Jihad Plotting Persists in Mosques

By Robert Spencer Jihad Watch It is now official U.S. Government policy that Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, and that therefore any examination of the stated motives and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists constitutes "Islamophobia" and must be shunned, as well as punished. But new revelations this week from a confessed jihad plotter indicate that this is exactly the opposite policy of what should have been adopted.A young Muslim named Abdel Hameed Shehadeh recently tried to join the U.S. Army, not out of patriotism but as part of a plan to surprise American soldiers and murder them in the name of Islam and jihad. But he was caught, and began talking; if even some of the information he has given investigators is accurate, he has exposed a jihad network of impressive proportions that should end politically correct self-deception in law enforcement officials' approach to the problem of jihad terrorism in the United States.Shehadeh provided the FBI with enough information to fill a 22-page report that is so incriminating to him personally that his lawyers are now trying to suppress it. Those he named would also no doubt like to see his report suppressed. According to the New York Daily News, Shehadeh was "a fount of information." Among the jihad plotters he named were "Brooklyn teachers of the Islamic orthodoxy Salafism" and Muslims who "delivered pro-jihadist speeches at mosques or ranted in online chat rooms." The Islamic advocacy establishment in the U.S. insists that all Muslims in this country happily accept Constitutional freedoms and pluralism, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a venomous "Islamophobe." If Shehadeh's claims are true, however, Salafism, a form of hardline Islam that calls for the imposition of Islamic law in its fullness, including stonings, beheadings, amputations, and warfare against unbelievers, is being preached not just in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran, but also right here in Brooklyn. And while the politically correct media establishment demands that we accept that mosques in the U.S. are exactly equivalent to churches and synagogues, nothing more, nothing less, Shehadeh claims that pro-jihad sermons are being preached in mosques in the New York area. This isn't really surprising, despite the fact that it goes against the iron dogma to which the government, the mainstream media and Islamic spokesmen in America all adhere. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the "extremist ideology." The Center for Religious Freedom's 2005 study and the Mapping Sharia Project's 2008 study confirmed his findings. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule. Just recently, in the summer of 2011, came yet another study that showed that only 19 percent of mosques in the U.S. do not teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.Shehadeh also named as jihad plotters, along with "a livery cab driver" and "a College of Staten Island student who attended a fund-raiser at Brooklyn College for a terrorist," an "Ethiopian Muslim in the U.S. Army." But of course it would be the height of "Islamophobia" to question Muslims in the U.S. military as to their loyalties. He even identified "a reputed member of the terror group Hamas who lives in Syracuse." Shehadeh says that in 2008 he went to "a lecture at the Brooklyn Islamic Center in 2008 with someone named 'Omar' and a second man who peddled pro-jihad T-shirts. 'Almost everything [Omar] and his friend . . . talked about was jihad.'"All this testimony suggests that jihadist sentiments are far more widespread among Muslims in the United States than most analysts have been willing to acknowledge. Even conservative anti-jihadists tell comforting fictions about Islamic texts and teachings and insist on refraining from telling the whole truth about Islam in order to support moderate Muslims, who in reality are so few in number as to be almost wholly ineffective against the jihadists.So will Shehadeh's revelations, if proven correct, lead to the abandonment of the government's politically correct fictions about Islam and jihad?Don't count on it.