The Perfect Enemy and How to defeat it.

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The Perfect Enemy and How to defeat it

by Paul Sperry

As details about the hijackers rolled in after 9/11, I was most struck by how long some had lived in America before stabbing their gracious host in the back. Hani Hanjour, the pilot of the Pentagon plane, for example, had lived in Arizona on and off since 1991.

Yet he and the others were not seduced by the many charms of America, and went through with their wicked plan anyway. America is a beautiful, fun and vibrant place. Its people are friendly and hospitable. The hijackers went to Sea World and shopped at Wal-Mart. They could come and go as they pleased, and they did. They could worship whenever and wherever they wanted, and they did – attending no less than seven mosques in five states. What wasn't to love about America? Wasn't this paradise enough for them? Why didn't any of the hijackers have second thoughts? Why didn't they say, "You know, this place isn't so bad after all. Osama can go pound sand up his nightgown; we're gonna chill here for a while"?

The short answer is that they didn't do what they did for Osama. They did it for Allah, who according to the Quran promises material and carnal pleasures better than anything even America could offer them. That is the spell their faith has over them. We are not fighting poverty or ignorance.

We are fighting a spiritual seduction we have yet to fully grasp and comprehend, hung up as we are on measuring the dreams and happiness of others against our own dreams and happiness. Pleasing their god makes them happy, even if it means killing themselves and others in his name.

But many of the officials in Washington leading the fight against this enemy still don't get it. They still don't understand the enemy's motivation, or at least won't talk candidly about it. A virtual taboo exists in official circles about Islam's role in terrorism. It is treated as if it comes out of the blue, as if there is no religious pattern. To hear them, terrorism is generic, not Islamic.

Even the independent 9/11 Commission hearings tap danced around the issue of why the hijackers did what they did. Witness this exchange during a 2004 hearing that brought together 9/11 investigators to reconstruct the plot.

America's enemy goes beyond al-Qaida or the violent terrorist. It includes all those who advance the agenda of militant Islam. It includes the highly organized network inside this country that secretly supports violent jihad from preachers, to facilitators, to fundraisers, to lobbyists, to even apologists. Instead of bombs, they use words and money, but they are no less dangerous in the overall scheme of things.

How do you fight an enemy driven by a foreign faith and language no one understands, not even your secretary of defense, commander in chief or central intelligence director; an enemy who plans its attacks according to a lunar calendar; who has an endless funding stream from petrodollars; who uses compound Arab names running several words long with dozens of aliases and spelling variations that can easily frustrate watchlists; who cannot be bribed to turn on his brother with even multimillion dollar bounties; an enemy who is adept at exploiting your religious and civil freedoms by recruiting foot soldiers and raising tax free funds for them while inspiring and preparing them for battle in places of worship you protect as the cornerstone of your constitution; who prides itself on patience, discipline and deception; who fights for a god, not even family or country, but a god; who welcomes death, relishes death, even beckons death in order to purchase a ticket to Paradise and a never ending, wine feted romp with nubile virgins in which the sex is better than anything experienced on earth and the wine produces no hangovers?

You have heard of the perfect storm. Well, death loving jihadists and their supporters and facilitators are the perfect enemy. And their creed of militant Islam is spreading like a cancer inside America – from Miami to Atlanta to Los Angeles and even sleepy little Lodi, Calif. – and it's now infecting second-generation Moslem immigrants and black converts, spawning a future wave of "homegrown terrorists:" Americans who kill fellow Americans.

The cancer is metastasizing inside our prisons and on our campuses and even in our government. So what can we do to stop it?

For starters, we need to listen to the senior agents and detectives on the streets working counterterrorism cases in the Moslem community. They know better than anybody what will work and what won't work. Policymakers should look to them for solutions. They're the ones thinking outside the box. In interviews with dozens of them, I've gleaned 10 practical and effective ideas for rolling back the tide of Islamism in America and defeating the perfect enemy. Here they are, in no particular order:

No. 1: Break through the enemy's language barrier by funding Arabic scholarships and hiring Sephardic Jews to eavesdrop and translate.

America's enemy goes beyond al-Qaida or the violent terrorist. It includes all those who advance the agenda of militant Islam. It includes the highly organized network inside this country that secretly supports violent jihad – from preachers, to facilitators, to fund raisers, to lobbyists, to even apologists. Instead of bombs, they use words and money, but they are no less dangerous in the overall scheme of things.

How do you fight an enemy driven by a foreign faith and language no one understands, not even your secretary of defense, commander in chief or central intelligence director; an enemy who plans its attacks according to a lunar calendar; who has an endless funding stream from petrodollars; who uses compound Arab names running several words long with dozens of aliases and spelling variations that can easily frustrate watchlists; who cannot be bribed to turn on his brother with even multimillion-dollar bounties; an enemy who is adept at exploiting your religious and civil freedoms by recruiting foot soldiers and raising tax-free funds for them while inspiring and preparing them for battle in places of worship you protect as the cornerstone of your constitution; who prides itself on patience, discipline and deception; who fights for a god, not even family or country, but a god; who welcomes death, relishes death, even beckons death in order to purchase a ticket to Paradise and a never ending, wine feted romp with nubile virgins in which the sex is better than anything experienced on earth and the wine produces no hangovers?

In prison chapels, meanwhile, Moslem chaplains preach anti-American hate to inmateand prison authorities have no idea what they're talking about because they don't have the Arabic translators to monitor their conversations. Worse, letters and phone calls of jailed terrorists are going unmonitored due to a lack of Arabic speaking staff. Federal prisons alone house more than 100 prisoners with specific ties to international Islamic terror groups. Yet until last year, the Federal Bureau of Prisons had not hired even a single fulltime Arabic translator. The terrorists, in concert with radical imams with access to chapels, are converting black inmates to Islam in droves, making U.S. prisons the top recruiting ground for al-Qaida right now as it tries to lower its Arab profile and draw less security scrutiny.

And five years into the war on terror, remarkably, the Bush administration has no plan to encourage the study of Arabic at U.S. colleges. According to the 9/11 Commission report, U.S. colleges and universities a year after 9-11 had conferred a total of just six undergraduate degrees in Arabic. The number of American students enrolled in Arabic courses still accounts for less than 1 percent of all the language students across the country. More than twice as many students are taking Russian, the language of the Cold War. The government needs to get busy funding fellowship programs in this difficult foreign language to cultivate more American born speakers to help law enforcement and the military translate Arabic documents and chatter in real time. In the meantime, it can start recruiting the many fluent Arabic speakers in America's large Sephardic Jewish community to help clear backlogs

No. 2: Deny visas to Moslem clerics from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

We don't need any more foreign imams preaching hate at mosques and schools here, investigators say. They only act as a force multiplier for the enemy by getting young Moslem men jacked up for jihad.

Incredibly, the Homeland Security Department exempts Moslem clerics visiting the U.S. on R-1 visas from fingerprinting to reduce flight delays at international airports, according to a department memo dated Jan. 2, 2004, and marked "LAW ENFORCEMENT SENSITIVE." They are ranked among the "lowest threat," and treated no differently than Buddhist monks.

Yet hundreds of foreign Moslem clerics have been linked to terrorism, many of whom still preach in the U.S. Since 9/11, the State Department has admitted more than 1,000 imams from Moslem nations including terror hotbeds like Pakistan. In fact, more than one tenth of them are from Pakistan.

Last year, federal authorities arrested two Pakistani imams in connection with a terror case involving a possible al-Qaeda cell in the sleepy farming community of Lodi, Calif. The men allegedly violated the terms of their religious worker visas. One of them got a visa in 2002 even though a month earlier he was caught on video rallying crowds in Islamabad – within earshot of the U.S. Embassy – to join Osama bin Laden's holy war against America.

The leniency the government gives such visiting clerics alarms GOP U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, chairman of the House Immigration Reform Caucus, since many imams are "calling for the violent overthrow of the nation" from mosque pulpits.

"They enter into this country, they are assigned to mosques. And most of the mosques in the United States are being built with Saudi money, most of them are Wahhabi. And these people, many of them, preach essentially sedition," Tancredo asserted. "What these imams have said even outside the mosque would under any other situation, if anybody else would say these things, be considered to be seditious, and even charges would be brought on that basis."

No. 3: Organize anti-Islamist NIMBY – Not in my backyard! – movements at the grass-roots level.

Average citizens have the power to block the development of new Saudi and Pakistani mosques and Islamic schools in their neighborhood through organized protesting. It worked in Loudoun County, Va. The Saudi government planned to build a new 3,500-student campus – complete with a towering minaret – in the county. But school officials scrapped the plan not long after locals warned of a "Saudi invasion," and raised concerns about terrorism. One local pastor who objected to the Islamic school argued that the Saudis should not be given free reign to promote their religion in America when they will not even allow American Christians and Jews to practice their religion in Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi kingdom already operates a school in neighboring Fairfax County. After 9/11, the Islamic Saudi Academy drew unwanted scrutiny for teaching anti-Western hatred and graduating and even employing terror suspects. It graduated a valedictorian who went on to join al-Qaida and plot the assassination of President Bush. Ahmed Abu Ali was voted by his class – are you ready? – "Most Likely to Be a Martyr."

The Saudis still lease their huge school building from Fairfax County, however, and their lease expires next year. Concerned locals should exercise their right to lobby the board of supervisors to deny an extension of the lease. This is a school where ideology of hate is taught on religious grounds. It should be treated no differently than a school that practices racial segregation. They should enjoy no tax breaks, and no government support.

Citizens should also find out what kind of mosque is going up in their neighborhood, and who is backing it. I did. I noticed a large mosque under construction not far from my home in Fairfax, Va. So I investigated. After pulling the real estate records at the county courthouse, I discovered the trustees were from Pakistan, and even used a notary public registered in Lahore, Pakistan – a major red flag. Pakistan, the cradle of the Taliban movement, was the base of operations for many of the 9/11 plotters, and the country remains a sanctuary for top al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden.

Then I learned that the lead trustee, Mian Muhammad Saeed, is also the imam of the mosque, called the Islamic Center of Northern Virginia. It turns out Saeed was the spiritual adviser and personal counselor to the Pakistani terrorist who last decade fatally gunned down two CIA employees and wounded three others outside the agency's headquarters in nearby Langley, Va. After his recent execution, the Pakistani community hailed him as a martyr. Saeed is a hard-line Pakistani cleric who will no doubt attract violent jihadists to his mosque. This is information the public should be aware of, especially the Christian church and Jewish school that will be the mosque's neighbors.

Residents have the right to petition local officials ho approve construction permits for such hard-line mosques. Know the local zoning ordinances. For example, do the proposed minarets exceed county height limits for such structures? Does the mosque's drainage plan meet environmental regulations? Does it have adequate parking, or will overflow lead to congestion and traffic accidents? Neighbors also have the right to tip off the FBI to any suspicious activity at such mosques.

No. 4: Profile Moslem travelers on both planes and trains – but with a twist.

Homeland Security knows where the outside terrorist threat is coming from. It's coming from immigrants from 35 Moslem countries, according to a DHS memo listing high-risk or "Special-Interest Countries." Yet it's waving them in anyway, pretending border authorities can screen out Moslem terrorists from entering the U.S. by running the occasional "intelligence-driven special operation" to detect, for example, Pakistani travelers exhibiting "rope burns," "bruises" and other signs of having trained at still-active terrorist camps in Pakistan, as a sensitive Homeland Security document I obtained reveals.

But all it takes is one terrorist to get through the net. And watchlists are only good for known terrorists. The 9/11 hijackers weren't on the terror watchlist.

Better: Profile young adult males from all the Moslem countries, and authorize immigration inspectors to ask them if they have ever been to a paramilitary training camp in Afghanistan or Pakistan. (They should also be asked the last time they fired a weapon.) It should be a standard question not much unlike the Cold War-era question we put to foreign travelers asking them if they've ever been a member of the Communist Party. And if they should come in to the country and lie, if they should make a false statement, then border authorities would have the grounds to kick them out of the country. And all their belongings should be searched, too. If any jihadi literature is found, it should be ample cause to block their entry.

Subways are a different story. It's harder to do targeted terror profiling of Moslems who are American citizens. The jihadists and their agents have put us in an impossible position. We have to profile them to survive, but they know we won't because if we did we'd violate everything we stand for.

Consider the rhetoric of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Moslem group leading the charge against targeted terror profiling. "I mean, you bring out the worst in people," argued CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper last month. "You violate American values when you do this kind of profiling." Checkmate.

So what can we do? Profile all young men, including WASPs like me, and save grannies and Girl Scouts – as well as elderly Moslem women – the indignity and hassle of random searches. I'd gladly volunteer for extra security screening knowing that young Moslem men were getting checked along with me instead of waltzing through while granny gets a body-cavity search.

Such a policy would leave CAIR's flacks for once tongue-tied.

No. 5: Audit all Moslem charities and launch sting operations against all Saudi-controlled mosques.

In applying for tax-exempt status with the IRS, Moslem charities and nonprofits should be required to submit an additional form certifying that their organization does not promote separatism, terrorism or violence. The IRS needs to do a better job of policing nonprofit Islamic organizations. In 1999, the American Moslem Foundation listed on its U.S. tax form a $5,000 contribution from Libya, a state sponsor of terrorism. Yet the line item raised no red flags at the IRS. It turns out the foundation's leader, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was illegally laundering money from the country. One of al-Qaida's top fundraisers in America, he's now in prison.

To date, the IRS does not collaborate with the FBI to determine whether a Moslem group applying for tax-exempt status is engaged in terrorist activities. Despite the fact the FBI has had the Saudi-based World Assembly of Moslem Youth and its former head Abdullah bin Laden under investigation on and off since 1996, and despite recent raids on its U.S. branch, the IRS continues to treat the Saudi-based group as a charity exempt from federal income tax. WAMY's office in the Washington suburbs is still open for business, frustrating case agents who want to apply RICO statutes to try to shut down the entire network of suspect Saudi charities. According to court documents, this supposed charity's goal is to "arm the Moslem youth with full confidence in the supremacy of the Islamic system over other systems."

It also teaches teenaged Moslem boys to sacrifice their lives in jihad against the infidels. "Are you miserly with your blood?!" it asks them. WAMY also teaches them to "love taking revenge on the Jews," who it calls "humanity's enemies."

And take the case of the Safa group of Moslem charities, also located in the D.C. suburbs. The IRS continued to authorize tax-exempt status for the group after conducting an audit of its finances in 2000 and early 2001. A subsequent investigation by U.S. Customs agents after 9/11 found that the group had allegedly falsified some of its returns. IRS auditors apparently were out to lunch.

Also, the IRS exempted the Holy Land Foundation from having to pay any income tax on the nearly $60 million in donations it received since 1992 – even though U.S. prosecutors say much of the money was funneled to the terrorist group Hamas. It turns out the Moslem charity filed no less than six false tax returns with the IRS, prosecutors say.

In the future, the IRS should require all Islamic charities to conduct basic vetting of foreign recipients of their donations including whether they show up on any terrorist exclusion lists kept by the U.S., U.N. or the EU. They should provide the agency the full names in English and dates of birth of the principals of their beneficiary groups. They should also be required to provide information about the banks where the recipients hold their accounts to further ensure that the funds provided by the charity are not ultimately distributed to terrorist organizations.

Investigators say the slightest association with violence or terrorism would be enough grounds to revoke a Moslem charity's tax exemption.

The same standard applies to American mosques. If they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves, the government must step in.

Like Moslem charities, the vast majority are funded and controlled by the Saudis, and many of their leaders belong to the dangerous Moslem Brotherhood, which seeks to achieve a global Islamic theocracy. No wonder so many are hotbeds of terrorist activity and magnets for terrorists. No wonder so many raise the banner of jihad during sermons. No wonder so many serve as political headquarters for Palestinian activists who raise money for Hamas and other terrorist groups. This is all happening inside America right now, and Washington is doing next to nothing to shut these mosques down – even ones in its own backyard like Dar al Arqam, which aided and abetted the so-called Virginia jihad network, and Dar al Hijrah, which aided and abetted the 9/11 hijackers.

These mosques remain safe houses for terrorist and other subversive anti-American activities. The same wartime imperative that existed in previous wars may require that the government shut down all pro-jihadist mosques. Draconian? Would it have allowed pro-Nazi groups to meet publicly and rally the Nazi faithful after Nazi Germany declared war on the U.S.? Of course not. Why then do we continue to allow the supporters of Islamofascists – the new enemy – to meet, organize and rally against us in this country?

Short of shutting militant mosques down, there are several things the government can do to crack down on them.

For starters, the IRS can probe suspect mosques and revoke their tax-exempt status if they are found to support violence, terrorism or anti-U.S. activities. Or if they fail to report donations from specially designated terrorist groups.

The FBI brought down a militant imam at a Wahhabi mosque in New York by setting up a phony weapons deal. Such stings are an effective tool for smoking out the bad guys, and law enforcement should conduct more of them.

If these tactics bother you, consider that even mosques in the nation's capital have warned their members not to cooperate with FBI agents. "There is no reason that anyone should ever, ever, ever talk to law enforcement as Moslems in the United States," Washington immigration and civil-rights lawyer Ashraf Nubani warns Moslems in a recent CD distributed to Washington-area mosques. "The FBI is just a tool of whoever is wielding it. And right now, it is very bad, it is very bad, it is very bad."

While FBI headquarters insists mosques have been allies in the war on terrorism, field agents say outreach efforts have borne little fruit. Since 9/11, the jihadists have gone deeper underground, making it harder to ferret them out.

Headquarters needs to get off the backs of counterterrorism agents in the field who are trying to do their jobs by canvassing mosque-goers. A few years ago, agents in Chicago interviewed people at the notorious Bridgeview mosque whose names were listed in the address book of a convicted terrorist. The Moslem community got up in arms and complained to the FBI. The agents were barred from asking Moslems questions about Middle East politics or religion.

"That's ridiculous," Vincent says. "That's all they talk about. That's all they're interested in. They talk about it at the coffee and tea shops, and they talk about it at the mosques. What should we talk to them about? The Chicago Bears? Most Moslems are not like normal Americans. They don't have the same interests. You won't see them at the Bears game."

FBI counterterrorism veteran Don Lavey agrees, arguing that FBI director Robert Mueller and his civil rights team are so sensitive to the concerns of the Moslem community that they have invited complaints and given Moslems a built in excuse not to cooperate.

"There are always people out there you can find to assist you, but you don't go around publicly apologizing or publicly stating your concern and what you want to accomplish," he says. "I wish the FBI would get its head out of the sand."

Michael Rolince, former assistant director of the FBI's Washington field office, says the FBI still knows very little about the militant Moslem community in America. On a scale of 1 to 100, he puts the bureau's knowledge of the enemy lurking in our cities at about 20. It has very few spies in the community, and is still playing catch up. And it can barely make a move in the community without first tipping off CAIR, which sits on its community advisory committee.

No. 6: Deny government access to Moslem activists tied to terror-supporting groups posing as legitimate NGOs, and beef up background checks on Moslem applicants for government jobs.

Investigators say it is critical that the U.S. government, as well as state and local governments, break off official ties with groups such as CAIR, the Islamic Society of North America, and the American Moslem Council, including its GOP offshoot the Islamic Institute. CAIR, an off shoot of a Hamas front group, has seen several of its leaders convicted of terror related charges since 9/11. Continuing ties only lends legitimacy and national voice to radical Islam's main PR machine in America.

At the same time, the administration should stop placing Islamists in government jobs where they have access to secrets they can feed back to the enemy. The alQaida manual calls spying on the enemy an essential duty. "Winning the battle is dependent on knowing the enemy's secrets," it says, and al-Qaida has already proved it can penetrate the U.S. government using double agent Ali Mohamed. Sami al-Arian, moreover, was in possession of a document written in Arabic that outlined a plan to infiltrate sensitive government agencies. Like the communists, who placed fellow travelers inside the government, the Islamists are trying to install their own agents of influence and sympathizers in sensitive posts. And they are getting a lot of help from the Washington-based Islamic Institute, which has well placed friends inside the White House.

Since 9/11, the administration has hired several Moslem activists who in the past have lobbied to deny law enforcement tools it needs to fight terrorism. Some have worked as paid lobbyists for Moslem leaders who turned out to be al-Qaida bagmen, as well as the Pakistani government, according to Senate lobbying records I obtained. Yet they failed to disclose that information on their government applications. Still, they were put in highly sensitive posts where they not only had access to top secret information but control over policies related to the war on terror. Some remain in office. This defies all common sense.

Vetting of any future Arab and Moslem applicants should include disclosure of memberships in Moslem organizations and mosques, religious activities and speeches at Islamic conferences. Security adjudicators should carefully evaluate religious activities of such applicants to confirm their loyalty. If it were OK during the Cold War to ask government workers if they were members of the Communist Party, it should be OK to ask them in the War on Islamic Terror if they are members of groups and mosques funded or held in trust by the North American Islamic Trust – the Moslem Brotherhood's bank here which is massively funded by the Saudis, according to senior FBI agents I've talked to.

No. 7: Fight Moslem activism in public schools.

More parents should challenge the Council on Islamic Education's instructional materials in court. They are stealthily promoting Islam in public schools, while denigrating other faiths. The Moslem activist group and its allies in the Ivory Tower have conned the education establishment including textbook publishers into accepting a sugar-coated version of Islam that is misleading students and possibly inspiring more John Walkers, the American Taliban, and Adam Gadahns, the "American al-Qaida."

Los Angeles-based CIE, whose research department is headed by a Moslem educator formerly on the Saudi payroll, edited the Houghton Mifflin social studies text Walker and Gadahn used in California and now used at schools nationwide. Christians come off bad in the book, but for Muslims the theme is tolerance. They are said to be "extremely tolerant" of Christians and Jews. Jihad is whitewashed. In contrast, Christians are never said to be tolerant of other people but have "persecuted" them, a term repeated throughout the unit on Christianity. Meanwhile, a federal court in San Francisco recently gave its blessing to Moslem role playing exercises in California public schools, even though the pro-Islamic lessons written by Saudi backed consultants for CIE appear designed to promote the religion rather than simply teach its history.

Such pro-Islamic propaganda cannot stand. Judeo-Christian scholars and historians should demand equal time with publishers to correct for CIE's bias.

No. 8: Hold nationally televised town hall meetings to educate the public about the true nature and threat of militant Islam.

There's a critical education process that's yet to take place about Islam in America, investigators complain. That the government hasn't even initiated one five years into the war resorting instead to pleasant platitudes about it being a "religion of peace" is scandalous. The learning curve about our uniquely pious enemy is steep, and until there is an open and honest debate about jihad and martyrdom, policymakers and Americans will continue to be fooled about where terrorists are getting their violent ideas.

For instance, there's still mass confusion about what's driving suicide bombers. Are they heretics, or are they following the tenets of their faith all too well? In the recently released movie "Suicide Killers," French filmmaker Pierre Rehov interviews the families of suicide bombers and would-be bombers in an attempt to answer that question. Sure enough, he finds they actually believe Allah will reward them with a harem of virgins and other carnal pleasures in the afterlife.

This notion of heaven as some kind of penthouse is often dismissed out of hand by Western apologists as a myth or fantasy of heretics. But Rehov found it's culturally accepted and deeply rooted in the Moslem world.

"People don't understand the devastating culture behind this unbelievable phenomenon," he said, explaining that sexual repression in Islam – young Moslem men are forbidden from dating or even swimming or dancing with girls – makes the idea of redeeming promised virgins in Paradise all the more appealing. Desire and death become one.

"It is no coincidence that suicide killers are mostly young men dominated subconsciously by an overwhelming libido that they not only cannot satisfy but are afraid of, as if it is the work of the devil," Rehov said. "Since Islam describes heaven as a place where everything on Earth will finally be allowed, and promises virgins to those frustrated kids, killing others and killing themselves to reach this redemption becomes their only solution."

He says would be Moslem suicide bombers he's interviewed have shown him passages in the Quran "in which it's absolutely written that they're going to get the girls in the afterlife" if they die fighting infidels in jihad.

"It's obviously connected to religion," he stressed. "They really believe they are going to get the virgins."

But isn't suicide forbidden in Islam? Yes, but only selfish suicide, the Quran says. Self immolation in the cause of Allah is actually the highest expression of love for Allah, rewarded by the highest honor in Paradise.

Moslem martyrs believe the first drop of blood they shed during jihad washes away all their sins instantaneously. It boggles the Western mind to think that anyone could believe that murdering people could wash away lesser sins, but this is what the enemy believes. It's not a myth; it's a reality, and we need to deal with it in national dialogue that engages Islamic experts on both sides of the debate. And we mustn't be afraid to dive into Islamic scripture to confirm conclusions.

And our leaders must not hesitate to denounce the perverted notion that God would reward killers with a harem of virgins in his heavenly domain. It must be a source of ridicule not just for late night talk shows but for press conferences and official speeches. If this is what is getting our enemy inspired for suicidal attacks, then no one's feelings should be spared.

Blind tolerance and respect are what keep the Islamist movement in America alive. Without it, it is doomed to marginalization.

There are signs the wall of taboo separating militant Islam from due scrutiny is starting to crack. A key Pentagon intelligence agency involved in homeland security is delving into Islam's holy texts to answer whether Islam is being radicalized by the terrorists or is already radical. Military brass want a better understanding of what's motivating the insurgents in Iraq and the terrorists around the globe, including those inside America who may be preparing to strike domestic military bases. The enemy appears indefatigable, even more active now than before 9/11.

Are the terrorists really driven by self serving politics and personal demons? Or are they driven by religion? And if it's religion, are they following a manual of war contained in their scripture?

Answers are hard to come by. Five years into the war on terror, U.S. intelligence officials tell me there are few baseline studies of the Moslem prophet Muhammad or his ideological or military doctrine found at either the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, or even the war colleges.

But that is slowly starting to change as the Pentagon develops a new strategy to deal with the threat from Islamic terrorists through its little known intelligence agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity or CIFA, which staffs hundreds of investigators and analysts to help coordinate Pentagon security efforts at home and abroad.

Dealing with the threat on a tactical and operational level through counterstrikes and capture has proven only marginally successful. Now military leaders want to combat it from a strategic standpoint, using informational warfare, among other things. A critical part of that strategy involves studying Islam, including the Quran and the sunna, or traditions of Muhammad.

"Today we are confronted with a stateless threat that does not have at the strategic level targetable entities: no capitals, no economic base, no military formations or installations," states a recent Pentagon briefing paper I've obtained. "Yet political Islam wages an ideological battle against the non-Islamic world at the tactical, operational and strategic level. The West's response is focused at the tactical and operation level, leaving the strategic level – Islam –unaddressed."

So far the conclusions of intelligence analysts assigned to the project, who include both private contractors and career military officials, contradict the commonly held notion that Islam is a peaceful religion hijacked or distorted by terrorists. They've found that the terrorists for the most part are following a war fighting doctrine articulated through Muhammad in the Quran, elaborated on in the ahadith, codified in Islamic or sharia law, and reinforced by recent interpretations or fatwahs.

"Islam is an ideological engine of war (Jihad)," concludes the sensitive Pentagon briefing paper. And "no one is looking for its off switch."

Why? One major reason, the briefing states, is government wide "indecision [over] whether Islam is radical or being radicalized."

So, which is it? "Strategic themes suggest Islam is radical by nature," according to the briefing, which goes onto cite the 26 chapters of the Quran dealing with violent jihad and the examples of the Moslem prophet, who it says sponsored "terror and slaughter" against unbelievers. "Muhammad's behaviors today would be defined as radical," the defense document says, and Moslems today are commanded by their "militant" holy book to follow his example. It adds: Western leaders can no longer afford to overlook the "cult characteristics of Islam."

It also ties Moslem charity to war. Zakat, the alms giving pillar of Islam, is described in the briefing as "an asymmetrical war fighting funding mechanism." Which in English translates to: combat support under the guise of tithing. Of the eight obligatory categories of disbursement of Moslem charitable donations, it notes that two are for funding jihad, or holy war. Indeed, authorities have traced millions of dollars received by major jihadi terror groups like Hamas and al-Qaida back to Saudi and other foreign Islamic charities and also U.S. Moslem charities, such as the Holy Land Foundation.

According to the Quran, jihad is not something a Moslem can opt out of. It demands able bodied believers join the fight. Those unable women and the elderly are not exempt; they must give "asylum and aid" (Surah 8:74) to those who do fight the unbelievers in the cause of Allah. Political correctness still infects the Pentagon, however, five years after jihadists hit the nation's military headquarters. quarters. "A lot of folks here have a very pedestrian understanding standing of Islam and the Islamic threat," a senior Pentagon intelligence analyst working on the project told me. "We're getting Islam 101, and we need Islam 404." The hardest part of formulating a strategic response to the threat is defining radical Islam as a political and military enemy. Once that psychological barrier has been crossed, defense sources tell me, the development of countermeasures such as educating the public about the militant nature of Islam and exploiting "critical vulnerabilities" or rifts within the Moslem faith and community can begin.

"Most Americans don't realize we are in a war of survival a war that is going to continue for decades," warns another high level military official working on the project. And education warfare is key to victory.

No. 9: Outlaw jihad.

Investigators point out that promoting jihad as free speech goes beyond the reasonable protection afforded by the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment is not a suicide pact, and jihad speech should never be tolerated. In fact, it should be outlawed. Only in America is there zero tolerance for pot, but not jihad. Only in America are pit bulls banned from cities, but not jihadi preachers. Theological justification for inciting violent jihad is a compelling defense tactic that Congress needs to head off before it wends its way through U.S. courts.

A lawyer for a British imam recently on trial for promoting terror defended his client by arguing he wasn't preaching murder but simply preaching from the text of his holy Quran, which says that "fighting is prescribed" upon Moslems (2:216), and that Allah "purchases" Moslems' lives on earth when they "fight and die in his cause" (9:111) in exchange for the delights of Paradise. Another tactic used by Saudi-paid lawyers and their "expert" witnesses to get off jihadist defendants is to convince courts that jihad is not a holy war but a internal struggle against sin, notes professor Walid Phares, an expert on Islamic terror at Florida Atlantic University, Sooner or later, Congress and the courts will have to deal with this issue define it, codify it, criminalize it. Making jihad speech illegal would be a valuable weapon for counterterrorism agents and prosecutors. Hopefully, Washington will act before the next Jihadist attack on U.S. soil.

No. 10. Meantime, it needs to step up counterterrorism training and Islamic study at the FBI academy.

FBI agents recruited and assigned to counterterrorism cases after 9ll 1 have received shockingly little, if any, counterterrorism training at the bureau's academy in Quantico, Va. Yet we train the Saudi police in such techniques there. "You get an agent who comes out of Quantico and you assign him to the UBL [Osama bin Laden] unit out of headquarters and he has no idea about UBL. He has no idea how these people operate, how they think, their mentality, nothing," FBI counterintelligence veteran John M. Cole, a former Quantico instructor, tells me. "And he's coming in and getting these headquarters cases and he doesn't know how to run a counterterrorism case. Yet he's in charge of certain cases now. And it gets screwed up because he doesn't know what's important, what's not important. It's crazy."

Intelligence is key to fighting terrorism. FBI counterintelligence veteran Tom Bloch, who worked Soviet espionage cases for 12 years, says the bureau has to get smarter. If the approach to counterterrorism is not as sophisticated as our effort against the Soviets, then there is cause to be worried and there is every indication that it is not," he tells me. "There are a lot of problems with the analytical side."

The key to understanding the enemy is understanding their sacred texts. Yet "the FBI doesn't train people to understand where the enemy is coming from," Vincent says, "and there's no one willing to learn it on their own." New recruits get only cursory training in Middle Eastern history and culture. Islam is taught only during Moslem sensitivity training programs and their instructors are Moslem leaders who whitewash the violent nature of jihad. "No one knows the trouble we're in," Vincent warns.

The preceding article was adapted by author Paul Sperry from his bestselling book, "Infiltration: How Moslem Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington, "

Conservative Book Club feature selection and a top pick on this summer's congressional reading list according to Roll Call.

"Infiltration" by Paul Sperry is being used by some of the top law enforcement departments in the country, including the NYPD and Miami-Dade Police Department, as well as the Department of Defense. Sperry, is a Hoover Institution media fellow.

Posted: 10 Nov 2006