I wish to see the day when Arab and Israeli women can also take their message of peace to Arab capitals. If our common goal in the Middle East is peace, then each side needs to see the humanity and suffering of the other. But so far my side—the Arab side—is not yet ready to allow its people to see the truth about Israeli suffering.
Eleven
The Challenge for America
My life has been a journey from hatred to love, from a culture that stifled joy and creativity, to a life of freedom and endless possibilities. Because I love my adopted country, I have a duty to alert my fellow Americans to a real and present danger.
Radical Islam has declared war on America and on the West, and the majority of Muslims either support or make excuses for terrorism. It is a kind of war we’ve never before fought. Worse than communism and Nazism, global jihad is fueled by radicals who believe their mission to conquer the world is God’s command, that it is the obligation of the good Muslims to spread Islam by any means. There is no chance that Americans will abandon their precious hard-fought freedoms to embrace the brutal, totalitarian, medieval lifestyle and belief system that radical Islam advocates. Therefore, the only way to “win” us over is by force, just as they captured Egypt, Mesopotamia, Turkey, and much of the Near East in the seventh century.
Of course, not all Muslims are terrorists, but the fear, defensiveness, and silence of the majority is “heard” loud and clear as agreement by the radicals. Cries to kill the infidels, kill the Americans, kill the Jews and Christians, echo in the holiest of places, in mosques across the Muslim world. But this war is not holy. Make no mistake: religion is the game the radical leadership plays as a camouflage for greed. All the radical Muslim countries combined do not amount to a military superpower, yet terrorism has given them negotiating power and, in their view, a kind of “respect” based on fear. In country after country, radical elements have overcome moderates and seized power, and they do not flinch from stating their intentions. Witness the stunning victory of Hamas in the Palestinian territories and the growing strength of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. American Muslims I speak with increasingly express fear of going back to visit their countries of origin. Iran’s president has openly threatened the West with terrorism if the West attacks its nuclear facilities. He has also repeatedly made clear his intention to annihilate Israel. When the president of Iran called on young volunteers for suicide/homicide operations, he had thousands of takers. In their goal of world domination, our enemy has discovered a powerful weapon of mass destruction, the suicide/homicide bomber.
So how do we fight terrorism? What is the West to do? What should America do? Every Arab I know who is honestly against terrorism says the same thing: The West should get tougher. For starters, we need to be specific in defining our enemy by name and location. We need to hold the nations that produce terrorists and the governments that threaten to use them responsible. Furthermore, we must inform these nations that it doesn’t matter how often they say they are against terrorism in English, we are beginning to translate what they say in Arabic to their own people and that is what we will judge them by. Terrorism is a weapon that gives its state supporters deniability. They leave the dirty work to the shadowy organizations while giving lip service disapproval. That way countries who produce and promote terrorism can always claim: “We didn’t do it.” Destruction and carnage in the streets of New York, London, or Madrid is a weapon that can be blamed on no nation but gets the blessings and support of many Muslims.
The West must also open its eyes to the other factors working in coordination with terrorist activities: oil boycotts, threats to moderate Muslims who speak out, financial rewards for those who defend jihadists and make excuses for terror. Terror has a whole culture of support around it.
Western democracies have a great challenge ahead. Are they ready to fight global jihad? Will they cherish and love their freedom and democracy more than the terrorists love going to heaven and conquering the world for Islam? We are already in World War III, but many in the West are still in denial. Can the West win this war given today’s attention to political correctness, our open and free society, and nearly unfettered immigration from radical Muslim countries? Can we fight terrorism without sacrificing our own freedom and ideals of tolerance and equality? These are not easy questions. Nor are the answers easy.
Islamist danger is hard to identify by many in the West who respect freedom of religion and believe immigrants have the right to choose not to assimilate into the larger American community if they so desire. America encourages its citizens to cherish and celebrate their cultural diversity. We love our Cinco de Mayo picnics and St. Patrick’s Day parades. We feel good when we see Jews congregate in their synagogues for Rosh Hashanah, or Muslims congregate at their mosques for the end of Ramadan or Christians carry palm fronds on Palm Sunday. We love the fireworks and dragon dances on the Chinese New Year, the pageantry of Greek Orthodox Easter, or the rowdy fun of Oktoberfest. This is the kind of multiculturism America cherishes. It makes our society robust, exciting, and vital. But we assume that all the people who have come from around the world to this great melting pot genuinely value tolerance, freedom of religion, separation of church and state, and the protection of civil liberties. Why else would they have come to America?
But what about those who immigrate to destroy our culture instead of to contribute to it? Can we continue worshipping multiculturalism and cultural relativism even at the expense of our own safety and freedom? Does our immigration policy lend itself to being used and abused by people who want to conquer us? We need to learn from the many examples around the world of Muslim minorities in such places as the Philippines, India, and Russia who are fighting and terrorizing for a separatist movement. Are we going to wait until Muslims congregate in parts of America and demand a separatist movement? How do we handle radicals who immigrate to our shores, teach hatred and anti-Semitism, refuse to assimilate, criticize the American way of life, its government and politics, then claim discrimination, profiling, and even cry “Death to America” as part of their free speech? People like Sami al Aryan, the former professor at the University of Southern Florida who was shouting “Death to America” in one of his speeches right here in America even as he was waiting to become a citizen.
Having lived in the West now for close to thirty years, I see its vulnerabilities. It takes constant and persistent hard work to maintain the values of democracy and freedom. Practical solutions must be adjusted and revised constantly, because what worked for us in the past might not work in our present predicament, and the ideals and values of the present might not work with an enemy with archaic, medieval values of subjugation.
The West is always concerned with trade imbalance, but are we equally concerned with cultural imbalance? By cultural imbalance I mean countries like Saudi Arabia who have access inside American society while giving America no access inside Saudi Arabian society. Radical Muslims regard non-Muslims walking on their land as an insult, a desecration of Muslim land, and some Muslim preachers go as far as to say they should be killed. The radical sheikh Hamza in Britain said non-Muslims walking on Muslim lands are like cows—they can be sold as slaves or killed. Muslim countries enjoy the freedom to build mosques, preach Islam, finance Islamic groups and schools, sponsor Middle East studies departments in our state-run universities, and lobby our politicians in Washington while at the same time refusing Americans access to the same rights inside Muslim countries. American citizens or governments have no right to build synagogues or churches, or preach or establish religious schools in Saudi Arabia or any other Muslim country. In Saudi Arabia no religion other than Islam is allowed to be practiced. After 9/11, the United States was denied access to almost all Arab media and prevented from placing ads to explain the U.S. point of view in its war on terror or clarify misinformation and propaganda widespread among the Arab public. Yet over the last few decades, radical Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia have had almost total freedom to spread r
adical Wahabi Islam in American society, universities, and even in prisons. Saudis are helping themselves to our open system to Islamize us, and we are not even charging them for it.
Many Americans and politicians were understandably disturbed when it was learned that a company owned by a Gulf Arab country was going to be in charge of loading and unloading goods in some U.S. ports, yet no one decries the fact that our whole society is open to oil-rich Arab countries to influence us as they please. We are giving Saudis and radical Muslims the most precious thing of all, the minds and hearts of our children on our college campuses, allowing them to influence and manipulate vulnerable young Americans with hate speech disguised as “Islamic Studies.” Professors in departments funded by oil-rich states are spreading the same hatred, anti-Semitism, and anti-Americanism that I was fed in the Middle East, as well as sponsoring campus organizations that are intimidating patriotic American and Jewish students.
The threat is not just to our ports but also inside American culture, American media, and even Hollywood. The normally highly vocal Hollywood activists, despite threats against Los Angeles high-rise buildings and airports, have been strangely silent as innocent people were murdered by Islamic terrorists in Bali nightclubs, hotels in Amman, shops and restaurants in Turkey and Morocco, underground stations in London, and morning rush-hour trains in Spain. Throughout its history, Hollywood has shown us that their greatest gift comes when they shine a light into the darkest places, when they give voice to the voiceless or power to the powerless. But in recent years Hollywood has given too much glory and “understanding” to terrorists and too little honor to their victims. Perhaps that will change. Some honest, gutsy Hollywood movies could reflect a mirror back to the decent people in my culture of origin where terrorism and hatred has become part of normal life and has caused unimaginable suffering.
The injustice to Christian and Jews in the Middle East should be exposed. There is too much silence in the West about the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians, especially Copts in Egypt. Saudi Arabia, the country that gave birth to Islam and calls Mecca and Medina the holy land of Muslims, denies Christians and Jews their own holy land. That is the same country that tramples on the human rights and dignity of its own people, particularly its women. Our relationship with Saudi Arabia should be consistent with our values. If we cannot survive without their oil, they cannot survive without our technology and dollars either. Our trade exchange should never be oil for our souls, oil for one-sided access to American culture to manipulate it as they please. We should never forget that fifteen out of the nineteen terrorists on September 11, 2001, were Saudi citizens and not exactly from a poor or oppressed Muslim fringe minority as some claim. Saudi Arabia and many other so-called moderate Muslim countries cannot be considered our friends when their media tells their citizens that we Americans are the enemy and deserve what happened to us on 9/11, or when their mosques tell them that we are the Great Satan and a country with no morals. If that is not a major enemy, then what does enemy mean?
America must protect its democracy, culture, and sovereignty from nations with aspirations of conquering us from within. Perhaps it is time to revise the international laws governing not just our trade imbalance, but also “access imbalance.” We should demand nothing less than access for access.
Immigration laws and procedures should be examined and tightened. I remember when I was filling out my immigration papers at the American embassy in Cairo, I answered a question that asked: Do you belong to or have any affiliation to the Communist Party? Now that America has won the cold war, perhaps another question is in order: Are you a member or do you have any affiliation with radical Islamist or terror groups, or do you sympathize with them? Perhaps our immigration documents should ask some pointed, specific questions of new immigrants and require some very specific terms. New immigrants should understand and accept the concepts of separation of church and state, equal rights under the law, the differences between free speech and hate speech, and the understanding that inciting to violence is a crime. Criminals are not allowed to immigrate and spread crime and violence. Radical Muslim clerics with dual citizenship or green cards who preach jihad, hatred, incitement, and violence against America should be sent back home. That is probably the one punishment they would hate the most—having to go back to live under the likes of a Saddam Hussein, and once again experience tyranny and restrictions on speech.
Importation of radical Muslim preachers through the generous “religious visa” policy of the West has placed the Western social, political, and cultural systems and values at great risk. Radical Islam does not have mutual respect for other religions, but vows instead to replace other religions. After their many invasions, it has been a custom of Muslims not to build their own mosques side by side with other religions, but to take over other people’s temples, churches, and holy sites, and replace them with mosques. Invading Muslim rulers have done exactly that in Egypt, Turkey, and India to thousands of churches, holy sites of Jews, Hindu temples, and Buddhist monasteries. The history of the Arabs and Muslims is full of outrageous denials of the humanity of those outside of their religion and ethnicity. This Nazi-style narcissism and outright invasion is dressed up and camouflaged in religious garb.
Some Westerners who take multiculturalism and compassion beyond the bounds of common sense will defend and tolerate radical Islam’s intolerance and blame themselves. The Muslim world loves this kind of naïveté because it opens the door for them to freely spread anti-Semitism and hatred against America and the West.
Perhaps we also need to address what may be lacking in our culture that renders our children vulnerable to radical Islam and other hate-mongering philosophies. To preserve the values that have made our democracy strong and just, we need to give the children of America limitations and guidance, and teach them clear-cut differences between right and wrong. We all heard the parents of John Walker Jr., the “American Taliban,” proudly say they let him pick his own religion as a child and gave him a ticket to Yemen with their blessings, to go learn his newfound religion at age sixteen or so. Some Arabs jokingly say if you want to visit Yemen you need a bodyguard, but Walker’s parents apparently found it appropriate to send their vulnerable sixteen-year-old son there. Is John Walker Jr. a symbol of some elements in the West attracted to the clear-cut right and wrong taught in Muslim culture? There is much to be learned here. Children need guidelines and moral certainties in a confusing world. It is the absolutes in Muslim culture that in fact form the attraction that lures some Western young men and women. For example, the differences between the sexes are clear, acknowledged, and respected in Muslim culture. Acknowledging these differences in the West has become a stigma in many circles. “Differences,” by the way, should not be confused with issues of equality. Western men are sometimes lured by the fellowship, devotion, and male bonding in Muslim society. Young Western men, like Walker, might become attracted to Muslim male groups that promise total allegiance to one another under the Prophet Muhammad’s example. It offers a sense of belonging and purpose. Young Western men may also be lured by the possibility of having respectful, compliant, ready-to-please covered-up Muslim women who have been brought up to “know their place.” That is much less threatening to a young man who may have low self-esteem. Western women who crave acceptance and a sense of belonging may be lured by the macho, over-protective, and blonde-crazy Arab and Muslim men. However, sometimes a hidden agenda lurks behind the open arms of marrying into Muslim culture. Some Muslim men who marry Western women do it for the purpose of conversion and receiving a blessing from Allah for doing such a good deed. Very often these Western women and men are alienated from their families and culture as a result. I have received tons of letters through the years from both Western men and women who wanted to get out of the trap they fell in by marrying radical Muslims and converting to Islam. Many in the process have been abused and have had their children taken away from them.
When I speak with Muslims, I
call for reform and for tolerance, and I encourage other like-minded Arabs to work to bring about a revival of the goodness in Islam. In my opinion, the first and most important reform is to change the law that forbids a Muslim from converting to another religion, an infraction that can carry a death penalty. The freedom to leave Islam is key to the reformation of Islam. If this is granted everything else follows. Why? When the free marketplace of ideas forces Islam to compete for its existence, it will reform. Right now, why reform, since followers are held within their religion by fear, just like hostages? What is Islam afraid of? If Muslims are truly confident of their religion, then they should not fear the exposure to the free marketplace for people to pick and choose what they want to believe in.
Second, stop blaming America, the West, and Israel for all the problems in the Middle East. Only when the Arab world has lost its scapegoat can it look within and accept responsibility for the failings of its own society and hold its leaders accountable. Accepting responsibility is the necessary step to righting the wrongs in society and forcing the governments of the Middle East to better serve their people’s needs.
Third, American Muslims need to do some housekeeping and take control of their mosques. Some American Muslim mosque-goers have shown gross recklessness and negligence by allowing fanatics to represent them. By depending on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan’s generosity, they get the likes of the arrested father-son preachers, Hamid and Umer Hayat, of Lodi, California, and Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman, who plotted the first World Trade Center bombing. Such people should never have been teachers of American Muslim young people or spiritual leaders of decent Muslims. These radical clerics, often with ties to al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood, immigrated to the United States through religious visas that are much easier to obtain than regular visas. Many of them entered before 2001 when America did not yet understand the threat of terrorism.
Now They Call Me Infidel Page 27