U.S., Canadian and Israeli delegates walked out in disgust. Nary a word was uttered about Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, or the Taliban, to say nothing of what was happening in Rwanda while they crunched caviar on toast and washed it down with vintage Champaign.

Genocide does not qualify as “racism” according to the UN “morality.” Neither we nor the world needs the UN to muck up what is already a very delicate situation. If given proper leadership every Middle Eastern country named above will throw in with the Coalition, for if they don’t they will be the next targets of the Third Great Jihad and the Great Caliphate. Pakistan is already showing the leadership which others will follow.

What do you think moved Kadahaffi to cozy up to the U.S. and Great Britain? He fears the Jihadist more than he hates us.

Evil Does Exist
Our current crises, in meeting the threat of the Third Jihad, is one more example of how most Americans simply refuse to believe there is evil in this world and are willing to grant moral equivalence on any human action. Unless the crime is personalized such as in the case of Lacy Peterson, we lose interest quickly and become bored or at least not involved.
To try and understand what we are facing, look into the eyes of your son or grandson and try to fathom a mind which would take pride in strapping a bomb to his body and sending him out to kill himself and countless innocent people. Or in the case of your daughter or grand daughter, try to imagine a religion which commands you to mutilate her vagina to destroy her sex drive or demands you to stone her to death if she has sexual relations with a man other than of your choosing.
If you can comprehend these facts both intellectually and emotionally, then you will start to understand what we are facing in the months and years ahead, both at home and abroad.
The radicals of Islam will stop at nothing to destroy us and all we stand for. They see this war as their “entry to paradise” and a release from the miserable existence they have built for themselves within the confines of an evil and perverse religion. The Jihadist are NOT like us, nor most of their fellow Muslims. But, like terrorists everywhere they have silenced any criticisms from fellow Muslims through threat and intimidation and have, with the help of the ‘useful idiots” in the West, “created the appearance of popular support."
If we are incapable of understanding these realities and acting accordingly, within the life time of everyone who reads these words, we will see our cherished way of like cease to exist and chaos become our lot. The Clash of Civilizations is now reaching out and touching all of us. May God grant us the wisdom and the courage to meet the challenge.
I respectfully dedicate the above to the memory of Pat Tillman and his 872 comrades who by their courage and willing sacrifice set an example for every American. May we be worthy of their “greatest love…” The above was written by Larry Abraham. He makes many good points in this article, and gives a warning Americans should be heeding. Learn more about Islamic terrorism here.

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Pathways To Jihadi Terrorism

The following article is written by Dr. Babu Suseelan and is republished here with his permission.

Pathways To Jihadi Terrorism

Jihadi terrorism is as old as Islam. Jihad war, death, and destruction have followed in the wake of Islam for hundreds of years. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Spain, Persia, India and several societies have experienced the deadly Islamic conquest. Now Jihadi terrorism has surged to dangerous proportions and is a major threat to public health and world peace. Jihadi terrorists have the potential to perpetuate their deadly terrorism, wreaking havoc in every city in the world. Its destructive impact on the economy, public health and public safety is widespread, and on the increase.

Sensational Jihadi terrorism, mass riots, violence, beheadings, suicide bombings and plane hijackings are under constant media scrutiny. Jihadi terrorism is also a compelling subject for terrorism scholars, social scientists and security planners. Nevertheless, agreement on the important underlying causes has been elusive and inconsistent. Liberal social scientists say Jihadi terrorism is a product of “labeling.” This is one of the ten forms of cognitive distortion that we will talk about in a minute.

Social scientists on the more liberal side also theorize that Jihadi terrorism has social causes including economic deprivation and interference by non-Islamic countries. They romanticize Jihadi terrorists as involved in protest against social injustice. In their eagerness to promote the irrational doctrine of “political correctness,” left wing armchair speculators see Jihadi terrorists as victims of reactionary, reductionist “conspiracy theories” that make the terrorists the real victims of unjust social forces. For phony, left wing, liberal social scientists, suicide bombing, mass murder, riots, arson and the public beheading of non-Muslims by Jihadi terrorists are frustrated responses to political injustices.

Ample empirical evidence and case study analysis of Muslim terrorists proves the unsoundness of these theories. Such malicious “politically correct” statement s are misleading and mischievous. The unified left wing explanation of Jihadi terrorism as a social phenomenon in the changing political, economic context is false and falls far short of explaining reliable and stable psychological and religious variables influencing Islamic terrorism.

In recent years, studies of risk prediction and identification of both static and dynamic factors associated with Jihadi terrorism have provided a clear understanding of the problem. Empirically based investigations of psychological factors on Jihadi terrorists have indicated important cognitive and behavioral variables acting as pathways for Jihadi terrorism. Focused studies have revealed the unique patterns of the Jihadi terrorists' thinking, asocial attitudes, cruelty, and indifference to the feelings of their victims, paranoia and aggressive hostility.

ISLAMIC THINKING ERRORS

Religious, psychological, educational, and historical factors are implicated in Jihadi terrorism. Static variables (age, ethnic religious background) and dynamic variables (cognitive distortions, thinking errors, negative emotions, maladaptive behaviors, community networks that support deviance) also specifically lend themselves to the identification of dynamic risk factors of Jihadi terrorism.

Muslims think Islam is a perfect and perfected religion. It has perfect answers for science, politics, government, economics, psychosocial problems and human life. As far as the doctrinal tenets are concerned, Islam maintains that Muslims must unquestionably follow the tenets. Muslims should shun everything that is opposed to Islam. Muslims consider the Koran, the Hadith and the Sura to be perfect and above criticism.

Many Muslims are indoctrinated at an early age into the rigid, closed, reductionist Islamic dogma, demanding full faith and devotion and separation from all competing philosophies. They are kept ignorant of the world and other rational thought systems. Islamic schools focus on rote memorization of Koran and discourage critical thinking. Questioning Islamic concepts is the biggest crime in fundamentalist cultures, punishable by death.

From the beginning, Islamic education starts formulating a conceptualization, which logically connects automatic Islamic thoughts and beliefs. The education system fails to see the larger picture. It provides a cognitive map that is limited, hostile and untrue. The faulty cognitive map generally resonates with the students for life.

These rigid Islamic cognitive schemas have a profound impact on their thinking, feeling and behavior. Muslims have a common narrative history, cognitive schemas, social scripts, attitudes and cultural values. The whole thought-system lacks critical thinking, rational analysis and personal responsibility, and some Muslims are content to stay the same and blame everyone but themselves for their thinking errors. For their failings and shortcomings, Jihadi Muslims hide behind alibi and denial. Everything that happens is “Allah’s will” and “non-believers will burn in Islamic hell fire.” Such automatic expressions influence their subsequent emotion, behavior and response. Since their automatic response is based on their preconceived Islamic thought, they often misconstrue neutral situations to fit their closed model thinking. In other words, a Muslim whose education has been so restricted has automatic thoughts that are biased and full of thinking errors.

Since Islam is a closed dogma and Muslims are forbidden to test its validity or utility, and required to maintain the equilibrium at any cost, Muslims' thinking errors are overwhelming. Dysfunctional automatic thoughts coexist with various thinking errors in the Muslim mind. Typical Islamic thinking errors include:

1. Polarized or all-or-nothing-thinking (e.g.: the world is cleanly divided into believers and non-believers, daru-ul-Islam and dar-ul-harb, the house of Islam and the house of war)

2. Catastrophic thinking (all infidels will go to hell)

3. Discounting the positive, accentuate the negative (all infidels are out to get Muslims)

4. Emotional reasoning (emotional justification for bombing, beheading, and terrorism)

5. Labeling (putting a global label on non-believers, such as kafirs or infidels)

6. Minimization (blame the victim, denial, alibi)

7. Mind Reading (a form of jumping to conclusions, for example, when a Muslim assumes he knows what non-Muslims are thinking)

8. Mental Filter (the failure to see things holistically)

9. Overgeneralization (making sweeping negative conclusions, Jews are pigs, Christians are rats)

10. Personalization (as when Muslims believe kafirs are behaving negatively because of Islam)

11. Tunnel Vision (only seeing things the Islamic way)

Many Muslims erroneously think the Islamic absolutist paradigm is designed to be adaptable to all applications for all the time — to all existing, new and future situations. It prevents fundamentalist Muslims from seeking new and viable solutions to life’s problems. They refuse to reform. They refuse to incorporate new elements with traditional Islamic thinking as a means to achieve a better society. Because of their limited indoctrination, they are unable to utilize new concepts to reach a more accurate assessment to produce more accurate judgments. Out-of-the-box thinking, logical reasoning, higher order thinking, and scientific thinking are really not intellectual pursuits of fundamentalist Muslims. This is the incubational source of Jihadi terrorists.

DISTURBED JIHADI MIND

As a result of the early indoctrination, and of their willful protection against new information, a Jihadi terrorist's interpretation of neutral events, their problem solving strategies, their emotional reactions, their interpersonal communication and their attitudes toward non-Muslims are full of thinking errors, automatic thoughts and negative behaviors. Consciously or unconsciously, Jihadi Muslims react to upsetting events, rejection, failure, and criticism in extremely negative Islamic terms. They may spontaneously respond — without critical evaluation — with extreme, angry outbursts. Instead of developing a more adaptive response, Jihadi Muslims accept automatic, pre-cooked responses couched in Islamic jargon as correct, and feel proud of it.

Islamic fundamentalists' automatic thoughts are predictable since their underlying beliefs are in the closed, rigid Islamic dogma. Such automatic responses and ready-made solutions from Koranic concepts complicate issues, and interfere with their ability to reach positive goals. These dysfunctional, automatic thoughts and negative maladaptive behaviors are logically connected to the content of the defective automatic thoughts. All of this leads to "intermittent explosive disorder" including violence, riots, suicide bombing, and terrorism. For Jihadi Muslims, such distorted thoughts and violent behavior have their own validity and utility.

The consequences are decidedly disastrous and miserable for the victims. The interaction of Islamic dogmatism, early indoctrination, rote memorization, deviance-amplifying community psychodynamics, and cognitive processes enable Jihadi Muslims to maintain their closed thinking, negative emotions, and explosive behaviors. Strict Islamic regulatory guidelines also act as catalysts for developing authoritarian/conservative personality traits including conservatism, aggression, toughness, projectivity, stereotyping, destruction, hostility and anger. Such aggressive, conservative personality traits are maintained in all Jihadi Muslims by militant Islamic religious and social networks.

Research studies have revealed that individuals who are committed to a dogmatic Islamic belief system suffer from reasoning deficiencies, thinking errors, and are likely to join terrorists groups as an expression of their conservative/authoritarian outlook. There is also evidence that socioeconomic factors, and educational level are not a determinant of Jihadi terrorism.

Are Jihadi Muslims who share dogmatic Islamic beliefs and membership in terrorism groups more emotionally disturbed by clinical standards? Yes. By every measure available to researchers, these kinds of absolutist, dogmatic, rigid beliefs negatively influence ethical judgment, and precipitate emotional disturbances.

DEVIANCE-AMPLIFYING ISLAMIC NETWORKS

In Islamic culture, the common emotional impulses of Muslims are shaped through Islamic education, and through shared experiences in the Islamic social groups. Islamic cultural institutions, religious organizations and the state (in an Islamic state) have ways of controlling thinking and social expression. A dogmatic Islamic ideology, and the strict enforcement of religious practices to maintain the closed system, and the rote memorization of the Koran — all of these solidify dysfunctional cognitive schemas. Defective cognitive schemas, culture and conservative personalities continuously interact, in mutually supporting ways, and they help create and support explosive behaviors.

Jihadi Muslims seldom recognize the existence or inappropriateness of their thinking errors, of course. That would be the beginning of the end of those thinking errors. In the same way, they don't recognize that the negative emotions are inappropriate. So they can't help but misinterpret situations or or refrain from violent outbursts. In discussion or negotiation sessions, Jihadis often mix up feelings and thoughts and mislabel feelings as thoughts. The connection among their irrational thoughts, negative emotion and outrageous behavior is always justified in the name of Allah.

PREVENTING JIHADI VIOLENCE

To develop and implement an effective model to prevent Jihadi violence and terrorism, it is important to focus on the cognitive and behavioral variables acting as pathways for Jihadi terrorism. Empirically based investigations of psychological factors of Jihadi terrorism have been helpful in identifying the risk factors, thinking errors, and criminogenic needs of Jihadi terrorists. These risk factors, and the deadly Islamic ideology — which transforms Muslims into terrorists and suicide bombers — should be part of any effective harm-reduction and terrorism-prevention policy and plan. Prevention strategies must include effective cognitive restructuring methods to address the impact of early learning processes and its influence in shaping negative emotions and deviant behaviors.

Democratic nations must exert pressure on Islamic countries to reform their education system. Dogmatic, rote education that focuses only on the Koran is not conducive to rational thinking. It doesn't help students think. It doesn't help expand scientific knowledge or insight.

It is necessary to compel Islamic educational institutions to modify the system to minimize those factors that enhance destructive beliefs and thinking errors. Effective educational reform must include restructuring school curriculums, and revising training curriculums for teachers. Islamic education reform can modify negative thinking process and possibly ameliorate some of the violent behavior — including Jihadi terrorism. Revision of Islamic education should (and will only) come from outside the Jihadi groups. Islamic countries must be forced to break the wall of denial and commit themselves to the difficult process of change.

As part of the pressure, liberal democratic nations must enforce effective psycholinguistic, cognitive/behavior restructuring, and thinking. The reforms must modify the Muslim student's sense of righteousness and the simplistic all-or-nothing mentality that causes them to wage war against infidels.

The above article was written by Dr. Babu Suseelan, a psychologist who specializes in addiction, forensic psychology, criminal and sex offenders. His research degrees are in psychology, cognitive/behavioral therapy, criminal justice, and addiction. By our request, he added some supplementary comments below.

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The above article is for Muslims and non-Muslims who want to understand the criminalization process of Jihadi Muslims. This article is also for those who are deceived by Islamic propaganda and thus prevented from seeing the nature of Islamic thinking errors. Also, to help Jihadi Muslims extricate themselves from their dangerous dogma disguised as religion. Unfortunately our leftists and pseudo-liberals are under the illusion that education, democracy, economic development and the non-interference of Israel, the U.S., India, and Britain would enable Muslims to live in peace. These phony root-cause theories are not based on reality. In their theories, they have no sign of any effective corrective programs to contain terrorists.

From its inception, everything fundamentalist Islam has touched has been marred with lies, wars, tyranny, massacre, and terror. Traditional cultures and secular principles have been violently destroyed. Original ethical concepts and social structures have been disintegrated by force.

Bogus liberals, phony leftists and pseudo-secularists need to realize that it would be naive and condescending to assume that Jihadi fundamentalists would give up their dearly-held core beliefs on Jihad war, in return for democracy, economic aid, employment opportunities, Israeli withdrawal from West Bank, or non-interference from the U.S.

History proves that wealth (Saudi Arabia), democracy (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt) will not deter Jihadi terrorism. Appeasement, peace treaties, more aid, and surrender are clumsy attempts to "buy them off." It will not work with Jihadi Muslims.

Muslim countries have had many opportunities to reform their rigid, closed dogma, and take an easier and more peaceful path. Globalization, economic development, technology, and human resources are available for them. However, Jihadi fundamentalists have decided to merely modernize their terror tactics and direct their resources to spreading hatred through Muslim Madrasas around the world. Israel turned the desert into a blooming garden. Jihadi Muslims still refuse to compromise or learn from the only democratic country among Islamic nations.

The free world won the cold war, destroyed Soviet Communism, Nazism, Fascism, and Japanese Imperialism through psychological warfare and outright war. But the world has not yet taken the Jihadi Islamic ideology for what it is — an ideology of war. We are facing a deadly ideology with millions of Jihadis stretching from Indonesia to Turkey. Unless now we embark upon new effective strategies including strong psychological warfare, we will not be able to live in peace.

As a psychologist, I have worked for years with alcohol and drug addicts, sex offenders, and criminals. Based on my theoretical and practical experience, I can clearly say that most of the character and behavioral traits of Jihadi Muslims are similar to criminal offenders and addicts. Jihadis suffer from denial, cognitive disorders, thinking errors, and they have no guilt, fear, shame, remorse and empathy. They indulge in blame games, they avoid responsibility, and they exhibit intermittent explosive disorder.

Complete recovery from their criminal thinking and antisocial behavior is impossible. As such, I can categorically say that reformation in Islam is not possible unless the free world can conquer Islamic nations, free the majority reform-minded Muslims who are trapped in their own countries by the Jihadis, and then change the educational policies. The free world was successful with Japan, Germany and Italy to reform their systems.

What can one citizen do? One person may be able to change one or two Jihadis. But the Islamic communities (uma) that encourage dogmatic thinking is very strong and they have a hold on the mind-set of every Muslim.

To effect change in Jihadis, one need to induce fear, guilt, shame, remorse and responsibility. Jihadis justify terrorism and violence in the name of Islam. Inducing change in any offender, the first step is to introduce guilt, fear, responsibility and empathy. With Jihadi fundamentalists, this will be difficult. Using every available means, we should try to shame them and induce guilt through the following avenues: psychological warfare, media, TV, video, movies and advertisements. Jihadis need to undergo an effective cognitive and behavior change program under a controlled environment.

We also need to expose Jihadis through media, internet, TV, movies, articles and chat groups. The free world needs an organized, effective psychological warfare to extricate them from the slavish ideology. We also need to consider seriously the following measures:

1. Ban or reform all Islamic madrasas.

2. Deny permission to construct mosques.

3. Consider limiting immigrants from Islamic countries to free countries.

4. Closely monitor students studying in free countries from Islamic nations.

5. Stop the flow of funds from Saudi Arabia to American Islamic schools.

6. Deny visas to Muslim Imams from India, Pakistan and the Middle East.

7. Establish radio and television stations in and around Islamic nations.

8. Use mind manipulation techniques to denounce evil practices of Jihadis.

9. Stop immediately the conversion of correctional populations into Muslims. This is a serious consideration. The U.S. has 2.5 million offenders in federal correctional institutions, state prisons and local jails. 95% percent of them will return to our communities. Converted Muslims with criminal proclivities are a potential danger. They could work as sleeper-agents in our communities. Most of the prisons employ Imams and 95% percent of them are from Pakistan, India, Iran, and from the Middle East.

Jihadi terrorism is complex and uncontrollable. Because Jihadi terrorism has so many dimensions and it disturbs so many aspects of our lives, solutions to the problem are not going to be simple. Of course, there are policy guidelines proposed by liberals, but not many will be effective. Business organizations are not interested in the topic for obvious reasons. Law enforcement officers can arrest a few terrorists. But they are unable to address the complex underlying causes for Jihadi terrorism.

Frequent observation of the extend of Jihadi terrorism around the world and empirical studies show striking similarities among Jihadi terrorists. One of the most important factors in these incidents is the underlying concept of Jihad war. It is constant and there is no compromise. There is significant association between Islamic call for Jihad war and Jihadi terrorism.

Muslims have disproportionally high rates of antisocial behavior, conduct disorder and violence. Because these deadly incidents are hidden under the guise of religion, little has been done to address the deviance-amplifying nature of Islamic Jihadi teachings. Governments and professional organizations have not addressed the issue or devised effective intervention strategies. Therefore your attempts on citizenwarrior.com to educate citizens about the problem is highly desirable and it could prove effective.

Dr. Babu Suseelan, 2006

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Historical Significance

The following article is by Raymond S. Kraft, an attorney from California. We are reprinting it with his permission.


SIXTY-THREE YEARS AGO, Nazi Germany had overrun almost all of Europe and hammered England to the verge of bankruptcy and defeat, and had sunk more than four hundred British ships in their convoys between England and America for food and war materials.

Bushido Japan had overrun most of Asia, beginning in 1928, killing millions of civilians throughout China, and impressing millions more as slave labor.

The US was in an isolationist, pacifist mood and most Americans and Congress wanted nothing to do with the European war or the Asian war.

Then along came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and in outrage Congress unanimously declared war on Japan, and the following day on Germany, which had not attacked U.S. It was a dicey thing. We had few allies.

France was not an ally, the Vichy government of France aligned with its German occupiers. Germany was not an ally, it was an enemy, and Hitler intended to set up a Thousand Year Reich in Europe. Japan was not an ally, it was intent on owning and controlling all of Asia. Japan and Germany had long-term ideas of invading Canada and Mexico, and then the United States over the north and south borders, after they had settled control of Asia and Europe.

America's allies then were England, Ireland, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and Russia, and that was about it. There were no other countries of any size or military significance with the will and ability to contribute much or anything to the effort to defeat Hitler's Germany and Japan, and prevent the global dominance of Nazism. And we had to send millions of tons of arms, munitions, and war supplies to Russia, England, and the Canadians, Aussies, Irish, and Scots, because NONE of them could produce all they needed for themselves.

All of Europe from Norway to Italy, except Russia in the east, was already under the Nazi heel.

America was not prepared for war. America had stood down most of its military after WWI and throughout the depression, at the outbreak of WWII there were army units training with broomsticks over their shoulders because they didn't have guns, and cars with "tank" painted on the doors because they didn't have tanks. And a big chunk of our navy had just been sunk and damaged at Pearl Harbor.

Britain had already gone bankrupt, saved only by the donation of $600 million in gold bullion in the Bank of England that was the property of Belgium and was given by Belgium to England to carry on the war when Belgium was overrun by Hitler — actually, Belgium surrendered one day, because it was unable to oppose the German invasion, and the Germans bombed Brussels into rubble the next day anyway just to prove they could. Britain had been holding out for two years already in the face of staggering shipping loses and the near-decimation of its air force in the Battle of Britain, and was saved from being overrun by Germany only because Hitler made the mistake of thinking the Brits were a relatively minor threat that could be dealt with later and turning his attention to Russia... this at a time when England was on the verge of collapse in the late summer of 1940.

Russia saved America's butt by putting up a desperate fight for two years until the US got geared up to begin hammering away at Germany.

Russia lost something like 24 million people in the sieges of Stalingrad and Moscow, 90% of them from cold and starvation, mostly civilians, but also more than a million soldiers. More than a million.

Had Russia surrendered then, Hitler would have been able to focus his entire campaign against the Brits, and then America, and the Nazis would have won that war.

Had Hitler not made that mistake and invaded England in 1940 or 1941, instead, there would have been no England for the U.S. and the Brits to use as a staging ground to prepare an assault on Nazi Europe, England would not have been able to run its North African campaign to help take a little pressure off Russia while America geared up for battle, and today Europe would very probably be run by the Nazis, the Third Reich and, isolated and without any allies (not even the Brits), the US would very probably have had to cede Asia to the Japanese, who were basically Nazis by another name then, and the world we live in today would be very different and much worse.

I say this to illustrate that turning points in history are often dicey things. And we are at another one.

There is a very dangerous minority in Islam that either has, or wants and may soon have, the ability to deliver small nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, almost anywhere in the world, unless they are prevented from doing so.

France, Germany, and Russia, have been selling them weapons technology at least as recently as 2002, as have North Korea, Syria, and Pakistan, paid for with billions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the "Oil For Food" program administered by the UN with the complicity of Kofi Annan and his son.

The Jihadis, the militant Muslims, are basically Nazis in Kaffiyahs — they believe that Islam, a radically conservative (definitely not liberal) form of Wahhabi Islam, should own and control the Middle East first, then Europe, then the world, and that all who do not bow to Allah should be killed, enslaved, or subjugated. They want to finish the Holocaust, destroy Israel, and purge the world of Jews. This is what they say.

There is also a civil war raging in the Middle East — for the most part not a hot war, but a war of ideas. Islam is having its Inquisition and its Reformation today, but it is not yet known which will win — the Inquisition, or the Reformation.

If the Inquisition wins, then the Wahhabis, the Jihadis, will control the Middle East, and the OPEC oil, and the US , European and Asian economies, the techno-industrial economies, and all will be at the mercy of OPEC — not an OPEC dominated by the well-educated and rational Saudis of today, but an OPEC dominated by the Jihadis.

You want gas in your car? You want heating oil next winter? You want jobs? You want the dollar to be worth anything? You better hope the Jihad, the Muslim Inquisition, loses, and the Islamic Reformation wins.

If the Reformation movement wins, that is, the moderate Muslims who believe that Islam can respect and tolerate other religions and live in peace with the rest of the world, and move out of the 10th century into the 21st, then the troubles in the Middle East will eventually fade away, and a moderate and prosperous Middle East will emerge.

We have to help the Reformation win, and to do that we have to fight the Inquisition, i.e., the Wahhabi movement, the Jihad, Al Qaeda, the Islamic terrorist movements. We have to do it somewhere. We cannot do it nowhere. And we cannot do it everywhere at once. We have created a focal point for the battle now at the time and place of our choosing, in Iraq.

Not in New York, not in London, or Paris, or Berlin, but in Iraq, where we did and are doing two very important things.

(1) We deposed Saddam Hussein. Whether Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11 or not, it is undisputed that Saddam has been actively supporting the terrorist movement for decades. Saddam is a terrorist. Saddam is, or was, a weapon of mass destruction, who is responsible for the deaths of probably more than a million Iraqis and two million Iranians.

(2) We created a battle, a confrontation, a flash point, with Islamic terrorism in Iraq . We have focused the battle. We are killing bad guys there and the ones we get there we won't have to get here, or anywhere else. We also have a good shot at creating a democratic, peaceful Iraq, which will be a catalyst for democratic change in the rest of the Middle East and an outpost for a stabilizing American military presence in the Middle East for as long as it is needed.

The European nations could have done this, but they didn't and they won't. The so-called "Coalition Forces" are, in most cases, little more than a "Token Force" to keep face with the US. And once attacked, like the train bombing in Madrid, they pull their forces and run for home.

We now know that rather than opposing the rise of the Jihad, the French, Germans, and Russians were selling them arms — we have found more than a million tons of weapons and munitions in Iraq . If Iraq was not a threat to anyone, why did Saddam need a million tons of weapons?

And Iraq was paying for French, German, and Russian arms with money skimmed from the UN Oil For Food Program (supervised by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and his son) that was supposed to pay for food, medicine, and education for Iraqi children.

World War II, the war with the German and Japanese Nazis, really began with a "whimper" in 1928. It did not begin with Pearl Harbor . It began with the Japanese invasion of China. It was a war for fourteen years before America joined it. It officially ended in 1945 — a 17 year war — and was followed by another decade of U.S. occupation in Germany and Japan to get those countries reconstructed and running on their own again .... a 27 year war.

World War II cost the United States an amount equal to approximately a full year's GDP — adjusted for inflation, equal to about $12 trillion dollars, WWII cost America more than 400,000 killed in action and nearly 100,000 still missing in action.

The Iraq war has, so far, cost the US about $180 billion, which is roughly what 9/11 cost New York. It has also cost over 2,300 American lives, which is roughly 2/3 of the lives that the Jihad snuffed on 9/11.

But the cost of not fighting and winning WWII would have been unimaginably greater — a world now dominated by German and Japanese Nazism.

Americans have a short attention span, now conditioned, I suppose, by 1 hour TV shows and 2-hour movies in which everything comes out okay.

The real world is not like that. It is messy, uncertain,and sometimes bloody and ugly. Always has been and probably always will be.

If we do this thing in Iraq successfully it is probable that the Reformation will ultimately prevail. Many Muslims in the Middle East hope it will. We will be there to support it. It has begun in some countries, Libya , for instance. And Dubai. And Saudi Arabia.

If we fail, the Inquisition will probably prevail and terrorism from Islam will be with us for all the foreseeable future because the Inquisition, or Jihad, believes they are called by Allah to kill all the Infidels, and that death in Jihad is glorious.

The bottom line here is that we will have to deal with Islamic terrorism until we defeat it, whenever that is. It will not go away on its own. It will not go away if we ignore it.

If the U.S. can create a reasonably democratic and stable Iraq , then we have an " England" in the Middle East , a platform, from which we can work to help modernize and moderate the Middle East .

The history of the world is the clash between the forces of relative civility and civilization, and the barbarians clamoring at the gates. The Iraq war is merely another battle in this ancient and never-ending war.

And now, for the first time ever, the barbarians are about to get nuclear weapons. Unless we prevent them. Or some body does.

The Iraq war is expensive, and uncertain, yes. But the consequences of not fighting it and winning it will be horrifically greater. We have four options:

1. We can defeat the Jihad now, before it gets nuclear weapons.

2. We can fight the Jihad later, after it gets nuclear weapons (which may be as early as next year, if Iran's progress on nuclear weapons is what Iran claims it is).

3. We can surrender to the Jihad and accept its dominance in the Middle East, now in Europe in the next few years or decades, and ultimately in America.

4. Or we can stand down now, and pick up the fight later when the Jihad is more widespread and better armed, perhaps after the Jihad has dominated France and Germany and maybe most of the rest of Europe . It will be more dangerous, more expensive, and much bloodier then.

Yes, the Jihadis say that they look forward to an Islamic America . If you oppose this war, I hope you like the idea that your children, or grandchildren, may live in an Islamic America under the Mullahs and the Sharia, an America that resembles Iran today.

We can be defeatist peace-activists as anti-war types seem to be, and concede, surrender, to the Jihad, or we can do whatever it takes to win this war against them.

The history of the world is the history of civilizational clashes, cultural clashes. All wars are about ideas, ideas about what society and civilization should be like, and the most determined always win.

Those who are willing to be the most ruthless always win. The pacifists always lose, because the anti-pacifists kill them.

In the 20th century, it was Western democracy vs. communism, and before that Western democracy vs. Nazism, and before that Western democracy vs. German Imperialism. Western democracy won three times, but it wasn't cheap, fun, nice, easy, or quick.

Indeed, the wars against German Imperialism (WWI), Nazi Imperialism (WWII), and communist imperialism (the 40-year Cold War that included the Vietnam Battle, commonly called the Vietnam War, but itself a major battle in a larger war) covered almost the entire century.

The first major war of the 21st Century is the war between Western Judeo/Christian Civilization and Wahhabi Islam. It may last a few more years or most of this century. It will last until the Wahhabi branch of Islam fades away, or gives up its ambitions for regional and global dominance and Jihad, or until Western Civilization gives in to the Jihad.

Senator John Kerry, in the debates and almost daily, makes 3 scary claims:

1. “We went to Iraq without enough troops”.

We went with the troops the US military wanted. We went with the troop levels General Tommy Franks asked for. We deposed Saddam in 30 days with light casualties, much lighter than we expected.

The real problem in Iraq is that we are trying to be nice — we are trying to fight minority of the population that is Jihadi, and trying to avoid killing the large majority that is not. We could flatten Fallujah in minutes with a flight of B52s, or seconds with one nuclear cruise missile — but we don't. We're trying to do brain surgery, not amputate the patient's head. The Jihadis amputate heads.

2. “We went to Iraq with too little planning”.

This is a specious argument. It supposes that if we had just had "the right plan" the war would have been easy, cheap, quick, and clean.

That is not an option. It is a guerrilla war against a determined enemy, and no such war ever has been or ever will be easy, cheap, quick, and clean. This is not TV.

3. “We proved ourselves incapable of governing and providing security”.

This too is a specious argument. It was never our intention to govern and provide security. It was our intention from the beginning to do just enough to enable the Iraqis to develop a representative government and their own military and police forces to provide their own security, and that is happening.

The US and the Brits and other countries there have trained over 100,000 Iraqi police and military, now, and will have trained more than 200,000 by the end of next year. We are in the process of transitioning operational control for security back to Iraq .

It will take time. It will not go with no hitches. This is not TV.

Remember, perspective is everything and America’s schools teach too little history for perspective to be clear, especially in the young American mind.

The Cold war lasted from about 1947 at least until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. Forty-two years. Europe spent the first half of the 19th century fighting Napoleon, and from 1870 to 1945 fighting Germany .

World War II began in 1928, lasted 17 years, plus a ten year occupation, and the US still have troops in Germany and Japan. World War II resulted in the death of more than 50 million people, maybe more than 100 million people, depending on which estimates you accept.

The US has taken more than 2,000 KIA in Iraq in 3 years. The US took more than 4,000 Killed in action on the morning of June 6, 1944, the first day of the Normandy Invasion to rid Europe of Nazi Imperialism. In WWII the US averaged 2,000 KIA a week for four years. Most of the individual battles of WWII lost more Americans than the entire Iraq war has done so far.

But the stakes are at least as high . . . a world dominated by representative governments with civil rights, human rights, and personal freedoms, or a world dominated by a radical Islamic Wahhabi movement, by the Jihad, under the Mullahs and the Sharia (Islamic l! aw).

I do not understand why the American Left does not grasp this. They favor human rights, civil rights, liberty and freedom, but evidently not for Iraqis. In America, absolutely, but nowhere else.

300,000 Iraqi bodies in mass graves in Iraq are not our problem. The US population is about twelve times that of Iraq , so let's multiply 300,000 by twelve. What would you think if there were 3,600,000 American bodies in mass graves in America because of George Bush? Would you hope for another country to help liberate America?

"Peace Activists" always seem to demonstrate where it's safe, in America.

Why don't we see Peace Activist demonstrating in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, North Korea, in the places in the world that really need peace activism the most?

The liberal mentality is supposed to favor human rights, civil rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc., but if the Jihad wins, wherever the Jihad wins, it is the end of civil rights, human rights, democracy, multiculturalism, diversity, etc. Americans who oppose the liberation of Iraq are coming down on the side of their own worst enemy.

If the Jihad wins, it is the death of Liberalism. Everywhere the Jihad wins; it is the death of Liberalism. And American Liberals just don't get it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Raymond S. Kraft is a writer and lawyer living in Northern California.

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The Indictment Of An Entire Religion

The Tragedy of Islam
Opinion column by Michael Graham (reprinted with his permission)

I take no pleasure in saying it. It pains me to think it. I could very well lose my job in talk radio over admitting it. But it is the plain truth: Islam is a terror organization.

For years, I've been trying to give the world's Muslim community the benefit of the doubt, along with the benefit of my typical-American's complete disinterest in their faith. Before 9/11, I knew nothing about Islam except the greeting "asalaam alaikum," taught to me by a Pakistani friend in Chicago.

Immediately after 9/11, I nodded in ignorant agreement as President Bush assured me that "Islam is a religion of peace."

But nearly four years later, nobody can defend that statement. And I mean "nobody."

Certainly not the group of "moderate" Muslim clerics and imams who gathered in London last week to issue a statement on terrorism and their faith. When asked, "Are suicide bombings always a violation of Islam?", they did not answer, "Yes. Always." Instead, these "moderate British Muslims" replied, "It depends."

Precisely what it depends on, news reports did not say. Sadly, given our new knowledge of Islam from the past four years, it probably depends on whether you're killing Jews. That is part of the state of modern Islam.

Another fact about the state of Islam is that a majority of Muslims in countries like Jordan continue to believe that suicide bombings are legitimate. Still another is the poll reported by a left-leaning British paper that only 73 percent of British Muslims would tell police if they knew about a planned terrorist attack.

The other 27 percent? They are a part of modern Islam, too.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is outraged that I would dare to connect the worldwide epidemic of terrorism with Islam. They put it down to bigotry, asserting that a lifetime of disinterest in Islam has suddenly become blind hatred. They couldn't be more wrong.

Not to be mean to the folks at CAIR, but I don't — care, that is. I simply don't care about Islam, its theology, its history. I have no interest in it at all. All I care about is not getting blown to smithereens when I board a bus or ride a plane. I care about living in a world where terrorism and murder/suicide bombings are rejected by all.

And the reason Islam itself has become a terrorist organization is that it cannot address its own role in this violence. It cannot cast out the murderers from its members. I know it can't, because "moderate" Muslim imams keep telling me they can't. "We have no control over these radical young men," one London imam moaned to the local papers. Can't kick 'em out of your faith? Can't excommunicate them? Apparently Islam does not allow it.

Islam cannot say that terrorism is forbidden to Muslims. I know this because when the world's Muslim nations gathered after 9/11 to state their position on terrorism, they couldn't even agree on what it was. How could they, when the world's largest terror sponsors at the time were Iran and Saudi Arabia — both governed by Islamic law.

If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror and murder repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language justifying it — and the scoutmasters simply said "Could be" — the Boy Scouts would have been driven out of America long ago.

Today, Islam has entire sects and grand mosques that preach terror. Its theology is used as a source of inspiration by terrorist murderers. Millions of Islam's members give these killers support and comfort.

The question isn't how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.

As I've said many times, I have great sympathy for those Muslims of good will who want their faith to be a true "religion of peace." I believe that terrorism and murder do violate the sensibilities and inherent decency of the vast majority of the world's Muslims. I believe they want peace.

Sadly, the organization and fundamental theology of Islam as it is constituted today allows for hatreds most Muslims do not share to thrive, and for criminals they oppose to operate in the name of their faith.

Many Muslims, I believe, know this to be true and some are acting on it. Not the members of CAIR, unfortunately: As Middle East analyst and expert Daniel Pipes has reported, "Two of CAIR's associates (Ghassan Elashi, Randall Royer) have been convicted on terrorism-related charges, one (Bassem Khafegi) convicted on fraud charges, two (Rabih Haddad, Bassem Khafegi) have been deported, and one (Siraj Wahhaj) remains at large."

But Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf admits what CAIR will not. He's called for a jihad against the jihadists. He's putting his life on the line (Islamists have tried to assassinate him three times) in the battle to reclaim Islam and its fundamental decency.

He remembers, I'm sure, that at a time when Western, Christian civilization was on the verge of collapse, the Muslim world was a bastion of rationalism and tolerance. That was a great moment in the history of Islam, a moment that helped save the West.

Let's hope Islam can now find the strength to save itself.


Michael Graham had a radio talk show that was shut down by a lobby group with suspicious ties to terrorism. He was fired for what he said about Islam.

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Fired For Saying Somethign Bad About Islam

The following article appeared on Michael Graham's web site.


MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2005

WELL, THEY GOT ME...

The First Amendment and I have been evicted from ABC Radio in Washington, DC.

On July 25th, the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded that I be “punished” for my on-air statements regarding Islam and its tragic connections to terrorism. Three days later, 630 WMAL and ABC Radio suspended me without pay for comments deemed “hate radio” by CAIR.

CAIR immediately announced that my punishment was insufficient and demanded I be fired. ABC Radio and 630 WMAL have now complied. I have been fired for making the specific comments CAIR deemed “offensive,” and for refusing to retract those statements in a management-mandated, on-air apology. ABC Radio further demanded that I agree to perform what they described as “additional outreach efforts” to those people or groups who felt offended.

I refused. And for that refusal, I have been fired.

It appears that ABC Radio has caved to an organization that condemns talk radio hosts like me, but has never condemned Hamas, Hezbollah, and one that wouldn’t specifically condemn Al Qaeda for three months after 9/11.

As a fan of talk radio, I find it absolutely outrageous that pressure from a special interest group like CAIR can result in the abandonment of free speech and open discourse on a talk radio show. As a conservative talk host whose job is to have an open, honest conversation each day with my listeners, I believe caving to this pressure is a disaster.

I for one cannnot apologize for the truth and I cannot agree to some community-service style “outreach effort” to appease the opponents of free speech.

If I had made a racist or bigoted comment -- which my regular listeners know goes against everything I believe in -- I would apologize immediately, and without coercion. When I have made inadvertent fact errors in the past, I apologized promptly and without hesitation.

But we have now gone far beyond that, with demands that I apologize for the ideas my listeners and I believe in. It is not a coincidence that, after my suspension on July 28th, WMAL received more than 15,000 phone calls and emails protesting my removal from the airwaves.

Why such a huge response? It wasn't about me; The listeners I spoke to said they felt betrayed by my suspension because the vast majority of them agree with me on the subject of Islam. By labeling my statements as unacceptable, these listeners felt that WMAL management was insulting them, too.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I care about the listeners of 630 WMAL. I respect them and I appreciate the amazing support they have given me.

I could not dishonor their principled support for free speech by giving into these demands. I cannot join ABC Radio in bowing to CAIR’s wishes. And I will not apologize for my opinions or retract the truth.

The whole point of the Michael Graham Show is what my listeners and I call the “natural truth,” those obvious facts about modern life that the p.c. police and mainstream media believe should never be discussed. That includes the tragic, but undeniable relationship between terrorism and Islam as it is constituted today.

The conversations my listeners and I had on this subject were not offensive or bigoted in the least. In fact, Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR (who has appeared on my show several times) credited “criticism from talk radio” in part for the recent fatwa against terrorism issued by a group of US Muslim scholars. Ironically, it was issued the day before I was suspended.

That’s the real tragedy here. The people who most need free speech and open dialogue on the issues facing Islam today are America's moderate Muslims. These are people of good will who have the difficult job ahead of reforming and rescuing their religion. They need all the help they can get.

The decision to give CAIR what it wants—a group with well-publicized ties to terrorists and terror-related organizations--will make it harder for the reformers to successfully face Islam's challenges. Still worse, silencing people like me will make it easier for Islamist extremists to dismiss all sincere calls for reform as mere "bigotry."

When CAIR is able to quell dissent and label every critic a "bigot," the chilling effect is felt far beyond ABC Radio and 630 WMAL. If anyone is owed an apology, it is the moderate, Muslim community who have been failed once again by the mainstream media.

A VERY SPECIAL NOTE TO EVERYONE WHO EMAILED AND CALLED ON MY BEHALF: Again and again through this ordeal, as people pressured me to just give in, say what CAIR wanted to hear and get my job back, I thought of you. I cannot express how much your support meant to me. I don't know that I'm doing the right thing by fighting this fight. I only know that I believe it's the right thing, and I believe it with all my heart.

Your support, your words of encouragement, your anger that the forces of p.c. fear have this much power--these all helped me do what I needed to do. Thank you.

In the coming days, I hope I'll have some good news for you about how we can continue our conversation. So please stay tuned, please stop by here each day and check it.

Trust me, this isn't the last you've heard from me.

MICHAEL, ARE YOU *SURE* YOU'VE BEEN FIRED? I've had several people tell me that ABC Radio says I'm not really fired, that I have "chosen" not to go back to work. I don't know what to say to that except that I received a hand-delivered letter very late Friday announcing that I was "terminated immediately." If there is some other definition of that other than "you're fired," I am not familiar with it.

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