http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/75520
*National Security Experts: Shariah Law Is 'Preeminent Totalitarian Threat of Our Time'* *A team of national security experts assembled by the conservative Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, issued a report last week warning of that Shariah law--which they described as a "legal-political-military doctrine"--is the "preeminent totalitarian threat of our time."* Monday, September 20, 2010 By *Matt Cover* <http://www.cnsnews.com/source/73645> *[image: Former CIA head James Woolsey]*<http://www.cnsnews.com/image/former-cia-head-james-woolsey> ** *Former CIA chief James Woolsey. (AP photo/file)* *(CNSNews.com) –* A team of national security experts assembled by the conservative Center for Security Policy, a Washington, D.C., think tank, issued a report last week warning of that Shariah law--which they described as a "legal-political-military doctrine"--is the "preeminent totalitarian threat of our time." The team was led by retired Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the former deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and Lt. Gen. Harry Edward Soyster, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. It also included, among others, James Woolsey, the former director of Central Intelligence Agency; retired Adm. James A. Lyons, the former commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet; Joseph E. Schmitz, the former inspector general of the Defense Department; Frank Gaffney, the former assistant secretary of defense for international security policy and current president of the Center for Security Policy; and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy, who successfully prosecuted Omar Abdel Rahman, the Muslim jihadist leader convicted of being the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The group drew a distinction between Muslims who embrace Shariah law as the comprehensive model for governing all human society and those who view it as a reference point for personal behavior but not for the conduct of government and the state. "Shariah is the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle. On one side of the divide are Muslim reformers and authentic moderates--figures like Abdurrahman Wahid, the late president of Indonesia and leader of the world’s largest libertarian Muslim organization, Nahdlatul Ulama--whose members embrace the Enlightenment’s veneration of reason and, in particular, its separation of the spiritual and secular realms," the *authors write*<http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/upload/wysiwyg/article%20pdfs/Shariah%20-%20The%20Threat%20to%20America%20(Team%20B%20Report)%2009142010.pdf> . "On this side of the divide, shariah is a reference point for a Muslim’s personal conduct, not a corpus to be imposed on the life of a pluralistic society," they say. "By contrast, the other side of the divide is dominated by Muslim supremacists, often called Islamists. Like erstwhile proponents of Communism and Nazism, these supremacists--some terrorists, others employing stealthier means--seek to impose a totalitarian regime: a global totalitarian system cloaked as an Islamic state and called a caliphate. "On that side of the divide, which is the focus of the present study, shariah is an immutable, compulsory system that Muslims are obliged to install and the world required to adopt, the failure to do so being deemed a damnable offence against Allah," they write. "For these ideologues, shariah is not a private matter. Adherents see the West as an obstacle to be overcome, not a culture and civilization to be embraced, or at least tolerated. It is impossible, they maintain, for alternative legal systems and forms of governments peacefully to coexist with the end-state they seek." “The good news is that millions of Muslims around the world--including many in America--do not follow the directives of Shariah, let alone engage in jihad,” says the report. “The bad news is that this reality reflects the fact that the imposition of strict shariah doctrine is at different stages across Muslim-majority and -minority countries." The authors also differentiate between Islamists who use violence and those who do not. The violent Islamists, they argue, are already well known--groups such as al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizballah. The non-violent Islamists, they say, pose a different and perhaps greater threat because while they have the same goals as their violent counterparts--the imposition of Sharia--their non-violent tactics make them harder to detect and oppose. “Far less recognizable, however, is the menace posed by jihadist enemies who operate by deceit and stealth from inside the gates,” the experts said. “The latter threat is, arguably, a far more serious one to open, tolerant societies like ours. “The first thing to understand about the jihadis who operate by stealth is that they have precisely the same dual objectives as the openly violent jihadists (including al Qaeda, Hizballah, Hamas and the Taliban): global imposition of Shariah and re-establishment of the Islamic caliphate to rule in accordance with it. They differ only with respect to timing and tactics,” the report added. These non-violent Islamists, led predominantly by the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies in America, practice what the analysts termed a “civilization jihad” that seeks to undermine Western civilization and replace it with Shariah. "The prime practitioners of this stealthy form of jihad are the ostensibly 'non-violent' Muslim Brothers and their front groups and affiliates," the report says. "It must always be kept in mind that such tactics are 'non-violent' not because the Brotherhood eschews violence out of principle, but rather because it has decided that this phase of battlefield preparation is better accomplished through stealthy means. The violence is always implicit in the overall strategy, albeit held in reserve for the final stages of the offensive. It is the combined effect of the violent and pre-violent strains of jihad that constitutes the most serious threat to America and its free people. According to the report, the Muslim Brotherhood was operating in the United States long before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks alerted Americans generally to Islamist threat to the homeland. "[T]he Muslim Brotherhood has been in this country for decades and is an existential threat to American society and the fundamental liberties ordained and established by the Founding Fathers in the U.S. Constitution," says the report. "Its own mission statement asserts that 'the Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.' "This carefully articulated mission flows ineluctably from shariah, which holds that only Allah can make laws and that democratic rule whereby people legislate is impermissible," says the report. "Therefore, the destruction of Western-style governments and subjugation of free societies to the Ikhwan’s view of Allah’s will is obligatory for the Muslim Brotherhood, as for other adherents to shariah. Since America is the world’s preeminent exponent of individual liberties and the most powerful democratic nation in the world, those who are fighting to establish the Islamic caliphate have targeted this nation for destruction--not necessarily in the military or physical sense of the word, but in the destruction of American society as we know it. "Ultimately, the Muslim Brotherhood intends for America to live under shariah," says the report. "This ambition was explicitly stated in 1996 by Abdurahman Alamoudi, at the time one of the top agents of the Muslim Brotherhood operation in the United States. Back then, Alamoudi enjoyed access to the Clinton White House since, as the founder of the American Muslim Council and a director of numerous other Brotherhood fronts, he was considered a leading spokesman for the Muslim community in America. (He is currently serving a twenty-three year federal prison term on terrorism-related charges.)" The report concludes that U.S. policy-makers must confront this insidious threat, saying to ignore it any longer would be “intolerable.” “Under successive presidencies, the United States has failed to understand, let alone counter successfully, the threat posed to its constitutional form of government and free society by Shariah. In the past, such failures were reckless. Today, they are intolerable,” the report concludes. “As we have seen, Shariah explicitly seeks to replace representative governance with an Islamic state, to destroy sovereign and national polities with a global caliphate.” -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
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