What do the following organizations have in common?
Al-Qaida, ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Boko Haram, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Abu Nidal Organisation, Abu Sayyaf, Aden Abyan Islamic Army, Al-Badr, Al-Nusrah Front, Al-Shababb, Ansar al-Sharia, Ansar al-Islam, Ansar al-Deen, Army of Islam, Boko Haram, Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front, Harqat al-Jihad al-Islamic, Palestine Liberation Front, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Taliban.
I'm sure you know.
These are just a few of the many Islamic terrorist organizations slaughtering Christians and Jews, other non-Muslims, those belonging to other Muslim sects and even those of their own sect whom they consider “not Muslim enough”.
Their overall aim is the violent imposition of Sharia law wherever they can; as Boko Haram, IS, and Al-Shabab have done in northern Nigeria, Iraq-Syria and Somalia respectively.
Most are off-shoots of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) aka “Ikwan”, though the MB will often disown them publicly.
What do the groups below have in common?
Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Muslim Aid, Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), Institute of Islamic Political Thought, Muslim Public affairs Council UK (MPACUK).
Maybe you don’t know.
They too are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, which in a document presented to the American court system in 2007 was forced to reveal that they regarded the role of Muslims in the west to be “...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 [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions." (page 7, see here and here).
They, just like the “terrorists” have the goal of replacing Western (and all other) civilizations with Sharia law as their own statement clearly shows (this is what it means when “God's religion is victorious”).
Thus the “terrorists” and the MB all share the same goals, they only differ as to the means to attain them. Both have the goals of the imposition of worldwide Shariah law, the subjugation of women into a status of second-class personhood, reduction of non-Muslims to a third-class status as “Dhimmis” and the triumph of Islam over all other ideologies and religions. A key point to understand is that both the MB and its fronts as well as the “terrorists” are actually orthodox Muslims.
Not all of them admit their goals. They’ll tell you Islam seeks to elevate the status of women, Shariah doesn’t need to be imposed but welcomed because it is compatible with democracy and/or western values and that Islam has always demonstrated extreme tolerance and respect for other religions. Those that say such things are engaging in “taqqiya” - lying to non-Muslims to advance the cause of Islam and/or protect Muslims.
The MB seeks to use (largely) peaceful means, a generational undermining of “non-Islamic” societies until they are degraded to a point at which Sharia law may be progressively introduced.
The terrorists, on the other hand, believe that the use of violence will produce the same results in a much shorter time frame. Their belief is that they can bully and terrorise non-Muslims et al into acquiescence.
MB fronts will often repudiate terror, especially when it is directed at other Muslims, since they believe in targeting the society not the individual and they also believe that once Sharia is properly imposed then the “hypocritical” Muslims (those that are not fully orthodox Muslims) will fall into line.
Despite such repudiation the MB and its fronts are actually quite “comfortable” with Islamic violence when it is directed at non-Muslims.
The report “milestones to militancy” shows that 51 of the 100 “prominent Jihadists” surveyed had well-documented links to what the author calls “Islamist groups” and most were also well educated. In my terms this would be links to non-violent orthodox Muslim groups and in particular the Muslim Brotherhood or one of its many offshoots. The Orthodox-Jihadist link was shown clearly in this article which showed that just one “non-violent Islamist” group had links to half of all Islamic terrorists in the U.K. In the period 1995-2015.
Jihadist violence aids the aims of the MB by frightening non-Muslim governments who fear “civil unrest” above all and this fear is used to gain ever greater “accommodations” of Islamic practice (that is elements of Sharia law) as normative within non-Muslim societies.
Welcome to creeping Sharia.
There are certainly differences between what writers such as Jacob Olidort call “quietist” i.e. non-violent Orthodox Muslims (many of whom are Salafists) and Jihadists in terms of attitudes.
The main areas of contention are that the “quietists” think that the “time is not right” for overt Jihad against the west and they often disapprove of the murder of other Muslims preferring the idea of persuasion to “bring them back to Islam”.
But when it comes to attitudes towards the “darul Harb” - literally meaning “the house of war” - which refers to the non-Muslim dominant world, as Olidorf says the quietism “is merely a placeholder rather than a principle for most Salafi groups today. "Quietists,” [political] activists, jihadists, and other Salafis are all composed of the same 'theological DNA'. They base themselves on texts and concepts developed over centuries by communities of established Muslim scholars. Indeed, this is a crucial component of the Salafi claim to authenticity. It is therefore not a big conceptual leap to go from quietism to jihadism. ” (Brookings edu, 2015 emphasis mine).
In August 2007 the NYPD produced a report called “Radicalization in the West: the homegrown threat” which rapidly disappeared from their website following intervention by CAIR and other US Muslim groups.
In it the authors studied a number of terrorist attacks with the intent of identifying any patterns, not with the attacks, but with the perpetrators.
They found that there were four stages common to the attacks they studied. These were “pre-radicalisation”, self-identification, indoctrination and what they termed “jihadization”.
According to the NYPD report the final step, “Jihadization”, takes place outside the mosque because the mosque, whilst espousing orthodox Theology, is “quietist” in nature either for ideological or practical reasons.
In some cases this final step will be at the hands of those who have already taken that step, in other cases the developing understanding of orthodox ideology will be sufficient – thus the supposed “phenomenon” of “self-radicalisation”.
In other words even “quietist” orthodox Muslims will turn to aggressive Jihadist violence if and once they deem that the time is right.
It therefore follows that the difference between orthodox Muslims and Jihadists is demonstrably not one of belief or ideology, but only in application.
“Quietist” orthodox Muslims are only “quietist” because they think they are living in conditions in which overt sword-jihad (“jihad bis saif”) is contra-indicated, the Jihadists simply think that the “time is right”.
The Koran was recited in two very different places and sets of conditions. The first years of Mohammed's preaching took place in Mecca when his band of followers were a tiny minority and highly vulnerable. In this time and place Mohammed preached peace and relied purely on Daw'ah (proselytisation) to gain converts.
The later years were in Medina, the first place in which Islam came to be a dominant force. Here, with a safe place for Muslims Mohammed's preaching turns to the violent conversion, subjugation or extermination of non-Muslims.
Thus if orthodox Muslims think that their community is a vulnerable minority they think of themselves as being “in Mecca” - that is they are peaceful. It should be noted that the driver for this “peaceful Islam” is primarily fear (more on that in a moment).
If, however, orthodox Muslims think themselves as “strong”, in large enough numbers to over-awe non-Muslims or otherwise protected by the state, then they are “in Medina” and violence is to be expected.
In history this violence extended to the extermination of non-Muslim populations, from the Jews of the Banu Quraiza to the Jews of Grenada and from the Christians of North Africa to the genocide of Armenian Christians. And these were mostly peoples who were supposed to be “protected” within Islam as Dhimmis.
Given that Jihadist violence can reach genocidal levels it would be no surprise if there is not a certain degree of fear amongst Muslims that, were the tables turned, Muslims might be subjected to such a level of “counter-Jihad” violence. It therefore follows that when Muslims are a small minority within a non-Muslim (“Kaffir”) Country they have a powerful fear-based incentive to be peaceful.
The worrying element here is that the more the west reacts with supine indifference and appeasement – both verbal or practical – and the larger the Muslim population becomes, the stronger becomes the Jihadists' case because in practical terms the Muslim population will view itself as “strong” - i.e. it is increasingly “in Medina”.
If the west will not defend it's own values, persists in denying the involvement of the “religion of peace” in terrorism, opens it's borders to even more (orthodox) Muslims, allows Sharia to encroach ever more on it's societies then the West will be validating the Jihadists' viewpoint ever more strongly and thus we can expect to see ever increasing levels of Islamic terror as more and more orthodox Muslims become convinced that we are ripe for subjugation.
“Fight against those who (1) believe not in Allah, (2) nor in the Last Day, (3) nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (4) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.” Koran 9:29, Hilali-Khan translation
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