Report: 'Shariah, the Threat to America'

From Family Security Matters:

Shariah, the Threat to America

September 15, 2010 - The Editor

A report (pdf) has just been published by the Center for Security Policy, which should be taken seriously by anyone with an interest in national security issues, and particularly those in government. The report has been written by “TEAM B”, a panel of 19 people, headed by Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin and Lieutenant General Harry Edward Soyster. From 2003 to 2007 Boykin was Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Soyster was a former Director of Defense Intelligence Agency and Commanding General at U.S. Intelligence and Security Command.

The 17 associates in the report include Maj. Stephen C. Coughlin (ret.), Andrew McCarthy , Ambassador Henry Cooper, Admiral James A. “Ace” Lyons - US Navy (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, John Guandolo—former Special Agent, Counter-Terrorism Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, R. James Woolsey—former Director of Central Intelligence and others.

The 177-page report itself is entitled: “Shariah, The Threat to America, An exercise in competitive analysis.” You can download it here (pdf format).

The message is simple but strong. There may be some libertarian interpretations of sharia law, such as that practiced by the late Gus Dur, an Indonesian religious leader, where sharia is seen as a guide to personal conduct. That interpretation of sharia is rare, however, and more people and most Muslim nations respect the other end of the sharia spectrum. This shade of sharia is connected with Islamic supremacists (Islamists) who are directly opposed to all of the liberties and democracy that could only have grown in the Enlightenment and later. The Enlightenment values that inspired and informed the Founding Fathers to create America, which epitomises Western Democracy, are the antithesis of the extremist – Islamist – side of sharia.

Even Tony Blair, who had allowed his government’s policies to be dictated by Islamist followers of Maududi and the Muslim Brotherhood, recently stated that Radical Islam is the world’s greatest threat.

The Team B report states:

What cannot credibly be denied, however, is that:

a. shariah is firmly rooted in Islam’s doctrinal texts, and it is favored by influential Islamic commentators, institutions, and academic centers (for example, the faculty at al-Azhar University in Cairo, for centuries the seat of Sunni learning and jurisprudence);

b. shariah has been, for over a half-century, lavishly financed and propagated by Islamic regimes (particularly Saudi Arabia and Iran), through the offices of disciplined international organizations (particularly the Muslim Brotherhood); and

c. due to the fact that Islam lacks a central, universally recognized hierarchical authority (in contrast to, say, the Roman Catholic papacy), authentic Islamic moderates and reformers have an incredibly difficult task in endeavoring to delegitimize shariah in the community where it matters most: the world’s Muslims.

The report demands that genuine moderate Muslims and Islamic reformers must be encouraged, for without them, the hardline “Islamist” ideology will prevail.

Chapter 4 deals specifically with the Muslim Brotherhood, and other subsections of Chapter 5 deal with Hamas, al-Qaeda, Khomeinism, Hezbollah, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tablighi Jamaat and Jamaat al-Fuqra.

For too long, governments in the West, including those in America, have taken on board a fictional version of Islam, a myth. This has allowed (p.17 of the report) individuals like Abdurahman Alamoudi to be an adviser at the White House, even though this Muslim Brotherhood member supported terrorist groups and was himself subsequently jailed for 23 years for terrorist offenses.

Alamoudi had claimed in 1996, at the time that he was nominating and vetting chaplains for the U.S. military and prisons, that: “either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country.”

Other people who have masqueraded as “moderates” and have had the ear of government in America have had the same attitudes. Omar Ahmad, founder of CAIR had stated in 1998 that:

“If you choose to live here [in America]… you have a responsibility to deliver the message of Islam. Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Quran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

You can read the rest here.