Pamela Geller, American Thinker: Is this the proper American Muslim response to jihad in America?

Go over to The American Thinker and read my column.

Is this the proper American Muslim response to jihad in America?

Pamela Geller, American Thinker

On Friday, October 11, a Muslim convert who calls himself Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum was taken off a terror-bound bus in California and arrested for aiding and abetting the jihadi group al-Qaeda.  Another Muslim busted for jihad in America.

This is hardly new or unique.  We see these reports daily.  Muslims and converts to Islam wage jihad in the cause of Islam.  They cite the Quran, chapter and verse.  Muslims worldwide continue the 1,400-year-old war to impose Islam across the world — all citing the same Islamic texts and teachings.

There is a problem in Islam.

So what is the response of the Muslim community?

On the same day that Hassan Abu Omar Ghannoum was arrested, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California issued a statement: “We share the collective concern for the safety of our communities and security of our nation.”  However, it went on to say: “We ask that law enforcement officials and members of the media refrain from assuming that the alleged criminal’s wrongful conduct, if any, was a product of his self-proclaimed faith or associations with members of the southern California Muslim community.”

Obfuscation, cover-up, and deceit.  The bottom line is that they know exactly what Ghannoum is doing and why.  Ghannoum’s brother said that after converting to Islam, Ghannoum had gone to Lebanon to learn more about the religion: “He wanted to view more of the religious things. Firsthand experience.”  His sister said that he went to Syria to study the Quran.  While there, he began posting on Facebook about how he was fighting alongside the jihad forces there, bragging about his “first confirmed kill” and writing: “So pumped to get more!!”

The Islamic Shura Council of Southern California never mentioned the possibility that Ghannoum’s study of the Quran inspired him to wage jihad.  They just warned everyone else not to consider that possibility.  Did the Shura Council call for the expunging in the Quran of the violent texts that call for jihad?  No.

We never see that from Muslim groups.  What we do see is this Islamic pattern of stealth jihad.  Muslim Brotherhood groups issue pro-forma, fill-in-the-blank condemnations after jihadi attacks or arrests (e.g., the Boston bombing), but they never address the Islamic texts that inspire jihad — nor do they attempt to organize programs that intervene in the recruitment of young Muslims or Muslim converts to jihad.  What are the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, CAIR, ICNA, ISNA, et al. doing to stop the mosques preaching and teaching jihad?  Nothing.  Instead, these Muslim groups urge Muslims not to talk to law enforcement (right photo: CAIR poster), and they seek to dismantle counter-terror programs in the USA.

Why isn’t the Muslim community trying to reform Islam?  Why aren’t Muslim groups shutting down mosques that teach and preach jihad?  What mosque did Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum attend?

And this isn’t the only example of Muslim groups’ denial and obfuscation.  The United Muslim Nations International (UMNI) group asked the South African media to stop using terms like “Islamist” to describe jihad attacks such as the recent one in Nairobi’s Westgate Mall.  South African Muslim leader Ganief Hendricks said that “the biased terminology of editors” was “not helpful,” and added: “What happened in Nairobi, in the mall attack, may have been a bank robbery gone wrong, using Islam as a cover-up.”

Here again we see Islamic supremacism even among the “moderates.”  Why is UMNI asking the media not to use terms like “Islamist”?  So as not to incite jihad?  The jihadists can separate the victims by religion in the Nairobi Westgate Mall, and Muslims are released (and this is not new; we saw this in Algeria, Mumbai, etc.) but the non-Muslims are tortured and killed, but the media can’t use the word Islam?

Victims at the mall had to say an Islamic prayer and give Muhammad’s mother’s name, but the media cannot report events as they took place.

Why is the Muslim world asking this of the media?  Why isn’t the Muslim world taking this up among its own ranks?  Why isn’t the Muslim world looking inward to reformation, to address the daily acts of jihad in the cause of Islam?

Further, the word “Islamist” itself is already a concession.  Think about it.  Do we use “Christianist” (outside a few rabid leftists)?  Judaist?  Essentially, what does it mean to say that someone or something is “Islamist” as opposed to “Islamic”?  Nothing, really, except that the person speaking doesn’t want to offend Islam by speaking unwelcome truths about the political nature of the religion.

I have been called the most vile names, and let me assure you that it never entered my mind to respond violently.  The idea that the kuffar are responsible for the violence of jihadists is an Islamic supremacist concept.

AFDI has issued an 18-point platform for defeating jihad in America.  If Muslim groups in the U.S. were genuinely “moderate,” they’d endorse every point.  Instead, they smear us as “Islamophobes.”  It’s telling.

The Truth Must be Told

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