More Dangerous Than Bombs: Jihad By Subversion

When we started Citizen Warrior back in 2001, I knew very little about jihad. I just wanted to do something about "terrorism." But I have come to see that terrorism is merely a tactic, and it doesn't make any sense to fight a tactic. That would be like trying to fight planes — deciding that planes were the enemy — after Pearl Harbor.

The actual problem we are facing is the principle of Islamic jihad, which is a fundamental principle of the Islamic faith. According to the Qur'an, it is the duty of every faithful Muslim to fight the unbelievers, and to try, through every means possible, to make all countries in the world follow Allah's law (Shari'a).

Jihad is the problem. Not terrorism. Jihadists use terrorism as one of their many tactics. Another tactic is subversion. And another is deceit. And these three tactics are being used from within democratic countries. The jihadists are using the tolerance and freedom within democracies to cultivate the circumstances that will allow them to ultimately overthrow the government, remove freedoms, and replace our laws with Shari'a.

The Mapping Sharia Project (MSP) has sent undercover agents into mosques in the United States to see what techniques they are using, and MSP then turns their evidence over to the FBI.

One of MSP's many discoveries is Imam Yusuf Estes. He's an American convert to Islam and works out of a mosque in the greater D.C. area. Estes also runs and contributes to many web sites. He is actively engaged in gaining Muslim converts and promoting violent jihad.

Estes gave the undercover agent a CD. One of the things on the CD was a 17-page manual in English called The Book of Jihad, which is essentially 17 pages of quotes of Muhammad and passages from the Qur'an, and then commentary on those passages, which makes it very clear that Muslims have a sacred duty to wage jihad, wherever they are (even within a non-Muslim country), and by whatever means they can, including arming themselves and training for war.

The MSP had this summary of their contact with Estes and their review of the literature Estes gave them:

Yusuf Estes is a Jihadist. He is actively engaged in dawa to convert as many Muslims and non-Muslims to the way of Jihad and the political ideology of Islamic hegemony, all of which is intended to lead to the destruction of the U.S. as a constitutional republic. Jihad incorporates necessarily the use of violence when circumstances permit. While Estes lectures in public like an enthusiastic, yet peaceful preacher, he quite effectively pursues his goal of global Jihad through the “quiet” teachings of the literature he promotes.

Below are some quotes from the Book of Jihad. While you read them, imagine a teenage American Muslim, say a young man, impressed with Estes, reading these passages:

1332. `Uqbah bin `Amir Al-Juhani (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: I heard the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) saying from the pulpit, "Prepare to meet them (the enemy) with as much strength as you can afford. Verily! Strength is in archery, strength is in archery, strength is in archery.'' [Muslim].

Commentary: In accordance with the conditions of his times, the Prophet (PBUH) ordained the Muslims to acquire every possible power and keep it ready for war. Elucidating his order on this point, he stated that by power he meant archery and then he repeated this word three times to stress its importance. He did it because the art of archery had fundamental importance in war at that time. In the present-day world, archery has lost its value as it has been replaced by other inventions like tanks, guns, missiles, atom bombs, etc. 

Similar is the case of devices which are used in air and naval war, and all these military wares have superb importance in modern warfare. In the present-day context, the injunction of the Noble Qur'an to acquire power means manufacturing and possession of all these devices. 

It is incumbent on the Muslims that they equip themselves with all this material and show no carelessness in this regard. In modern times, Muslims have badly neglected this field with the result that non-Muslims have more knowledge of modern warfare and by dint of that they are dominating the world and making a claim of their supremacy all over the world. 

Unless Muslims pursue the Qur'anic injunctions on this score and acquire greater or equal or at least similar measure and style of power, as is possessed by the non-Muslims, they will not be able to check the onslaught of their enemies, and to defeat them.
It is incumbent upon the Muslims to overpower the might and power of the infidels for the glorification of Islam.

1334. `Uqbah bin `Amir Al-Juhani (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, "He who learnt archery and then neglected it, is not from us.'' (Or said,) "He has been guilty of disobedience (to Messenger of Allah).'' [Muslim].

Commentary: This Hadith also stresses the importance of the art of archery to the extent that if a Muslim forgets it after learning without a valid reason, he is excluded from the followers of the Prophet (PBUH). Now this exhortation applies with equal force to modern military weapons, and if the present-day Muslims lose their command in handling these weapons, they will be exposed to the consequences of which they have been warned in this Hadith, because their training in this field is essential for upholding the Word of Allah and defending the Muslims. If the Muslims lose proficiency in it after acquiring it, they will be guilty of neglecting a very important Islamic obligation.

1341. Abu Hurairah (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Messenger of Allah (PBUH) said, "He who dies without having fought in the Cause of Allah or without having thought of doing so, will die with one characteristic of hypocrisy in him.'' [Muslim].

Commentary: It is a different matter that one may not get a chance to take part in Jihad, but it would be a hypocritical attitude if one does not ever think that if an opportunity ever comes in his way, he will certainly go for Jihad in the way of Allah against the infidels. The reason to that is that, to stay back at home at the time of Jihad was a habit of the hypocrites. In the light of this, Imam Al-Qurtubi has stated the principle that if one is not capable of doing some virtuous deeds, he should then make a resolve that whenever he will be capable of it, he will do that deed, so that his intention takes the place of his act. He who neither performs a good deed nor aspires for it, has a hypocritical disposition. This is specially true of a Muslim who does not even aspire to take part in Jihad. Such a Muslim develops a resemblance with hypocrites.

1352. Abu Hurairah and Jabir (May Allah be pleased with them) reported: The Prophet (PBUH) said, "War is deception.'' [Al-Bukhari and Muslim].

Commentary: "Khad`ah'' means deception, i.e., employing a strategy which causes misunderstanding to the enemy, and one's real intent does not become evident to them. This is permissible in Islam in the state of war. The Ahadith mentioned in this chapter make the importance of Jihad and the reason for so much stress on it abundantly clear. These also show how great a crime it is to ignore it. It is very unfortunate indeed that present-day Muslims are guilty of renouncing Jihad in every part of the world. May Allah help us to overcome this negligence. 

Jihad can be fought in many ways. Already Muslims are trying to change the laws in Europe and Canada, and sometimes succeeding. They have a 20-year plan to overthrow the U.S. government. It seems hard to believe anything like that could happen. We think of political progress toward freedom going in only one direction, but even in our lifetimes, many reverses in the Muslim world have taken place.

Egypt used to be a democracy. Its freedoms have been steadily eroded by jihadists.

Lebanon was once a Christian nation; it is now controlled by jihadists.

Turkey was once the only secularized Islamic state, but it is now controlled by jihadists.

All these changes have occurred in the last thirty years. Jihadists are serious, dedicated people. They have all the time in the world, and they can't think of anything more important to do. It is entirely possible they could gain a foothold in democratic countries, even the one you live in, and they could make it very difficult to stop them encroaching on the freedoms of all of us.

But you're a citizen. You're not in the CIA. You're not in the military. You're not a politician. What can you do?

Here is a list of ways you can help: WhatYouCanDoAboutIslam.com. Most of these involve educating your fellow westerners. We cannot get a democratic consensus about what to do until a majority of the voters know what you know.

Introduce people you know to these ideas. Be as gentle as possible. This informaton is hard to stomach at first, and you don't want to close their minds by displaying too much intensity, causing them to believe you're a screwball conspiracy theorist. They will write you off. They won't listen to you and their minds will be closed to the information in the future. We can't afford too many of those kinds of mistakes. Err on the side of being too low-key rather than too intense.

Introduce small, bite-sized, easily-digestible pieces of information. I have several articles I recommend as introductory materials to share.

Just as a Muslim feels it is his duty to wage jihad, you should feel it is your duty as a person living in a free society, to protect and defend your society against an enemy working to undermine it. You can play an important part by helping to educate your fellow citizens. For the sake of us all, I hope you do.

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Are Jihadists Better Strategists Than Free Governments?

The following brief article was published in: The American Ideological Society.

2007: Strategic Thinking Needed
in Fighting Global Jihad
by Jeffrey Imm

The United States of America has some of the smartest leaders in government, military, and business in the world. Yet the American government has failed to collectively use this formidable brain-power 5+ years after the attack by Jihadists on the American homeland to develop a truly strategic plan to fight the global threat of Jihad and Islamist extremism. In one of the most complex wars in American history, rather than starting with holistic, big-picture thinking towards the challenges and prioritizing resources and actions accordingly, America has spent much of the past five years after 9/11 in reactive and bureaucratic churning.

Why has the United States government been so incapable of addressing this national blueprint and study group for addressing Jihadist and Islamist threat? There are multiple problems here:

1. Reactive, tactical thinking for quick-fix approaches to the Jihadist problem and achieving "homeland security". As virtually all of the government planning regarding the Jihadist problem has been a reaction to the 9/11 attacks, it is predictable that such thinking would be highly tactical, reactive, and focused on near-term protective and military measures. This was perhaps excusable or at least understandable 1 to 6 months after the 9/11 attacks. It is now 5+ years after 9/11 attacks, however, and this excuse has long since run its course. But the government approach towards addressing the Jihadist problem is no more robust or strategic than it was in the early months of 2002. The organizational approach to "homeland security" is based on such reactive thinking, and has developed a bureaucracy based on such organization. Yet there has been no determination as to what the term "homeland security" even means in a larger sense other than a reaction to the 9/11 attacks, and certainly not as a component in a larger government blueprint regarding Jihad and global Islamism. Thus, there is no "homeland security" for the economy, culture, demographics, and dozens of other war components vital for winning the long term war.

2. Believing that fighting "terrorism" itself is an end, when terrorism is only one tactic in a larger, global Jihadist strategy. Thus, we have a "War on Terror", and neither the true enemy nor the true threat is clearly identified. Furthermore, the focus on both military objectives and "counterterrorism" lack context within a well-defined war strategy and blueprint regarding Jihad and global Islamism, which has uses many other tactics other than terrorism to meet its objectives. While it is acknowledged that no terrorist attacks have taken place on the American homeland since 9/11, Jihadists have been and continue to use communications tactics, demographic tactics, political tactics, and economic tactics quite effectively against the USA and the rest of the world. We are hampered by the language which makes "counterterrorism" and "counterintelligence" sound unnecessarily robust, when we are really only addressing measures against a single tactic of war in both cases. We would not fight a military war with only anti-tank or anti-aircraft measures. Moreover, we would not fight any war solely on a military front. But in this war, the American government has thus far only prioritized military and counterterrorism activities.

3. Institutional failure in investigating what the Jihadist problem is and fully understanding it or developing a shared understanding that can be used for strategic planning. The American government seems to believe any serious investigation into Jihad and Islamism will be counterproductive to winning the hearts and minds of Moderate Muslims in fighting terrorism. This argument makes sense if America is only fighting "terrorists" and "terrorist activity". But the facts are that Jihadist terrorist activity is funded, supported, and based on larger Islamist organizations - ranging from educational centers to charities to political groups. Ignoring the basis for Jihadist terrorism leads to an endless pursuit of trying to cure symptoms without ever acknowledging or treating the source of the symptoms. America did not fear offending Germans in fighting Nazism or offending Russians in fighting Communism. Like past wars in fighting totalitarian ideologies, a thorough understanding is needed of these and a comprehensive, strategic war plan against every tactic is needed against such Jihad.

4. Mistaking the use of strategic assumptions in tactical approaches to issues as "strategic thinking" on the larger threat. For example, Michael Chertoff has frequently indicated that one of the strategic assumptions of DHS is to prevent a nuclear attack on American soil, with appropriate tactical emphasis on this. Such strategic assumptions in general tactics in an element of a war are not the same as an overall strategic thinking in fighting the larger war, and looking at all aspects of the war (economic, energy, communications, cultural, demographic, etc.). But this surface-level of strategic assumptions in both counterterrorism and in military engagements are as far as the American government is currently going. Situational strategic assumptions are not the same as a long-term, big-picture, war strategy. Objections to strategic thinking and planning are plentiful and well-rationalized. The multitude and rationalization for these objections, however, do not make them any less wrong. And it is precisely this lack of strategic thinking and planning that Jihadists are truly counting on. As Bin Laden has repeatedly stated, he hopes that America will bankrupt itself pursuing individual avenues of military conflict against Jihadists:

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah".

In 2007, it is time for the American government to step back, evaluate and identify the scope of the threat of global Jihad and Islamism, and wisely prioritize the best way to use our limited resources to fight this generational war. The fight against Jihad is a marathon, not a sprint, and America needs to fight smarter to win.

The original article by Jeffrey Imm was published on the Counterterrorism Blog:

2007: Strategic Thinking Needed in Fighting Global Jihad

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Ayaan Hirsi Ali Talks Frankly on How To Defeat Islamic Terrorism

In a long interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rogier van Bakel of Reason Magazine brought out her best with some excellent questions. Ali was raised as a Muslim in Somalia, and has since become an outspoken atheist who is now marked for death by Islamic fundamentalists. She is sharp and bold and straightforward. I am excerpting parts the article here. If you have the time, it will be worth it to read the whole article: "The Trouble Is The West."


Reason: Should we acknowledge that organized religion has sometimes sparked precisely the kinds of emancipation movements that could lift Islam into modern times? Slavery in the United States ended in part because of opposition by prominent church members and the communities they galvanized. The Polish Catholic Church helped defeat the Jaruzelski puppet regime. Do you think Islam could bring about similar social and political changes?

Hirsi Ali: Only if Islam is defeated. Because right now, the political side of Islam, the power-hungry expansionist side of Islam, has become superior to the Sufis and the Ismailis and the peace-seeking Muslims.

Reason: Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?

Hirsi Ali: No. Islam, period. Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace.
Reason: We have to crush the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims under our boot? In concrete terms, what does that mean, “defeat Islam”?

Hirsi Ali: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say, “This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.” There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.

Reason: Militarily?

Hirsi Ali: In all forms, and if you don’t do that, then you have to live with the consequence of being crushed.

Reason: Are we really heading toward anything so ominous?

Hirsi Ali: I think that’s where we’re heading. We’re heading there because the West has been in denial for a long time. It did not respond to the signals that were smaller and easier to take care of. Now we have some choices to make. This is a dilemma: Western civilization is a celebration of life—everybody’s life, even your enemy’s life. So how can you be true to that morality and at the same time defend yourself against a very powerful enemy that seeks to destroy you?

Reason: George Bush, not the most conciliatory person in the world, has said on plenty of occasions that we are not at war with Islam.

Hirsi Ali: If the most powerful man in the West talks like that, then, without intending to, he’s making radical Muslims think they’ve already won. There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.

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Hirsi Ali: We have to get serious about this. The Egyptian dictatorship would not allow many radical imams to preach in Cairo, but they’re free to preach in giant mosques in London. Why do we allow it?

Reason: You’re in favor of civil liberties, but applied selectively?

Hirsi Ali: No. Asking whether radical preachers ought to be allowed to operate is not hostile to the idea of civil liberties; it’s an attempt to save civil liberties. A nation like this one is based on civil liberties, and we shouldn’t allow any serious threat to them. So Muslim schools in the West, some of which are institutions of fascism that teach innocent kids that Jews are pigs and monkeys — I would say in order to preserve civil liberties, don’t allow such schools.
Reason: In Holland, you wanted to introduce a special permit system for Islamic schools, correct?

Hirsi Ali: I wanted to get rid of them. I wanted to have them all closed, but my party said it wouldn’t fly. Top people in the party privately expressed that they agreed with me, but said, “We won’t get a majority to do that,” so it never went anywhere.

Reason: Well, your proposal went against Article 23 of the Dutch Constitution, which guarantees that religious movements may teach children in religious schools and says the government must pay for this if minimum standards are met. So it couldn’t be done. Would you in fact advocate that again?

Hirsi Ali: Oh, yeah.

Reason: Here in the United States, you’d advocate the abolition of—

Hirsi Ali: All Muslim schools. Close them down. Yeah, that sounds absolutist. I think 10 years ago things were different, but now the jihadi genie is out of the bottle. I've been saying this in Australia and in the U.K. and so on, and I get exactly the same arguments: The Constitution doesn’t allow it. But we need to ask where these constitutions came from to start with — what’s the history of Article 23 in the Netherlands, for instance? There were no Muslim schools when the constitution was written. There were no jihadists. They had no idea.

Reason: Do you believe that the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights — documents from more than 200 ago — ought to change?

Hirsi Ali: They’re not infallible. These Western constitutions are products of the Enlightenment. They’re products of reason, and reason dictates that you can only progress when you can analyze the circumstances and act accordingly. So now that we live under different conditions, the threat is different. Constitutions can be adapted, and they are, sometimes. The American Constitution has been amended a number of times. With the Dutch Constitution, I think the latest adaptation was in 1989. Constitutions are not like the Koran — non-negotiable, never-changing.

Look, in a democracy, it’s like this: I suggest, “Let’s close Muslim schools.” You say, “No, we can’t do it.” The problem that I’m pointing out to you gets bigger and bigger. Then you say, “OK, let’s somehow discourage them,” and still the problem keeps on growing, and in another few years it gets so bad that I belatedly get what I wanted in the first place.

I respect that it needs to happen this way, but there’s a price for the fact that you and I didn’t share these insights earlier, and the longer we wait, the higher the price. In itself the whole process is not a bad thing. People and communities and societies learn through experience. The drawback is, in this case, that “let’s learn from experience” means other people’s lives will be taken.


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Reason: Samir Azouz, another young man in Holland convicted of terrorist plotting, attended a fundamentalist Muslim school in Amsterdam which is still open. He had maps of the Dutch parliament. He wanted to kill me and other politicians. He wanted to cause murder and mayhem congruent with the set of beliefs that he was taught in school using Dutch taxpayers’ money. Now go back in time a little. Isn’t it extremely cruel when you put yourself in the shoes of that little boy? He was just going to an officially recognized school in a multicultural society. Everyone approved — and now he’s being punished for it. He’s in jail.


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Reason: Having lived in the United States for about a year now, do you find that Muslims in the United States have by and large integrated better here than they have in Europe?

Hirsi Ali: Since I moved here, I’ve spent most of my time in airports, in airplanes, in waiting rooms, in hotels, doing promotion for Infidel all over the world, so the amount of time I’ve actually lived in the U.S. is very small. But yes, I have the impression that Muslims in the United States are far more integrated than Muslims in Europe. Of course, being assimilated doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t be a jihadist, but the likelihood of Muslims turning radical here seems lower than in Europe.

For one thing, America doesn’t really have a welfare system. Mohammed Bouyeri had all day long to plot the murder of Theo van Gogh. American Muslims have to get a job. What pushes people who come to America to assimilate is that it’s expected of them. And people are not mollycoddled by the government.

There’s a lot of white guilt in America, but it’s directed toward black Americans and native Indians, not toward Muslims and other immigrants. People come from China, Vietnam, and all kinds of Muslim countries. To the average American, they’re all fellow immigrants.

The white guilt in Germany and Holland and the U.K. is very different. It has to do with colonialism. It has to do with Dutch emigrants having spread apartheid in South Africa. It has to do with the Holocaust. So the mind-set toward immigrants in Europe is far more complex than here. Europeans are more reticent about saying no to immigrants.

And by and large, Muslim immigrants in Europe do not come with the intention to assimilate. They come with the intention to work, earn some money, and go back. That’s how the first wave of immigrants in the Netherlands was perceived: They would just come to work and then they’d go away. The newer generations that have followed are coming not so much to work and more to reap the benefits of the welfare state. Again, assimilation is not really on their minds.

Also, in order to get official status here in the U.S., you have to have an employer, so it’s the employable who are coming. The Arabs who live here came as businessmen, and a lot of them come from wealthy backgrounds. There are also large communities of Indian and Pakistani Muslims, who tend to be very liberal. Compare that to the Turks in Germany, who mostly come from the poor villages of Anatolia. Or compare it to the Moroccans in the Netherlands, who are for the most part Berbers with a similar socio-economic background. It’s a completely different set of people.

And finally, there’s the matter of borders. In America, Muslim immigrants typically pass through an airport, which means the Americans have a better way of controlling who comes in — a far cry from Europe’s open borders. Forty years ago, when Europe began talking about lifting borders between countries to facilitate the free traffic of goods and labor, they weren’t thinking about waves of immigrants. They thought of Europe as a place people left. America, on the other hand, has always been an immigration nation, with border controls that have been in place for a long time. I know the southern border is difficult to monitor, but for Arab Muslims and Pakistanis coming to America, it’s very hard to enter illegally.


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Reason: Tolerance is probably the most powerful word there is in the Netherlands. No other word encapsulates better what the Dutch believe really defines them. That makes it very easy for people to say that when they’re being criticized, they’re not being tolerated — and from there it’s only a small step to saying they’re being discriminated against or they’re the victims of Islamophobia or racism or what have you.

Hirsi Ali: We have to revert to the original meaning of the term tolerance. It meant you agreed to disagree without violence. It meant critical self-reflection. It meant not tolerating the intolerant. It also came to mean a very high level of personal freedom.

Then the Muslims arrived, and they hadn’t grown up with that understanding of tolerance. In short order, tolerance was now defined by multiculturalism, the idea that all cultures and religions are equal. Expectations were created among the Muslim population. They were told they could preserve their own culture, their own religion. The vocabulary was quickly established that if you criticize someone of color, you’re a racist, and if you criticize Islam, you’re an Islamophobe.

Reason: The international corollary to the word tolerance is probably respect. The alleged lack of respect has become a perennial sore spot in relations between the West and Islam. Salman Rushdie receiving a British knighthood supposedly signified such a lack of respect, as did the Danish cartoons last year, and many other things. Do you believe this is what Muslims genuinely crave—respect?

Hirsi Ali: It’s not about respect. It’s about power, and Islam is a political movement.

Reason: Uniquely so?

Hirsi Ali: Well, it hasn’t been tamed like Christianity. See, the Christian powers have accepted the separation of the worldly and the divine. We don’t interfere with their religion, and they don’t interfere with the state. That hasn’t happened in Islam.

But I don’t even think that the trouble is Islam. The trouble is the West, because in the West there’s this notion that we are invincible and that everyone will modernize anyway, and that what we are seeing now in Muslim countries is a craving for respect. Or it’s poverty, or it’s caused by colonization.

The Western mind-set — that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away — is delusional. The problem is not going to go away. Confront it, or it’s only going to get bigger.

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Read the whole interview: The Trouble Is The West

Read a speech by Nonie Darwish, a woman who grew up as a Muslim in Gaza and Egypt.

Learn more about Islam: The Terrifying Brilliance of the Islamic Memeplex

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