USMC Hellfire missile being loaded by US Navy sailors on an aircraft mount. Note the size of the missile requires two men to hold it up.
posted by Christopher W. Holton
Another significant news story receiving hardly any attention from the U.S. media…who could possibly have wanted these missiles?
Hellfires are fairly large. They are not something that could be readily launched without a large launcher, which is usually vehicle mounted on large armored vehicles, such as the Bradley fighting vehicle. But the shaped charge (HEAT) warhead could absolutely be used in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) that could penetrate some types of armor and reinforced concrete.
Serbia’s authorities are investigating reports that a cargo package bound for the U.S. containing two missiles with explosive warheads was found on a passenger flight from Lebanon to Serbia.
N1 television said the package with two guided armor-piercing missiles was discovered Saturday by a sniffer dog after an Air Serbia flight from Beirut landed at Belgrade airport.
Serbian media say documents listed the final destination for the AGM-114 Hellfire missiles as Portland, Oregon.
With so many Jihadist threats metastasizing around the world, it’s getting tough to keep track. There are more Jihadists fighting in more countries than ever before. Here are just a few examples:
The Islamic State
HAMAS/Islamic Jihad in Israel
Boko Haram in west Africa
Al Shabaab in east Africa
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
Al Qaeda on the Indian Subcontinent
The Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan
Lashkar e Taiba in India and Pakistan
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Jemaah Islamiyah in Malaysia and Indonesia
Jamaat–ul–Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)
Ansar al Sharia in Libya
Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines
Not long ago, America’s attention was focused on our porous southern border when thousands of unaccompanied minors were flooding across at an orchestrated invitation signaled by President Obama. That story seems to have been largely forgotten, except by people in border states.
Now, however, with President Obama’s unilateral executive action on illegal immigration, the border will likely come back into focus.
When the Mexican border was the top of the news, it served as a reminder that our southern border is almost completely unsecure. And there have been some reminders mixed in about the potential for a terrorist threat from south of the border, such as James O’Keefe of Project Veritas wading across the Rio Grande dressed like Osama Bin Laden.
But the Jihadist threat from south of the border is not new. It has been discussed since before 9/11. The Jihadist threat on the southern border is real and it is multifaceted.
For instance in May 2001, former Mexican National security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, reported, that ‘Islamic terrorist groups are using Mexico as a refuge.’
Adolfo Aguilar Zinser
There is no way to estimate how many jihadists may already have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. But the time to play politics with the border issue is long past. The shallow sloganeering and race-baiting that have dominated the national debate about border controls should be recognized as what they are: hindrances to sane and sensible national defense measures.
SIA-OTMs
OTM is an acronym for illegal aliens who are ‘Other Than Mexican’ — SIA stands for ‘Special Interest Aliens’ from 34 terrorist nations like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
Special Interest Alien Countries of Origin
Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally are often simply processed at the border and sent back. But Mexico won’t allow us to send citizens from other countries back through Mexico, and under U.S. law, they’re entitled to a formal deportation hearing. The immigration service lacks beds to hold them, so the vast majority of OTMs are released from custody and asked to voluntarily return for their court date.
In 2005 alone, there were estimated to be 71,000 such OTM fugitives.
From 2008-2010, an estimated 180,000 OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) were believed to have crossed the border illegally. In that same period, 1,918 “Special Interest” OTMs were apprehended on the border. It is generally believed that for every illegal alien apprehended at the border, there are several who elude border security and are not apprehended.
It has become increasingly common for Muslims in Mexico to change their Islamic surnames to Hispanic sounding names to facilitate moving across the border. Apologists claim this is simply to avoid discrimination.
Perhaps not coincidentally, there has been a noticeable proliferation of Salafist mosques in Latin America since the early 1990s and an increasing proselytization campaign on the part of Wahhabi and Saudi-funded nongovernmental organizations like the World Assembly for Muslim Youth (WAMY). It is worth mentioning that WAMY’s U.S. operations were shut down by the Justice Department due to the organization’s massive material support for Jihad.
The Jihadi-Cartel Relationship
Drug cartels have been involved in trafficking Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and Hezbollah operatives into the US.
99.9 percent of the time, the media line is that 99.9 percent of the people crossing our Southern border are just poor innocents looking for work and a meager wage. Evaluated in the most simplistic terms, this is of course, partly true. But the more complex reality isn’t that simple or sanitary.
The majority of border crossers are NOT economic immigrants.
An examination of anecdotes about general enforcement conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border paint a picture that indicates that America has not taken the steps necessary to defend itself from Jihadi infiltration.
For instance, there are severe constraints on border enforcement personnel. The Border Patrol is forbidden from patrolling on federal land, opening large swathes of territory by default. Demoralized Border Patrol officers also report receiving instructions to avoid detaining and processing illegal aliens.
Against these constraints, our border and immigration enforcement personnel are going up against a robust, sophisticated alliance of drug cartels and Jihadis.
Cartels are buying real estate on both sides of the border to set up staging areas and camps. The cartels employ high-tech comm gear superior to that in the hands of US law enforcement. Cartels and “coyotes” employ scouts and snipers on the high ground along trafficking routes—as far north as Phoenix.
Border enforcement personnel report that the Mexican army has in fact provided surveillance and cover fire FOR traffickers on more than one occasion.
Arizona ranchers are afraid to use their cell phones in the open because cartel snipers might think they are calling in reports to law enforcement and kill them. Even U.S. law and border enforcement personnel are careful about using communications gear in the open on the southern border. It is believed that the cartels have snipers and scouts on the high ground all the way to Phoenix.
Anecdotal Evidence of Jihadi Activity on the Southern Border Over the Years
In an infamous YouTube video, a Muslim cleric in Kuwait, Abdullah al-Nafsi, in a sermon in his mosque said that “there is no need for airplanes and planning; one man with the courage to carry a suitcase of anthrax through the tunnels from Mexico to the United States could kill 330,000 Americans in one hour.”
In June 2004, the US Border Patrol arrested 77 “Middle Eastern” men attempting to cross the border from Mexico illegally.
In October 2004, US intelligence officials received reports that 25 Chechans had illegally crossed into Arizona from Mexico.
In December 2004, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Fakhrul Islam, was arrested crossing the southern border from Mexico in the company of the Central American gang MS-13.
MS-13 members
In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.
In September 2007, Texas’ top homeland security official, Steve McCraw, told the El Paso Times that terrorists with ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda had been arrested crossing the Texas border with Mexico in recent years.
In November 2007, the FBI issued an advisory about a plan by jihadists in league with Mexican drug lords to cross the border via underground tunnels and attack the intelligence training center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, twenty miles from the border with Mexico. “The Afghanis and Iraqis,” one official explained, paid the Mexicans $20,000 or “the equivalent in weapons” for their help in getting into the U.S., and “shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”
In February 2008, three Afghanis were arrested at an international airport in India for traveling on forged Mexican passports.
A 2010 GAO report detailed the ease with which WMD might be smuggled across the southern border. In a simulation exercise conducted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in three states, investigators were able to cross undetected, successfully simulating the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States.
ISIS?
Most recently, the possibility that ISIS terrorists could be exploiting our southern border has been raised. While this possibility absolutely exists, this aspect of the threat is still in the realm of the theoretical.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas discussed it recently, as did the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dempsey.
Joshua Katz, an Army veteran and former CIA operations officer who served as Senior Policy Advisor to the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said it is “very, very, true” that ISIS may have crossed the southern border.
General Dempsey’s comments are much more significant. Dempsey said that ISIS was an immediate threat due to open borders and immigration issues. General Dempsey was actually referring to Europe, but…he could have easily been talking about the US.
Al Qaeda on the Southern Border
The Al Qaeda threat in Latin America has been well documented:
On June 30, 2004 it was announced by the Honduran Security Ministry that high-ranking Al Qaeda operative Adnān Shukrī Jumaʿah (Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah) had been in Honduras during the previous month meeting with members of the MS13 street gang. He is also believed to have conducted surveillance of the Panama Canal. He is still one of the most wanted terrorists in the world. ( He happens to be the son of an Imam from Miramar, FL incidentally)
Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah
In July 2004, a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York after she either walked or swam across the Mexican border into Texas. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group and was believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based Al Qaeda operatives.
Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed
In November 2004, captured Al Qaeda Egyptian Jihadist Sharif al-Masri told US interrogators that Al Qaeda sought to exploit the US’s porous southern border and possibly smuggle radiological material across it from Mexico.
Sharif al-Masri
In February 2005, Porter Goss, the director of central intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Al Qaeda had considered infiltrating the United States through the Mexican border.
In February 2005, Adm. James M. Loy, the deputy secretary of homeland security testified before Congress that intelligence “strongly suggests” that Al Qaeda operatives have considered using the Mexican border as an entry point. Admiral Loy cited recent information from investigations and detentions as the basis for his concern about the Mexican border. He added, “Several Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.”
Also in 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony indicated that “there are individuals from countries with known Al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic.”
In November 2005, Texas Congressman John Culberson described on national TV how an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.
Al Shabaab on the Southern Border
The east African Jihadist organization Al Shabaab has been discovered to have a footprint in Mexico. They are receiving Mexican language and cultural assimilation training, have been discovered to have a relationship of convenience with the Mexican drug cartels, and have been smuggling their operatives into the United States to raise money and to recruit members to their cause:
In 2010, a man named Ahmed Muhammad Dhakane allegedly secreted “hundreds of people” — including Somalis believed to be associated with Al Shabaab — into the United States. Prior to arriving to Congress, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) worked as chief of counterterrorism in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas — part of the Lone Star State that borders with Mexico. McCaul’s statement on this incident is chilling: “To this day we do not know where those 300 Somalis are … We do know they are in the United States.”
Ahmed Muhammad Dhakane
In May 2010, the DHS sent an alert to Texas law enforcement to be on the lookout for a suspected member of Al Shabaab suspected of entering Texas from Mexico.
In June 2010, Mexican Marines raided a house occupied by an Al Shabaab member in Mexico City, uncovering a large cache of explosives reportedly to be used in an attack on the US embassy, which was less than a mile away.
Hezbollah on the Southern Border
The Iranian-backed Shia Jihadist terrorist group Hezbollah is probably the biggest threat on the southern border:
In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani (the brother of Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon) came across the border from Tijuana into California in the trunk of a car, after bribing a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to get a visa. He eventually settled in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spycraft in Iran.
Mahmoud Kourani
In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border from Tiajuana into California. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.
Salim Boughader
In April 2006, FBI Director Robert Muller announced that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling operatives across the Mexican border into the U.S. Mr. Muller claimed the FBI had dismantled the smuggling ring, identified the people who had been smuggled in and “addressed” them. Or at least “addressed” those we knew about. Or something.
In July 2010, Mexican authorities announced that they had broken up a Hezbollah network operating in their country.
An indictment was handed down on August 30, 2010 by the Southern District Court of New York that showed a connection between Hezbollah and the drug cartels that violently plague the U.S.-Mexico border. In short, a well-known international arms dealer was trying to orchestrate an arms-for-drugs deal in which cocaine from FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which works with Mexican drug cartels to take cocaine into America – would be traded for thousands of weapons housed by a Hezbollah operative in Mexico.
Michael Braun, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations, has even been quoted as saying, “Hezbollah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels. … They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.”
In February 2012, Braun testified before Congress that Hezbollah, had developed strong, sophisticated relationships with Mexican drug cartels: “And by developing those relations it provided them with the ability to operate far from home in our neighborhood and on our doorstep.”
In September 2012, three members of Hezbollah–including a US citizen named Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun–were arrested in Merida, Mexico and turned over the US authorities. Allaboun was carrying a fake passport identifying him as a citizen of Belize at the time of arrest. Once a prominent Muslim leader in Northern California, Labboun spent over two years in prison for credit card fraud. Authorities suspected that the $100,000 in credit card fraud was linked to Hezbollah’s money laundering activities.
Fake Belize passport used by Hezbollah terrorist Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun arrested in Mexico
What all this adds up to is that the American people are being sold a bill of goods.
President Obama claims that he is taking unilateral executive action to “reform” immigration, but the reality is that the most pressing need for true reform is border security and there has been no action on that issue whatsoever.
This is despite the fact that there is a true national security threat on the southern border. Our Jihadist enemies have openly discussed this vulnerability and have already exploited it in documented cases. Pundits like Geraldo Rivera who go on national television and declare that there has never been a single credible report of a terrorist threat on the southern border are either ignorant or dishonest.
The American people are right to be concerned about the vulnerability of our porous, undefended borders. Open borders in the age of global Jihad are insanity.
Excerpt and LINK from my guest article in The Hayride…
The Islamic State is not simply an Iraqi problem or a Syrian problem. IS has metastasized into a worldwide organization with 20,000 recruits from Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Somalia, the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Germany. Even worse, Jihadists from Boko Haram in Nigeria, Abu Sayyef in the Philippines, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Northwest Africa and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Yemen have all pledged allegiance to IS.
There can no longer be any doubt that the global Islamic insurgency that some have been warning about for some time, amounts to a world war. Nevertheless, policymakers here in the U.S. continue to ignore or deny this reality.
Over the period of a generation, the West has allowed itself to be thoroughly infiltrated by a savage and barbaric belief system. This is evidenced by the global base of recruitment that the Islamic State has been able to take advantage of and the numerous public displays of support for IS in the West.
ISIS has been allowed to metastasize. It is now operating in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. There are reports it is operating in Libya. Aby Sayyaf in the Philippines has pledged allegiance to ISIS. ISIS has recruits from the US, the UK, Western Europe and just about every Islamic nation on the globe–some 20,000 fighters by some estimates. There have been demonstrations in support of ISIS in The Netherlands, Austria and Indonesia. ISIS leaders have promised to “see us in New York.”
Sooner or later, we will have to fight ISIS, whether we want to or not. We are squarely in their sights. The longer we wait, the more difficult the task will become. I have zero confidence that Obama will recognize these facts. He is in the process of hollowing out the US military precisely to prevent such operations, not just in his regime, but in future presidential administrations as well. We are in far deeper trouble than even most conservatives realize.
In case you had any doubts as to whether the “interim” agreement with Iran on nuclear technology that Barack Obama and John Kerry foisted on the world in the dead of night over the weekend was a terrible development, the world’s foremost Shia Jihadist terrorist organization has provided confirmation:
Lebanon’s Hezbollah on Monday hailed a nuclear deal between its patron Iran and world powers as “a major victory” for Tehran.
“What was achieved through this agreement is a major victory for Iran and to all the people of the region and it is a defeat for the enemies of these people,” Hezbollah said in a statement.
“(It is) a model victory and world class achievement which the Islamic state adds to its record which shines with victories and achievements.”
There are many people in America who don’t know just who Hezbollah is. For those of you who need a reminder, Hezbollah is the Jihadist terrorist wing of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Their stated goal is to establish an Islamic state in the Middle East ruled by Shariah. They have a long record of killing Americans, stretching back to 1982 and 1983 with Islamikaze truck bomb attacks on the US embassy and US Marine Barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, a host of hostage-takings and murders of Americans in Beirut in the remainder of the 1980s and active involvement in the insurgency against US forces in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
This is not the first time that Barack Obama has pleased Hezbollah. Not long ago, he allowed Ali Mussa Daqduq, a high-level Hezbollah operative responsible for torturing and killing several US Army soldiers, to go free in Iraq…
The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit acts of violent Jihad, but that does not mean that there isn’t a doctrinal basis for it in Islamic scripture.
I am not talking about just a few violent verses in the Quran. The Islamic trilogy is replete with it: the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. (The Hadith are traditions and stories of the life of Muhammed and the Sirah is the biography of Muhammed). Moreover, in the Quran, the principle of abrogation bestows the most violent verses with the greatest strength as compared to earlier, peaceful verses.
These are facts, and if you read what the Jihadis themselves talk to each other about, EVERYTHING they do is based on contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture.
We’re not talking about a fringe element here, folks. We’re talking about entire regimes (the Ayatollahs in Iran and Taliban Afghanistan are examples) and scores of violent Jihadist organizations around the world such as, Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Lashkar e Taiba, Abu Sayyef, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Jemaah Islamiyah, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Muslim Brotherhood…and many more.
To assign these beliefs to EVERY SINGLE Muslim of the 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet is wrong. But to deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for all of this violent Jihad is just as wrong and it is preventing the West from coming to grips with the global war with which we are faced, whether we want to believe it or not. There is a reason why we see Islamic terrorist organizations as well as individual Jihadis waging violent Jihad in places as geographically diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Hood, Little Rock, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Marrakech, Algiers, Benghazi, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yaounde, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Timbuktu, Kaduna, Dar el Salam, Sana’a, Istanbul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karachi, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mumbai, Amritsar, Dhaka, Hat Yai, Yala, Bali, and Mindanao.
In warfare, your enemy’s reality becomes your reality. To defeat him, you better understand him. You better understand his motivations and his goals. In short, you need to know what makes him tick. We understood what made the Nazis tick, we had Mein Kampf as a doctrinal guide. We understood what made the communists tick, we had The Communist Manifesto and other works as a doctrinal guide. But we REFUSE to even TRY to understand what makes the Jihadis tick because we fear that the reality will be too frightening. We are in willful denial: “The violence simply cannot have anything to do with Islam because there are too many peaceful Muslims in the world.”
That is missing the point entirely. The fact that the majority of Muslims do not know Islamic doctrine and thus do not adhere to it is not particularly remarkable or surprising. How many Catholics are truly highly familiar with the doctrinal aspects of their faith?
The fact remains that there are violent Jihadists around the world who commit acts of war and they both justify it on Islamic scripture and carry out these acts to promote Islam. The doctrinal basis is found in Islamic law, known as Shariah. The Jihadists’ goal is to impose Islamic law and Islamic law is the code which they follow. (If you are skeptical of this, go pick up a copy of the excellent work by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, and read what the enemy writes and says.) To deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for violent Jihad is becoming more and more suicidal as a civilization with each new incident that we in turn deny.
The latest example is of course in Boston. Two Jihadis, perhaps members of a Jihadist organization, or perhaps so-called “lone wolf” actors, committed atrocious acts of violent Jihad, killing several innocents and wounding many more. Despite evidence on social media and YouTube, as well as accounts of the Jihadis’ devout Islamic beliefs, the simpletons in the news media and even in our own government are pondering aloud what their motivation could possibly have been. Hours and hours of TV coverage in the so-called “mainstream” media go by with nary a mention of the word “Islam.” The elephant in the room is being ignored.
Some “experts” are quoted as taking comfort in the belief that the two Tsarnaev brothers may not have had any operational connection with any known terrorist organization, such as Al Qaeda. This is 180 degrees out from reality and these “experts” completely miss the point.
The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers may have “only” been inspired to commit Jihad on their own is not cause for celebration or relaxation. It is cause for alarm and it would seem to be part of a disturbing pattern that has been emerging over the years:
• Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, apparently acting on his own after receiving terrorist training in Yemen, shot two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing one, Private William Long and wounding another.
• Major Nidal Malik Hasan, apparently acting on his own, after years of conversing with Al Qaeda Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, shot and killed 13 fellow US Army soldiers and wounded 39 more.
These types of attacks are indicative of a revolutionary critical mass in which centralized direction and control is no longer necessary. Jihadis around the world are now waging violent Jihad in Al Qaeda-like fashion after reading web postings and listening to sermons. This presents a whole new series of challenges for security services and makes the use of military force much less effective. Infiltrating organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been extremely difficult. But how does one infiltrate lone wolf actors like the Tsarnaev brothers? Who does the US military go after in the wake of the Boston attacks?
This new reality makes identifying and understanding the Islamic doctrinal basis of our Jihadist enemies all the more important, yet with each passing attack, we seem to be getting further and further away from doing so.
The internet has literally been littered with news reports about a new propaganda campaign being waged by the head of the Council on American Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Chicago director.
The man’s name is Ahmed Rehab and his methodology has been to run advertising on buses to change the public perception of the word “Jihad.”
Rehab has chosen two of the most liberal cities in America in which to conduct his campaign so far: Chicago and San Francisco.
The name of the campaign is “MyJihad” and it aims to convince Americans that Jihad only means “to struggle” or, more specifically, an internal, personal struggle. Rehab claims that this is the “true” meaning of Jihad.
Unfortunately for Rehab, he is only partially correct and any campaign that claims that the term Jihad only means an internal, personal struggle amounts to disinformation. The dualistic nature of Islam, in this case as it applies to the meaning of “Jihad,” is well documented both in historical Islamic doctrine and in contemporary use of the term.
And Jihad definitely does not only mean an internal, personal struggle. In fact, the most widespread meaning of the term that is of particular interest to Westerners who are threatened by Jihad does in fact entail violence.
A false and misleading statement has been attributed to the San Francisco chapter head of CAIR, Zahra Billoo:
“A common misconception of the word jihad is that it means armed struggle or holy war, and that is something that has been perpetrated by many who’ve made careers out of pushing anti-Muslim sentiment.”
Such a meaning for Jihad has nothing to do with anyone with an “anti-Muslim sentiment.” It has everything to do with Islam itself.
Let us examine definitions of Jihad from two authoritative sources.
Jihad According to the Quran
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The first is the Quran itself. In this case, specifically The Noble Qu’ran, translated into English by two scholars: Dr. Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali, PhD, professor of Islamic Faith and Teachings at the Islamic University, Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia and Dr. Muhammad Mushin Khan of the same institution. The Noble Qu’ran was published by Darussalam Publishers and Distributors, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It has been catalogued by King Fahad National Library. On page 818, in a glossary accompanying the text of the Quran, The Noble Qu’ran provides the following definition of Jihad:
“Jihad: Holy fighting in the Cause of Allah or any other kind of effort to make Allah’s Word superior. Jihad is regarded as one of the fundamentals of Islam.”
Can the Quran itself be promoting “anti-Muslim sentiment” as CAIR’s Zahra Billoo asserts?
Jihad According to Shariah
Our second source is Reliance of the Traveler: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law.
Reliance of the Traveler is one of the world’s most widely read manuals of Shariah law. It has been endorsed by a variety of Islamic authorities, including Al Azhar University in Cairo, IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought) in Herndon, Virginia, the Fiqh Council of North America, the Islamic Fiqh Academy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the Mufti of the Jordanian Armed Forces andthe Imam of the Mosque of Darwish Pasha in Damascus, Syria.
These can hardly be termed as those pushing “anti-Muslim sentiment” as Billoo claims.
On page 599 of Reliance of the Traveler, readers can find the following passage:
o9.0 JIHAD
(O: Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word mujahada, signifying warfare to establish the religion…
The scriptural basis for jihad, prior to scholarly consensus is such Koranic verses as:
(1) “Fighting is prescribed for you” (Koran 2:216);
(2) “Slay them wherever you find them” (Koran 4:89);
(3) “Fight the idolators utterly” (Koran 9:36);
and such hadiths as the one related by Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
“I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And their final reckoning is with Allah”;
and the hadith reported by Muslim,
“To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.”
Jihad According to Terrorists
If Jihad truly means to “struggle” and not warfare to establish the religion, how does CAIR explain the names of all these terrorist organizations?
A 4-minute posthumous call to Jihad by American-born Anwar al Awlaki. Keep in mind that, before he became head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Awlaki had been an Imam at mosques in San Diego, Denver and northern Virginia and was regarded as a great “moderate” who was a favorite show pony for “outreach” programs. He was invited to the Pentagon. He delivered sermons to the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association on Capitol Hill. Prominent CAIR officers, employees and members attended these sermons. At least one former CAIR employee who attended Awlaki’s sermons on Capitol Hill in Washington DC is now in jail on terrorism charges:
President Obama has selected one of the worst possible candidates imaginable to become Secretary of Defense. Chuck Hagel has a history of being weak on Jihad and terrorism, the greatest threat to American lives and national security today.
Hagel’s nomination should become a “teaching moment.” Just because someone served honorably in the uniform of the United States military or has an “R” instead of a “D” after his name, does not automatically mean that the person is strong on national security policy.
Chuck Hagel is as bad on the threat of Jihadist terrorism as anyone in America. Not only has he been on the wrong side of votes on the issue, but his votes demonstrate a lack of commitment on the issue, as well a tendency to enable Jihad:
• Wrong on Iraq
A graphic depiction of the impact of the surge on Al Qaeda in Iraq
Initially, then-Senator Hagel voted in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom to overthrow Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. But when the insurgency did not go so well, Hagel flip-flopped and called for a withdrawal of US troops in just 120 days back in 2007.
Had such a policy been implemented, Al Qaeda and other Jihadist elements would have emerged victorious in Iraq and the US would have been seen as clearly losing Iraq to Al Qaeda. This would have energized Al Qaeda and given it the biggest recruiting boost since the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States homeland. This would have essentially allowed the global jihad to morph at an accelerated rate.
Then, when the US announced the surge counteroffensive in Iraq, Senator Hagel said it would be “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it’s carried out.”
Hagel is clearly no military strategist. The surge broke the back of the insurgency, drastically reduced the violence in Iraq and allowed the US to draw down its force levels in a secure manner.
To be sure, Iraq is no utopia today, but violence levels there are no where near what they were during the insurgency and, most importantly, Al Qaeda was denied victory in Iraq due to the surge.
Wrong on Hezbollah
In 2006 Hagel was one of a just 11 senators who refused to sign a letter urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Hezbollah not only killed 241 Marines, soldiers and sailors in Beirut, Lebanon on 23 October 1983, they also kidnapped and murdered US Marine Colonel William Higgins in 1988 when he was on UN Peacekeeping duty. More recently, Hezbollah was active in fighting US GIs in Iraq and Hezbollah members captured, tortured and killed US GIs in Iraq.
US Marine Barracks bombing–Beirut, Lebanon–23 October 1983. 241 Americans killed by Hezbollah Islamikaze bombing
Colonel William “Rich” Higgins, USMC–Kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah in 1988.
Ali Mussa Daqduq: Hezbollah leader captured in Iraq in 2007. He planned a raid in which 4 US soldiers were captured, subsequently tortured and killed in Karbala, Iraq. He was captured by US Special Operations Forces, but was released from custody when President Obama refused to have him remanded to the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Wrong on Iran
Iranian “art” in Tehran
Chuck Hagel has a shamefully weak record on Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism and a serial proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles.
His weakness on Iran goes way back to August of 2001 when he was one of just two US Senators to vote against renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act was set up to punish entities for investing in Iranian or Libyan petroleum industries, aiming to prevent Tehran or Tripoli from gaining petroleum profits that could be used to develop or acquire weapons of mass destruction or to finance terrorism.
In September 2007, Hagel voted against designating the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity. 76 Senators voted for the bill in an overwhelming bipartisan vote.
In July 2008, Hagel voted in the Senate Banking Committee against legislation imposing sanctions on countries conducting certain business with Iran. The legislation passed 19-2.
In October 2008 Hagel single-handedly killed Senator Gordon Smith’s (R-Oregon) S.970 Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, a bill that had 71 co-sponsors, 36 Republican and 35 Democrat. This act would have strengthened the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (now referred to simply as the Iran Sanctions Act).
Chuck Hagel: Wrong for America
Leftist pundits are creating a straw man argument by promoting the meme that only the “Jewish lobby” is opposed to Hagel because of his record of not supporting Israel.
This dishonest tactic is merely meant as a smokescreen to mask Hagel’s shamefully weak, longstanding record on Jihad and terrorism primarily directed against the United States and its citizens.
Call and write your Senator and tell him/her to oppose the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. America cannot afford to have someone as weak on Jihadist terrorism as Chuck Hagel.
In 1994, 85 innocent civilians were killed in a bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Hundreds more were wounded.
To this day, that bombing is the worst terrorist attack ever to take place on the South American continent.
The bombing is believed to have been a joint operation of Hezbollah and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Arrest warrants were issued in the case through Interpol for five Iranians and a Lebanese back in 2007. The Lebanese was Imad Fayez Mugniyeh, Hezbollah’s military commander. Mugniyeh lost his head and “assumed room temperature” when he was killed in Syria a couple of years ago when an explosive in the head rest of his car detonated while he was sitting in the seat.
Recently there has been a new development in the case.
Former Argentine President Carlos Menem has been indicted for obstruction of justice for diverting attention away from Iran’s role in the bombing. Evidence indicates that Menem received millions of dollars deposited in a secret Swiss bank account.
In addition to the indictment of Menem, Argentina has announced that they are opening a new investigation into the bombing.
Israel praises Argentina for reinvestigating Jewish community center bombing
There is mounting evidence that the global Jihadist insurgency is fully entrenched in the USA.
Note that it makes little difference if the perpetrators are members of a previously known terrorist organization (such as Al Qaeda or Hezbollah) or are lone actors. Actually, it DOES make a difference. It is difficult to combat a shadowy organization like Al Qaeda, but it is far more difficult to combat lone wolf actors. Al Qaeda may be difficult to infiltrate and gather intelligence on, but how do we “infiltrate” a lone Jihadist?
This is symptomatic of a revolutionary Jihadist subculture metastasizing within the American Muslim community, especially within some of its mosques and organizations. This revolutionary subculture has produced an atmosphere in which Jihadis are inspired to act violently on their own, as well as part of organizations.
This is a very dangerous and volatile situation.
Over the last 12 months alone, we have been provided with a stack of evidence of the Jihadist insurgency inside America. Americans have largely ignored this evidence, or at least failed to “connect the dots.” Seemingly completely unrelated cases do in fact have common threads: they are acts of Jihad. And these are not in actuality isolated incidents, but rather are linked by a common ideology that animates and motivates Jihadis everywhere….it’s only some that respond with actual, overt violent action, but many others are inspired to support passively, with words only, or financially. This is a global movement with a unified core ideology and doctrine rooted in Islam.
It is not difficult to go back and research examples of Jihad in America over the course of a calendar year, such as 2011. What follows is a list of incidents, cases, actions, statements and plots which point to a Jihadist insurgency in our midst: (Keep in mind that insurgencies are 80% civilizational/political and 20% violent/militant.):
Terror Trends Bulletin 