Reporting Islam: Fair, Balanced – and Accurate

On Tuesday night, I had an opportunity to address the O’Reilly Factor‘s audience on a matter of immense importance: the threat posed to America by not only the violent form of jihad but by its stealthy counterpart – what its prime practitioner, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB or Ikhwan), calls “civilization jihad.”

As it happened, Eric Bolling was substituting for Bill during our conversation about the blindspot too many in academia, journalism and the U.S. government have when it comes to the sort of non-violent – or, more accurately, pre-violent – jihad being waged against the United States by the likes of Ground Zero Mosque Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf.

The news peg for this segment was Rauf’s announcement that he is going to begin next month a nationwide tour of college campuses and other venues. The ostensible goal is to promote “understanding” and “tolerance” through speeches, interviews and interfaith dialogue. In fact, the real purpose is dawa – the systematic, highly disciplined and aggressive effort to proselytize and recruit adherents to shariah. Dawa is the engine behind what the Ikhwan has dubbed the “process of settlement,” a term used to describe the phased insinuation and ultimate triumph of shariah in lands where it has yet to be established. Dawa is the precursor to jihad.

Faisal Rauf’s dawa agenda (see his book whose Malaysian title was A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America post 9/11.) is largely indistinguishable from that of the Muslim Brotherhood. As we discussed on O’Reilly last night, the MB laid out its vision two decades ago in a strategic plan that was introduced into evidence in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial. According to this document, the Brotherhood’s self-declared mission is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their [American] hands and the hands of the believers.” (See the full text of this “Explanatory Memorandum” at the Appendix to Shariah: The Threat to America).

For Rauf’s part, the would-be imam of the Ground Zero Mosque could not be more clear: His goal is to bring shariah to the United States and indeed, the entire world. That objective happens to be the animating purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is also the object of so-called “Islamic radicals” and “terrorists” like al Qaeda, the mullahs of Iran, Hezbollah, the MB’s Palestinian franchise, Hamas, etc. Only the tactics employed differ from the pre-violent jihadists to the violent ones.

It is chilling to read the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategic plan and to realize that it explicitly calls for the establishment of “Islamic centers” and “Islamic societies” – entities that are required by the Ikhawn to “prepare [Muslim Brothers] and supply our battalions.” Keep that in mind as Faisal Rauf tirelessly promotes his own Islamic center (now repackaged as “Park 51”) and others around the country during his tour. It seems predictable that this will be a mantra of his road show, which will likely feature only private meetings before hand-picked and sympathetic Muslim Brotherhood audiences (like his visit to the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA) or left-wing ones (like Harvard’s).

The sooner we awaken to shariah as the enemy threat doctrine we confront – and recognize the range of guises being adopted by those who promote it, the sooner we will be able to counter the danger posed by the mosque at Ground Zero and around the world.

In particular, there will be an enormous premium in 2011 on accurate reporting about shariah as the Muslim Brotherhood’s sizeable propaganda machine is ginned up for a simple, but lethal, purpose: to keep us in the dark about this doctrine. It will help greatly if we can keep in mind the central reality: the goals of the violent jihad waged by al Qaeda et.al., and those of pre-violent jihadists of Muslim Brotherhood propagandists like Rauf are the essentially the same – the imposition of shariah as a political, legal and military doctrine..

In the words of former federal prosecutor, bestselling author and member of Team B II Andrew C. McCarthy (from his Broadside): “We need to move the dividing line of where we understand the threat to the United States. We’re suggesting that the dividing line is not terrorism. The dividing line is shariah.” It is time for a great many more fair, balanced and accurate news broadcasts to that effect.