Israel Matzav

The Third Jihad and political correctness

Jonathan Rosenblum has a great piece in the weekend's JPost on the controversy over the use of the video The Third Jihad for training New York City police officers. Rosenblum argues that the claim of 'Islamophobia' is being used as an offensive weapon to counteract the fight against terrorism.

Far from being an attack on Islam, the opening lines of the film state clearly: “This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are radical.” Jasser, a devout Muslim of Syrian descent and a former US Navy lieutenant commander, is the founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.

He distinguishes between Islam as a private faith and Islam as a political doctrine mandating the worldwide imposition of Shari’a law.

So far, Kelly and his boss, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have tried to get past the immediate controversy through now familiar public penance rituals expressing regrets.

It has been left to others, most notably Woolsey and Ridge, to make the substantive case for the NYPD’s anti-terrorist policies. In an op-ed in The New York Daily News (and rejected by the Times), the two argue that the NYPD’s undercover terror prevention program, including intelligence-gathering within the Muslim community, has been one of the prime tools allowing the NYPD to foil several credible threats that have arisen from within the community. And given that even one successful terror attack in New York City could claims tens of thousands of lives, the NYPD cannot afford to decrease its intelligence-gathering activities.

THE TIMES omitted any discussion of the thesis of The Third Jihad. Jasser holds up a 15-page document at the beginning of the film, which we eventually learn is a Muslim Brotherhood manifesto for “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within,” through use of front groups, mosques and Islamic centers. The document was uncovered by the FBI in the course of its investigation leading up to the government’s successful prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding case.

Terrorism, intones Jasser, is only one tactic toward the Islamists’ goal of imposing Shari’a across the globe – a goal shared by many groups who are not themselves involved in terrorist activity. CAIR, which is specifically mentioned in the document, is one such group. CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, and the FBI broke off all relations with the group at the time.

Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, the founder of the American Muslim Council, who was invited to speak at an ecumenical service in the National Cathedral after 9/11, is another so-called “moderate” Muslim. He is shown in The Third Jihad boasting, “Either we do it now or we do it in a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country.”

The current controversy could itself be a chapter in The Third Jihad, which discusses the manner in which Islamist front groups constantly raise the specter of Islamophobia to suppress discussion of radical Islam.

And it works. Paul Berman writes in The Flight of the Individuals about how Western intellectuals have been induced to remain silent on such awkward matters as the historical link between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis, and the Nazi inspiration for present-day Islamists.

Read the whole thing.

What bothers me most about this film is that its thesis states that "Only a small percentage of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims are radical." I have my doubts that is correct. I would say a large percentage - a very large percentage - of Muslims are radical if we define 'radical' as being the belief that Islam will one day rule the world and the willingness to act on it. As regular readers know, we have a regular commenter on this blog who claims to be a Muslim living in the West (yes, I know in what country, although God only knows if she actually lives there) who makes no secret of her aspirations for Islam to control the world. She has threatened me personally - both on comments I have allowed through on this blog and in private emails. Is she typical? Sadly, I think the answer to that question is "yes." 'Moderate Muslim' is an oxymoron as far as I can tell.

For those who have not seen The Third Jihad yet, you may do so here or click on the widget below.

Labels: CAIR, Global jihad, Islamist, myth of moderate Islam, Zuhdi Jasser

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:53 PM