Dozens of 'incubators' for jihad found in U.S.
'More than 80% of mosques advocate or promote violence'
June 08, 2011
By Bob Unruh
wnd.com
Dozens of mosques around the United States have been identified in a new study as incubators for jihad against America, with more than 80 percent of those surveyed advocating violence.
"Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51 percent had texts on-site rated as severely advocating violence; 30 percent had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19 percent had no violent texts at all," said the survey compiled by Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi and published by the Middle East Quarterly.
"How's this for a wake-up call?" asked Frank Gaffney, chief of the Center for Security Policy in a commentary today in the Washington Times.
"America's most cherished civil liberties and the Constitution that enshrines them are enabling Muslim Brotherhood operatives and other Islamists who have the declared mission of destroying our freedoms and government 'from within … by [our] hands.' Specifically, our enemies are using our tolerance of religion to create an infrastructure of mosques here that incubate the Islamic holy war called jihad."
Among the findings in the study, "Shariah and Violence in American Mosques," by Kedar, an assistant professor at Bar Ilan University in Israel, and Yerushalmi, the general counsel for Center for Security Policy, were that:
•Mosques identified as being more Shariah-adherent, that is, their imams wore beards, they segregated men from women and the like, were more likely "to feature violence-positive texts on-site."
•In 84.5 percent of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts.
•Of the 51 percent of the mosques with texts severely advocating violence, 100 percent were led by imams who recommended that worshippers study texts promoting violence.
•Nearly three in five of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad.
"Such findings strongly suggest that Shariah-adherence is a useful predictor of sympathy for – and, in some cases at least, action on behalf of – jihad, to include both the Islamists' violent or stealthy forms of warfare aimed at supplanting the U.S. Constitution and government," Gaffney said. "Indeed, the study confirms the anecdotal reports by Muslims themselves and earlier, less rigorous empirical studies of Saudi hate-filled literature permeating mosques in the United States."
He told WND that "this empirical study demonstrates that under the guise of religious freedom and our tolerance for it, newcomers to our country have built an infrastructure for our destruction."
He said the data reveals that "most mosques in the United States are actually engaged in – or at least supportive of – a totalitarian, seditious agenda they call Shariah. Its express purpose is undermining and ultimately forcibly replacing the U.S. government and its founding documents."
The survey dispatched people and asked them to "observe and record selected behaviors deemed to be Shariah-adherent" such as women wearing head coverings, gender segregation during prayers and enforcement of straight prayer lines.
The authors noted when U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., held congressional hearings on the question of the danger of extremist violence, he was characterized as Joe McCarthy and the hearings were called a witch-hunt.
"Yet the larger dilemmas outlined by both the congressman and some of his witnesses remain: To what extent are American Muslims, native-born as well as naturalized, being radicalized by Islamists? And what steps can those who are sworn to the protection of American citizenry take that will uncover and disrupt the plots of those willing to take up arms against others for the sake of jihad?"
The goal then, was to determine empirically whether there is a correlation between observable measures of religious dedication to Shairah and the presence of violence-positive materials.
Among the violence-positive texts found was "Jihad in Islam" by Abul Ala Mawdudi, which instructs followers to employ force in pursuit of a Shariah-based order.
Another was by Sayyid Qutb, whose "Milestones" "serves as the political and ideological backbone of the current global jihad movement. He sanctioned violence against those who would stand in the way of Islam expansion.
The survey looked at 100 mosques around the U.S., with worshiper totals ranging from 10 or fewer to 1,700. They were found in Arizona, California, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.
"The study found a statistically significant association between the severity of violence-positive texts on mosque premises and Shariah-adherent behaviors. … Mosques that segregated men from women during prayer service were more likely to contain violence-positive materials."
Also, those mosques that displayed strict alignment of men's prayer lines "were more likely than their less observant counterparts to contain materials from both the moderate and severe categories."
"Whether a mosque's imam or lay leader wore a traditional beard was also predictive of whether the mosque would contain violence-positive materials on premises. Of the mosques led by traditionally bearded imams, 61 percent contained literature in the severe category."
"A disturbing 98 percent of mosques with severe texts included materials promoting financial support of terror. Those with only moderate-rated materials on site were not markedly different, with 97 percent providing such materials. These results stand in stark contrast to the mosques with no violence-positive materials on their premises where only 5 percent provided materials urging financial support of terror," the survey said.
"The fact that spiritual sanctioners who help individuals become progressively more radicalized are connected to highly Shariah-adherent mosques is another cause for deep concern. In almost every instance, the imams at the mosques where violence-positive materials were available recommended that worshipers study texts that promoted violence," the survey said. |
