Islam, Jihad And Democracy: The Inquisitr Interviews Robert Spencer

Robert Spencer may be one of the most controversial men in America today. Since he published his first book on Islam in 2002, Spencer has been the nation’s leading voice on the danger the United States is facing from Islamic supremacy and Jihad. Much to the discomfort of those practitioners of Islam who would happily overthrow our government and replace our Constitution with Sharia law, Spencer uses the authentic teachings of the Qur’an and the Hadith, decades of Islamic Jurisprudence and the actual words of living Islamic clerics and leaders to illustrate the undying hostility expressed towards the non-Muslim world by centuries of Islamic doctrine.

Were Mr. Spencer voicing his own opinion, devoid of facts or proof, one might be able to question his behavior, but Spencer has never once slandered or spoken hatefully of Muslims. There is a great difference between attacking individuals Muslims for their faith, which Spencer does not do, and criticizing Islamic religious doctrine that teaches hatred of the other, violence against the non-believer, legitimizes slavery, puts women on the level of property and kills people for their sexual orientation or for daring to leave Islam. There is a real difference between the hateful slander Islam preaches against Jews and Christians and Mr. Spencer’s desire to have an honest dialog about the dangers of Jihad and Islamic supremacy.

While Islamic groups in the United States like CAIR and the Muslim Students Organization claim that anyone who dares to criticize Islam is a bigotedmuslimhatingdirtyislamophobe, the truth is that Spencer’s factual arguments against Jihad and Islamic supremacy infuriate the Jihadis and the Islamists. Instead of using words of hate and slander, Mr. Spencer simply translates their teachings and their political statements from Arabic into plain English. Try as they may to deny the truth, the Islamists are condemned by the own words.

As was revealed in the Holy Land Trial, in a document discovered by the FBI, the Muslim Brotherhood and their front groups in America have devised a plan to overthrow our Republic and replace our Constitution with Sharia Law. Written in Arabic, here is the fate they have in store for each and every non-Muslim American: “The Ikhwan [Arabic for brothers] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad to eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within, and sabotage its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated, and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”

While our political leaders continue to lie to us and give cover to the Islamists who are infiltrating our government, America is on the brink of a clash of civilizations. Who will survive; the freedom loving people of America and the West or the Jihadis who blow up churches and synagogues, fly airplanes into buildings and decapitate three month old Jewish babies? The future is in your hands.

Wolff Bachner: Robert, welcome to The Inquisitr. Before we begin our discussion, would you share with our readers how and why you decided to become involved in the debate about Islam, Jihad and Islamic supremacy.

Was there a particular event that inspired you to become involved or was it a gradual process of awakening?

Robert Spencer: It was a gradual thing. I first started studying Islam because I was looking for answers to some things that had happened to my family in the last Islamic empire, the Ottoman empire. Then I began consulting privately with some individuals and groups on Islamic issues, and finally publicly.

Wolff Bachner: Most Americans are badly misinformed or uninformed about the realities of Islam. Explain to our readers how and why Islam poses a threat to their way of life here in America?

Robert Spencer: The Muslim Brotherhood says in a captured internal document that its goal in America is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house…so that Allah’s religion is victorious over other religions.” This is an imperative to replace the Constitution with an authoritarian system that denies basic rights to women, non-Muslims, and others. Most U.S. Muslim groups have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Why shouldn’t we be concerned?

Wolff Bachner: We often hear the expression, “Moderate Muslim.”

Is there really such a thing as a moderate Muslim? Prime Minster Erdogan of Turkey took great offense to the slightest suggestion that moderate Muslims exist and he concluded by saying, ‘Islam is Islam?”

Since the doctrine of Islam teaches that the Qur’an was dictated by Allah before time began and that every word is the unalterable word of god, how can Islam change the teachings in the Qur’an that are completely out of step with any free society?

How can Islam ever treat non-Muslims as equals with full human rights?

Robert Spencer: Yes, there are moderate Muslims in the sense that there are Muslims who either don’t know about or don’t care about Islam’s doctrines of violence and supremacism. There are other Muslims who deny that Islam has any such doctrines, but they are not moderates, they are deceivers. There is a very small number of Muslims who sincerely wish to reform those doctrines, but their numbers and influence are infinitesimal.

Islam cannot change the texts of the Qur’an. I know of no religion that has ever altered the contents of its holy book. But it could conceivably develop a non-literal understanding of these texts that blunts their ability to incite violence and hatred. Even this is unlikely also, however, since these texts are clear and are understood as being the direct and absolute words of Allah.

Islamic law can only treat non-Muslims as equals with full human rights only if the texts of the Qur’an and Hadith that make them think of non-Muslims as unequal in the first place are subjected to a thoroughgoing reinterpretation. Again, this is extremely unlikely.

Wolff Bachner: On the subject of “Moderate Muslims” and Muslims who do not openly advocate Jihad, what can be said about the fact that there is virtually no movement among the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims that calls for understanding with the West, treating other religions equally, ending Jew hate and the persecution of Christians, advocates for women’s rights or that stands up against terrorism and violence?

The vast majority of Muslims may not be openly involved in Jihad, but they certainly are not doing anything to stop it or criticize the violence. Why is there so much a silence?

Robert Spencer: Muslims know that the texts and teachings of Islam call for violence against non-Muslims, deny equality to women, and justify acts that “strike terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah,” as Muslims are commanded to do in the Qur’an (8:60). Thus they know that if they speak out, they themselves could be targeted as a heretic or apostate, and denounced, ostracized, and even brutalized or killed.

Wolff Bachner: The Holy Land trial revealed the Muslim Brotherhood’s plans to conduct “a kind of grand Jihad to eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within, and sabotage its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”

Who are these believers and how have they managed to so effectively integrate themselves into American society?

Robert Spencer: The believers in question are the Muslim Brotherhood groups in the U.S.: CAIR (Council on American–Islamic Relations), ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), MAS (Muslim American Society), MSA (Muslim Students Association), ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), NAIT (North American Islamic Trust), IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought), etc.

Wolff Bachner: Isn’t the stated goal of stealth Jihad to carefully infiltrate non-Muslim majority nations and sabotage them subtlety and quietly, until there are enough Muslims to begin armed, open Jihad?

Robert Spencer: Yes, unless they can subvert America so effectively by stealth that armed jihad is not even needed.

Wolff Bachner: Americans hear very little of the real dialog that goes on throughout the Muslim world, mostly in Arabic. Is there any truth to the claims that Islamic clerics in Muslim majority countries are constantly calling for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of all non-Muslims?

What proof do you have that there is a serious and well funded movement in the Muslim world to impose Islam on the entire human race through the re-establishment of the Caliphate?

Robert Spencer: The proof is the Muslim Brotherhood document we’ve both quoted above. Also, Muslim leaders have enunciated this aspiration many times, Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said: “Have no doubt… Allah willing, Islam will conquer what? It will conquer all the mountain tops of the world.” The most influential Islamic cleric in the world today, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, has said: “Islam will return to Europe as a conqueror and victor, after being expelled from it twice.” And in the U.S. itself, CAIR cofounder and longtime Board chairman Omar Ahmad said in 1998: “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.” The prominent American Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj said in 1992: “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.”

Wolff Bachner: How do you explain the behavior of Barack Obama and his constant obsession with Islam? Muslims make up two percent of the population of the United States, yet Obama devotes incredible amounts of time and government resources to Islam.

What is going on here? Is Obama simply a deluded community organizer or is he deliberately trying to impose Islamic beliefs on the American people?

Robert Spencer: Only Obama knows for sure, but I think he really thinks that he can end the jihad against the U.S. by showing the Muslim world that he is completely Islam-positive. Obviously, it has not worked.

Wolff Bachner: According to one recent study, 80 percent of the mosques in America teach violent Jihad. If 80 percent of the churches or synagogues in America taught violent overthrow of our government, the President would be demanding a Congressional investigation and the mainstream media would be screaming for blood.

Why is our government refusing to protect the American people from religious extremism and violence being promoted in mosques across America, many of which are funded by the Saudi Arabian Royal Family?

Robert Spencer: They are clearly compromised by infiltrators, as well as afraid of being charged with “bigotry” and “Islamophobia.”

Wolff Bachner: The OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation) has repeatedly tried force a treaty through the United Nations that would outlaw criticism of Islam, under the guise of protecting religious freedom.

Is Obama and the Arabist State Department working behind the scenes to help get this treaty passed? After all, Hillary Clinton held a closed door, top secret meeting with OIC representatives on this very subject before she resigned as Secretary of State.

How close are we to making criticism of Islam a hate crime?

Robert Spencer: I don’t know, but we are close. Not only did Hillary have this meeting, but also, in July 2012, then-Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division was asked by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ): “Will you tell us here today that this Administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion?” Perez (whom Obama has now nominated to be Secretary of Labor) refused to rule out such a proposal – strongly suggesting by his refusal that the Obama Administration is indeed contemplating ways to circumvent the First Amendment and outlaw criticism of Islam.

Wolff Bachner: Obama has managed to remove all mention of Islamism, Jihad and Islamic terror from the Federal government and pressured State and Local law enforcement across the country to do the same.

Has Obama endangered the safety of our nation with his total unwillingness to identity the elephant in the room? After all, there have been more than 21,000 acts of Islamic terror worldwide since 9/11. What does it take before someone in Washington has the sense to admit the truth?

Robert Spencer: Yes, Obama has endangered our safety. The Russians warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers before the Boston Marathon jihad bombing, and the FBI did nothing. They probably had no idea how to understand the intelligence they had received, since they are now forbidden to study the motives and goals of the jihadis.

Clearly the people in Washington know the truth. It is just not in their interests as they see those interests to admit the truth.

Wolff Bachner: On Wednesday, May 22, 2013, a British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, was hacked to pieces and beheaded by two Muslim men on the streets of London in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses and video cameras. One of the men, his hands dripping with blood and holding two meat cleavers, screamed “Allahu Akbar” over and over and then looked straight into the camera and said “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

Is this the future we are facing here in America under Obama.

Robert Spencer: Yes.

Wolff Bachner: Will Islam ever stop fighting against non-Muslims?

Robert Spencer: No.

Wolff Bachner: After Lee Rigby’s grusome murder, you were invited to Woolwich, England to attend a memorial service for the fallen British soldier. Within hours of announcing your intention to attend the service, you were attacked by British Islamic leaders and an anti-fascist group, who demanded the Home Secretary ban you from entering the United Kingdom. Your very vocal critics called you “a far-right anti-Islam activist” and accused you of planning to enter Great Britain to slander Muslims and spread hatred.

Sadly, British freedom and Democracy took another serious blow when Home Secretary Theresa May caved in to the pressure and banned you and your colleague Pamela Geller from entering the country. The British Home Office sent you a letter that read in part:

“After careful consideration, she [the Home Secretary] personally directed that you should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here is not conducive to the public good. The Home Secretary has reached this decision because you have brought yourself within the scope of the list of unacceptable behaviors by making statements that may foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.”

How do you respond to the claims that you only wanted to enter the United Kingdom to spread hatred and religious slander?

What does your banning say about the situation in Britain and the future of Democracy?

Robert Spencer: What I say about Islam is neither hatred nor slander; it is true. The letter to me from the UK Home Office said I was banned for saying: “[Islam] is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society because media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.” This is a garbled version of what I actually said, which is that Islam in its traditional formulations and core texts mandates warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. This is not actually a controversial point to anyone who has studied Islam. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, Assistant Professor on the faculty of Shari’ah and Law of the International Islamic University in Islamabad, in his 1994 book The Methodology of Ijtihad quotes the twelfth century Maliki jurist Ibn Rushd: “Muslim jurists agreed that the purpose of fighting with the People of the Book…is one of two things: it is either their conversion to Islam or the payment of jizyah.” Nyazee concludes: “This leaves no doubt that the primary goal of the Muslim community, in the eyes of its jurists, is to spread the word of Allah through jihad, and the option of poll-tax [jizya] is to be exercised only after subjugation” of non-Muslims.

A Shafi’i manual of Islamic law endorsed by the most prestigious institution in Sunni Islam, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, says that the leader of the Muslims “makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians…until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax,” and cites Qur’an 9:29 in support of this idea: “Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden-who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book-until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled.” (‘Umdat al-Salik o9.8)

Just days before I was banned, the British government admitted Saudi Sheikh Mohammed al-Arefe. Al-Arefe has said: “Devotion to jihad for the sake of Allah, and the desire to shed blood, to smash skulls, and to sever limbs for the sake of Allah and in defense of His religion, is, undoubtedly, an honor for the believer. Allah said that if a man fights the infidels, the infidels will be unable to prepare to fight.”

If that is acceptable in Britain and I am not, then Britain is in very serious trouble, and its future as a free society is in very serious doubt.

Wolff Bachner: I recently interviewed your erstwhile collaborator and good friend Pamela Geller, who is also quite outspoken in defense of freedom. Pamela wrote an article with the headline: “Why Are We Importing Jihad Invaders?” When you consider the fact that many of the recent terrorist attacks on America, including the failed Times Square bombing, the Airplane Underwear bomber and the Boston Marathon bombing were all committed by dedicated jihadis from Muslim majority countries, this is a valid question.

Why is America’s leadership flooding our nation with people are openly hostile to our way of life?

Robert Spencer: Out of a misguided sense of “multiculturalism,” that “diversity is strength.” It would be “Islamophobic” for them to consider the possibility that some of these people are jihadis.

Wolff Bachner: Every day, we hear about another rocket attack on Israeli citizens, another beheading of a helpless woman in Saudi Arabia for witchcraft or another church burned to the ground in Nigeria by Boko Haram. Iran is threatening to wipe Israel off the face of the earth with nuclear weapons and European politicians are openly calling the re-establishment of Israel in 1948 the worst injustice in the history of the human race. The Copts in Egypt are facing a potential Holocaust of their own at the hands of Egypt’s Muslims and most of Christians in the Arab world have been killed or they have fled their homes with nothing but the shirts on their backs. Yet America’s leaders and our mass media refuse to acknowledge the insanity and refuse to discuss the incredible violence being done to non-Muslims across the Muslim world. Obama has armed Jihadis in Libya and Syria and Ambassador Stevens was suspected of negotiating illegal arms transfers to the Syrian rebels when he was killed.

The people of America fought two World Wars to save Europe and the world from Fascism, Tojo and Hitler. We spent untold trillions to defeat Russian Communism. Now it seems our leaders have abandoned the American people and turned their backs on freedom, while ignoring the Muslim Brotherhood’s takeover of much of the Arab world.

What is going on in our country? Have our leaders simply lost their minds or is there something truly sinister at work to destroy the American way of life?

Robert Spencer: Both.

BIOGRAPHY: Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of thirteen books, including two New York Times bestsellers, The Truth About Muhammad and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) (both Regnery). His latest books are Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry Into Islam’s Obscure Origins (ISI) and Not Peace But A Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam (Catholic Answers). His next book, The Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In, will be published early in 2014 by Regnery Publishing.

Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the FBI, the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the U.S. intelligence community.

Spencer is the Associate Director of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI). He is a weekly columnist for PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine, and has written eleven monographs and well over three hundred articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism. In addition to the above books, he is the author of Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World’s Fastest Growing Faith (Encounter); Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West (Regnery); Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn’t (Regnery), a refutation of moral equivalence and call for all the beneficiaries and heirs of Judeo-Christian Western civilization, whatever their own religious or philosophical perspective may be, to defend it from the global jihad; Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs (Regnery), an expose of how jihadist groups are advancing their agenda in the U.S. today by means other than terrorist attacks; and The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery). He is coauthor, with Daniel Ali, of Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics (Ascension), and editor of the essay collection The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims (Prometheus). He is coauthor, with Pamela Geller, of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America (Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster). Spencer’s books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Korean, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Along with his current weekly columns, for nearly ten years Spencer wrote the weekly Jihad Watch column at Human Events. He has completed a weekly Qur’an commentary at Jihad Watch, Blogging the Qur’an, which has been translated into Czech, Danish, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. He has served as a contributing writer to Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism. His articles on Islam and other topics have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News, the New Criterion, the Journal of International Security Affairs, the UK’s Guardian, Canada’s National Post, Townhall, Middle East Quarterly, WorldNet Daily, First Things, Insight in the News, National Review Online, and many other journals.

Spencer has discussed jihad, Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the German Foreign Ministry. He has also appeared on the BBC, ABC News, CNN, FoxNews’s O’Reilly Factor, the Sean Hannity Show, the Glenn Beck Show, Fox and Friends, and many other Fox programs, PBS, MSNBC, CNBC, C-Span, France24, Voice of Russia and Croatia National Televison (HTV), as well as on numerous radio programs including Bill O’Reilly’s Radio Factor, The Mark Levin Show, The Laura Ingraham Show, Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, Michael Savage’s Savage Nation, The Sean Hannity Show, The Alan Colmes Show, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Neal Boortz Show, The Michael Medved Show, The Michael Reagan Show, The Rusty Humphries Show, The Larry Elder Show, The Barbara Simpson Show, Vatican Radio, and many others.

He has been a featured speaker at the University of California-Irvine, Temple University, Dartmouth College, Penn State University, the University of California-Los Angeles, Stanford University, New York University, Brown University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Virginia, State University of New York-Binghamton, State University of New York-Stony Brook, DePaul University, the College of William and Mary, Washington University of St. Louis, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Boise State University, and many other colleges and universities.

Spencer (MA, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in depth since 1980. As an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation in 2002 and 2003, he wrote a series of monographs on Islam: An Introduction to the Qur’an; Women and Islam; An Islamic Primer; Islam and the West; The Islamic Disinformation Lobby; Islam vs. Christianity; and Jihad in Context. More recently he has also written monographs for the David Horowitz Freedom Center: Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future (with David Horowitz); Obama and Islam (with David Horowitz); What Americans Need to Know About Jihad; The Violent Oppression of Women In Islam (with Phyllis Chesler); Islamic Leaders’ Plan for Genocide; and Muslim Persecution of Christians.

Introduction by Wolff Bachner for The Inquisitr