Excerpt
Introduction"TAKE UP ARMS AND ARMS ALONE!"
The veiled commander stood up, a Hamas flag in one hand and a Koran in the other. The crowd roared "Allahu akbar walillahi'l-hamd!" ("Allah is great and to Allah we give praise!") -- the slogan of the international Muslim Brotherhood movement. This was the moment everyone seemed to have been waiting for.
His face still veiled in a red-and-white checkered keffiyeh, the Hamas commander spoke: "Greetings...from the occupied land...I extend thanks to all those who stood on our side at times when our allies were few." He gave a report describing in methodical detail Hamas terrorist attacks, reveling in the bloody results of each assault: "Naturally the war has moved into Israel's '48 boundaries. One day in Tel Aviv, one of the brothers entered a building and began stabbing all the people....The last operation I am going to tell you about is the operation of the bus --"
The anticipation was too great -- shouts of "Allahu akbar!" erupted from the crowd, which sensed exactly what he was going to discuss. "[One of our fighters] was on the bus to Jerusalem, Bus 405 and he steered it off the road....And the bus plunged...sixteen Jewish soldiers were killed!" In fact, seventeen civilians, including one American, were killed when a fundamentalist steered this particular bus into a ravine. "...I call upon my brothers to take up arms with us...to take up arms and arms alone!" The crowd responded with a thunderous ovation and chanting of "Allahu akbar!"
The date: 1989. The location: Kansas City. The commander was addressing and thanking the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Occupied Land Fund, two organizations holding a conference in the country they called home.
The dream of a world under Islam has engendered Muslim dissidents everywhere in the world over the last two decades. Almost every Islamic country has its militant faction, often two or three. The Hamas of Palestine, Hizballah of Iran, the Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, An-Nahda of Tunisia, the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Gama'at al-Islamiyya of Egypt, the Jama'at Muslimeen of Pakistan, and the Holy Warriors of the Philippines and Chechnya -- all share the same goal of an Islamic world, or, as they refer to it, a Khilafah.
In the past twelve years, however, these groups have achieved a new level of coordination, owing to their exploitation of the civil liberties of the United States. None of these small national groups was ever able to coordinate its worldwide efforts with the others until they came to the United States. Operating in our open society, with freedom of speech and assembly and with only casual oversight from the FBI, the CIA, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the worldwide network of militant Islamic organizations has finally been able to coordinate. They have operated here both in order to direct activities in the Middle East, and to target America. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, were only part of the results.
After September 11, 2001, everyone in America knows full well the power and persistence of these militant radical groups. It is a certainty that terrorists, already living among us, will continue to pursue their destructive agenda. Whether they succeed may depend in part upon whether we can recognize how they operate. This book offers a twelve-year-long story of the arrival and flourishing of terrorists in the United States, explaining where they are, how they interconnect, how they recruit, how they raise money, and how they use our legal system as a cover.
Call it jihad, American style -- or the American Jihad.
Copyright © 2002 by Steven Emerson