Author: Daniel Pipes
Publication: Commentary
Date: November 2001
In the aftermath of the violence
on September 11, American politicians from George W. Bush on down have
tripped over themselves to affirm that the vast majority of Muslims living
in the United States are just ordinary people. Here is how the President
put it during a visit to a mosque on September 17: "America counts millions
of Muslims among our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable
contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors,
members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads." Two
days later, he added that "there are millions of good Americans who practice
the Muslim faith who love their country as much as I love the country,
who salute the flag as strongly as I salute the flag."
These soothing words, echoed and
amplified by many columnists and editorial writers, were obviously appropriate
at a moment of high national tension and amid reports of mounting bias
against Muslims living in the United States. And it is certainly true that
the number of militant Islamic operatives with plans to carry out terrorist
attacks on the United States is statistically tiny. But the situation is
more complex than the President would have it.
The Muslim population in this country
is not like any other group, for it includes within it a substantial body
of people-many times more numerous than the agents of Osama bin Ladin-who
share with the suicide hijackers a hatred of the United States and the
desire, ultimately, to transform it into a nation living under the strictures
of militant Islam. Although not responsible for the atrocities in September,
they harbor designs for this country that warrant urgent and serious attention.
In June 1991, Siraj Wahaj, a black
convert to Islam and the recipient of some of the American Muslim community's
highest honors, had the privilege of becoming the first Muslim to deliver
the daily prayer in the U.S. House of Representatives. On that occasion
he recited from the Qur'an and appealed to the Almighty to guide American
leaders "and grant them righteousness and wisdom."
A little over a year later, addressing
an audience of New Jersey Muslims, the same Wahaj articulated a rather
different vision from his mild and moderate invocation in the House. If
only Muslims were more clever politically, he told his New Jersey listeners,
they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government
with a caliphate. "If we were united and strong, we'd elect our own emir
[leader] and give allegiance to him. . . . [T]ake my word, if 6-8 million
Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us." In 1995, Wahaj
served as a character witness for Omar Abdel Rahman in the trial that found
that blind sheikh guilty of conspiracy to overthrow the government of the
United States. More alarming still, the U.S. attorney for New York listed
Wahaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators"
in the sheikh's case.
The disparity between Wahaj's good
citizenship in the House and his militant forecast of a Muslim takeover-not
to mention his association with violent felons-is only one example of a
larger pattern common to the American Muslim scene. Another example, about
which I have written recently elsewhere, involves the American Muslims
for Jerusalem, an organization whose official advocacy of "a Jerusalem
that symbolizes religious tolerance and dialogue" contrasts markedly with
the wild conspiracy-mongering and crude anti-Jewish rhetoric in which its
spokesmen indulge at closed events.1 At a minimum, then, anyone who would
understand the real views of American Muslims must delve deeper than the
surface of their public statements.
Doing so, one discovers that the
ambition to take over the United States is hardly a new one. The first
missionaries for militant Islam, or Islamism, who arrived here from abroad
in the 1920's, unblushingly declared, "Our plan is, we are going to conquer
America." The audacity of such statements hardly went unnoticed at the
time, including by Christians who cherished their own missionizing hopes.
As a 1922 newspaper commentary put it:
To the millions of American Christians
who have so long looked eagerly forward to the time the cross shall be
supreme in every land and the people of the whole world shall have become
the followers of Christ, the plan to win this continent to the path of
the "infidel Turk" will seem a thing unbelievable. But there is no doubt
about its being pressed with all the fanatical zeal for which the Mohammedans
are noted.
But it is in recent decades, as
the Muslim population in the country has increased significantly in size,
social standing, and influence, and as Islamism has made its presence widely
felt on the international scene, that this "fanatical zeal" has truly come
into its own. A catalyzing figure in the story is the late Ismail Al-Faruqi,
a Palestinian immigrant who founded the International Institute of Islamic
Thought and taught for many years at Temple University in Philadelphia.
Rightly called "a pioneer in the development of Islamic studies in America,"
he was also the first contemporary theorist of a United States made Muslim.
"Nothing could be greater," Al-Faruqi wrote in the early 1980's, "than
this youthful, vigorous, and rich continent [of North America] turning
away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu
Akbar [God is great]."
Al-Faruqi's hopes are today widely
shared among educated Muslim leaders. Zaid Shakir, formerly the Muslim
chaplain at Yale University, has stated that Muslims cannot accept the
legitimacy of the American secular system, which "is against the orders
and ordainments of Allah." To the contrary, "The orientation of the Qur'an
pushes us in the exact opposite direction." To Ahmad Nawfal, a leader of
the Jordanian Muslim Brethren who speaks frequently at American Muslim
rallies, the United States has "no thought, no values, and no ideals";
if militant Muslims "stand up, with the ideology that we possess, it will
be very easy for us to preside over this world." Masudul Alam Choudhury,
a Canadian professor of business, writes matter-of-factly and enthusiastically
about the "Islamization agenda in North America."
For a fuller exposition of this
outlook, one can do no better than to turn to a 1989 book by Shamim A.
Siddiqi, an influential commentator on American Muslim issues. Cryptically
titled Methodology of Dawah Ilallah in American Perspective (more idiomatically
rendered as "The Need to Convert Americans to Islam"), this 168-page study,
published in Brooklyn, remains largely unavailable to general readers (neither
amazon.com nor bookfinder.com listed it over a period of months) but is
widely posted on Islamist websites,2 where it enjoys a faithful readership.
In it, in prose that makes up in intensity and vividness for what it lacks
in sophistication and polish, Siddiqi lays out both a detailed rationale
and a concrete plan for Islamists to take over the United States and establish
"Islamic rule" (iqamat ad-din).
Why America? In Siddiqi's judgment,
the need to assume control here is even more pressing than the need to
sustain the revolution of the mullahs in Iran or to destroy Israel, for
doing so will have a much greater positive impact on the future of Islam.
America is central not for the reasons one might expect-its large population,
its wealth, or the cultural influence it wields around the world-but on
three other grounds.
The first has to do with Washington's
role as the premier enemy of Islamism (or, possibly, of Islam itself).
In Siddiqi's colorful language, whenever and wherever Muslims have moved
toward establishing an Islamic state, the "treacherous hands of the secular
West are always there . . . to bring about [their] defeat." Nor are Muslim
rulers of any help, for they are "all in the pockets of the Western powers."
If, therefore, Islam is ever going to attain its rightful place of dominance
in the world, the "ideology of Islam [must] prevail over the mental horizon
of the American people." The entire future of the Muslim world, Siddiqi
concludes, "depends on how soon the Muslims of America are able to build
up their own indigenous movement."
Secondly, America is central because
establishing Islamism here would signal its final triumph over its only
rival, that bundle of Christianity and liberalism which constitutes contemporary
Western civilization. (One cannot help noting the irony that Siddiqi's
tract appeared in the same year, 1989, as Francis Fukuyama's famous article
speculating that, with the collapse of Communism and the apparent triumph
of liberal democracy, we had begun to approach the "end of history.") And
thirdly, and still more grandly, the infusion of the United States with
Islamism would make for so powerful a combination of material success and
spiritual truth that the establishment of "God's Kingdom" on earth would
no longer be "a distant dream."
But this dream will not happen by
itself. To American Muslims, writes Siddiqi, falls the paramount responsibility
of bringing Islam to power in their country; and to this goal, Muslims
must devote "all of their energies, talents, and resources." For this is
how they will be assessed on judgment day: "Every Muslim living in the
West will stand in the witness box in the mightiest court of Allah . .
. in Akhirah [the last day] and give evidence that he fulfilled his responsibility,
. . . that he left no stone unturned to bring the message of the Qur'an
to every nook and corner of the country."
How this desired end is to be achieved
is a question on which opinions differ in Siddiqi's world. Basically, the
disagreement centers on the role of violence.
As has been made irrefutably clear
in recent weeks, there are indeed some, not just abroad but living among
us, who see the United States as (in the phrase of Osama bin Ladin) an
"enemy of Islam" that must be brought to its knees and destroyed. In its
broad outlines, this judgment came to be solidified during the crisis over
Iraq's seizure of Kuwait in the early 1990's, when militants like bin Ladin
discerned a historic parallel between the presence of American troops on
the soil of Saudi Arabia and the brutal Soviet occupation of Afghanistan
in the 1980's. In their dialectical view, as the New Yorker writer Mary
Ann Weaver has explained, the United States, just like the Soviet Union
before it, represented "an infidel occupation force propping up a corrupt,
repressive, and un-Islamic government." And just as the Islamist mujahideen
in Afghanistan had succeeded in defeating and driving out their occupiers,
and thereby played a role in the collapse of the mighty Soviet Union itself,
so Islamists might cause the collapse of the United States: one down, one
to go, as it were.
To the blind sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman,
who after bin Laden is perhaps today's most notorious enemy of the United
States, bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 was part and parcel of this
revolutionary strategy to "conquer the land of the infidels" by force.
The idea, as one of his followers put it, was to "bring down their highest
buildings and the mighty constructions they are so proud of, in order thoroughly
to demoralize them."3 And this was a duty that Islamists saw as incumbent
on all Muslims; having helped humiliate the Soviets in Afghanistan, they
now, as one native-born American convert to Islam proclaimed in July 1989,
must "complete the march of jihad until we reach America and liberate her."
But there are several problems with
the approach of revolutionary violence, even from the perspective of those
who share its goal. The most obvious has to do with its impact on American
society. Although attacks like the 1993 bombing or the suicide massacres
of September 11 are intended to demoralize the American people, prompt
civil unrest, and weaken the country politically, what they do instead
is to bring Americans together in patriotism and purpose. Those who mastermind
them, in the meantime, are often caught: Abdel Rahman is sitting out a
life sentence in a federal penitentiary, his campaign of violence stillborn,
while Osama bin Ladin is the object of a massive manhunt to get him "dead
or alive." Unlike in the very different case of the Soviet Union, it is
very hard to see how the use of force will succeed in wearing down this
country, much less lead to a change in government.
Besides, as a number of commentators
have recently pointed out, in targeting all Americans the perpetrators
of Islamic violence do not bother even to discriminate between non-Muslim
and Muslim victims. According to preliminary estimates, several hundred
Muslims died in the collapse of the World Trade Center. This is not exactly
calculated to enlist the participation of most resident Muslims in a campaign
of violent insurrection.4
For all these reasons, the non-violent
way would seem to have a brighter future, and it is in fact the approach
adopted by most Islamists. Not only is it legal, but it allows its enthusiasts
to adopt a seemingly benign view of the United States, a country they mean
to rescue rather than to destroy, and it dictates a strategy of working
with Americans rather than against them. As a teacher at an Islamic school
in Jersey City, near New York, explains, the "short-term goal is to introduce
Islam. In the long term, we must save American society." Step by step,
writes a Pakistan-born professor of economics, by offering "an alternative
model" to Americans, Muslims can transform what Ismail Al-Faruqi referred
to as "the unfortunate realities of North America" into something acceptable
in God's eyes.
Practically speaking, there are
two main prongs to the non-violent strategy. The first involves radically
increasing the number of American Muslims, a project that on the face of
it would not seem very promising. Islam, after all, is still an exotic
growth in the United States, its adherents representing just 1 to 2 percent
of the population and with exceedingly dim prospects of becoming anything
like a majority. Islamists are not so unrealistic as to think that these
numbers can be substantially altered any time soon by large-scale immigration
(which is politically unfeasible and might anyway provoke a backlash) or
by normal rates of reproduction. Hence they focus most of their efforts
on conversion.
They do so not only as a matter
of expediency but on principle. For Islamists, converting Americans is
the central purpose of Muslim existence in the United States, the only
possible justification for Muslims to live in an infidel land. In the view
of Shamim Siddiqi, there is no choice in the matter-American Muslims are
"ordained by Allah" to help replace evil with good, and otherwise "have
no right even to breathe." "Wherever you came from," adds Siraj Wahaj,
"you came . . . for one reason-for one reason only-to establish Allah's
din [faith]."
This imperative, relentlessly propagated
by authoritative figures and promoted by leading Islamist organizations
like the Muslim Student Association, has been widely adopted by Muslim
Americans at large. Many attest to the sense of responsibility that flows
from being an "ambassador for Islam," and are ever mindful of the cardinal
importance of winning new adherents. And, given what they hold to be the
truth of their message and the depravity of American culture, Islamists
are optimistic about their chances of success. "A life of taqwah [piety]
will immediately attract non-Muslims towards Islam," writes Abul Hasan
Ali Nadwi, an important Indian Islamist, in his "Message for Muslims in
the West."
He has a point: the more readily
the message of Islam is available, the more converts it is likely to win.
In making headway in the United States, Islam has largely depended on hands-on
contact and personal experience. According to one survey, over two-thirds
of American converts to Islam were motivated by the influence of a Muslim
friend or acquaintance. The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964), with its
moving account of redemption through Islam, has had a wide impact on American
blacks (and even some whites), causing a substantial number to convert.
Similarly not to be discounted are the efforts of the various Muslim organizations
in the United States, whose "attempts at educating the American public
about Islam" may be responsible, according to one observer, for "Islam's
increasing numbers."
But if increasing numbers are necessary,
they are also not sufficient. After all, whole countries-Turkey, Egypt,
Algeria-have overwhelmingly Muslim populations, but Islamism is suppressed
by their governments. >From an Islamist point of view, indeed, the situation
in Turkey is far worse than in the United States, for it is a more grievous
thing to reject the divine message as interpreted by Islamists than merely
to be ignorant of it. Therefore, in addition to building up Muslim numbers,
Islamists must prepare the United States for their own brand of ideology.
This means doing everything possible toward creating an Islamist environment
and applying Islamic law. Activities under this heading fall into various
categories.
Promoting Islamic rituals and customs
in the public square. Islamists want secular authorities to permit students
in public institutions, for example, to recite the basmallah (the formula
"In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate") in classroom exercises.
They also want the right to broadcast over outdoor loudspeakers the five
daily Islamic calls-to-prayer. Similarly, they have agitated for publicly
maintained prayer facilities in such institutions as schools and airports.
Privileges for Islam. Islamists
seek public financial support for Islamic schools, mosques, and other institutions.
They also lobby for special quotas for Muslim immigrants, try to compel
corporations to make special allowances for Muslim employees, and demand
the formal inclusion of Muslims in affirmative-action plans.
Restricting or disallowing what
others may do. Islamists want law-enforcement agencies to criminalize activities
like drinking and gambling that are offensive to Islam. While seeking wide
latitude for themselves, for instance when it comes to expressing disrespect
for American national symbols, they would penalize expressions of disrespect
for religious figures whom Islam deems holy, especially the prophet Muhammad;
punish criticism of Islam, Islamism, or Islamists; and close down critical
analysis of Islam.
Some of these aims have already
been achieved. Others may seem relatively minor in and of themselves, implying
no drastic alterations in existing American arrangements but rather only
slight adjustments in our already expansive accommodation of social "diversity."
Cumulatively, however, by whittling away at the existing order, they would
change the country's whole way of life-making Islam a major public presence,
ensuring that both the workplace and the educational system accommodate
its dictates and strictures, adapting family customs to its code of conduct,
winning it a privileged position in American life, and finally imposing
its system of law. Steps along the way would include more radical and intrusive
actions like prohibiting conversion out of Islam, criminalizing adultery,
banning the consumption of pork, formalizing enhanced rights for Muslims
at the expense of non-Muslims, and doing away with equality of the sexes.
A Muslim majority? Islamic law the
law of the land? Even the most optimistic Islamists concede the task will
not be easy. Just as Muhammad confronted die-hard opponents in pagan Mecca,
writes Siddiqi, so pious Muslims in America will face opponents, led by
the press cum media, the agents of capitalism, the champions of atheism
(Godless creeds) and the [Christian] missionary zealots." Doing battle
with them will demand focus, determination, and sacrifice.
And yet Siddiqi also thinks Muslims
enjoy advantages undreamt of in Muhammad's day or in any other society
than today's United States. For one thing, Americans are hungry for the
Islamist message, which "pinpoints the shortcoming of capitalism, elaborates
the fallacies of democracy, [and] exposes the devastating consequences
of the liberal lifestyle." For another, the United States permits Islamists
to pursue their political agenda in an entirely legal fashion and without
ever challenging the existing order. Indeed, precisely because the Constitution
guarantees complete government neutrality toward religion, the system can
be used to further Islamist aims. Democratic means are at hand for developing
an active and persistent lobby, cultivating politicians, and electing Muslim
representatives. Nearly a million legal immigrants arrive in the country
each year, plus many more through the long coastlines and porous land borders.
The courts are an all-important resource, and have already proved their
worth in winning concession after concession from American corporations
and public authorities.
Even so, the road will not be completely
smooth. A delicate point will be reached, in Siddiqi's mind, as society
polarizes between Muslim and non-Muslim camps "in every walk of life."
At that point, as the struggle between Truth and Error "acquires momentum
and the tension increases along with it," the "Wrong Doers" are likely
to take desperate steps to "eliminate the Islamic movement and its workers
by force." But if Islamists tread cautiously to navigate this point, taking
special care not to alienate the non-Muslim population, eventually there
will follow what Siddiqi calls a general "Rush-to-Islam." It will then
be only a matter of time before Muslims find themselves not just enfranchised
but actually running the show.
How much time? Siddiqi sees Islamists
in power in Washington before 2020. For Wahaj, implementation of the shari'a
in the United States "appears to be approaching fast," and in contemplating
what that means his language grows ecstatic:
I have a vision in America, Muslims
owning property all over, Muslim businesses, factories, halal meat, supermarkets,
all these buildings owned by Muslims. Can you see the vision, can you see
the Newark International Airport and a John Kennedy Airport and LaGuardia
having Muslim fleets of planes, Muslim pilots. Can you see our trucks rolling
down the highways, Muslim names. Can you imagine walking down the streets
of Teaneck, [New Jersey]: three Muslim high schools, five Muslim junior-high
schools, fifteen public schools. Can you see the vision, can you see young
women walking down the street of Newark, New Jersey, with long flowing
hijab and long dresses. Can you see the vision of an area of no crime,
controlled by the Muslims?
It hardly needs pointing out that
this vision is, to say the least, farfetched, or that Islamists are deluding
themselves if they think that today's newborns will be attending college
in an Iranian-style United States. But neither is their effort altogether
quixotic: their devotion, energy, and skill are not to be questioned, and
the larger Muslim-American community for which they claim to speak is assuredly
in a position, especially as its numbers grow, to affect our public life
in decisive ways. Indeed, despite persistent complaints of bias against
them-more voluminous than ever in the wake of the airplane hijackings on
September 11-Muslim Americans have built an enviable record of socio-economic
accomplishment in this country, have won wide public acceptance of their
faith, and have managed to make it particularly difficult for anyone to
criticize their religion or customs.
Whether and to what degree the community
as a whole subscribes to the Islamist agenda are, of course, open questions.
But what is not open to question is that, whatever the majority of Muslim
Americans may believe, most of the organized Muslim community agrees with
the Islamist goal-the goal, to say it once again, of building an Islamic
state in America. To put it another way, the major Muslim organizations
in this country are in the hands of extremists.
One who is not among them is Muhammad
Hisham Kabbani of the relatively small Islamic Supreme Council of America.
In Kabbani's reliable estimation, such "extremists" have "taken over 80
percent of the mosques" in the United States. And not just the mosques:
schools, youth groups, community centers, political organizations, professional
associations, and commercial enterprises also tend to share a militant
outlook, hostile to the prevailing order in the United States and
advocating its replacement with an Islamic one.
Not all these organizations and
spokesmen are open about their aspirations, though some are: for example,
the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia, proclaims
its academic purpose to be nothing less than "the Islamization of the humanities
and the social sciences." But the best-known organizations-the ones whose
members are invited to offer prayers and invocations before Congress or
to attend White House functions, or whose representatives accompanied the
President on his September 17 visit to a mosque-tend to hide their true
colors behind arch-respectable goals. Thus, the American Muslim Council
claims to work "toward the political empowerment of Muslims in America,"
the Council on American-Islamic Relations is "putting faith into action,"
and the Muslim Public Affairs Council seeks only to make American
Muslims "an influential component in U.S. public affairs."
But as I have documented at greater
length on other occasions,5 much if not everything about the conduct of
these organizations points to their essential agreement with the "conquer
America" agenda, and from time to time their leaders-including Al-Faruqi
and Shakir-have even said as much. As for Siraj Wahaj, he is a top figure
in the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North
America, the Muslim Alliance in North America, and the Muslim Arab Youth
Association, and his views contaminate every single one of them. It is
not accurate to say, as President Bush said of the Islamist leaders with
whom he met on September 17, that they "love America as much as I do."
That a significant movement in this
country aspires to erode its bedrock social and legal arrangements, including
the separation of church and state, and has even developed a roadmap toward
that end, poses a unique dilemma, especially at this moment. Every responsible
public official, and every American of good faith, is bent on drawing a
broad distinction between terrorists operating in the name of Islam and
ordinary Muslim "moms and dads." It is a true and valid distinction, but
it goes much too far, and if adhered to as a guideline for policy it will
cripple the effort that must be undertaken to preserve our institutions.
What such an effort would look like
is a subject unto itself, but at a minimum it would have to entail the
vigilant application of social and political pressure to ensure that Islam
is not accorded special status of any kind in this country, the active
recruitment of moderate Muslims in the fight against Islamic extremism,
a keener monitoring of Muslim organizations with documented links to Islamist
activity, including the support of terrorism, and the immediate reform
of immigration procedures to prevent a further influx of visitors or residents
with any hint of Islamist ideology. Wherever that seditious and totalitarian
ideology has gained a foothold in the world, it has wrought havoc, and
some societies it has brought to their knees. The preservation of our existing
order can no longer be taken for granted; it needs to be fought for.
1 "Islam's American Lobby," Jerusalem
Post, September 20, 2001.
2 Here are two: http://www.islambook.com/dawah.htm
and http:// www. halalco.com/dawah.html.
3 These words were found in a notebook
kept by Sayyid Abd al-Aziz Nusayr, the Egyptian immigrant who assassinated
Rabbi Meir Kahane in a New York hotel in November 1990.
4 Upon hearing an immigrant Islamist
speaker instruct an audience of Muslims that they were "obligated to desire,
and when possible to participate in, the overthrow of any non-Islamic government-anywhere
in the world-in order to replace it by an Islamic one," one American-born
convert remembers protesting in dismay that this would involve people like
himself in political treason. "Yes, that's true," was the lecturer's blithe
response. (Jeffrey Lang, Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America,
1997.)
5 See, in Commentary, "Are Muslim
Americans Victimized?" (November 2000), "How Elijah Muhammad Won"
(June 2000), "'How Dare You Defame Islam'" (November 1999), and "America's
Muslims Against America's Jews"
(May 1999).
