American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

by Steven Emerson

  Theoretically speaking, the Khilafah would be governed solely by Islamic law; it would be neither liberal nor democratic. Hizb-ut-Tahrir makes it clear what this society would be like when it states that “The four common ‘freedoms’ [belief, speech, ownership of capital, and personal freedom] are in conflict with the laws of Islam.”20

  To Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the Khilafah is not something that is optional. It is commanded by Islam, as Muhammad said: “‘Whosoever dies without having a bay’ah [pledge of allegiance] to the Khilafah [Islamic State] upon his neck, dies a death of jahiliyyah [ignorance]’…a failure to observe this duty is a negligence of one of the most important commands of Islam.”21

  Taqiuddin an-Nabhani had a very clear vision of what had to be accomplished in order to realize the goal of Khilafah. As in 7th-century Mecca when the survival of the fledgling Islamic community depended on individual sacrifice and total submission to Allah, the realization of Khilafah, for an-Nabhani, will be based on the degree to which the Muslim community is willing to sacrifice. The endeavor will fail without jihad [holy war]. In his book Islamic Concepts, an-Nabhani maintained that “[J]ihad is the established method (which is unchangeable) for spreading Islam.” For an-Nabhani, there was no alternative but jihad: “Jihad is to call to Islam and to fight for the sake of Allah…. Jihad is fard [compulsory].”22

  When the Muslims get the upper hand, according to an-Nabhani, the Koran will dictate the course of events: “…if the enemies from the kafireen [infidels] are encircled then they will be invited to Islam…. If they rejected Islam, then Jiziya [tribute] would be demanded from them…if the enemy rejected Islam and rejected paying the jiziya then it is Halal [permissible] to fight against them.”23

  Since its inception, Hizb-ut-Tahrir has been based primarily in Jordan and Lebanon. It has existed in relative obscurity except for a brief few moments: in 1981, members of the organization staged a failed assault on the military academy in Alexandria, Egypt; in 1988, group members attempted a coup d’etat in Tunisia; and in 1993 members were accused of plotting to overthrow King Hussein of Jordan.24

  Consistent with its support for terrorists, in 1988, Hizb-ut-Tahrir published a treatise entitled “The Islamic Rule on Hijacking Aeroplanes,” which sanctioned the hijacking of aircraft of countries considered to be against Muslims. Needless to say, according to Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the United States qualifies as an enemy of Islam: “The system of Islam is the only real threat that America faces, and the [American] conspiracy to destroy Islam is proof of that threat. As Muslims we should realize that only we as an Ummah [community] have the potential to not only counter the American plans, but also to take Islam to the rest of the world.”25

  For the ICW, Khalif’ornia and the Khalif’ornia Journal provided a forum for the dissemination of the ideology of Hizb ut-Tahrir within the United States. As stated in the Khalif’ornia Journal, “Hizb ut-Tahrir is the first Islamic Movement since the demise of the Islamic State that is seriously willing to enter society.”26 In editions of the Khalif’ornia Journal from January 1996 through June 1997, “A Draft Constitution of the Islamic State,” a document prepared by Hizb-ut-Tahrir was published in its entirety.

  Regarding what they referred to as the “butcherization from the Muslims in Bosnia,” the pages of Khalif’ornia stated, “Help them by not carrying candles [in peaceful vigils]. Muslims need swords, not candles!”27 Against whom these swords might be used was further explained: “The Khilafah would regard states with imperialistic motives, such as the United States, Britain, and Russia, as belligerent and potential enemies of war…. [S]tates such as Israel…would be regarded as actual enemies of war.”28

  In another article entitled “Qaid’a: A Legal Principle,” the use of weapons in Islam is explained: “Use of Swords is permissible in Islam, however, what Islam restricts is the way it is utilized…. [T]he act of using a sword in Jihad is rewarded.”29

  Not surprisingly, the Islamic Cultural Workshop was violently opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements: “All the current peace treaties with Israel [are forbidden]…. The treaties are an oppressively clear infringement upon the rights and interests of Muslims. They also run against the interests of Islam and the goals of the foreign policy in Islam.”30

  The absolute goal of the Islamic Cultural Workshop, the reestablishment of the Islamic State, requires combat with all infidel Jewish and Christian societies. What the establishment of this Islamic State means to those in the West is a repeat of the history of the Islamic State, i.e., “the Islamic State carried Islam to the world through da‘wa [propagation] and jihad to expand the horizons of Islamic rule.”31

  The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

  CAIR is the most prominent of the Muslim organizations concerned with “civil rights.” In its charter, CAIR stated it would “promote interest and understanding among the general public with regards to Islam and Muslims in North America and conduct educational services in the fields of religion, culture, education, society and history concerning Islamic issues both in the United States and abroad.” The organization generally purports to represent the Muslim viewpoint in America.

  Founded in 1994, CAIR is an outgrowth of the Islamic Association of Palestine. In 1994, then-IAP president Omar Ahmad approached Nihad Awad, IAP’s public relations director, and “suggested that they leave the IAP and concentrate on combating anti-Muslim discrimination nationwide.”32 When the organization was incorporated, the three individuals involved were Awad, Ahmad, and Rafiq Jaber who served as Ahmad’s successor to the position of president of the IAP.

  CAIR takes the public position that it condemns terror. Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, the organization took out a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post stating: “We at the Council on American Islamic Relations, along with the entire American Muslim Community, are deeply saddened by the massive loss of life resulting from the tragic events of September 11th. American Muslims unequivocally condemn these vicious and cowardly acts of terrorism…. We join all Americans in calling for the swift apprehension and punishment of the perpetrators of these crimes.”

  On its Web site, the statement appears as an adjunct to a section labeled “Passenger Profiling,” in which American Muslims are invited to submit complaints “if you or someone you know has been a victim.” Another subsection titled “Help for Victims” asks, “What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks” and allows contributions through both the Red Cross and the Holy Land Foundation.

  In fact CAIR has often served as an ideological support group for militants. On May 24, 1998, for example, CAIR cosponsored an incendiary rally at Brooklyn College that featured speakers spouting anti-Jewish rhetoric. One speaker was Wagdy Ghuneim, a radical cleric from Egypt. He told listeners, “Allah says he who equips a warrior of jihad is like the one makes jihad himself.” He led the audience in a song with the lyrics: “No to the Jews, descendants of the apes.”33

  On October 28, 1998, CAIR’s Southern California branch issued a press release to protest the existence of billboards in the Los Angeles area that depicted the visage of Osama bin Laden with the headline “the sworn enemy.” The billboards had been sponsored by the Los Angeles-based KCOP Television, Inc., and were intended “to take recognizable characters and situations that affect people’s lives because they are in the news” (as CAIR put it).34 The CAIR statement claimed that the billboard was “an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who live in Southern California.”35

  CAIR has even refused to condemn the Taliban. A conference in Columbus, Ohio, entitled “Leadership Ambassadors, Making a Difference,” featured a seminar led by CAIR’s Director of Communications, Ibrahim Hooper. There, Hooper explained how he preferred to contextualize the regime:

  [O]ften I’m dealing with very sensitive controversial issues, and I don’t want to be quoted about the Taliban, you know, but I want to put the Taliban into context for a reporter. So I’ll say well, you know, CAIR doesn
’t comment on international issues where there is not an American component so we just don’t have any comment. But, can we go off the record, and then I’ll go off the record in trying to explain what is going on so that they don’t just go away with a stereotypical, one dimensional portrayal….36

  CAIR’s executive director, Nihad Awad, explained his views regarding the Palestinian situation in a speech delivered in 1994 at Barry University in Florida: “After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement….”37 In 2000 Awad appeared at a rally in front of the White house in Washington, D.C., and rejected any peaceful settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians: “they [the Jews] have been saying ‘Next year in Jerusalem’—we say ‘Next year to all Palestine.’”38 He also stated that Hollywood had distorted its treatment of groups engaged in violence in the Middle East by referring to them as terrorists: “Hollywood is not our friend. Hollywood has distorted the facts. Hollywood has shown freedom fighters as terrorists. Hollywood has done the work that Zionists cannot done [sic].”39

  CAIR officials have defended the action of suicide bombers. On the one hand, Awad told CNN’s “Crossfire” that “Suicide is an act of disbelief, because we Muslims believe that God is only in charge of life and death. And to take one’s life or other people’s life is an act of disbelief and it goes in sharp contradiction with Islamic teachings.”40 On the other hand, at a conference of the Islamic Association for Palestine held a week later, Omar Ahmad, chairman of CAIR’s board of directors, told a youth session: “Someone in Islam is allowed to fight…. Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam—that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.”41

  Much of CAIR’s time is spent trying to persuade the press not to “overreact” to acts of Muslim terror and trying to prove that Muslims themselves are victims of discrimination and prejudice. A year after the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 that killed 224 people, Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe wrote: “On that occasion, prominent Islamic voices in the United States did speak out. But their chief message was not one of horrified sympathy for the victims and their families or of shame that anyone calling himself a Muslim could perpetrate such an atrocity. No—what [these] Muslim leaders were eager to communicate was a warning to the media not to speculate about a possible Islamic connection to the slaughter.

  “A release issued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations was typical: ‘American Muslims Ask Journalists to Exercise Restraint in Reporting on Embassy Bombings,’ ran the headline. At the time, despite the ferocity of those bombings, America’s major Islamic groups made no move to distance themselves from bin Laden—or even to label him a terrorist.”42

  CAIR has several ties to the Hamas-connected organizations and individuals discussed in Chapter 5. At its founding, CAIR received funding of $5,000 from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. According to annual reports filed in the state of Illinois, Mohammad Nimer, the director of CAIR’s Research Center, was on the Board of Directors of the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). After September 11, 2001, and up until the U.S. government froze the assets of the Holy Land Foundation in December, CAIR’s Web site included a feature, “What you can do for the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks,” with a link to the Web site of HLF (“Donate through the Holy Land Foundation”).

  When Federal Judge Kevin Duffy ordered the extradition of Hamas leader Mousa abu Marzook in 1996, CAIR coordinated a press conference on May 10 to protest the decision. CAIR also signed a letter, printed in a June 1996 “Newsletter of the Marzuk [sic] Legal Fund,” arguing that the extradition order was “anti-Islamic” and “anti-American.”

  Steve Pomerantz, former chief of the Counterterrorism Section of the FBI and former assistant director of the FBI, says: “CAIR has defended individuals involved in terrorist violence, including Hamas leader Musa abu Marzook…. The modus operandi has been to falsely tar as ‘anti-Muslim’ the U.S. government, counter-terrorist officials, writers, journalists and others who have investigated or exposed the threat of Middle East–based terrorism…. Unfortunately, CAIR is but one of the new generation of new groups in the United States that hide under a veneer of ‘civil rights’ or ‘academic’ status but in fact are tethered to a platform that supports terrorism.”

  Seif Ashmawy, former publisher of Voice of Peace, wrote: “It is a known fact that both the AMC and CAIR have defended, apologized for and rationalized the actions of extremist groups and leaders such as convicted World Trade Center conspirator Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, Egyptian extremists, Hassan al-Turabi, the Sudanese National Islamic Front, and extremist parliamentarians from the Jordanian Islamic Action Front and others who called for the overthrow of the Egyptian government…. As a proud American Muslim…I bow to no one on my defense of Muslim civil rights, but CAIR…champion[s] extremists whose views do not represent Islam.”

  The American Muslim Council (AMC)

  The American Muslim Council (AMC) was established as a tax-exempt organization in July of 1990 to “educate [the] public about Muslims.”44 The AMC, in fact, supports radical Islamist causes. Its leaders have openly championed Hamas terrorists, defended Middle Eastern terrorist regimes, issued anti-Semitic and anti-American statements. The AMC supports “the worst, most vicious and most radical terrorist movements and regimes in the Middle East and Africa,” says Michael D. Horowitz, Director of the Hudson Institute’s Project for Civil Justice Reform.

  The AMC is a founder, corporate parent and supporter of several militant Islamic groups including: American Muslims for Jerusalem, a militant group that routinely invokes “Zionist” conspiracies and has featured calls at its conferences for the killing of Jews; and the Kosovo Task Force, an organization that has promoted jihad around the globe, including in “Palestine,” and has condemned the seizure by the FBI of funds in Chicago used to support the radical Hamas terrorist organization as an “attack on Muslim civil rights.”

  The AMC served as the headquarters of the U.S. office of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), a militant fundamentalist group whose U.S.-based representative was jailed pending deportation proceedings for his support of terrorism. The AMC has aggressively attacked Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a leading moderate voice in the American Muslim community (see Chapter 8).

  The AMC has also spoken out against counterterrorism legislation as being a product of the Jewish influence on American policy. In 1995, in reference to an executive order and to a bill proposed by President Clinton, then-AMC President Mohammed Cheema stated, “It is now well known that this Executive Order, and the Omnibus AntiTerrorist legislation proposed by the White House a few days later, are the result of intense Jewish pressure on the White House. With Bill Clinton being frequently regarded as a one-term president, it is expedient to secure Jewish political support for 1996.”45

  According to Nazir Khaja, who resigned as chairman of the Board of Directors and president of AMC, no one in the organization really knows “where the funds for AMC are coming from, how are they being raised and spent, and who is actually controlling this whole process.” Khaja explained, “It has been repeatedly brought up that the money is being raised abroad in the Middle East by one person, Mr. Abdulrahman al-Amoudi, who has built contacts overseas only in the name of, and because of, AMC, and who chooses to dispense with it as he pleases with no knowledge or approval of the Board. These are serious concerns, which have the potential for damage to not only just AMC, but also the possibility of severe collateral damage to the overall image and the efforts of the American Muslim community.”46

  The AMC has routinely featured or honored Islamic militants or supporters of terrorism at its annual conferences. At its 1997 convention, the AMC hosted Layth Shubaylat,47 a terrorist implicated in an Islamic plot to topple the regime of then-King Hussein in Jordan.48 Shubaylat has managed a legal defense fund for Ahmed Daqamisa, the Jordanian soldier convicted in the killing of Israeli schoolgirls in Nahara
yim in 1997.49 In early 1995, AMC hosted a visit by Dr. Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi, a renowned Muslim cleric, has blessed “martyrdom operations in which a given Muslim fighter turns himself or herself into a human bomb that casts terror in the hearts of the enemy…. If we can’t carry out acts of Jihad ourselves, we at least should support and prop up the mujahideen financially and morally so that they will be steadfast until God’s victory.”50

  At its 1998 National Convention, the AMC hosted Dr. Sami alArian, who is under investigation by the FBI and the INS for his role with WISE and ICP in Tampa, Florida (see Chapter 6). On August 30, 2000, the INS showed a videotape during bond redetermination proceedings which showed alArian stating, “Let us damn America. Let us damn Israel, let us damn their allies until death. Why do we stop?” In another segment alArian refers to Jews as “monkeys and pigs” and states, “Mohammad is leader. The Koran is our constitution. Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution! Revolution! Until Victory! Rolling, rolling to Jerusalem.”

  At the 1999 AMC Convention, the organization bestowed annual “awards” on the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). It also honored the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a publication that routinely invokes Jewish conspiracies and champions Islamic extremism. Its editors, Richard Curtiss and Andrew Killgore, have been featured speakers before the Liberty Lobby, labeled by the Anti-Defamation League as the most active anti-Semitic organization in the United States.51

  The AMC has cosponsored conferences together with the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR). AMC’s Abdulrahman Alamoudi has served on the Board of Directors of UASR. On UASR’s 1997 annual report filed with the state of Illinois, where it is incorporated, Aly Abuzaakouk, AMC’s president, was listed as president of UASR.