The Investigative Project on Terrorism

Steven A. Emerson, Executive Director=
5505 Connecticut Ave NW= No. 341
Washington, DC 20015
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Email: articles@ctnews.org=

The following speech was given by Steven Emerson a= t The Sydney Institute = in Sydney, Australia on February 15, 2006. It is reprinted from The Sydney Papers.

Jihadism: Where is it at in 2006

By Steven Emerson, Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism

The recent episode over the publication of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed triggered an out= cry in the Muslim world not seen since the publication of Salman Rushdie’s book in 1989. Then, like today, riots broke out over the Middle East and southeast Asia. During the Rushdie episode, the West responded largely with resolution and resolve not to cave in. Rus= hdie was treated like a hero and given protection by various governments. Bookstores continued to carry the book. Rushdie was granted meetings = with world leaders including then President Clinton. Newspapers came to his defence. Compare that with the reaction today. The West has responded with a resounding cravenness. Most media publications, with several notable exceptions, refused to republish the cartoon. And most Western governments and leaders painstakingly, echoing the Muslim protestor= s, endorsed their view that it was “disrespectful” to publish the cartoons and that free speech should only be exercised with “responsibility” — a euphemism for appeasing Muslim deman= ds.

It was truly startling to = see the primary defenders of free speech – the media – squirm and deflect responsibility by invoking manifestly contrived excuses in refusing= to publish the cartoons. Rather than the lofty reasons they gave in not wanting to disrespect Islam, the real reason came down to the mundane reali= ty that journalists have to look in the rearview mirror when they go home at night. With the exception of the Danish government, nearly every other Western leader and regime kowtowed to Islamic demands in not supporting the absolute right to publish the cartoons or in outright criticism of the cart= oons’ publication.

The furor over the cartoons recently will take a while to fade away. And we have to ask ourselves what the legacies such an episode will bring to our history and whether we = will learn from this. A lesson that is about caving in= to an unpluralistic, dictatorial force which will only compound our insecurity la= ter on. A lesson about needing to stand up and= draw a line in the sand. And I question the willingness of much of = the Western media, and indeed many areas of the Western world including, more recently, the Prime Minister of Canada, to accept a limit to freedom of spe= ech rather than provoke a clash with the most violent voices of the Muslim world. Where do we place that limit?

Even here in Australia, reaction from the = local Muslims has been to condemn the publication of the cartoons as unacceptable= and blasphemous. They have demanded, like their brethren around the world= , to make blasphemy against the law in Western countries similar to anti-blasphe= my laws that already prevail in Muslim countries. Blasphemy may be offen= sive to some but the notion of making it illegal in the West, where the separati= on of church and state is the guiding principle of Western civilization, is indicative of the religious intolerance that radical Islam stands for.

When I was in New Zealand a week and a half ago there we= re major protests by hundreds of Muslims in Auckland, and later a meeting of Wellington Muslim leaders. In their meetings w= ith their editorial writers and some government officials, those leaders demand= ed that, from then on, the Muslim community needed to be consulted before any article could be published that might be critical of Islam. The viole= nce we saw in Beirut and Denmark , in Indonesia in Pakistan – right throughout Pakistan the burning of Western businesses – lie at the heart of what I call t= he “cultural jihadist” problem.

So what do I mean by cultu= ral jihad? This is the notion that in the Muslim community that deems it acceptable for jihadists to carry out violence or to deny responsibility for the actual terrorists acts themselves. It is manifest when Muslim lea= ders claim to condemn terrorism but exempt “resistance” from their condemnation. It is manifest when Muslim public opinion refuses to ac= cept the responsibility of Muslim terrorism – for example, the survey of British Muslims after 9/11 that showed that some 55 per cent did not believe that Muslims were responsible for the attack that day. It is manifest= in the denial by Muslims groups that Jihad actual means violent fighting as se= en in the claims by “mainstream” Muslim groups that there is no su= ch thing as holy war in Islam. It is manifest in the widespread support = in the Muslim world for suicide bombings against the Israelis. And it is manifest in the support for terrorist attacks on Western targets among Musl= im communities. Finally it is manifest in the chilling intimidation of f= ree speech and freedom of thought as most chillingly demonstrated in the cartoon controversy.

The public has no problem = recognizing acts of Jihad when carried out by Islamic terrorists. Bombings in Madrid and Lond= on or plots in Canada, Italy, Ger= many, the US and Australia. Jihad, despite false representations by savvy politically correct apologists for militant Islam, means fighting to impose Islam or to repel non-Muslim “aggressors.” Although genuinely moderate Muslims interpr= et Jihad as a spiritual struggle, the traditional meaning and expression of Ji= had has been violent holy war to impose Islam or repel the “enemies”= ; of Islam.

How many hard core Jihadis= ts are there in the world wide Muslim population of 1.2 billion? No one knows with any certainty and probably is not something that could ever be determined with any accuracy. With the exception of those arrested fo= r carrying out or plotting to carry out terrorism, it is impossible to know the number= of true jihadists—those that are personally prepared to carry out violence. =

The 1979 Soviet invasion o= f Afghanistan resulted in the first modern incarnation of Jihad on a local level in the Arabic Muslim worlds. No longer confined to a theoretical or simply religious concept, jihad became accessible to young Muslims. One could actually join the jihad and personally participate in a concept that had be= en elusive, theological and abstract. It now meant that Jihad was attain= able at the local level. “Join the Jihad Caravan” was the promotional brochure that flooded Islamic centers and Muslim student groups throughout the Unite= d States, promising young Muslims the opportunity of a lifetime. Jihad became t= he rage. Tens of thousands of young Muslims, from the United States , Europe, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, Asia volunteered to fight alongside Afghani mujahid= een.

As the Soviets were defeat= ed, the jihad soon began to spread outside Afghanistan. Intoxicate= d with their defeat of a superpower, the jihadist movement snowballed into a world wide movement with new jihad fronts opening up in Chechnya, Bosnia, the Philippines, Israel, Kashmir, and elsewhere. With a bas= e of operations in newly liberated Afghanistan, the world wide jihad movement could train under laboratory conditions in territory that would soon be dominated by the Taliban in a de facto power sharing agreement with Osama Bin Laden. Jihad now had a murderous momentum culmination in the 9/11 attacks that killed 3000 Americans.

When radical Muslims crash planes into buildings, it’s not hard to recognize those acts of terro= rism as manifestations of Jihad. The conventional jihad is a holy war and = is embodied in acts of violence against Western and other declared “enem= ies of Islam.” We don’t have a problem recognizing what Islam= ic terrorism is when we see it or experience it. Whether in Bali , New York , Madrid , London , or Jerusalem .

In recent years, the conce= pt of the global village has been traditionally used to describe the projectio= n of Western culture in to the outer most recesses of the less developed world, through telecommunications, the internet, television, and the internet. But in recent years, there has been a reverse global village phenomen= on, with jihadism spreading to every nook and cranny of the West.

As a result we now have another set of jihadists, those I call the cultural jihadists. They a= re probably just as dangerous, if not more problematic, than the military jihadists. They are not the ones lighting fuses or blowing up airplanes; th= ey are simply the ones that give moral support to those crashing planes into buildings. They are not the ones who carry out suicide bombings; they= are the ones that glorify suicide bombings. They are not the ones who car= ry out fatwas to kill “enemies” of Islam; they are the ones who re= fuse to condemn such fatwas. They are not the ones who blow up buses full = of school children; they are the larger community that condones such actions. <= o:p>

Intimidation and the spect= er of violence are critical to the success of the cultural jihad. I reme= mber, in 1995 after producing the film Jihad in America, being warned by government officials that a fatwa had been issued against m= e by South African Muslims. I was also told an assassination move could be forthcoming and that I needed to move out of my apartment. That type = of intolerance, which we see over and over, has a chilling effect. The journalists who refused to publish the cartoons may claim that they were not publishing the cartoons because of an unwillingness to offend Muslim sensit= ivities. The reality is that journalists were afraid of being bombed. <= span style=3D'font-family:SimSun;background:white'>

Right now we have a dual jihadist issue. The militarily violent jihad, articulated by Jama Isl= amia from Indonesia, is now in the headlines. Recently, the President of the United States revealed the second stage of= the plot of 9/11 was a plot to blow up a prominent Los Angeles tower by Jama Islamia. = ; JI is alive and well and, sadly, you’ve experienced the pain. But = so have others. JI is active in this part of the world in the same way t= hat al Qaeda is active in Europe and even in North Ameri= ca.

In the last year two major incidents, among many, stand out conspicuously for what they tell us of the state of jihad. In one, last September, prison inmates from California hatched a plot to blow up military facil= ities, several synagogues and the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles. The inmates had conv= erted to Islam and they believed in the jihad, the notion that it was not just acceptable but mandatory to carry out an act of violence against the Western infidel. And if it were not for a very serendipitous arrest made by a local Los Angeles policeman that plot may have not been uncovered and could have succeeded in killing thousands. Similarly another plot, by Pakistani Americans, involved a desire to create a Madrassa on American soil, a religious school that was going to teach jihad for the purposes of carrying out acts of terrorism.

The United States has prosecuted, indicted, convicted, or deported more than 300 individuals linked to terror= ism in the last four and a half years. From Buffalo= to Chicago, from Por= tland to Virginian, jihadists manage to ensconce themselves throughout the United States. But how did the Jihadists groups succeed in getting so advanced in the hear= t of the West? One word I would use would be “deception”. Cultural jihad hid under the guise of pluralism and became part of the moral equation. Instead of defining themselves as standing for intolerance,= the cultural Jihadists inverted the moral argument and said they were the victi= ms of hate crimes. Cultural Jihadists actually created “civil rights” groups and demanded that they be included and enfranchised in= a plural society where minorities are usually excluded. They targeted t= he very vulnerability of Western society – the charge of being a racist. In fact, these groups were the very incarnation of racism.&nb= sp;

The outstanding example of somebody who deceived the United States, and was probably successful in t= he greatest strategic penetration of American national security since the Cold War, is a man named Abdul Rahman Alamoudi. From 1990 till early 2000, Alamoudi was the head of a group called the American Muslim Council representing the largest American Muslim group. He appeared at the Wh= ite House numerous times. You can go online and see pictures of him meeti= ng then President Bill Clinton, or Vice President Al Gore. He was invite= d to testify at Congress; he was sent abroad by the State Department numerous ti= mes as a goodwill Ambassador. He was celebrated as the most prominent mainstream American Muslim leader who would affirm the virtues of moderation. Then it came out, quite recently, that from 1994 until he= was arrested in 2003 he was secretly a financier for al Qaeda and Hamas. = How could a man get to the most wanted positions of power in the US government; a man who was a cultural Jihadist, perhaps even more; somebody who was actually accelerating acts of violence by financing Islamic terrorism?

Let me be very clear; I am= not suggesting that all Muslims are Jihadists or that the entire world of Islam needs be condemned. Far from it. I p= refer to believe that the vast majority of Muslims are not part of the radical agenda. But the institutional leadership of the Islamic world, emanat= ing from the Al Alzhar University in Cairo = 211; a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated institution – to the Wahabist Institutio= ns in Saudi Arabia, all articulate and champion the cultural jihad. This is the notion th= at it is acceptable to carry out violence as long as one is not caught pulling= the trigger. The Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo originated in the 1920s and has spread throughout the West. Its aim is the imposition of Sharia law through democratic means. In other words – one man, one vote, one time. That has been= the model of some of the Islamic movements who have championed democracy becaus= e it offers the power to acquire the reins of democracy.

Where do we stand today?&n= bsp; How can the West fight against the cultural jihad and protect free speech, freedom of thought, freedom of the press, freedom of religion? On the other hand, how does an open society tolerate calls in the= US calling for death to America, death to Jews and de= ath to Christians as protected speech? And how do we know what the true agen= da of the Jihadists is if they are not scrutinised through their publications = and their intentions successfully hidden from public view? The United States has a rich tradition of protecting free speech. But, unfortunately because of vulnerabilities attaching to that rich tradition, cultural Jihad= ists can drive a truck through the gaps - sometimes as large as a suicide bomb.<= /span>

Indeed, throughout the 199= 0s the Jihadists created a whole infrastructure in the United States, in Europe and even in Australia, of Muslim Brotherhood-oriented institutions that did= n't define themselves as a Muslim brotherhood but called themselves different names, different acronyms, that misled and deceived. In the US they called themselves the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim American Society, and the Musl= im Student Association. In Australia it is operating under a group called FAMSY. And yet they were champio= ns and deacons of the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine. Every time there was a counter-terrorism action by the governments of Europe, United States, or Australia, prior to or even after 9/11, the first reaction by these groups would be the claim that such actions were defamatory of Islam and part of a= war to defame Islam and to attack Islam rather than what it really was - a war against terrorism.

The Jihadists believe, as = the cartoon protestors believe, that there has been a war against Islam, carried out by the West, since the year 1095. And every action that is perceived to= be an insult is part of that war against Islam. So a conspiracy theory has gro= wn up and a culture has developed in which all actions by the West to protect itself – such as stopping the flow of financing from Hamas and Hezbol= lah, the arrest of al Qaeda terrorists, the deportations of terrorist financiers living illegally in the United States - have been represented by Muslim gro= ups to be part of a war against Islam. As a corollary, many do not believe that Osama bin Laden carried out 9/11.

After 9/11, I was speaking= to a university group in Ohio at the University's Law school. A car picked me up from the airport and, as= I got closer to the school, I saw police cars and squad cars outside the University. I asked the driver what the squad cars were doing there. He responded by saying, "I think they are there to protect you Mr Emerson= ." I walked in to a capacity crowd of nearly 1000 students, jeering with catca= lls and interruptions. I could not speak. If you are a public speaker and you s= tart getting interrupted by catcalls it is impossible to shout over the cat call= ers in the crowd. But I realized I had to get their attention somehow. So I rip= ped up my speech in a very conspicuous act. This seemed very irrational to ever= yone watching and I got people's attention. There was a quiet in the audience. I thought to myself, "Now what do I do?" I said, "I'm going to take a public opinion poll. Hour many here in the audience believe that Osa= ma bin Laden carried out 9/11?” Five hundred people raised their hands. “And how many of you here believe that 9/11 was carried = out by the Israelis and the Americans?” The other five hundred rais= ed their hands – most of these, as far as I could tell by observation, w= ere Middle Eastern or Muslims as evident by their head covering. <= span style=3D'font-family:SimSun;background:white'>

There was a woman in the f= irst row who turned out to be a second year law student. I asked her “Sister why do you claim that bin Laden was not behind 9/11?”&n= bsp; And she responded instantly: “Why do you claim he was?”&n= bsp; I said, “The evidence is there. You see the tape; we have our intelligence.” She said, “They’re all lies and fabricated= . We know that they were the Israelis and the Americans.” This was a second year law student afforded all of the same opportunities other Americ= ans are. She was emblematic of the cultural Jihadist. I am sure that she would not be tempted to an act of terrorism. But I am also virtually positi= ve that, secretly, she applauds the suicide bombings that go off in Tel Aviv o= r in the heart of Europe.

The reality is that the cultural Jihadists have a monopoly on the debate. No matter what Karen Hughes, now the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, says, the hearts and minds are not going to be changed by a liberal adverti= sing campaign. The wealth of information emanating from Islamic institutions, fr= om broadcasts, from mosques, from universities, from the schools, the text boo= ks, all reaffirm the notion that there is a war against Islam and that the infi= del has to he defeated, destroyed or converted.

Bin Laden wasn’t so = irrational. In his own mind he actually believed that the US could be brought to its kn= ees by weakening its resolve to fight jihad. In that he was right. He read the tea leaves perfectly up until 9/11. Throughout that period, the previous seven years, the US didn't e= ver respond to acts of terrorism - whether it was the bombing of the USS COLE, = the bombing of the Embassies, the bombing of other US targets. The US simply didn't respond albeit lob a few missiles into Sudan an= d Afghanistan after the Embassy bombings in 1998. Bin Laden's attitude became "I've = got them on the run".

There was an email that we= nt out today which I found quite frightening. It was an email put out by a gro= up here in Australia called the Federation of Australian Muslim Students and Youth (FAMSY). They= put out publications and editorials claiming there is a war against Islam carri= ed out by the Australian government. They claim that the publication of the cartoons is unacceptable. However, the email today read, "Please do not forward articles about the cartoons. Praise Allah. The Muslim world, the community, has made its views very clear. Inshallah, hopefully, with Allah's help we can mobilise similar efforts for other issues such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, occupied Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran. Kashmir, Islamaphobia, discrimination." In other words, they have learned from = the lessons of intimidation, successfully carried out by the cultural Jihadists throughout the Muslim world, in both the Middle = East, South East Asia, Europe and North America. And what they have learned is that intimidation has a dividend. It ki= lls freedom of speech. They can now mobilise similar outfits. There= was no email put out by FAMSY condemning the bloody riots that had taken the li= ves of nearly two dozen people. There was no condemnation of the violence that saw the Danish Embassy burned to the ground in D= amascus, or a temple to be burned down in Beirut or hostages being taken in the West Bank in Gaza . Instead, they want to mobilise similar efforts because they now see the Wes= t on the run.

I fear that sometimes the = West loses its resolve. The first US reaction to the publication of the cartoons was issued when the State Department spokesperson said the cartoon provocation was "unacceptable". Pray tell me, what gives the government the right to make the claim that publication by the media is "unacceptable"? That's the language of Khoumeniests. Jihad has succeeded in putting democracy in a position where a gun has been held to i= ts head. The Sunday Telegraph came out with a phenomenally strong editorial including:<= /o:p>

This newspaper w= ould not have published the cartoons of Mohammad at the centre of this controver= sy, images which we regard as vulgar and fatuously insulting. But we rese= rve absolutely our right to make our own decision, free of threat and intimidat= ion. The difficulty is that what started as an issue of editorial judgment has become a question of public order. The protestors in London with their disgraceful slogans -"behead those who insult Islam", = or "Britain you will pay - 7/7 is on the way" - have made it all but impossible fo= r a genuinely free debate on this issue to take place. All such debate is= now being carried out in the shadow of murderous intimidation, the cultural jih= ad.

When an act of terrorism occurs there is a natural market response. We galvanise, and our publ= ic consciousness is made more aware. When we understand the threat of terrorism, counter terrorist legislation is made more likely, the public de= bate then ensues, people understand the whole notion of what terrorism can carry= out and how it inflicts such damage upon the moral fibre of Western society.&nb= sp; Because terrorism basically denies you the freedom to act as who you are, it’s an execution.

People often ask me whether terrorism is any worse than people dying from cancer. Well, there may= be no difference in the loss of a loved one. But there is a difference between dying from the medically induced scars which we can attribute to fa= te and somebody who is executed. Right now I’m afraid the resolve = of the West is wearing thin. We don’t realize the extent to which = the Jihadists are emboldened. And while the military Jihadists may not be flagrant every single day, it’s the cultural Jihadists that make the military jihad possible. Unless and until that cultural jihad is deleated, discredited, and de legitimized, there can be no hope for a true expression of freedom of thought in the Muslim world.

What we seek as an antidot= e is a reformation in the Muslim world. The first sign of a reformation occurring would be a lot of Muslim comedians suddenly appearing. The ability to poke fun at one’s self, to carry out self criticism, is absolutely critical. It lies at the heart of the West. The West’s separation of Church and State, the notion that pluralism reig= ns supreme over any differences of opinion and our affirmation of pluralism is rejected by the cultural Jihadists.

It all comes down to one fundamental fact – the media in the West are currently afraid and they don’t want to admit it. But that fear is the fear that will rob= us of our freedoms. In Canada, when the government proposed to introduce Sharia courts to the local community the one block of activists that successfully overturned the government’s decision was a bunch of secu= lar Iranian women. They understood, more than anyone, what Sharia law wou= ld do with them in terms of disenfranchisement. Sharia law is incompatib= le with democracy, period. And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.<= /span>

As we face the prospect of other acts of terror, I am not worried about the response of the British government, the Australian government, the American government, the Spanish government or the Italian government in responding. I know they will = do the right thing. What I fear is the successful deception practised by the cultural Jihadists. Unlike the resolve exhibited by Britain in the face of the Na= zi scourge in WWII, Western governments have sought to appease the Jihadists o= ver the cartoon issue. They have shown a cowardice which will only embold= en future jihadists.

Now that the West has demonstrated its “cultural sensitivity” to Islamic demands, how= far should the West have gone to accommodate Islamic feelings? Should the West now cave in to demands that Western women not wear mini-skirts? = Or that public schools segregate hours for both women? The question is n= ot so preposterous as a national health club in Detroit recently caved into demands from fundamental= ist Muslims in the Detroit area to maintain segregated hours.

One of the most encouraging aberrations in my thesis is the emergence of singular voices of moderation = in the Muslim world. Whether it’s Irshad Manji from Canada, or Tashbih Sayyed who= edits = Pakistan Today or Kamal Nalwash who heads the group called Muslims Against Terrorism. They have the courage to stan= d up against the cultural Jihadists and affirm the right of free speech and pluralism. But unless, and until, we see more Muslims stand up against the cultural jihadists the future is bleak.

<= /p>

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