Islam - Using Democracy to Destroy Democracy!

Go to FULL TEXT of Chapter 11

The following is taken from the book, Militant Islam Reaches America, Daniel Pipes, W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2002. Chapter 11 runs from page 111 - 125.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum. A former instructor at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, he has served in the Departments of State and Defense. He has written ten prior books and is a columnist for the New York Post and the Jerusalem Post.

He can be reached via www.danielpipes.org

In his Introduction, he states "I approach the religion of Islam in a neutral fashion, neither praising it nor attaching it but in a spirit of inquiry. Neither apologist nor booster, neither spokesman nor critic, I consider myself a student of this subject. . . . " [page xii-xiii]

[The highlighting (in burgundy) and underlining in the transcription below are done by Paul Lorenzen and not part of the original book.]

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 folk. Here is how the president put it on a visit to a mosque on September 17, 2001: "America counts millions of Muslims amongst 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."1 Two days later, he added that "there are millions of good Americans who practice the Muslim faith who love their country as much I love the country, who salute the flag as strongly as I salute the flat."2

These soothing words were obviously appropriate for a moment of tension and mounting bias against Muslims living in the United States. And it is absolutely true that the number of militant Islamic operatives with plans to carry out terrorist attacks on the United States is a statistically tiny proportion of the Muslim population as a whole.

The situation, nonetheless, is more complex than the president would have it. The Muslim population is not like any other, for it harbors a substantial body - one many times larger than the agents of Osama bin Laden - who have worrisome aspirations for the United States. Although not responsible for the atrocities in September, these people share important goals with the suicide hijackers: Both despise the United States and ultimately wish to transform it into a Muslim country. However bizarre this goal, the killing of over three thousand Americans requires that it be noted and seriously worried about.

An Ambition to Rule

Siraj Wahhaj, for example, is a black convert to Islam, the recipient of some of the Muslim community's highest honors, and called "one the most respected Muslim leaders in America."3 In June 1991, he enjoyed the honor of being the first Muslim to deliver the daily prayer invocation for the U.S. House of Representatives, at which time he recited from the Qur'an and appealed to the Almighty to guide American leaders "and grant them righteousness and wisdom."4

With this background, what does one make of his vision of Muslims taking over the United States, articulated to an audience of New Jersey Muslims in late 1992? "If we were united and strong, we'd elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him . . .take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us."5 If Muslims were more clever politically, Wahhaj told his listeners, they could take over the United States and replace the constitutional government with a caliphate. Wahhaj openly calls for replacing the U.S. government with a caliphate.6 He also served as the character witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman in the trial that found him guilty of conspiracy to blow up a number of New York City landmarks as part of a campaign to overthrow the government of the United States. In addition, the U.S. attorney for New York listed Wahhaj as one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in the sheikh's case.7

The contrast between Wahhaj's quiet appearance in the House and militant Islamic hope to dispatch the U.S. government fits into a larger pattern common to the American Muslim scene: speaking moderately to the general American public and radically to Muslim-only audiences.8 This means that anyone who would understand the real views of American Muslims must delve deeper than the surface of their public statements.

The ambition to take over the United States is hardly a new one. The first Islamic missionaries from abroad arrived in the 1920s and unblushingly declared: "Our plan is, we are going to conquer America."9 The audacity of this and other statements of intent did not go unnoticed, as a 1922 newspaper commentary shows:

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 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.10

Such hopes have become commonplace in recent years, as shown by Siraj Wahhaj's vision of an Islamic America. The key figure here was Isma'il Al-Faruqi, a Palestinian immigrant who taught for many years at Temple University and founded the International Institute of Thought. Called "a pioneer in the development of Islamic studies in America" by John Esposito,11 He was the first theorist of a United States made Muslim. "Nothing could be greater," Al-Faruqi has written "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]."12 Zaid Shakir, formerly the Muslim chaplain at Yale University, has said that Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the secular system in the United States, for it "is against the orders and ordainments of Allah . . . the orientation of the Qur'an pushes us in the exact opposite direction as the forces that are at work in the American political spectrum."13 Ahmad Nawfal, a leader of the Jordanian Muslim Brethren who frequently speaks at American rallies, has denigrated the United States as a country that "has no doctrine and no ideology, no thought, no values and no ideals," then goes on to say that if Islamists "stand up, with the ideology that we possess, it will be very easy for us to preside over this world once again."14 Masudul Alam Choudhury, a Canadian professor of business, writes matter-of-factly about the "Islamization agenda in North America,"15 and Shamin A. Siddiqi even writes of the establishment of "Islamic rule" (Iqamat ad-Din) in the United States.16

For a full exposition of this outlook, one can do no better than to turn to a 1989 book written by Siddiqi, an influential commentator on American Muslim issues, and published in Brooklyn. Cryptically entitled Methodology of Dawah Ilallah in American Perspective (which can be more idiomatically rendered as The Need to Convert Americans to Islam), this 168-page study is nearly unavailable to a general audience (neither amazon.com nor bookfinder.com listed it over a period of months), but is widely found on militant Islamic Web sites and has a faithful readership among their visitors.17 Siddiqi lays out a detailed justification and plan for Islamists to take over the United States that bears close attention.

Siddiqi argues that Muslims taking control of the United States has more importance than such goals as sustaining the Iranian revolution or destroying Israel, for it has greater impact on the future of Islam. The centrality of America hinges not on the reasons one might expect - its large population, wealth, or cultural influence - but on three other arguments:

• The perception of Washington as the premier enemy of militant Islam (or, possibly, Islam itself). In Siddiqi's colorful language, whenever Muslims move toward the emergence of an Islamic state, the "treacherous hands of the secular West are always there in the Muslim world to bring about the defeat of the Islamic forces." Muslim rulers are no help, for they are "all in the pockets of the Western powers."18 To permit Islam to attain its rightful place requires that the "ideology of Islam prevail over the mental horizon of the American people."19 The future of the Muslim world, Siddiqi concludes, "now depends on how soon the Muslims of America are able to build up their own indigenous movement."20
  
• Establishing militant Islam in America would signal the triumph of this ideology over its only rival, the bundle of Christianity and liberalism that constitutes Western civilization. (So much for Fukuyama's "end of history" thesis, which also appeared in 1989.)
  
• Joining Islam and the United States makes for an ideal team, Siddiqi wrote in a subsequent article. The United States is more successful than any country with a Muslim majority, but it lacks a guiding ideology and is decaying morally. Bringing together this successful country with that "superb ideology"21 makes for an extraordinary combination.

Contemplating the implications of a militant Islamic victory in the United States, Siddiqi can hardly contain his enthusiasm, finding that this could mean that the establishment of "God's Kingdom" on earth no longer is "a distant dream."22

This dream, however, will just not happen by itself. To achieve it, Muslims must devote "all of their energies, talents and resources in building and strengthening the Islamic Movement of America."23 American Muslims. In other words, have the paramount responsibility of bringing Islam to power in their country. Indeed, this will be how "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 where he used to live [i.e., in the West]."24

Revolution or Evolution

If Islamists agree on the need to take over in Washington, they disagree on how to do so, whether through revolution or evolution.

Revolution. There are some -- most famously Osama bin Laden -- who see the United States as an "enemy of Islam"25 that must be destroyed through violence. This outlook was forged by the sending of American troops to protect Saudi Arabia during the Kuwait crisis of 1990-91, when militants like bin Laden discerned a parallel between this and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89). As The New Yorker writer Mary Anne Weaver explains, to them, "the United States had become to Saudi Arabia what the Soviet Union had been to Afghanistan: an infidel occupation force propping up a corrupt, repressive and un-Islamic government."26 That the Islamists in Afghanistan, by defeating the Soviets, had had a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, made the notion of bringing down the United State's that much more plausible. Innocent of any deeper understanding of how the two countries differed, the Islamists vaguely thought they could repeat their Soviet success in America.

The blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, may be the second most famous enemy of the United States. He calls on Muslims to "conquer the land of the infidels";27 in his understanding, bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 was part of a revolutionary strategy of defeating America on the battlefield: as some of his followers put it, the goal was to "bring down their highest buildings and the mighty constructions they are so proud of, in order thoroughly to demoralize them."28 Even some native-born Americans converted to Islam adopted this approach. One of them explained his goal in America to be akin to his efforts helping defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan by force of arms: "it is the duty of all Muslims to complete the match of jihad until we reach America and liberate her. And I will be a guide for them."29

There are, however, several problems with this head-on assault against the United States. First, Islamists have a caricatured vision of American life and hence completely misunderstand the impact of their assault. Attacks such as those on September 11 are intended to demoralize, prompt civil unrest, and weaken the country. In fact, as we have seen, they brought Americans together in a way not witnessed for years, showing a patriotism and sense of purpose. Second, Abdel Rahman is sitting out a life sentence in a federal penitentiary, his campaign of violence stillborn; Osama bin Laden became the target of a massive military campaign launched to get him "dead or alive." More broadly, it is very hard to see how the use of force against the United States can succeed in wearing down the country, much less leading to a change in government.

Third, violence implies looking at the United States as a whole as the enemy, thereby alienating the allegiance of most Muslims resident in the country. According to preliminary estimates compiled by Muslim groups, several hundred Muslims died in the World Trade Center collapse. This anti-Americanism especially puts off some converts to Islam. One of them, Jeffrey Lang, writes of his dismay attending a lecture in a San Francisco mosque not long after his conversion and hearing an immigrant medical student issue a seditious call to arms:

We must never forget - and this is extremely important - that as Muslims, we are 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.

But calling on Muslims to overthrow the U.S. government, Lang protested to the lecturer, means that accepting Islam was tantamount to an act of political treason. "Yes, that's true," the lecturer blithely replied.30 The convert was appalled.

Evolution. The nonviolent approach has a brighter future. It is legal and it does not alienate loyal Americans. It implies an optimism about the United States; rescue it rather than destroy it. It works with Americans, not against them. These features make it both more attractive and realistic than revolution.

Most Islamists have adopted this approach. They present Islam as a way to "bring extremely beneficial things to this society."31 As a teacher at an Islamic School in Jersey City, across the Hudson from New York, explains, the school's "short-term goal is to introduce Islam. In the long term, we must save American society."32 A Pakistan-born professor of economics and finance explains that Muslims "have the opportunity and the responsibility to offer an alternative model"33 to what exists in America. Isma'il Al-Faruqi, the professor of religion, held that propagating true faith is a step toward transforming "the unfortunate realities of North America" into something acceptable in God's eyes."34

Practically speaking, though, the key question is how Muslims establish an Islamic state in the United States through nonviolence. By two goals, comes the answer: increasing the numbers of American Muslims, and establishing Islamic law, the Shari'a.

GOAL I: MORE AMERICAN MUSLIMS

Increasing the number of Muslims is the first priority, the basis for all else. Islamists aspire to transform American Islam, a new presence in the United States and just 1 to 2 percent of the population, from an exotic growth into a majority. Here is Wahhaj, explaining what this will mean:

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, [seeing] 3 Muslim high schools, 5 Muslim junior high schools, 15 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 Mustims?35

There are three possible means to increase Muslims numbers to achieve this dream: immigration, reproduction, and conversion. Sensing that overwhelming the country with immigrants would provoke a backlash and that reproduction will take a long time, Islamists focus most of their efforts on conversion.

Indeed, they see converting Americans to Islam as the central fact of Muslim life in the United States. Al-Faruqi argued that it is the only possible justification for Muslims to live in the United States. Whatever their reason for being there --economic opportunity, political refuge, conversion, or accident of birth - living in America imposes on them a "duty to call all non-Muslims to Islam."36 Siddiqi says American Muslims have no choice in the matter -- they are "ordained by Allah" to do it,37 adding hyperbolically that Muslims living in the United States "have no right even to breathe" unless they help replace Evil with Good.38 Wahhaj, a convert, agrees: "Wherever you came from, you came to America. And you came for one reason -- for one reason only -- to establish Allah's din [faith], as a servant of Allah."39

Espoused too by other authoritative figures, these ideas have been widely adopted. Many Muslims attest to the sense of responsibility in their daily lives that comes from being an "ambassador for Islam," always mindful of the importance of winning new adherents to Islam. The Muslim Student Association, a leading militant Islamic organization, heavily promotes such ideas.

Islamists are optimistic about their chances of success. How could it be otherwise, given the truth of their message and the depravity of modern American culture? Siddiqi sees circumstances in America as "better and more conducive" for militant Islam than anywhere else."40 Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, an important Indian Islamist, is certain that "A life of Taqwah [piety] will immediately attract non-Muslims towards Islam."41

The Islamists have a point, for the more Islam is present, the more its message is available, leading to more converts. To make serious headway in the United States, Islam depends on hands-on contact and a personal experience with Muslims.42 A survey of American conversions to Islam finds that over two thirds did so under the influence of a Muslim friend or acquaintance.43 "Islam's increasing numbers in recent years could be a sign that attempts at educating the American public about Islam by several American-based Muslim organizations have been working," observes Anayat Durrani.44 Converts often feel alienated from their own society ("America is sick")45 and are looking for something to fill the gap; they usually discover Islam via a spouse, through a long religious search, or chance contact with a Muslim who impresses them.

GOAL II: APPLYING ISLAMIC LAW

Numbers and percentages of Muslims are necessary but not sufficient for Islamists; such countries as Turkey, Egypt, and Algeria have overwhelmingly Muslim populations, yet militant Islam is suppressed by their governments. Indeed, from a Militant Islamic point of view, the situation in Turkey is far worse than in the United States, both because the rulers crack down harder on Militant Islam and because it is worse to reject the divine message than to be ignorant of it. In addition to building up Muslim numbers, therefore, Islamists must also prepare the United States for their own brand of ideology. This means effecting a number of changes connected to applying Islamic law and creating a militant Islamic environment.

The changes fall into three main categories. The first pertains to forwarding Islamic rituals and customs: Permit recitation of the basmallah ("In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate") in public situations. Win the right to broadcast the five daily Islamic calls to prayer (adhan) over loudspeakers. Gain facilities for Muslim prayers in public institutions such as schools and airports. Win public recognition of the Islamic holidays. Promote the Arabic language. Gain the right to slaughter a sheep or other animal on the Feast of the Sacrifice ('Id al-Adha) without heeding hygienic or other regulations. Segregate children by sex in school. Tolerate polygamy. Apply lenient or no punishments to perpetrators of "honor" killings (against women deemed to have soiled their families' honor).

The second implies special privileges for Islam: Provide public financial support for Islamic schools, mosques, and other institutions. Recognize Islam in government settings (commemorative postage stamps, invocations at public events, celebration of Islamic holidays, library displays). Establish special quotas for Muslim immigrants. Restrict law enforcement's ability to deal with Muslims and militant Islamic organizations. Permit disrespect for national symbols. Institute affirmative action for Muslims. Force corporations to make special allowances for Muslims.

Finally, the Islamists seek to restrict or disallow what others may do: Punish activities offensive to Islam such as drinking liquor and gambling. Punish disrespect toward those religious figures whom Islam deems holy - especially the Prophet Muhammad, but also Moses, Jesus, Mary, and others. Punish criticism of Islam, militant Islam, or Islamists. Restrict anything construed as anti-Islamic. Close down the critical analysis of Islam. Disallow a public presence for other religions (e.g., singing Christmas carols in school).

What may be a puzzling list of goals should be understood in the light of a few comments. First each of these steps in itself is relatively minor, implying no drastic changes. But cumulatively, they have the effect of establishing Islamic law and changing the American whole way of life by making Islam a public presence, ensuring that the workplace and the educational system accommodate Islam, adopting family customs to Islam, and winning it a privileged position in American life. Second, whereas most Westerners would look at this list and see that permitting such changes expresses an open-mindedness toward Islam, Islamists see these same acts as a way to whittle away at the existing order. Third, these steps would surely be followed by others that would sharpen the militant Islamic order: the prohibition of conversion out of Islam, criminal punishments for adultery, inequality in the treatment of men and women, banning the consumption of pork, and enhanced legal rights for Muslims.

Taking Over

Siddiqi provides the most detailed public analysis on the matter of how Muslims will actually take over. He assumes that bringing Islam to the United States will not be easy. Just as the Prophet Muhammad confronted die-hard opponents in pagan Mecca, so pious Muslims in America will face opponents, led by the "secular press cum media, the agents of capitalism, the champions of atheism (Godless creeds) and the [Christian] missionary zealots."46 Doing battle with them demands focus, determination, and sacrifice, far more so than American Muslims have shown until now. Immigrants have the additional challenge of having to detach themselves from too much concern with their countries of origin (Egypt, Pakistan, and the like) and focusing instead on the United States.

It will be tough, but Siddiqi sees Muslims disposing of two great advantages. First, Americans are hungry for the militant Islamic message that "pinpoints the shortcoming of capitalism, elaborates the fallacies of democracy [and] exposes the devastating consequences of the liberal life-style."47 Add in the dedication of militant Islamic cadres, and Siddiqi estimates that Muslims can prevail with just one tenth of the resources of their opponents; he specifically estimates that $10 million per year will suffice to achieve these hugely ambitious goals - though that sounds like far less than one tenth of the other side's resources.

Second, the United States permits Islamists to transform the country in a legal fashion. They never need to challenge the existing political order, but can achieve all their goals "without disturbing or violating the constitution of the U.S.A."48 Indeed, because that Constitution guarantees complete government neutrality toward religion, Siddiqi finds that the existing system can be used to further militant Islamic aims. Democratic means can be used to spread the message - for example, by developing a lobby, cultivating politicians, and electing Muslim representatives. Nearly a million legal immigrants arrive in the country each year, as well as many more through the long coastlines and porous land borders. Courts are an important vehicle. Conversion to Islam is not just perfectly legal but happening in substantial numbers. These are advantages, it hardly needs stressing, that did not exist in Muhammad's Mecca or in any other society outside the contemporary West.

Yet things will not be completely smooth. A delicate point will be reached as society polarizes between the Muslim and non-Muslim camps and this becomes "visible in every walk of life."49 At that point, the struggle between Truth and Error "acquires momentum and the tension increases along with it." Seeing the balance tip against them, the "Wrong Doers" will likely take desperate steps to "eliminate the Islamic Movement and its workers by force."50 Islamists must tread very carefully to get past this point, taking care not to alienate the non- Muslim population.

Siddiqi happily speculates that the point will be navigated and eventually there will be what he calls a "Rush-to-Islam" that finds most Americans embracing Islam.51 The process will culminate in a change of leadership. Muslims will find themselves not just enfranchised but actually running the show: with due representation in Congress and throughout American life, "they will be able to create a strong lobby in Washington for the promotion of Islam and its cause in this country as well as elsewhere in the world."52

Support for an Islamic America

A Muslim majority and Islamic law applied in the United States? It sounds far-fetched, yet Islamists are optimistic. Wahhaj finds that implementation of the Shari'a in the United States "appears to be approaching fast."53 Siddiqi sees Islamists in power in Washington before 2020.54

Of course, Islamists are deluding themselves if they think that today's newborns will be going to college in an Iranian-style United States. But this does not mean their effort is entirely quixotic: their devotion, energy, and skill give them a real chance to move the country in their preferred direction.

Despite the complaints of bias -- more voluminous than ever in the wake of the airplane hijackings on September 11 -- American Muslims have built an enviable record of socioeconomic accomplishment, they have wide public acceptance for their faith, and they have managed to make it particularly difficult for anyone to criticize their faith or customs. The American Muslim community is in a position, especially as its numbers grow, to affect the country's public life.

And if the institutions that dominate the community continue to espouse the militant Islamic outlook they do today, that influence will surely be in the militant Islamic direction. A survey of American Islam finds that most of the organized Muslim community in the United States agrees with the dream of turning the United States into an Islamic country. With varying degrees of explicitness, most Muslim spokesmen indicate that they hope to build an Islamic state in America. Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the Islamic Supreme Council of America estimates that "extremists" with this outlook have "taken over 80 percent of the mosques in the United States.55 And not just mosques: publications, schools, youth groups, community centers, political organizations, professional associations, and commercial enterprises also tend to share a militant Islamic outlook extremely hostile to the prevailing U.S. culture and wanting to replace it with an Islamic order.

(Of course, that leaves 20 percent of the institutions and many individual Muslims who reject the idea of turning the United States into a Muslim country. Turks and those who flee militant Islamic states like Iran and Sudan usually want nothing to do with Islamic politics, nor do Sufis. Kabbani himself, for example, repudiates the application of Islamic law in the United States, saying that "America was founded on the principle of a separation between church and state. Therefore, I presume it is not legally possible by virtue of the Constitution of this country.") 56

Nonetheless, many individuals and some organizations do express a hope that one day Muslims will take over in the United States. For example, the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia, aims for nothing less than "the Islamization of the humanities and the social sciences." But the best known Muslim political organizations -- the ones whose members are invited to offer prayers and invocations before the Congress, the president, and the two political parties -- are publicly coy about the full extent of their agendas knowing full well that broadcasting aspirations to "conquer America" harms them. So they announce arch-respectable goals: the American Muslim Council works "towards the political empowerment of Muslims in America";57 the Council on American-Islamic Relations is "putting faith into action";58 and the Muslim Public Affairs Council seeks just to make American Muslims "an influential component in US public affairs."59

These modest aims notwithstanding, everything about the leading organizations points to their agreement with the "conquer America" agenda. But their leadership -- people like Al-Faruqi and Shakir -- on occasion explicitly raise this goal. Wahhaj is a top figure in many of the leading militant Islamic organizations (vice-amir of the Council of Muslim leaders of New York City, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America, a member of the North American Islamic Trust's board of advisers, as well as on the board of the Council on American- Islamic Relations and associated with the Muslim Alliance in North America and the Muslim Arab Youth Association), so his outspoken views contaminate every one of them.

Preservation of the Existing Order

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 road map 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 Muslins 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.

Footnotes:

1. Remarks by the President at Islamic Center of Washington, DC, 17 September 2001. [back to text]

2. Remarks by the President at Photo Opportunity with House and Senate Leadership, 19 September 2001, at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010919-8.html. [back to text]

3. Ibrahim Hooper, "CAIP, Responds to Daniel Pipes 'Anti-Muslim Hysteria," The Muslim Observer, 27 August-3 September 1999. Reuters news agency describes Wahhaj as "a respected scholar and leader of the Muslim community in Brooklyn," 24 April 2001. [back to text]

4. Congressional Record-House, 25 June 1991. [back to text]

5. Siraj Wahhaj, Muslim Community Building in America, undated videotape distributed by Islamic Educational Video Series of the International Institute of Islamic Research, Burlington, NJ. [back to text]

6. The Imam (Midwinter 1998). [back to text]

7. Letter from Mary Jo White, U.S. Attorney for New York, to Federal judge Michael Mukasey, 2 February 1995. [back to text]

8. For another example, see Daniel Pipes, "Islam's American Lobby," The Jerusalem Post, 20 September 2001. [back to text]

9. Quoted in Andrew T Hoffert, "The Moslem Movement in America," The Moslem World, 20 (1930), p. 309. [back to text]

10. Syracuse Sunday Herald, 25 June 1922. Quoted in Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), p. 122. [back to text]

11. John L. Esposito, "Ismail Ragi al-Faruqi," in John L. Esposito and John 0. Voll, eds., Makers of Contemporary Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 23. [back to text]

12. lsma'il R. Al-Faruqi, "Islamic Ideals in North America," in Earle H. Waugh, Baha Abu-Laban, and Regula B. Qureshi, eds., The Muslim Community in North America (Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta Press, 1983), p. 269. [back to text]

13. The Role of Muslims in the American Political Process, videotape distributed by the International Institute of Islamic Research, Burlington, NJ, 1992. [back to text]

14. Lecture (in Arabic) at a MAYA convention in Kansas City in 1989, available on commercial videotape entitled Shaikh Ahmad Naufol, Rabita, Kansas City 1989. [back to text]

15. Masudul Alam Choudhury, "Perspectives in Islamization of the Labour Market: The Occupational Composition of Canadian Muslims," in Amber Haque, ed., Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects (Beltsville, MD: Amana and A.S. Noordeen, 1999), p. 87. [back to text]

16. Shamim A. Siddiqi, "Islamic Movement in America-Why?," in Haque, ed., Muslims and Islamization in North America: Problems and Prospects, p. 361. [back to text]

17. See, for example, www.islambook.com/dawah.htm and www.hatalco.com/dawah.html. [back to text]

18. Shamim A. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah liallah in American Perspective (Brooklyn, NY. The Forum for Islamic Work, 1989), pp. ix-x. [back to text]

19. Ibid., p. 68. [back to text]

20. Siddiqi, "Islamic Movement in America-V&y?," p. 358. [back to text]

21. Ibid., p. 355. [back to text]

22. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah IlalIah, p. 69. [back to text]

23. Ibid., pp. xii-xiii. [back to text]

24. Ibid., pp. viii-ix. [back to text]

25. Christian Science Monitor, 5 February 1997. [back to text]

26. Weaver, "Children of the Jihad." [back to text]

27. Detroit, 199 1. Quoted in PBS documentary, Jihad in America, 21 November 1994. [back to text]

28. Words found in a notebook kept by El-Sayyid Nossair, the Egyptian immigrant who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in a New York hotel in November 1990. [back to text]

29. Abu Muhammad, Al-Bunyan 'al-Marsus (July 1989). [back to text]

30. Jeffrey Lang, Even Angels Ask: A Journey to Islam in America (Beltsville, MD: Amana, 1997), p. 117. [back to text]

31. Syed Manzoor Naqi Rizvi, interviewed in Elias D. Mallon, Neighbors: Muslims in North America (New York: Friendship, 1989), p. 60. [back to text]

32. The New York Times, 13 November 1990. [back to text]

33. Mohammad 0. Farooq, "Muslim American Dream," The Minaret (Los Angeles) (August 1995). [back to text]

34. lsma'il R. Al-Faruqi, "Islamic Ideals in North America," in Waugh, Abu, Laban, and Qureshi, eds., The Muslim Community in North America, p. 269. [back to text]

35. Wahhaj, Muslim Community Building in America (videotape). [back to text]

36. Al-Faruqi, "Islamic Ideals in North America," P. 268. [back to text]

37. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah Ilallah, p. 64. [back to text]

38. Ibid., p. 76. [back to text]

39. Speech in Dallas to the Islamic Association of Northern Texas, 15 November 1991. [back to text]

40. Siddiqi, "Islamic Movement in America-Why?," p. 358. [back to text]

41. Abut Hasan Ali Nadwi, "Message for Muslin-is in the West," 1992, at www.jamiat.org.za/isinfo/mwest.html. [back to text]

42. For example, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press, 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 of them to convert. [back to text]

43. Larry Poston, Islamic Da'wah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 173. [back to text]

44. Anayat Dtirrani, "Islam Growing Fast in America, Arabia on Line, 10 March 2000. [back to text]

45. Muzaffar Haleem and Betty Bowman, The Sun Is Rising in the West: New Muslims Tell About Their Journey to Islam (Beltsville, MD. Amana, 1999), P. 8. [back to text]

46. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah Ilallah, p. 61. [back to text]

47. Siddiqi, "Islamic Movement in America-VAy?," p. 360. [back to text]

48. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah Ilallah, p. 66. [back to text]

49. Ibid., p. 61. [back to text]

50. Ibid., p. 63. [back to text]

51. Ibid., p. 67. [back to text]

52. Ibid., p. 66. [back to text]

53. Siraj Wahhaj, Islamic Voice (August 2000). [back to text]

54. Siddiqi, Methodology of Dawah Ilallah, p. 69. [back to text]

55. Speaking at the Department of State's Open Forum, 7 January 1998; a transcript of the talk is available at www.islamicsupremecouncil.org. [back to text]

56. Muhamniad Hisham Kabbani, "The Muslim Experience in America Is Unprecedented," Middle East Quarterly (June 2000), p. 62. [back to text]

57. www.amconline.org. [back to text]

58. www.cair-net.org. [back to text]

59. http://wmpcc.net/mission/mpac.shtml. [back to text]