Thank you for the sentiment.
I have something for you to consider though, 15-25% of Muslims around the world are of the extremist variety. Of the 1.3 billion that figures up to around the same as the population of the U.S.
It is encumbant upon the Muslim community to clean up the image of Islam by challenging the extremists yourselves. The reaction to cartoons compared to the reaction to these extremists' activities has a large disparity. Witnesses who would know like Brigitte Gabriel are reporting like this:
Because They Hate
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPagemag.com; September 25, 2006
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Brigitte Gabriel, a journalist and news producer who started her career as an anchor for World News, an evening Arabic news broadcast throughout the Middle East, for which she reported on critical events in the Middle East.
As a terrorism expert and the founder of the non-profit organization AmericanCongressforTruth.com, Brigitte travels widely and speaks regularly on topics related to the Middle East. She is the author of the new book Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.
FP: Brigitte Gabriel, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.
Gabriel: Thank you Jamie. It is always a pleasure working with you.
FP: So what inspired this new book?
Gabriel: Radical Islam’s modern war of world domination has been picking up momentum with its universal colophony of Allahu Akbar accompanying each act of terror and destruction.
Today, radical Islam’s war rages in varying degrees of intensity throughout the world, not just against Christians and Jews in the west, but also against Hindus, Buddhists, Copts, indeed all non-Muslim infidels, Their degree of zealotry even has them attacking other denominations within Islam itself. Islamic radicals are instigating and perpetuating terrorist campaigns, insurgencies, civil wars, minority suppression, ethnic cleansing and/or genocide in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Chad, Chechnya, Dagestan, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Gambia, Great Britain, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Kenya, Kosovo, Lebanon, Macedonia, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Netherlands, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, territories administered by the Palestinian Authority, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Somalia, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, The United States of America, Yemen, and Zanzibar. The rest of the world is held hostage to fear.
This book is part my personal story and my observations. It is written in the hope that Americans and the west will recognize this eminent threat to their way of life and make the correct philosophical, legal, governmental policy and militarily decisions to protect themselves and our civilization before it is too late.
FP: I am sorry to raise a very painful subject, but can you kindly relate to us a bit about how you lost your childhood to militant Islam.
Gabriel: I was born into Paris of the Middle East, the Arab world’s jewel on the Mediterranean. Lebanon's geography encompasses both pristine beaches and snowcapped mountains, and most of the time Lebanon has an ideal Mediterranean climate. Lebanon was the most westernized Arabic speaking country in the Middle East, its citizens the most cultured and educated.
This natural beauty that filled and blessed our lives would fall prey to an ugliness of hate and animosity in 1975, when South Lebanon, where I lived, became a bloody battleground.
The Muslims and Palestinian declared war on the Christians and started killing us. They bombed my home in trying to take over our town. I was ten years old when my home exploded around me burying me under the rubble as the perpetrators shouted Allahu Akbar. I was wounded and spend two and half month in and out of a hospital for treatment. My father became deaf and lost all our lifesavings in the bombing. I had to live in an 8 by 10 bomb shelter for seven years of my life between 1975 and 1982 in pitch darkness for lack of electricity, freezing cold for lack of heat. I had to drink stale water which I collected from a near by spring crawling on my stomach in a ditch dodging sniper bullets. We had very little food, and resorted to collecting grass and vegetation that grew around the bomb shelter to eat. I was 13 yeas old when I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night waiting to be slaughtered, and by the age of 20 I had buried most of my friends who were killed by radical Muslims.
FP: In your book you discuss how radical Islam spread from the Middle East throughout the world and how the west failed to connect the dots. Please tell us about that.
Gabriel: As news anchor for World News, I realized there was a form of repetition developing with every broadcast I did. The same story but different actors: hijackings, car bombs and Muslims fighting non Muslims was the news. The only differences were the locations, the vehicles used and the names of the perpetrators and their victims. The names of the terrorists became all too familiar and similar. Muhammad, Ahmed, Hussein, Ali were nothing but a repeat of Islamic names of Muslim youth who had been brain washed with hatred and bigotry towards the infidels. They were always shouting Allahu Akbar, the Moslem call to prayer, as their trademark celebratory cry for murder and glory as they slaughtered, killed, blew up, maimed or behead non Muslims.
The names of the targets or the kidnapped people were usually western: Terry Anderson, Terry Waite, Lt. Col. William Higgins, Pan Am flights, TWA, the Achille Lauro. I began to see how the Middle East was dragging the world down into a war of ideologies based on religious hatred and bigotry. I began to understand that what I and the Christians were going through in Lebanon that I thought was just a regional conflict was becoming a world wide conflict with international implications.
America and the west found an excuse for every incident and boxed and labeled it under the context of the country in which it took place. They attributed Iran’s conflict and the victory of Ayatollah Khomeini to an inner conflict within Iran. They attributed the Lebanese war to being a civil war among factions. They attributed the overall Arab/Israeli conflict as being just a Palestinian verses Israeli conflict over land. Yet in all these conflicts radical Islam was the driving force or lingered just under the surface. My book Because They Hate offers a list of Islamic/Arabic aggression leading up to 9/11 while the west neglected to connect the dots.
FP: What are the West’s weaknesses in its confrontation with this new enemy?
Gabriel: America never seems to learn the danger of letting your enemy think that you are weak, asleep or careless. America sent message after message to the Islamists that while America posses the most superior weapons of war, it does not posses the resolve or the will to follow through till victory. America proved it when it withdrew from Lebanon after the marines were bombed and after it didn't finish the job in Iraq the first time around during the gulf war. Ever since that signal was sent, the Islamists ratcheted up their attacks and the United States slept through every attack on our basis and interests overseas. They hijacked TWA flight 847, as well as the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. They bombed another TWA flight as well as hijacked Pan Am flight 73 in 1986. They bombed another Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. They bombed a military compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1995. The Khobar Towers also in Saudi Arabia 1996. They also bombed The USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.
So what signal did the United States send to the Islamic terrorists during eight years of the Clinton administration? For eight years the United States military defense budget was depleted. For eight years the US government was a social development center of political correctness, political corruption and arrogance while the Chinese stole our military secrets. The United States was in the middle of a slumber party while the Islamists were organizing, training, recruiting and infiltrating our country and counting on our blindness, carelessness and ignorance. They knew that the leadership was busy with sexual scandals instead of building our military, building our intelligence, increasing America's defense and staying on the lookout for anyone wishing our country harm.
Our anti military attitude as a nation and our cowardly responses to terrorists empowered our enemy to strengthen, grow, acquire weapons, and scientists and place Islamic terrorists right here in our midst living, and learning flight lessons, to begin our destruction.
FP: Tell us about terrorist cells in America.
Gabriel: Terrorist networks have set up shop in America. They took their time watching our reaction, learning our weaknesses, learning how to use our system and studying our immigration system and how it works. America has focused on Al Qaeda only as the most threatening group du jour and America's number one enemy. This is a grave mistake. Al Qaeda is nothing more than a melting pot of Islamists from different countries and various Islamic militant groups that share their hatred for and ideology against the West. Intelligence classified reports show evidence that Hamas, the terrorist organization that most Americans believe is Israel's problem, and Hezbollah, whom most Americans believe is a Lebanese problem, have both established cells in the United States and networks with al Qaeda to perpetrate suicide bombings in American cities. The Muslim Brotherhood is also active in the United States.
America's problems with terrorist infiltration stem from its large porous borders with Canada and Mexico. Our Canadian border stretches more than 4000 miles while the Mexican one is about 2000 miles long. Almost half these borders are unpopulated areas and are not patrolled. Thousand of terrorists can get in undetected. The Mexican border poses the most dangerous threat where non Mexicans - called the politically correct word OTM (other than Mexicans) - are being snuck into our country by the notorious Mexican MS 13 gang. It is estimated that thousands of sleeper agents have been smuggled into the country illegally through the Mexican border alone. Many sources within the FBI believe that these terrorists are here in America raising funds and working on logistics, waiting for the opportunity to strike within the United States. Many of them have received training in Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The majority of these terror cells are made up of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and most Middle Eastern Muslim countries who have families, relatives or friends residing in the United States and came in the country legally. However some of these cells include members who are U.S.-born American Muslim citizens. They are strongly established in Muslim communities working and running small businesses under the radar where they can have meetings, recruit sympathizers, offer videos, Arabic magazines and publications that entice hatred of anything western and glamorizes Jihad fe samil el lah, jihad for Allah. All this while able to raise funds for their cause under the cover of Islamic charities and foundations.
FP: How about the mosques in America? What role do many of them play in controlling radical ideology in their communities?
Gabriel: Sadly Jamie, the mosques around the world are a part of the problem instead of being a part of the solution. A recent report by Freedom House/Center For Religious Freedom clearly reveals the toxic tsunami of religious hatred that Saudi Arabia has unleashed here in the United States. The entire report can be found on line.
In compiling the report, the center studied over 200 books and publications collected from more than a dozen of the most prominent mosques and Islamic institutions in the United States, including those in Washington, DC, New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles and Oakland. All of these books and publications were financed and produced directly or indirectly by the Saudi government. Some of the books were texts from Islamic schools. Some were publications issued by the Saudi government specifically to provide guidance to Muslims living in or visiting the United States.
In their relations with all non-Muslims, these Saudi books and publications repeatedly exhort Muslims to hate them for their religion,- meaning us infidels - to hate…for Allah’s sake, …always oppose them in every way…, maintain a wall of resentment against them. They say that Democracy is responsible for all of the horrible wars of the 20th Century and that attractive names like democracy, …justice, freedom, brotherhood and equality cause all of the world’s problems.
They say that all religions but Islam are false, and that it is the religious duty of every Muslim to impose functionally Islamic governments on every country in the world. This religious duty is binding in principle, in law, in self-defense, in community, and as a sacred obligation of jihad. In order to fulfill this sacred obligation of jihad, they must invade its western heartland, and struggle to overcome it until all the world shouts by the name of the Prophet [Mohammad] and the teachings of Islam spread throughout the world. Only then will Muslims achieve their fundamental goal….[A]ll religion will be exclusively for Allah.
This type of education presents a major problem when we are trying to control the radical in our Muslim communities.
FP: How can the U.S. and the West prevail in this war?
Gabriel: Our Government needs to take stronger action not only against those persons who seek to destroy us, but also against those individuals who impede our fight on the war on terrorism, well-intended or not. Tougher laws must be implemented that protect our right to life and liberty, and if that means a declaration of war putting other rights on hold for a while, so be it! As I have learned from my own life’s experiences, nothing in life is free, especially freedom. In my opinion here are several initiatives that I believe will protect us in the homeland.
- Close our borders
- Reform the Immigration and naturalization service (INS):
- Increase human intelligence
- Profile, Profile and Profile
- Control education of foreign students of hostile countries
- Develop alternative energy sources
- Silence any teaching of hate and intolerance against our country
In the book I offer suggestions as to what the average person can do to fight terrorism and what everyday American and westerner can do to protect our communities and defend our nations.
Our willingness as a nation to support our intelligence community and provide them with whatever laws that will enable them to track and infiltrate cells in America will determine our demise or survival. The tragedy of September the 11th could be the end of terrorism on American soil or the beginning of the end of American civilization.
FP: Brigitte Gabriel, thank you for joining Frontpage Magazine. You are a very special person. It is an honor to have spoken with you.
Gabriel: The honor is all mine Jamie. I thank you and Frontpage Magazine for giving me the opportunity to get my voice out. Together we can make a difference.
Now make your voice heard in the Muslim community with as much passion as you have toward the cartoons that mock Islam.
2006-10-07 05:27:09
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answer #10
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answered by Anonymous
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