Sedition Under Our Noses: American Islam

Palestinian Arab Imam Fawaz Damra, leader of Ohio’s largest mosque, was arrested
in December 2003 for fraudulently seeking U.S. citizenship. Damra, out on bail
, hid his ties to Islamic terrorist organizations and continues to preach to his
congregation. The case demonstrates that while America fights Islamic extremis
m abroad, it remains well entrenched at home. Numerous criminal cases are pendi
ng against U.S. clerics with ties to terrorism. To the surprise of many citizens
, radical clerics dominate the American mosque. While serving as sheiks, educat
ors, military chaplains, and interfaith communal representatives, they are court
ed as Moslem liaison to the White House and Congress. Americans need to be awar
e of the Islamic extremist seed threatening to transplant the jihad plaguing the
Middle East to America.
Just how did extremists hijack the American Moslem community? In order to answe
r this question we must look at American Moslems. There are approximately 3 mill
ion Moslems, comprising 2% of the population. Their community is about three qu
arters immigrants. Beyond the Louis Farrakhan led Black Muslims, most Moslems we
re born abroad. Moslem immigrants are mostly from South Asia (India and Pakistan
), Iran, and the Arab world. Like other immigrants, they reside predominately i
n traditional immigrant centers of the East Coast, Midwest, and California. The
ir largest concentration is in Dearborn, Michigan where Moslems make up 30% of t
he population.
Historically benign, Moslem immigration steadily increased with the landmark 196
7 immigration law opening U.S. doors to the entire world. Moslems generally uti
lize the U.S. as a haven from Middle East persecution and turmoil. Significant
waves of immigration followed the Iranian revolution and wars in Pakistan, Iraq,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Somalia, and Afghanistan.
While escape from persecution was the primary immigration motivator, education a
nd prosyletization also served as incentives. By the 1990s, U.S. colleges attra
cted over half a million foreign students of which 90% of them remained. Profess
ional opportunities, a high standard of living, and civil liberties encouraged p
ermanent residency.
Islamists discovered that civil liberties made America ripe for proselytizing th
eir faith aimed at a new Islamic world order. Drawing on inspiration from the I
ranian Revolution and the resurgence of Sunni fundamentalism, many radical Mosle
ms found their way to American shores to proselytize. These extremists, repress
ed in their own despotic countries, turned to America to freely spew their poiso
nous venom of hatred. Extremists took their queue from exiled Iranian Ayatollah
Khomeini, who left a repressed Iraq for democratic France to build his Islamic
Revolution.

But with most Moslem immigrants prone to Westernization, just how did Islamic ex
tremists seize the podiums of the American mosque? While many immigrants turned
to Islamic extremism to overthrow the regimes they fled, most Moslems pursued a
new life in the “land of the free.” However, as practicing Moslems they natural
ly turned to mosques for religious guidance. These mosques grew not only with t
he immigrant tide but with the infusion of Saudi funding. The State Department a
nd oil elites promoted the Saudis as benefactors of the American mosque. But wh
ile portraying the Saudis as moderate allies, these Arabists ignored the Islamic
extremism lurking in the House of Saud’s Trojan Horse.
Unlike most Moslems, the Saudis embrace an extremist Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam
which seeks to impose world Islamic domination through jihad (holy war). Throug
h this radical ideology, the Saud family seized Arabia in the 1920s and ousted t
he centuries old Hashemite dynasty from Islamic leadership. With the oil boom a
nd the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Saudis unleashed their jihadist ideol
ogical weapon to spread Islam. Pakistan became a center of jihad through Islami
c schools called madrasas to train would be jihadists to fight abroad, especiall
y in neighboring Afghanistan. To reverse the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan,
the U.S. enlisted Saudi backed jihadists, including the Taliban, to liberate the
country. In the meantime the Saudis invested heavily in American mosques, reli
gious schools, and university Islamic studies departments. With this funding Wa
habbi trained clerics and their jihadist dogmatism dominated American Islam.
By the 1980s, with Saudi funding and encouragement, the organization of the Mosl
em community began with the establishment of the Council on American-Islamic Rel
ations (CAIR), American Muslim Council (AMC), and the Muslim Public Affairs Comm
ittee (MPAC). On the surface these organizations mimicked their American religi
ous counterparts to address religious discrimination, intercommunal relations, a
nd Middle East policy. But these institutions contradicted democratic principle
s as they sought ousting of moderates and fundraising and defense of terrorist o
rganizations abroad. American Moslems succumbed to these Saudi influenced radic
al institutions that entered an Islamic leadership vacuum.
As representatives of American Moslems, these institutions were courted by the g
overnment and incorporated into the U.S. religious establishment. American lead
ers hosted these organization’s leaders for political payoff. Government institu
tions certified them for religious education and the military granted them chapl
ain posts.
September 11th was a wake up call at just how far these Islamic extremists penet
rated America. The American Moslem community aided and abetted the 9/11 terrori
sts by hosting, funding, and endorsing their organizations and allowing them san
ctuary.
The Iraqi and Afghan military engagements showed the extent Moslem extremism pen
etrated our military. During last year’s war in Iraq, Army Sergeant Asan Akbar
declared vengeance for U.S. killing Iraqi coreligionists and unleashed a grenade
attack on fellow soldiers killing two and injuring fourteen. Air Force Airman
and translator Ahmad al Halabi, and Army Captain James “Yousef”, a Moslem chapla
in are being court martialed for espionage while working with al-Queda and Talib
an prisoners at the Guantanamo, Cuba military prison.
While a backlash occurs against Moslem hatred in the post-9/11 period, the Ameri
can Moslem community is legitimately being placed under the microscope. The crim
inal investigations disclose just how extensive Wahabi-led American Moslems have
been backing terrorist co-religionists abroad. In 2002, CAIR protested Bush’s
decision to freeze assets of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development
, a Hamas front organization. With the Holy Land Foundation, CAIR co-sponsored
conferences calling for the death of Jews, support to Hamas leaders, and attacks
against American policies toward Iran and the Sudan. Currently CAIR and its si
ster organizations are pursuing a Moslem voter registration drive aimed at regis
tering 100,000 new voters.
So what does American Wahabi Islam mean for other faiths? Religious institution
s can’t ignore the Islamic hand in emerging anti-Semiticism which can eventually
turn against Christians supportive of Jews and Israel. In Europe, anti-Semitic
ism is growing with the ascent of Islam. Immigrant Moslems are transplanting th
eir Jew hatred and offering it as an ethnic dish to anti-Semitic hungry European
s. The political right fights Moslem exclusivity with religious dress bans, als
o targeting religious Jews, while the political left embraces the immigrants’ an
ti-Zionism.
Although the 9/11 tragedy silenced American anti-Zionism, a European trend poten
tially awaits us as leftist Democrats solicit Moslems with an anti-Israel agenda
. Such anti-Zionism masks the underlying anti-Semitism it unleashes, especially
 at American college campuses where leftists, Jew hating immigrant students, and
Saudi funding flourish. Clergy leaders, in representing religious interests wi
th college campuses, communal affairs, and the military are forced to work along
side extremists clerics. For instance, Cleveland clergy, including rabbis, lame
nted Darma’s indictment, as they acknowledged a working relationship with him in
interfaith communal affairs. Both President Bush and Senator Joseph Lieberman
endured media embarrassment last year as another Moslem cleric they courted was
also placed under Federal indictment for ties to overseas terrorist organization
s.
But Americans must differentiate between the hate preaching jihadist sheiks and
the congregants they purport to represent. Most American Moslems, from diverse
Moslem sects and ethnicities, are relatively moderate. For the most part, Ameri
can Iranians have backed the anti-cleric democracy movement in their home countr
y. Many Moslem immigrants from the former Soviet Union are sympathetic toward t
he U.S. given that their native countries have strong ties to the U.S. and even
Israel. The majority of Moslems have escaped repression in their own lands and
do not necessarily bow to the extremist elements their oppressive governments su
pport. But unfortunately, American Moslems like their coreligionists abroad, se
e jihad as a means to overthrow repressive regimes and spread their faith.
In 1979, most Westerners laughed when exiled Ayatollah Khomeini declared France
to be an Islamic country in the making. Yet a generation later Moslem exclusivi
ty has so threatened that country’s cultural integrity that the government has i
mposed a religious dress ban at public institutions. Moslem exclusivity, combin
ed with unchecked expansionist ideology now confronts the U.S. In a 1993 interv
iew CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that his goa
l is for the U.S. to become a Muslim country. “I wouldn’t want to create the im
pression that I wouldn’t like the government of the U.S. to be Islamic sometime
in the future. But I’m not going to do anything violent to promote that. I’m g
oing to do it through education.”
As Islamic extremism spreads both at home and abroad Americans must restrain the
Saudi funded Wahabiists by promoting moderate Islam embraced by most Moslems.
Because dominant extremists have bigger militant mouths and pocketbooks nurturin
g moderates will be difficult, yet not impossible. American interfaith institut
ions and the government can encourage an alternative Moslem leadership which bet
ter represents American Islam. New opportunities may emerge with oil wealth of
pro-American Moslem states in Central Asia. They might invest in more tolerant
Islamic institutions of their American expatriates and Turkish, Kurdish, and Ir
anian immigrants. Such a development combined with encouragement from their fel
low citizens will succeed in rescuing Moslems from the Saudi funded clerics that
have hijacked American Islam.