Engaged – Chapter 1

Posted by johnhouk on Aug 18, 2009
 Here is an interesting discussion about Islam that takes place between Gary H. Johnson, Jr. and Chris Carter. As you read these musings you will view Johnson’s understanding of phrases used by anti-jihad bloggers. Whether you agree or not with the definitions are not as important as it is to begin engaging your mind to ponder them.

The Obama Administration may not be at war with Islam or at least aspects of the theo-political cult, but Islam is definitely at war with the West (again) or at least aspects of Islam.

The pondering is posted at United Against Islamic Supremacism and it appears it may be an ongoing discussion.

JRH 8/18/09
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Engaged – Chapter 1

Posted by huntingnasrallah
August 16, 2009
United Against Islamic Supremacism

A letter exchange between two Americans, struggling to make sense of the 9/12 era.

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August 2, 2009

Gary,

We are fighting an enemy that does not believe in borders. Islamic terrorist groups take full advantage of the fact that we largely limit our warfare to certain areas. In the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the United States engages in limited attacks such as Predator strikes against targets in the safe havens of tribal Pakistan, yet our military has not crossed the border.

When Iran took over our embassy in 1979, that should have been a wake-up call for the U.S..

Fast forward thirty years – we are still struggling to identify our enemy.
Has our nation’s leadership failed us?

A great portion of Americans could probably name most if not all winners of the “American Idol” television show, but what percentage do you think have even heard of the Muslim Brotherhood?

Due to media and information distortions, the U.S. population believes that the so-called Global War on Terror is a war for oil and that Islam is the “religion of peace.”

This is what we are up against.

Islam can only destroy our civilization if we are not made aware of the threat the religion poses to our freedom and security. That is precisely why the Muslim Brotherhood engages in a cultural invasion rather than a stand-up fight. Our enemies have already said that Islam and its Shariah Law are not compatible with democracy, and as we see in Saudi Arabia, there is no such thing as coexisting with other religions.

The first thing we should have done is identify our enemy. Considering the Islamic roots of the threat, to say that we are at war with “extremism” is patently ridiculous. It is equally ridiculous to say that we are at war with terrorism. We are in a global struggle, but terrorism is a tactic, not a target.

Analysts and commentators have come up with many names for the ideology of our enemies: Islamism, Jihadism, Radical Islam, Islamic Fundamentalism, Islamofascism, and Islamic Supremacism. To your mind, what is the meaning of each? And which provides the most accurate depiction and definition of the threat we face?

Engaged,

Chris Carter
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August 11, 2009 (3:00pmEST)

Chris,

I apologize for taking so long to respond to your letter of the 2nd. My schedule sometimes gets hectic over at United Against Islamic Supremacism. I am interested in your Victory Institute, and your effort to Unite[d] the Blogs demonstrates a desire to generate a unified response to the legitimate grievances of U.S. citizens against terroristic threats to the Sovereignty of the United States. Thank you for your determined effort to engage. It is a frustrating thing to become a bridge.

You are right to point out that our enemy does not respect or recognize borders. Sovereignty is what Shariah Law destroys.

Bracketing the 30 years since the fall of the Shah in Iran and today is a vital recognition – Contemporary Jihadism is a full fledged field of study. Examining the manner in which Jihad has shaped the last 30 years has become a cottage industry – thousands of books have crammed the shelves of bookstores since the events of 9/11, exposing the extreme nature of the threat of jihad from various positions. Thousands more have focused on pieces of the problem, from Muhammad the founder to the historic, diplomatic, geopolitical and perceptual challenges the threat entails. Managing the constant stream of new books and daily internet updates is a challenge in these times of multiplying chaos. How many books does the average American read in a year, after all?

As to whether the nation’s leaders have failed us – reserve judgment in the interests of objectivity and liberty. Let us help one another understand the nature of our foe that we might earn victory by building a case of resentment, planked with legitimate grievances.

Make no mistake, Islam need not destroy our American Civilization to earn victory.

Islam’s nature is to weaken the integrity of manmade law and force the submission to an alternative. Islam holds the capacity to destroy the foundations and bedrocks of law and order in the United States. Islam generates fluidity into the concept of U.S. Sovereignty due to its insistent faith that it is interpreting the final words of Abraham’s god via the seal of the Prophets – this faith is the basic root of supremacist thought in Islam.

The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of our land – it is a man made law. The supreme law of Islam is Shariah Law. Shariah Law is based on the ethical lessons of the Koran, the Hadith, the sira, and the ijma. The definitions of right and wrong, legal and illegal, good and evil…are at stake in the elemental struggle we have engaged. U.S. Sovereignty must have champions in this intellectual battle. For Shariah Law prophecizes doom for all man made laws and borders. Tactics to achieve the supremacy of Islamic Law (Shariah) are carried out in a variety of ways on multiple levels.

You are right – our enemies have time and again told us that Islam and Democracy are incompatible. “We are,” as Ralph Peters recently noted, “in the unique position of denying that our enemies know what they themselves are up to. They insist, publicly, that their goal is our destruction (or, in their mildest moods, our conversion) in their god’s name. We contort ourselves to insist that their religious rhetoric is all a sham, that they are merely cynics exploiting the superstitions of the masses.” Ralph Peters’ article “Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars” in The Journal of International Security Affairs demonstrates the difficulty America’s intellectual community is having in defining the enemy. It is one of the best articles of 2009.

Walid Phares, one of the foremost experts in contemporary jihadist studies, in his book The Confrontation, notes that we are still struggling to define “jihad” in the West. This at the end of a trilogy which begins with a book entitled Future Jihad. Our U.S. Government, under Bush’s last term began moving toward banning the word “jihad” in its official documents and discussions. Obama’s administration is institutionalizing this evasion. So, your concerns on defining the problem are well met. Therefore, let us, as free men, with no constraints, retain our moral prejudices, dedicated to the sovereignty of our nation, our souls, and our liberties as we define the threat at hand. The experts, policy makers, diplomats, and representatives of Western Civilization are conflicted and fracted over their understanding of the threat. Without a unified definition of the threat, the moral response and grassroots effort to generate awareness are falling to the public without unity. It is our responsibility, as concerned citizens, to meet this threat without evasion.

As to your final questions – all are relevant terms, each with its slant on the threat.

Islamism is a term which references Political Islam. The goal of Political Islam is to establish an Islamic State beholdened to the dictate of Shariah Law. Typically, demography determines the type of Islamist activity on display in a given area. Some Political Islamists advocate the use of democracy and diplomacy as means to an end, while others reject the manmade roots of the Western-styled political process and demand its overthrow for the sake of the global caliphate. Bill Warner’s Center for the Study of Political Islam is fast making a science of the study of Islamism.


Jihadism is the militant activity of dutifully terrorizing infidels and, on behalf of Allah’s Will, laying siege the sovereignty of individual rights. Contemporary Jihadism has given birth to the suicide bomber martyr factories. Contemporary Jihadism relies on indirect funding by donors through a network of brokers called Hawaladars, who literally purify money for the mosque and the madrassa. When considering Al Qaeda, jihad is its “base” activity. When considering Hezbollah and Hamas and Fatah, jihad is framed in resistance rhetoric while legitimizing the movements is based on establishing Islamist political parties in parallel to the militant branch. Jihadists make up the bulk of terrorism’s end players throughout the world, since their fingers are on triggers or detonators when they shout “Allahu Akbar” and become the sword of Allah. Some modern Western thinkers have coined the phrase “bin Ladenism” to describe the holy warriors of this stripe.

Radical Islam is an understanding of the threat which presupposes the validity and existence of “moderate Islam”. As the term suggests, Radical Muslims teach a “perverted” or “extremely radical” version of Islam, which distorts the true nature of Islam. However, an analysis of the Islamic Trilogy (the Koran, the Hadith, and the Sira) renders all arguments for the existence of moderate Islam to the position of “theory”. Brigitte Gabriel’s books and Act for America is built around defeating the threat of Radical Islam.

Islamic Fundamentalism is the puritan form of Islamic Thought. When the term “literalist” or the term “revivalist” is used in reports, describing the enemy, Islamic Fundamentalism is the breed being discussed. There are many schools of thought within the purist interpretations of Islamic Fundamentalism. Islamic Fundamentalism presupposes a “golden age” narrative of Islamic conquest and expansion made up of the days of Muhammad and the first four Caliphs of Islam. Sectarianism within Islam is found at the fundamentalist level. To an Islamic Fundamentalist, the golden age of the ideal society (Muhammad’s Umma) must be revived and emulated in order to restore the former power and glory of Islam and achieve victory over the corruptions that have destroyed Muslim dominance.

IslamoFascism is a Western term which groups all of the above concepts into an organized movement bent on regional and world domination. In 2005, President Bush described the terrorist threat to America as “Islamofascist”. This reading of the threat by the “neoconservative” White House caused a backlash in the Muslim World. The phrase was widely condemned by Muslim groups like MPAC, MSA and CAIR, who immediately embarked on a public relations campaign on American airwaves. The leadership of the Muslim American communities developed a set of bumper-sticker slogan talking points and marched on CNN and FOX and NBC and ABC to make their case for why “Islam is a religion of Peace”. Day after day, news broadcast after news broadcast featured the mantra, and within a year the indoctrination method became gospel to the liberal leaning media. Soon phrases like “Islam is not a monolith” were added to the sound bite war of perception in the Western main stream media. When Geert Wilders, a publicly elected official in Europe remained outspoken about the “fascist” nature of the Koran, the international Muslim community went on the offensive, lobbying to reverse the tables and silence Wilders.

In short, the term IslamoFascism denotes an enemy which holds an ethical worldview based on – disregarding borders and manmade law in a transnational expansion mentality with an economic outlook based on the mercantile rules of Muhammad’s age – an age of piracy, slavery, monopoly, adventurous barbarism and a jihadist driven Shariah Law.

Islamism, Jihadism, Radical Islam, Islamic Fundamentalism, and IslamoFascism each hold a particular definition and connotation. More or less, they are approaches to understanding the scope and depth of the threat the West faces. The most accurate depiction of the threat we face is found in Islamic Fundamentalism and Islamism. State Fundamentalists like the Saudi Wahhabist and the Iranian Khomeinists export their fundamentalist interpretations of the Islamic Trilogy and the ijma consensus into the elite educational system of Muslim thought, which then trickles down into the Madrassa instruction, Mosque prayers, and political players. This methodology has yielded what is known as “strategic depth”.

Iran’s strategic depth is felt in the agitations of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi Army in Iraq, and the support streams for the Palestinians from Damascus through Gaza. Saudi Arabia’s strategic depth is felt in the Pakistani Taliban Frankensteins, the Yemeni constructs; even the Northern African belt is held by the influence. The ISI has followed a similar forma through the Deoband Wahhab and seek strategic depth throughout all surrounding states of the AfPak region.

At present, with three years of intense independent research on the topics of Islam, Jihad, the terror rings of the Levant, the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, Europe and the Americas, what has become abundantly clear to me is that the enemy we face is Islamic Supremacism. The chief weapon of Islamic Supremacism is not jihadist terror – the chief weapon is Shariah Law. It is evident that Islam, made up of literally dozens of sects, hundreds of tribal and nationalist camps, and thousands of local cultural interpretations of world and regional events, is not a monolith. However, it is also clear that Islam is a Supremacist Faith, drawn from the rock hard belief in the fundamental “new knowledge” of the Koran and its Prophet as the only valid and logical source of Authority.

Islamic Supremacism is an umbrella term. The Jihadists, Islamists, Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Radicals all fall under this umbrella. It is chiefly a term which designates the human rights aspect of the struggle against the threat. In the Iraq, Afghan, and Pakistani Constitutions, Shariah Law is the source of legislation. That is to say, right and wrong, legal and illegal, good and evil, the values and virtues of the societies at play in those nation states are determined by Shariah Law. Back in 2000, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights was considered by the OIC nation states of the Muslim World to be incomplete – the 57 states put forward the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights which appended Shariah Law as the arbiter of Human Rights in the Muslim World.

Shariah Law is attacking the Sovereignty of each individual country, the world over, in its push to reserve the final word and judgment on human rights, internationally.

The reverberations of the seemingly diplomatic attack were recently felt in London, when the Archbishop of Canterbury went to bat for the Muslims in London, saying that Shariah Law should be allowed in Muslim Communities, a complete trump of British Sovereignty by a Clerical Fascism, described well by Melanie Phillips in her book Londonistan. How long will it be before a Catholic, Anglican, Black Liberation Theologist or liberal elite leader in the United States decides to make the rights of Muslims to their own form of Law in complete subversion of the US Constitution into an ACLU bonanza?

Islamic Supremacism is actually a redundant term. Islam means submission; only those who are in a position of supremacy can force or coerce submission. On the economic front, Shariah Compliant Finance is on the rise and has been steadily advancing its regulatory mechanisms and governance methodology by consulting with groups like Ernst & Young or McKinsey & Company for the past decade – the entire MENASA region is ripe for Shariah Compliant Finance takeover. The threat is not just political or military as the above terms and categories suggest – Islamic Supremacism is a complete socio-economic attack on the national and individual sovereignty of the kuffar (blaspheming infidels). The chief weapon in that battle is Shariah Law. The first victim in the offensive will be limits of law, the second victim will be national borders. Why? Because they are man-made limits and do not submit to the laws of Allah. Interestingly, at the end of the day – Americans are fighting for their individual rights and liberties, while Islamic Supremacists are fighting for Allah’s Rights and the Umma’s collective liberties framed in the crucible of jihad.

Definitions matter. Defining the enemy is a primary task that we cannot take lightly. It is certain that the American people are not prepared to mount an ideological offensive against the threat since it cannot even identify it through the untouchable veil of Islam. And though time is ticking against us in this ever changing battle of ideas, we must walk with the faith that we have enough time left to mount an intellectual revolt against the threat of Islamic Supremacism. The revolt is only beginning. We, the intellectual front runners and bridges must frame the battle in a way that guarantees victory. We must tackle the definition of “jihad” and push forward to “see” the global map of terrorism, that we, a more clairvoyant generation, might defeat the supremacist dreams of our offenders.

Sovereignty is based on – the supreme source of law – authority. The chief enemy of the U.S. Constitution in this regard is Allah. Luckily, our Framers saw fit to include an Establishment Clause as a check on the supremacist aims of ideological movements such as Islamic Supremacism.

Actively Engaged,

Gary H. Johnson, Jr.
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