I have always firmly believed that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with economic position or status in life. This event in Britain reinforced these views as my heart went out to a nation of people facing days of fear and uncertainty. During the Lebanese war, doctors in Lebanon slaughtered hand in hand with the terrorists in the name of jihad. This is a very difficult concept for Western minds and especially Western intellectuals to accept and understand or even believe. I remember when I started speaking out about my experiences during the war, I would share how our neighbors—doctors and lawyers who we had known for years—became radicals overnight and started massacring us the next day. People looked at me with disbelief as if I were making things up just to make the Muslims look bad.
Both my experiences in Lebanon and the UK bombings planned by doctors strongly bolstered my opinion that Islamic terrorism is a religious, jihad doctrine-driven effort to murder or subdue and subjugate non-Muslims. The familiar arguments of Western liberals that “it’s a class struggle” or “the West is bad and economically oppressive” no longer have purchase.
Not only did doctor terrorists shock the world, but radical Islam also turned parents into coldhearted terrorists bent on mayhem. What else could drive a mother and father with their six-month-old child to willingly carry liquid explosives onto an airplane, hiding the liquid in the child’s baby bottle? This scenario unfolded in August of 2006 when police arrested twenty-four British-born and -raised Muslim citizens who had plotted to blow up as many as ten planes headed to the United States using liquid explosives. Officials say details of the plan were similar to other schemes devised by al Qaeda. Accounts such as these remind us of just how determined our enemy is.9
Back at home in America, a group of ten Islamic radicals conspired to kill U.S. servicemen at New Jersey’s Fort Dix Army Base. The plot was disrupted thanks to the FBI infiltration of the terrorist cell. In January 2007, a vigilant video-store worker contacted the FBI after a customer brought in a DVD to be duplicated that showed ten young men in their early twenties “shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic Allah Akbar (God is Great)."10
Within six months, the FBI had placed two cooperating witnesses within the terrorist cell, and they recorded meetings and phone conversations with the plotters. The terrorist cell reportedly surveyed Fort Dix, the Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station and Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and a Coast Guard building in Philadelphia. They also reportedly considered an attack timed to the annual Army-Navy college football game in Philadelphia.
One of the charged conspirators, Serdar Tatar, was familiar with Fort Dix because his family owns a pizzeria nearby and he delivered food to the base. He used his position as a pizza delivery boy to become a terrorist undercover agent committed to kill those to whom he brought food. The potential jihadists often viewed terror training videos, clips featuring Osama bin Laden, and a tape containing the last will and testament of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. They also viewed tapes of armed attacks on U.S. military personnel and erupted in laughter when one plotter noted that a Marine’s arm was blown off in one such ambush.11
Shortly after, on June 4th, a terror plot unfolded at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Three Muslim men living and working in the United States planned to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, its fuel tanks, and a jet fuel artery. One of the plotters was a former JFK air cargo employee.12
In all of these events, one striking similarity shines through: the terrorists' belief in an ideology that is based on the belief, faith, and teachings of Islam as it is written in the Koran. The common denominator within all the plots mentioned above is that these people were Muslims dedicated to becoming martyrs, to advance Islam, and to kill infidels regardless what country they came from, what culture they were raised in, what society there were living in, or what level of education they had.
Unless we understand the source from which this ideology of hate toward our Western cultures and nations is coming from, we will not be able to fight the cancer that is plaguing our international body. This cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.
What all terrorists are trying to achieve is the advancement of Islam and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate throughout the world ruled by sharia or Islamic law. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the number two man of al Qaeda, repeatedly states that “Our cause is one cause, and we have the responsibility of unifying this umma (Islamic Nation), Allah willing, and establishing Allah’s religion on his earth . . ,"13
Polls taken around the world show that a majority of Muslims in large Islamic countries support the establishment of a sharia-based Islamic caliphate regardless of their approval of al Qaeda or any other Islamic terrorist organization.14 Their loyalty is to Islam and not to any specific organization. This flies in the face of the image presented to us by leaders in the Western world that most Muslims are mainstream and do not share al Qaeda’s convictions that have hijacked a peaceful religion and twisted it to serve their purpose. Our elected officials continuously ignore the jihad teaching of pure Islam. Our Western leaders continuously ignore the fact that most Muslim countries in the twenty-first century are moving more and more into radicalism in their culture, which oppresses women and minorities and is pushing to impose sharia law as it is written and instructed in the Koran.
In his September 2007 video address Osama bin Laden wanted you to believe the lie that it is our presence in Iraq and our foreign policy that is causing Muslims to be enraged worldwide and wage jihad on us, and that if we just withdraw from Iraq and repent of our evil foreign policy ways and convert to Islam we will all live peacefully ever after. What most people miss here is that Osama bin Ladin wants us out of not only Iraq and Afganistan, but also out of every base, every presence we have on Muslim soil regardless what country we are in. That means our infidel U.S. soldiers must be out of Bahrain, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia. He does not want any Western influence or any Western cooperation between us and most Muslim leaders whom he despises. This will give Al Qaeda the opportunity to topple those regimes which Al Qaeda considers not Muslim enough, and establish an Islamic caliphate linking the umma (Islamic nations) together as one. By asking the West to convert to Islam, Osama was following the teaching of the Koran. Muslims are mandated by the prophet Mohammad in the Hadith to invite the enemy to convert to Islam before you attack.
Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war. . . When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. . . . If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)15
There is no time for any more delusions. There is too much at stake. America needs to wake up from a gullible state of ignorant bliss and start learning Islamic history. We must expose the truth and must get involved in ensuring that our elected officials know that they have our support to throw political correctness in the garbage. We must clearly state that we are sick and tired of the lies and deception, that we want to know the truth about the enemy we are fighting and what we can do to win this war. Only then will we have a chance of winning this battle. Once our elected officials know that they can count on our support and they will not be demonized for stating the facts, they will be more courageous in coming out in the open and declaring war on our enemy.
I urge all of you to get involved in ACT for America (www.actforamerica.com) and become an active voice affecting your community and our nation. Because of the huge success of Because They Ha
te, I realized that there is a huge need for a citizen’s action network, a national grassroots organization that will give power to “we the people.” ACT for America has connected, mobilized, and organized concerned citizens into one of the largest lobbying voices on Capitol Hill focused on and dedicated to America’s national security.
Join us in our defense of America.
—Brigitte Gabriel
1.
PEACE BEFORE THE RAGE
It’s 1978.I am thirteen years old. My family is in the third year of living in this bomb shelter, a tiny underground room that sits off to the side of a bombed-out pile of rubble that was once our beautiful home. Tonight the shelling is the heaviest it has been in two and a half years. The three of us, my elderly father and mother and me, sit in the dark on the corner of the bed.
We have been trapped in our shelter now for three days, and we are out of water. A shell hit near the entrance of our shelter, collapsing a wall of sandbags against our door and imprisoning us inside. We have given up trying to get it open.
No one knows we are trapped. For three days we have called out and screamed for help. But we are too far from the road for anyone to hear us amid the explosions. Besides, no one is going to venture outside in this heavy shelling. We don’t talk about it, but we could die of thirst or starvation if this goes on much longer.
The shelling is so bad we can’t sleep. If a big 155-millimeter bomb lands on our shelter, that’s the end for us. I do not want to die. I only hope it will kill us quickly, just bang and nothing more, rather than wounding us so that we die slowly and painfully. There is no one to get us to the hospital or give us first aid. I’ve already gone through being wounded and buried alive in rubble. A direct hit from a shell would be better.
To distract me, my parents are talking about my childhood, telling me how surprised they were when I came into their life, how much joy I have brought them, how they regret that I must live through this nightmare.
I was born in the small town of Marjayoun, a once peaceful, idyllic Christian town in the mountains of southern Lebanon. For my first ten years I lived a charmed and privileged life. All that came to an end when a religious war, declared by the Muslims against the Christians, and tore my country and my life apart. It was a war that the world did not understand.
This book is a warning. It is a warning that what happened to me and my country of birth could, terrifyingly, happen here in America, my country of adoption. It is a warning about what happened to countless other non-Muslims in the Middle East and what should never happen again anywhere or to anyone else. It now is becoming a dire warning because I see increasing evidence that what happened to me in Lebanon is beginning to happen in towns and cities throughout America and the Western world. Watching the World Trade Center buildings fall in 2001, I was struck by the same fear that I experienced during the war in Lebanon. As I watched, words instinctively came from my mouth as I spoke to the TV screen: “Now they are here.” I knew instantly why I had survived the suffering I experienced and what the purpose of my life would be. My being an eyewitness to the assault of Islamic jihad against non-Muslim Lebanese gives me a voice to help America and the West understand what is now happening to them.
But for you to understand anything about how the Middle East and Islamic jihad relate to the West, you must remember this: without understanding the past you will never understand the present and will have no idea how to plan for the future.
My country of Lebanon was much like America and the West are today. It was an island of freedom in the middle of an Islamic sea of tyranny and oppression. The majority of our citizens adhered to European Christian customs, traditions, ethics, and philosophy. Beirut, our capital, was commonly called the Paris of the Middle East. Our seemingly modern lifestyle, progressive thinking, democratic form of government, and schools of higher learning were a thorn in the side of the backward, feuding, feudal Arab world, whose Islamic customs and religious philosophies dominated other countries of the Middle East.
Lebanon is small, about 135 miles long and only about 25 to 50 miles wide. It is situated on the east coast of the Mediterranean between Israel to the south and Syria to the east and north. Lebanon has both pristine beaches and snowcapped mountains, and an ideal Mediterranean climate most of the time. Its coastal resorts and city nightlife were famous before the war. In ancient times, Lebanon was known as “the White” because of its distinctive snow-crowned inland mountain ranges.
My town, Marjayoun, lies between two beautiful green valleys, along the top of a long range of hills that runs from the border of Israel north into southern Lebanon. To the west is the Litani River valley. The hill slopes gently down to the river on the far side of the valley that runs along the bottom of steep cliffs that border its western bank. On top of the cliff stands the historic Beaufort Castle, once inhabited by a French nobleman who in the 1860s was sent by Napoleon III to intervene on behalf of the Christians in Lebanon being plagued by the Druze, a religious sect of Islam. The other valley to the east has many springs, which explains the name of my town: Marjayoun means “the valley of springs.” Across this valley toward the east is a large Muslim town called Elkhiam. Beyond Elkhiam, rising over nine thousand feet, is Mount Hermon, which is usually snowcapped.
Marjayoun was a small, peaceful town, much like any small town in the USA, with about three thousand citizens. There were Catholic and Protestant churches and a cemetery. The church bells rang for services, prayers, weddings, and funerals. We had a town center where we did most of our shopping, and one movie theater, which doubled as a place for community activities and school stage productions. There was a Catholic school, a private school, and public elementary and high schools. Some people were farmers who worked the fields down in the valley. Some were businessmen who had hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, beauty parlors, and restaurants. We had an elected city council and mayor. It was a close-knit country town that you might drive through in five minutes. It was a great place to live. While growing up as the only child born to an elderly couple, I always knew there would be a special meaning and purpose for my life. That meaning and purpose would be derived from the horror Lebanon and I would soon face, and are what this book is about.
My parents' house was located on the road that ran along the ridge of the hill connecting Marjayoun with another Christian town to the south called Klaia. Our majestic two-story stone house was set into the side of a hill and surrounded by beautiful gardens of fruit trees and flowers. My parents had been married for more than twenty years but were unable to have any children. In Arab culture, it is considered shameful when a woman is unable to bear children, and it is always considered the woman’s fault. Thus, being childless had been a major source of frustration for my parents. They had prayed for a child year after year. Then, in the late summer of 1964, my mother, at fifty-four years of age, noticed a mysterious swelling in her abdomen. Her alarm increased as the swelling continued to grow. She began to believe that she was ill with cancer and about to die. Since she was a devout Maronite Christian, she prayed about her “illness” every evening at the altar of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall of the living room. She would spend hours praying to Mary and Jesus for comfort, saying the rosary, burning candles, and crossing herself.
A visit to the doctor was in order. After a few tests the doctor had great news: she was pregnant. My mother’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe her ears. “No! How can that be?” she asked. “At my age! And my husband is sixty!” Although the signs would have been unmistakable to a younger woman, she never imagined that she could become pregnant at her age.
Despite the potential difficulty and danger in having a child at her age, my mother was overjoyed. She couldn’t wait to tell my father. Finally, their prayers had been answered. My parents would love me very much, and my birth would always be looked upon as redemption for my mother, and proof of God’s love.
Although everyone was delighted with the news, my mother, wi
th only two months left in her pregnancy, faced a new concern. Would her child be a boy or a girl? My mother was well educated for a woman in Lebanese society, and had a self-assurance and confidence few women could muster. She knew, however, that Arab culture praised the birth of a boy but condemned the birth of a girl. As her delivery day approached, this reality cast a shadow over her joy.
I had not yet been born, but the oppressive hand of Arab culture and society had already touched my life.
The nearest hospital that could handle deliveries was a two-hour drive away. When the day arrived, my father loaded my mother and her suitcase into a taxi and sent her off to the hospital alone. He stayed home. Men in Lebanon don’t have much to do with delivering babies or taking care of children. They will take credit if the baby is a boy, and will shower him with attention, love, and praise. If the baby is a girl, usually there is neither credit taken nor attention paid. After delivery a woman will know immediately if it is a girl by the lack of excitement and congratulations by the doctor or nurses. In my mother’s case, because of her age, she was congratulated on surviving delivery and giving birth to a healthy child.
However, even though I was a girl, people from all the surrounding towns and from every walk of life came to see us in Marjayoun because my father was a former government official, a successful businessman, and a pillar of the Maronite community. Indeed, he had raised the money to build the church in Marjayoun. So they came to pay their respects and to see and be seen, bringing with them the traditional birth gifts of gold jewelry, milk, and honey. The church gave a present of incense to my parents so that they could light a candle and burn it every night in thanks for my birth. I was told many times throughout my youth that the turnout for my birth celebration was “pretty good, for a girl."
Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America Page 4