Author: Arnaud de Borchgrave
Publication: NewsMax.com Wires
Date: August 21, 2002
URL: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/8/20/163711.shtml
A jury consists of 12 persons chosen
to decide who has the better lawyer. Robert Frost's cynical view of the
law found a dramatic echo in the land of Magna Carta this month. The defendant's
Web site called it "The Ultimate Jihad [Holy War] Experience." Nothing
less than a two-week firearms course in the U.S. Cost: $4,700.
The man behind the jihad buzz was
a British passport-holder, name of Suleyman Balal Zainulabidin. Last October,
he became the first Muslim in Britain to be prosecuted under the new post-Sept.
11 Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. The government charged
that the U.S. weapons course he was touting was "wholly for the purpose
of assisting or preparing for terrorism."
Zainulabidin's defense argued he
was simply "a trophy terrorist scapegoat for the authorities who had to
show the public they were doing something in the war against Islamic terrorism."
The jury agreed, and Zainulabidin
went scot-free. It was the second such setback for British authorities
in less than a month when the anti-terrorism law was declared "discriminatory
and unlawful."
Many of the imams who run Britain's
500-odd mosques show no restraint at Friday prayers as they open the sluice
gates of anti- American vitriol. Britain's 2 million Muslims - mostly from
South Asia - have been listening to lies about the war the U.S. is accused
of waging against Islam.
Repeat a Lie Often Enough ...
Freedom of speech - and religion
- gives the imams a license to resort to the time-tested and time-proven
methods of totalitarian propaganda. The big lie repeated often enough eventually
becomes fact.
The London Sunday Times recently
reported that some 3,000 British passport-holders had been recruited since
1996 for training in Osama bin Laden's Afghan camps. Abdullah al-Muhajir,
a.k.a. Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber," was recruited to the ranks of
radical Islam while serving time in a U.S. prison. International terrorism
expert Peter Brown believes Padilla is just one of several hundred American
passport-holders who made the same journey before Sept. 11.
Afghanistan's medieval Taliban regime
was defeated last November. But Taliban still has a Web site - U.S.-based
www.taliban-news.com - that specializes in disinformation about U.S. forces
in Afghanistan, all shielded by freedom of speech and of the press.
French and German security sources
say it's pretty much the same sad story in thousands of mosques on the
European Continent. Muslim clerics carefully abstain from taking on the
host country. The Bush administration is the villain, killing children
in Afghanistan and incarcerating innocent Muslims in America. Imams in
Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague were reported to Dutch authorities as
inciting their congregations to violence.
Between 1989 and 1999, Europe's
Muslim population more than doubled to 14 million. Germany with some 3.2
million Muslims (mostly Turks) has 2,300 mosques and France with 5 million
Muslims (mostly North Africans from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) has 1,500
places of Islamic worship.
In the 1960s, there were fewer than
20 mosques in America. Now there are more than 2,000, a number that keeps
growing much faster than new churches or synagogues. Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi
clergy provides the driving missionary zeal - and most of the funding.
Islam is now on a trajectory to surpass Judaism in the U.S. by 2010. Islamic
estimates show about 9 million American Muslims, and Jewish surveys say
the figure is closer to 3 million. Approximately 5 million is closer to
the mark.
Washington taxis can be seen parked
on Belmont Road, next to the capital's principal mosque, at all hours of
the day and evening. Drivers are there to say their salat, or five daily
obligatory prayers. Shi'ites pray three times a day. One Pakistani-American
driver, a Sunni, said, almost apologetically, "I can only interrupt my
work to pray two times a day."
P.C. Media Won't Investigate
Islam is gaining an impressive number
of American converts in prisons, almost all African-Americans, but political
correctness has inhibited investigative reporting on the phenomenon. Less
than 12 percent of American Muslims are of Arab descent. Native-born African-Americans
account for roughly 42 percent, and immigrants from south Asia 24 percent.
The others came to the U.S. from more than 100 countries.
National Islamic Prison Foundation
coordinates a coast-to-coast campaign to convert inmates to Islam. Foundation
officials claim an average of 135,000 such conversions a year. More than
10 percent of the 2 million-plus U.S. prison population is Muslim. When
black American Muslims are released from prison with the customary $10,
a suit of clothes and a one-way bus or train ticket, they know any mosque
or masjid (Islamic center) will shelter and feed them and help them find
a job.
The Saudis have funded most of the
North American mosques in recent years, and dispatched imams from several
Mideastern countries to settle in America, much the way Christian missionaries
go to sub-Saharan African countries. They have also sent tens of thousands
of copies of the Koran to U.S. prisons. Most masjids in the U.S. and Canada
are now funded and run by the zakat - the obligatory 2.5 percent of income
- from Muslim doctors, lawyers, computer scientists and engineers, and
wealthy businessman.
A retired warden at the D.C. prison
in Lorton, Va., said, not for attribution, that Muslim chaplains had done
"a good job" of calming violence-prone inmates. But few, if any, he added,
believe Osama bin Laden was responsible for Sept. 11. What do they believe?
That the U.S. and Israel planned it as a pretext to launch a crusade against
Islam.
'Islamic Army' in America
Al-Qaeda training manuals captured
in Afghanistan were not the only evidence that America's black prisoners
had been targeted as potential recruits. Politico-religious extremists
in Pakistan, such as Sami ul-Haq and Fazrul Rehman, have convinced themselves
that "in the next 10 years, Americans will wake up to the existence of
an Islamic army in their midst - an army of jihadis who will force America
to abandon imperialism and listen to the voice of Allah."
Louis Farrakhan, who heads Nation
of Islam in the U.S., harbors similar hopes. For the immediate future his
objectives are less ambitious. It was Muslim slaves, he says, who laid
the foundations and roots of Islam in America. This past weekend in Washington,
his organization joined forces with other black radical organizations in
the "Millions for Reparations Mobilization."
Reparations demands range from $1.5
trillion in unpaid wages to slave labor to $8 trillion, or more than U.S.
gross domestic product. White groups that joined the mobilization were
a throwback to the Cold War - e.g., Revolutionary Communist Party, Refuse
and Resist, Anti-Capitalist Convergence, Workers World Party, International
Action Center, Mobilization for Global Justice. Organizers suggested "a
sea of red, black and green internationalist flags, and not red, white
and blue American flags."
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at
large for United Press International and a member of NewsMax's board of
directors.
