Birth Pains of the New Caliphate

It's been a couple of years since I've seriously broached this topic. The recent riotous uprising in Egypt, categorized by the usual American media suspects as attempts at "democracy", bring the topic clearly back to relevancy. In actuality, the topic has always been relevant, but it always takes something major to wake up the American public.

For the great unwashed, and for those media talking heads who nearly lost their own heads this past week at the hands of these alleged democracy-loving demonstrators, let's do a quick refresher on just what exactly is the Islamic "caliphate", and why we all should be concerned about it.

A very long story begins in the first half of the 7th century A.D. with the birth of Islam under it's founder, Muhammad, a man believed by followers of that faith to be the greatest and final messenger of God. Muhammad first spread this new faith by peaceful preaching and teaching, but he and his followers eventually turned to violent and forcible means.

In the aftermath of Muhammad's death in 632, physical and spiritual battles arose for control of Islam by two groups who we continue that struggle today, 1,500 years later -  the Sunni and the Shiites. The Sunni were larger and stronger, and overall Islamic power was centralized under a leader who was known as the 'Caliph', the successor to Muhammad. The lands and peoples over which the Caliph held control became known as the Islamic Caliphate.

For centuries this Caliphate spread by conquest known as 'Jihad' throughout the lands of the Middle East, across northern Africa, and into both Spain and eastern Europe. By the end of the 17th century, just before the emergence of America as a nation and culture, the Caliphate controlled an area as large as the old Roman Empire.


The end finally began to come for the Islamic Caliphate on the eve of the American birth when, in 1774, it surrendered large portions of control to the emerging Russian nation. Then the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the Caliphate over it's final four centuries, went into World War I on the side of the Axis powers, the losing side.

In the aftermath of defeat in World War I, secular power took charge in Turkey, and the Caliphate was formally abolished. Ever since that time, various religious and military leaders have vowed to return the Caliphate to power, most notably the Muslim Brotherhood. That has been and remains the goal of the worldwide movement known to many today as "radical Islam", to take control first of the Middle East, and then begin to spread the Caliphate around the region, to neighboring nations, and eventually around the entire world.

The Muslim Brotherhood is at the very core of the troubles in the Middle East today. The Brotherhood has for decades been sparking, fomenting, and supporting uprisings through it's creations such as al Qaeda and Hamas among dozens of others. Their stated goals are: the reestablishment of the Caliphate, the reunification of their nation (the Ummah), the institution of strict Islamic religious law (Shariah), and the spread of the Caliphate around the world.

They are behind the uprisings that have taken place recently or are currently taking place across the Arabic world from Egypt to Jordan, from Tunisia to Syria, from Libya to Lebanon. While these alleged "popular uprisings" for "democratic reforms" topple various types of secular institutional governments, make no mistake about what the new replacement governments will become. They will become Islamic theocracies, either outright or by proxy control.

As the Muslim Brotherhood exercises and expands it's control by whipping up tens of thousands at the grass-roots level to violently demonstrate and forcibly coerce change, the results will not be anything like American or even European democracy. What we are seeing in Egypt and across the Middle East, and will continue to see there, in Africa, and will see at some point in every nation of the world during this century, are the birth pains of the new Caliphate.

Millions of Americans will be glued to their television sets for hours this weekend to watch a football game. They will gorge on tons of food and snack treats, scarf down alcoholic and carbonated beverages by the truck load, and gamble away hard-earned money on pools and bets. Meanwhile, a much bigger, deadlier, and far more important game will be playing out on the other side of the world.

Americans who continue to consider a few weeks, months, or even a couple years of largely quiet times in the struggle against radical Islam as anything other than a lull in the storm are kidding themselves. More than that, they are passively ignoring the struggle that will be one of the most vital across their world as they age. It is the struggle that will define the world in which their children and grandchildren live out this century. It is one that will be forced upon them by the Caliphate now in the struggles of it's own rebirth.

Islamism Series: The Two Jihads

Back in April of this year, local Philadelphia Bulletin writer Herb Denenberg pointed out that the War on Terror (or the 'contingency operation' or whatever other soft-sounding name the Obama administration wants to rename it today) needed to be fought on two fronts. Fail to fight battles aggressively on either front, and we are in danger of ultimately losing the entire war.

Denenberg opined that al Qaeda and other radical Islamist terror organizations and their sponsor states were fighting the war on those two fronts: the 'Explosive Jihad' being carried out by the terror organizations through bombings, beheadings, and other planned mass attacks and the 'Stealth Jihad' being carried out by the slow manipulation of populations, politicians, universities, and cultures.

That 'Explosive Jihad' has again blasted into the American news headlines in recent days with the FBI raids in the New York borough of Queens. The Feds uncovered the first proven al Qaeda cell operating on U.S. soil since the 9/11 attacks, and moved quickly to take them down with raids in New York and Denver. Complete plot details have not been released, but as reported in the New York Daily News, this was "the real deal" and not some informant-based action.

These raids follow on the heels of the May foiling of a major plot to bomb a pair of New York synagogues and then shoot down an airliner with a Stinger missile. That plot was foiled when the New York-area Joint Terrorism Task Force uncovered and infiltrated the scheme, and supplied it with phony plastic explosives. When the terrorists planted the fake bombs, the Feds moved in and made their arrests. The Daily News reported also that one of the suspects, Abdul Rahman, stated "I hate those motherfuckers, those fucking Jewish bastards. I would like to get a synagogue."

Meanwhile, on the "Stealth Jihad" front, the Wahhabists from Saudi Arabia continue to fund a variety of methods aimed at changing American attitudes and culture in favor of Islam. As reported in the online magazine Front Page: "..embedded deep within our system of higher education, including many of our most prestigious universities..the Saudis have steadily infiltrated American educational institutions with vast infusions of cash."

Wahabbism is one of the most radical and virulent strains of Islamism, the worst of the worst among radical Islamists. It hates Western religious tolerance, and advocates Islam taking over the entire world religiously, culturally, and politically. It has been estimated that the Arab Wahabbis have funded the vast majority of the mosques built here in the U.S. over the past few decades.

The Wahhabists make the mortgage payments on 80% of American mosques, according to Front Page, and have contributed approximately $70 billion dollars over the past three decades to fund anti-American and anti-Israeli propaganda efforts, including the establishment of schools of Middle Eastern studies at major American universities accompanied by the infiltration of professorial positions in those programs that push an anti-Western message.

The attempted attacks and the efforts at manipulating our society from within and without are all part and parcel of what the radical Islamists see as 'the long war', the one of attrition that they will ultimately win by wearing down America's will to fight. They hurt us on many levels with physical attacks, such as the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks of 9/11, but it may be the emotional toll that such attacks take on us, combined with our inability to recognize the danger thanks to the cultural and educational softening, that ultimately prove our undoing.

The Washington Times has reported that "al Qaeda is looking to exploit weakness in U.S. border security" in order to carry out what their sources believe may be a massive biological attack. In a video presentation, a senior al Qaeda official states: "Four pounds of anthrax in a suitcase this big (shows moderate hand separation) carried by a fighter through tunnels from Mexico into the U.S. are guaranteed to kill 330,000 Americans within a single hour if it is properly spread in population centers there."

It has also been reported that al Qaeda has forged agreements with the notorious South American drug cartel Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, to smuggle thousands of the terrorist group's operatives across the U.S-Mexico border. MS-13 would be paid from $30-50,000 US dollars for each operative smuggled into our country.

Americans need to understand that just because the former mainstream media does not report on these continuing efforts by the radical Islamists to exterminate and overthrow our culture and our nation, that these efforts have ended. As Denenberg pointed out correctly, the battle cry of the Muslim Brotherhood, one shared by all radical Islamists, is this: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” The fully intend to make this happen through the efforts of the Two Jihads.

Islamism Series: The Brotherhood

With the new kinder, gentler Obama administration becoming more and more entrenched by the week, their media apparatus and their own actions have thus far been successful in lulling us to sleep. To ignore the presence and growth of radical Islam here in the United States, to sleep the sleep of the dreamers who believe that a simple regime change here in America has made any difference to those radicals whatsoever, places us all in greater danger. On Monday, April 6th, 2009 the Hudson Institute, one of the most respected research think-tanks in the world, issued a report on 'The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States'. In short, the report states that "Leadership of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood has said that its goal was and is jihad aimed at destroying the U.S. from within." The report goes on to talk about the stated means of making this happen, by establishing Islamic organizations here in the U.S. that are under the control of The Brotherhood. The organization has for more than four decades been building a wide-ranging and elaborate cadre of front groups while denying publicly that it has any desire to topple the American governmental structure. The Hudson report, written by Steven Merley, says that the current operating goal has been in existence for at least two decades, and that is one of the concept of 'Settlement'. This benign-sounding term basically means the establishment, organization, and growth of Islam here in America. The reality behind this soft-sounding term of 'settlement', as a 1991 document published by U.S. Brotherhood leader Mohammed Akram said, is quite simply "a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within." The Muslim Brotherhood is to be at the forefront of that jihad here in the U.S., propped up by a covert infrastructure that supports a series of public organizations. Merley's Hudson report goes on to describe the growth of the Brotherhood in Europe prior to its coming to America, and then goes on to elaborate on that move here to the U.S. and its growth here since the 1960's. The wrap-up is the truth that the Brotherhood continues to publicly deny: it has a radical Islamic history, it has supported radical Islamic groups with ideology, money, and legal support, and it has made no efforts to reform itself. In short, the Muslim Brotherhood remains an organization committed at its very core to infiltrating the American government and society, and slowing but surely seeking and finding ways to overthrow democracy, capitalism, and freedom itself, replacing it with rule by fundamentalist Sharia Islamic law. Since taking office, some have claimed that Mr. Obama has allowed this organization to find a footing with him in Washington, including Douglas Farah at the Counterterrorism Blog who recently posted an article titled 'The Inroads of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration'. It is difficult to make that leap, that Brotherhood members, whether pronounced or covert, are in any way a part of the Obama administration. What is not difficult to examine, however, is the general attitude towards security and intelligence that the administration is taking. There is an article in today's Wall Street Journal by Gen. Michael Hayden, director of the CIA from 2006-2009, and Michael Mukasey, who was the U.S. Attorney General from 2007-2009 which is headlined 'The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror' and which basically claims that Obama's actions are making us less likely to be able to effectively monitor groups like the Brotherhood here in America. They talk about a book by Jack Goldsmith titled 'The Terror Presidency' in which Goldsmith speaks of "cycles of timidity and aggression": politicians, such as the Obama people are doing today, pressure the intel community to push legal limits, then accuse these people when aggressiveness goes out of vogue, thereby incurring no risk to themselves, while then being able to call the intel community timid in the wake of a 9/11-type attack. This is just one of many dangers with the Obama administration. They will talk tough, but tie the hands of intel and security people publicly, then will quietly tell them to do whatever they can to ensure our national security, and will either take praise if all goes well or shift blame to that intel and security community if things go poorly or a major attack happens. The 'intel' community didn't get that moniker from nowhere, they aren't stupid, and so they see how this game is being developed by the Obama folks, who have had a near-impossible time attempting to fill many of their highest-level job positions in these areas. One has to hope that it won't take a 9/11, or worse, for the Obama folks to wake up and realize the true danger that groups like the Muslim Brotherhood pose to America, its people, and our traditional way of life. While Obama plays political games with intel and security, the Brotherhood continues to operate towards its stated objective of one day lowering the American flag, and raising an Islamic flag over the White House. NOTE: As always, the title of this piece is a link to further information on the topic, this time to Steven Merley's Hudson Institute report.