>> Robert R. Reilly:
Robert Spencer is the Director of Jihad Watch
and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz
Freedom Center.
He’s the author of 18 books.
I won’t name them all or half his time will
be taken.
A number of them are New York Times bestsellers
as I assume his new book will be because
it’s already sold out on Amazon and it was
just listed and that is the “History of
Jihad: From Mohammed to Isis.”
I’d say they are available for sale on the
table outside in the library but they’re
already sold out but in case you haven’t
had a chance to get your copy signed I know
that Robert will be happy to do so after his
presentation.
Other books, just quickly name a couple of,
“Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America,”
“The Complete Infidel’s Guide
to Isis.”
He’s led seminars on the subject of Jihad
and Islam for many national security government
institutions both domestic and foreign policy,
the FBI, the United States Central Command,
U.S. Army Command and General Staff College,
Justice Department Anti-terrorism Advisory Council
and so forth.
He’s a weekly columnist for PJ Media and
Frontpage Magazine.
He’s written in addition to his 18 books
hundreds and hundreds of articles.
He’s a contributing writer to the Investigative
Project on Terrorism and as an adjunct fellow
with the Free Congress Foundation.
He has an MA in religious studies from the
University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill
and he has been studying about Islamic theology
history and law in depth since 1980.
Please join me in welcoming Robert Spencer.
Robert Spencer:
Thank you Bob and thank you everyone for coming.
It’s a great honor to me to speak with the
Westminster Institute and I admired the great
work that you’ve done here over the years
and all the resources you have provided.
I hope in this book, The History of Jihad,
to fill a gap that has not been addressed
thus far.
My friend David Wood, the great skewer-er
of Islamic apologists, he told me not long
ago that he knew about what was in the Quran,
that there were deeply problematic passages
within it, and he knew about the life of Muhammad,
that Muhammad was not exactly as Karen Armstrong
says, a ‘seventh century Ghandi’ but — she
really says that too — but he was actually
a warlord who led armies, committed the assassination
of his enemies, and so on but that after that
there’s a gap until 20th century jihad terrorism
becomes part of our daily lives.
And so the History of Jihad I wrote actually
in this book that I’ve wanted to write for
many years in order to fill that gap and to
give people a general overview of what happened
after Mohammed died and before the Saudis
struck oil and started financing Wahhabi terrorism
around the world.
And it is a story that I hope you will find
interesting.
I think it is a pressing moment in many ways
for American and American public policy and
the public policy of many other countries
today.
And I thought that tonight I would try to
outline some of that.
One of the first things that I think is noteworthy
about the 14th century history of jihad is
what you do not see in it and that is you
do not see any Muslim resistance to jihad
activity to jihad violence.
You do not see ever in any country at any
time in any place under any circumstances
some large Muslim organization opposing jihad
violence.
Now why does that matter?
Because nowadays, Western Europe in particular,
the United States to a lesser degree, we are
betting our futures on the idea that we can
bring in large numbers of Muslims into the
United States and we will not ever have any
problem with jihad activity, that that is
all a thing of the past that we need not be
concerned about.
But one thing we also do not see in the history
of jihad is any rejection, Reformation, reconsideration
or other kind of mitigation of the elements
of Islamic texts and teachings that gave rise
to jihad activity in the first place.
And so it is certainly true, it is undeniably
true, that most Muslims today are not waging
jihad.
That’s great and once again we are betting
our future on it.
However, the idea that most Muslims today
are not waging jihad means that they are therefore
Democratic pluralists who accept the principles
of human rights that are enunciated in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the
United Nations of 1948 remains at best unproven
and has no historical antecedents whatsoever.
There was all through the history of jihad
state warfare by Islamic entities against
the non-muslim entities solely because they
were non-Muslim.
We see this right from the beginning in the
Muhammad according to Islamic tradition is
supposed to have died in the year 632 and
almost immediately after that the armies came
out of Arabia and conquered the Middle East
and North Africa.
Very soon they conquered Persia which was
one of two great powers of the day and they
attacked the other great power of the day
the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire.
And by 732 a hundred years after the traditional
date for Muhammad’s death, they were of
course in central France fighting at Poitiers
or Tours against Charles Martel, Charles The
Hammer, who stopped their advance.
And they besieged Constantinople, the great
city of the Eastern Empire, in first in 675
then again in 717.
All the while thus fighting against Europe
from both sides and in – this book is the
first to discuss this at tremendous length
in a narrative fashion – that they were
also pressing the jihad into India and waging
it with a special fury there because the Indians
were not People of the Book.
Most of you I’m sure know that the Qur’an
speaks of Jews and Christians and Zoroastrians
and some others as people of the book who
have supposedly legitimate revelations from
Allah that they have twisted and changed out
of their original meanings and thus they out
of respect for this revelation they are given
the opportunity to live in peace as non-Muslims
within the Islamic state but they have to
submit to various humiliating and discriminatory
regulations, most notably the tax, the jizya,
that’s specified in the Quran in Chapter
9 verse 29 for the Dhimmis that for so called
protected people.
Now these humiliating and discriminatory regulations
made life very, very hard for these populations
such that you could ask for example what happened
to the Christians of Egypt?
Egypt was 99% Christian when it was invaded
in the late 630s and conquered in the 640s.
Now it’s about 10% Christian.
Where did all the Christians go?
Did they move?
No.
They’re still there.
They’re the Muslims of Egypt.
And what happened was life was so difficult
to live as a Dhimmi in Egypt that ultimately
over time the only thing that they had to
do to be out from under all the humiliation
and constant harassment was to convert.
They converted.
It’s very hard to think that anybody faced
with that kind of a situation would do anything
different although of course some did holdout
and we should acknowledge their courage and
perseverance.
At the same time the Hindus in India did not
even have that protection because they were
not people of the book and consequently the
choice that Muhammad and the Qur’an give
for the people of the book to convert or submit
to the rule of Islamic law or be killed, for
the Hindus it was only convert or be killed.
And as I show in the book the history of jihad
in India was especially bloody and especially
violent.
A certain certain point actually they had
to grant them honorary people of the book
status because it simply wasn’t possible
to kill them all but they were still nonetheless
extraordinarily harsh toward especially the
Hindu temples.
The Quran speaks about protecting churches
and synagogues because the name of Allah is
spoken there that was often honored in the
breach but there was no such protection afforded
to the Hindu temples at all and thousands,
tens of thousands of them were destroyed,
a great patrimony of human culture lost forever.
And in the middle of all this you have- This
is mainstream Islam.
You have state actors doing this: first Mohammed
unifying Arabia, then the so-called Rightly
Guided Caliphs, the four successors of Mohammed
as the leaders of the Islamic community, Abu
Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali and then the Ummayah
caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Ottoman
Caliphate and some of the outliers, the Umayyad
Caliphate of Cordoba in Spain, the Fatima
Shiite Caliphate in Egypt.
All of these are Islamic states and they all
waged jihad against non-Muslims on the basis
of the Islamic imperative in the Qur’an
and Sunnah to do so.
The difference that we have nowadays comes
about at the beginning of the 20th century
because the last Ottoman- the last Caliphate,
the Ottoman Empire, was abolished by the secular
Turkish government by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
of modern Turkey in 1924.
Now Ataturk was no- nobody to admire in any
respect.
He was just as brutal to the religious minorities
as the Ottomans had been if not more so but
he objected to political Islam and he was
unique among the leaders of Islamic States
throughout history.
He was the first ever to say the troubles
that were having come from Islam and what
we have to do is get rid of Islam as much
as we can and then our country will prosper.
And he’s consciously patterned Turkey after
Western secular models of governance.
Of course nowadays all that’s being rolled
back by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President
of Turkey today, but for almost a hundred
years Turkey was a secular state, a relatively
secular state, and the Caliphate was no more.
So what did the people who believed that there
was an Islamic imperative to wage war against
and subjugate unbelievers and that the Caliph
was the tip of this spear, what did they do
when there was no more Caliph?
They decided to form various international
organizations that would work toward restoring
the Caliphate.
The first of these was founded in 1928, the
Muslim Brotherhood.
Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood,
made it very clear than what he was intending
to do was to create a movement that would
restore the Caliphate and thereby the unity
of the Muslims and that once the unity of
the Muslims was re-established, then they
could wage offensive jihad again against non-Muslim
States.
But in the meantime there is the concept of
defensive jihad.
I should explain.
In Sunni Islamic theology, and of course the
Sunnis are 85-90% of Muslims worldwide, the
Caliph is the only one authorized to declare
offensive jihad.
And he’s not just authorized he has the
responsibility to do so.
If he doesn’t do it, he could be removed
on that basis.
He has to declare offensive jihad on a regular
basis against non-Muslim states.
But if there’s no Caliph, there’s no offensive
jihad so since 1924 all jihad has been defensive.
And you might think well that’s absurd.
What was defensive about 9/11?
If you read the communiques of Osama bin Laden
from the 1990s, he lists a long list of grievances,
terrible things that the Americans have supposedly
done that justify defensive jihad against
the United States, most notably Islamic- Sunni
Islamic theology specifies that if a Muslim
land is attacked, it is the responsibility
of every Muslim everywhere to wage jihad to
win it back and to repel the invaders.
So Osama bin Laden said ‘look the’ – this
is a little bit later – the- no, actually
it’s not.
I’m sorry.
I’m thinking of the second Gulf War.
The first Gulf War the American troops go
into Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden said
‘They’re trampling down the sacred soil
of the kingdom of the two holy places.
They have no business being there.
This is an invasion.
That triggers this defensive jihad and 9/11
was a defensive jihad in that respect.
Every jihad has been defensive.
All 30,000 jihad attacks since 9/11 around
the world.
They are all couched in this.
If you read the communications of jihad leaders
they always retail grievances.
It’s not because they’re inveterate whiners,
although they are, it is also – they are
– it is also because they have to list the
grievances to justify what they’re doing
is defensive.
If they don’t, then they have no authorization
to wage jihad.
So what we see in that is although there’s
a discontinuity at the beginning of the 20th
century and no more state actors at least
directly declaring jihad and carrying it out,
you could say that the Saudis certainly was
spending so many billions of dollars to spread
Wahhabi Islam around the world that that is
a certain waging of jihad that is just as
unmistakable as any Ottoman invasion of Vienna
or Eastern Europe in general.
Nonetheless the fact remains that there was
a change when the- with the decline- demise
of the Caliphate in the approach to how jihad
was justified, but there was no end in jihad.
And above all there was no internal resistance.
First you have mainstream Islam carrying out
the jihad because you have the Islamic states
of the world carrying out jihad, the Mughal
Empire in India, as well as the Ottomans,
the Abbasid, the Umayyads, and so on.
And then you have jihadis justifying what
they’re doing on the basis of defensive
jihad, which is a mainstream concept in mainstream
Islamic law.
No where do you find ever in history that
jihad was only the province of a tiny minority
of extremists who were twisting and hijacking
the true teachings of the peaceful faith.
That never happens anywhere and anybody who
would challenge that I would ask you to specify
when and where was there this Islamic movement
against jihad activity Under what theological
basis did it proceed, and what became of it?
But there just isn’t any such thing in Islamic
history.
The second thing you do not see in the history
of jihad is any let-up, any respite.
It is something that people are taken by surprise
about.
I was speaking to a marvelous group not long
ago and they were very well-informed, very
committed, very interested, very involved.
And I mentioned in passing this fact that
there was never any let-up and people were
shocked and said wait a minute what about
the age of tolerance and pluralism in Al-Andalus?
What about Muslim Spain?
What about the paradise of tolerance and proto-multiculturalism
that Maria del cimento Cal speaks about in
her book The Ornament of the World?
Everybody knows Muslim Spain was a paradise
of coexistence, right?
Well, unfortunately, here again this is a
historical myth.
There are great many of these things what
I tried to do in this book actually was puncture
some of the historical myths that people take
for granted nowadays.
And doing- to do that [I] went back to the
primary sources so is that were eyewitnesses
or in many cases the Muslim court historians.
The Mughals in India were especially in careful
to always have court historians, these guys
who would at the time something would happen,
they would write about how wonderful it was
that the emperor so-and-so he’d just demolished
325 Hindu temples.
He took all the gold and he strewed it in
front of the mosques that people would trample
on the idols as they went into the mosque.
Isn’t he wonderful?
Happy Hindustan.
That’s that’s- it’s true.
Anyway people who think that Islamic terror
tactics are newly-minted should look at the
reality of Muslim Spain and in particular
for example the rule of the Caliph- the court
of the Caliph Abdul Rahman the third.
This is the words of the 11th century Muslim
historian Ibn Hayyan of Cordoba.
He says at one- on one occasion Muhammad,
an officer of Abdul Rahman the third, chose
the 100 most important barbarians – that
could be you because there was a lot of Christians
– and sent them to the Alcazar of Cordoba
where they arrived on Friday, March 2nd, 939.
But since Abdul Othman was vacationing at
another place they took them there.
And they’re marching coincided with the
people coming out of the mosque on the- this
Friday afternoon.
So that many gathered and follow to see what
end the prisoners would have and it turned
out Abdul Rahman was installed on the upper
balcony over the orchard facing the river
to watch the execution.
All the prisoners one by one were decapitated
in his presence and under his eyes in plain
sight of the people and their feelings against
the infidels Allah alleviated.
You see they were very happy to see this.
As a matter of fact the Qur’an remember
in Chapter 9 verse 14 says “fight them and
Allah will soothe the bosoms of the believers.”
And so if you are feeling sad and depressed,
kill an infidel.
You’ll feel better.
You were- Allah will soothe the breasts of
the believers in doing this, in fighting the
believers.
And this is something that you see actually
recurring throughout Islamic history; Islamic
chroniclers making reference to that and taking
it quite seriously that through these acts
of savagery and violence the Muslims were
pacified and gladdened in their hearts.
And of course the most notorious example of
tolerance and pluralism in Muslim Spain was
in 1066 in Granada.
When rules are often honored in the breach
you know and just because something is Islamic
law doesn’t mean that every Islamic ruler
has always observed it just as every rule
is not always followed by every one of us.
Some of us perhaps may have had a speeding
ticket now and again or something of this
kind and so in Granada in 1066 there was a
Muslim ruler who had this Jewish friend whom
he appointed the, essentially, the mayor of
Granada and the local Muslims were furious
because Islamic law specifies that a non-Muslim
must not have authority over a Muslim, especially
a Jew.
And so there was a Muslim poet and he wrote
a very lengthy poem.
I won’t to read all of it to you but the-
this is the tenor of it: “Turn your eyes
to the Jews who are outcasts dogs.
Why would you be different and bring them
near when in all the land they are kept afar?
I came to live in Granada and I saw them frolicking
there.
They divided up the city in the provinces
was one of there cursed him and everywhere
they collect all the revenues they dress in
the finest clothes while you wear the meanest.
And so on so hasten to slaughter them as an
offering.
Sacrifice him for he is a precious thing.
Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill
them.
The breach of faith would be to let them carry
on.”
4,000 Jews were killed in a pogrom in Granada
after this poem was published.
And so this was a direct reaction to the Muslim
ruler breaking Islamic law by appointing a
Jew to have authority over Muslims.
So this was tolerant, pluralistic Muslim Spain.
What you see in the history of jihad is wherever
Muslims have gone, there are among them, there
have been among them, jihad, violent jihadis
who committed acts of violence against non-Muslims
and they were never upgraded or rebuked or
otherwise opposed by any Islamic authority
and were often rewarded for doing so.
So we see these two things that there was
never any internal resistance and there was
never any respite.
These things- This- the- the violence against
unbelievers is a constant of Islamic history.
The third golden thread that we see in the
history of jihad is that non-Muslims were
often the best help to the jihadis, which
ought to bring a lot of bells today.
But you take for example the conquest of Spain.
Now the conquest of Spain is shrouded in legend
and I’m not vouching for the absolute historicity
of any of this but these legends are alive
among the people of Spain to this day.
And the story goes that there was a Christian
count, Julian of Ceuta who had a daughter
and his daughter was very bright.
He sent her to the court, kind of like sending
her to Bill Clinton’s White House as an
intern.
And Roderic, the Visigothic King of Cordoba,
was an admirable predecessor of Bill Clinton.
So the girl of who – her degree of guilt
in this is widely controverted in the Spanish
legends – but in any case, Florinda is one
of those most common names that has come down
to her.
Florinda being thus outraged, Count Julian
was even more outraged and determined that
Roderic had to pay.
How could he get back at the King of Spain?
He decided to go to Tariq ibn Ziyad who was
a Muslim ruler in North Africa.
And he told him, “you want to invade Spain.”
And Tarik said, ‘Sure, I’d love to, but
every time they see us coming in our boats
they are- their defenses are prepared and
we are repelled’.
So he said, ‘I have a solution to that.
I’ll give you my boats and they’ll think
it’s me and no defenses will be up.”
And so Tarik ibn Ziyad used Count Julian’s
boats, got across the strait, and once on
the beach he burned Count Julian’s boats,
which I think is not entirely sporting.
They were after all a loner.
But he burns the boats and he told his men,
“We are going to take this land for Islam
or we’re going to die here but we’re not
going back.”
It’s noteworthy in terms of how important
it is to know history.
A few years ago there was a big controversy
in the Minneapolis area about a charter school
that was teaching Islam as fact.
It was all Muslim in any case but it was a
public school getting public funds so there
were there was a little bit of controversy
over it being a public school and being essentially
a madrasah.
And the name of the school I noticed, and
I was surprised to note, that nobody seems
to ever ask wait a minute why is this school
called Tariq ibn Ziyad Academy?
Who’s Tariq Ibn Ziyad?
Nobody seemed to care.
Nobody ever looked it up as far as I know.
It was never in any of the Minneapolis coverage
of this but you gotta wonder why would a school
in Minnesota name itself after this figure?
Could it have to do with maybe having the
same goals?
I mean this is what he’s famous for.
He’s the great Conqueror of Spain and he
was able to do it by means of the help of
this Christian who was enraged over his- He
had his own grievances and I’m not saying
his grievances were illegitimate but perhaps
he didn’t count on the consequences that
it would take 700 years to undo what he did.
There are so many other examples of this in
Islamic history.
In 1345, the Byzantine Emperor John the 6th
Kantakouzenos was in the midst of a dynastic
dispute and he invited the Ottomans to go
and fight against his rivals, and [he] let
them into Eastern Europe to do that.
And of course they’re still there.
The Ottomans at one point of course controlled
all of Eastern Europe and now they just have
that little bit of Europe that is so much
trouble because it gives them a claim to be
in NATO and everything else – the Turks
that is.
But it was John the Emperor, John the 6th
Kantakouzenos, excuse me, who allowed the
Ottomans to enter Europe in the first place
in order to solve his dynastic dispute.
And I don’t think that he expected that
they were just going to stay.
But he wasn’t probably thinking about the
whole of jihad activity or the jihad doctrine
even though it was something that he and the
emperors of his time, the other emperors of
his time, had ample reason to know all about.
You may recall about 12 years ago now Pope
Benedict the 16th got in a lot of hot water,
there were riots all over the world, because
he quoted a Byzantine Emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos.
And Manuel II said, “There is nothing new
that Muhammad brought except what is evil
and inhumane.”
And this of course was terrible and Islamophobic
and Benedict had to apologize.
And people, innocent people, were killed by
those who were objected to their prophet being
called evil and inhumane.
And nobody here again seems to ask well wait
a minute who was this Manuel II Palaiologos?
Why did he say this?
And he’s one of the tragic figures in this
book.
You can you read about how he was essentially
a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman emperor actually even sent him
to put down uprisings among the Turks and
kept him prisoner at the court where he was
routinely mocked and vilified, ridiculed.
He had a very rough life and a sad and tragic
life going also to Europe when he was free,
trying to get support for a new crusade to
roll the Ottomans back and preserve the Byzantine
Empire.
All of it failed.
The Byzantine Empire fell.
Constantinople was entirely conquered nine
years after his death.
So he had direct daily experience of what
he was talking about.
And that seems to me that should have been
some of the part of the debate when the Regensburg
address controversy was raging.
But here again nobody seems to have any historical
interest.
One final example of non-Muslims aiding the
jihad were or- the British of course who-
In the- in the latter part of the 18th century
there arose a reformer in Islam.
A lot of people ask me all the time well what
about what are the chances of reform?
What we need is Islamic reform.
Another thing you’ll see in this book actually
is that there’s been- there’s been plenty
of reform.
There’s lots of reform in Islamic history.
Now the thing about it is think about reform.
What is reform?
Whether you’re a Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox
or none of the above, the people most famously
known as reformers are those who said we’re
going to get rid of all the later additions
and get back to the basics.
That’s what reformers generally do in whatever
context.
And so the Almohads, who were among the rulers
of Muslim Spain, they were reformers, And
the fellow who arose in Arabia in the 18th
century to whom I referred, Muhammad ibn Abdul
Wahab, he was a reformer.
He began to fight against the Ottomans.
He said they were not Islamic enough.
They had strayed from true Islam.
He was going to restore true Islam.
He began to get gain of following when he
personally stoned an adulteress to death to
show how Islamic he was.
And he did get a following.
One of the main followers he got early on
was a chieftain in Arabia named Ibn Saud.
Ibn Saud and Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab began
to fight a jihad against the Ottomans, against
the other rulers in Arabia.
They began to gain a little bit of territory
and by the middle of the 19th century the
Wahhabi movement, the Saudi movement caught
the attention of the British Empire, which
was in several hundred years of struggle against
the Ottomans.
Now the Ottomans by this time had well earned
the nickname the sick man of Europe and they
weren’t really a formidable force at all.
But the British wanted to administer the coup
de gras and they thought, ‘This guy Saud,
these Saudis, they could help us’.
So they started bankrolling them.
They started giving them money and at the
end of World War I they favored the Saudis
over the Hashemites and others to gain control
of Arabia and helped to establish the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia.
Of course the rest is history the Saudi struck
oil and what did they use our oil money to
do but spread Wahhabi Islam around the world,
this reformist idea of Islam that is even
more virulent in violence than other forms.
So we have the British to thank for that as
for so much else.
It is probably or probably I would say the
most responsible outside of the Saudis themselves
for the spread of Wahhabi Islam around the
world.
When the Wahhabis did begin to spread their
version of Islam around the world, there were
many areas where jihad was essentially quiescent.
This doesn’t mean it was reformed or rejected.
It was just ignored.
As a matter of fact one of the pamphlets that
the Saudis distributed is called, Jihad: the
Forgotten Obligation,” and they wanted to
bring it all back and they did so we can thank
King George or whoever it was at that time
for this marvelous calculation.
But of course in all of these and so many
other examples I could give you.
And perhaps the most stinging is George W.
Bush when six days after 9/11.
I wrote this book more or less chronologically.
I don’t usually do that but this was a book
of- as I said at the beginning I wanted to
write this book for many years.
I’ve had all this material and just haven’t
had the opportunity to put it all together.
Finally I got the opportunity last- last winter
to put it all together and I did.
And I just started at the beginning and went
all the way through.
Essentially, most of them of- most of the
time- and so what happened was I got to 9/11
after I’d written fourteen centuries of
jihad activity and I got to six days after
9/11 with all of this very much in my mind,
just having set it down on paper.
And there’s George W. Bush in the mosque
in front of me Nihad Awad of CAIR, which is
tied to Hamas in the Muslim Brotherhood and
Abdul Rahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim
Council, who is now doing 23 years in prison-
well root sentence was reduced by Obama, but
he was sentenced to 23 years for financing
al Qaeda.
And he stands in front of them in the mosque
in Washington and says, “Islam is a religion
of peace.”
It really hit me after reading this uninterrupted,
unmitigated, no let-up jihad for 14 centuries,
this guy says Islam is a religion of peace.
Now we know he had various political reasons
for doing so.
Things that he thought would make things easier
for our allies or whatever.
We don’t have to go over all that.
At least not right now.
Maybe in the question period if you like but
George W. Bush was in a short-sighted manner
actually enabling jihad activity by foreclosing
upon an examination of the motivating ideology
that gives feel to it.
And he was doing so on the basis of short-sighted
political calculations just as much as Count
Julian was when he invited Tariq Ibn Ziyad
into Spain and just as much as the British
were when they funded the Wahhabis and John
the 6th Kantakouzenos was when he invited
the the Ottomans to fight his rival.
It never ends up working out for the infidels
because the infidels have their own immediate
goals but the jihadis always have the goal
of establishing Islamic law over the world
and will take and have taken throughout history
any advantage in which to do that.
So the history of jihad I think is one that
it is extraordinarily important for people
especially in the government in the military
to be aware of.
You cannot solve the problem unless you know
exactly the dimensions of the problem itself.
And that’s where we drastically- so signally
failed since 9/11, especially with the advent
of Obama and his forbidding of any mention
of Islam and jihad in counter-terror training
in 2011.
So it is imperative that we reacquaint ourselves
with this history, that we ponder very carefully
its implications for our stances toward various
policy questions today.
I mean one of the most obvious of course is
immigration, the Trump travel bans.
Is it really wise to bring in large Muslim
populations into the country?
Obviously, not every Muslim we bring in is
going to be a jihadi but among them there
will be or at least people who think that
Sharia ought to be the law of the land.
How- how is that going to work out in terms
of a tolerant and pluralistic society when
you introduce this radically intolerant force?
Another one is of course our alliances with
Pakistan, with Turkey where it’s very clear
that these entities are now on the other side
if they ever were not on the other side.
And we- is it really prudent to keep pouring
money into these countries when we’ve known
for 10 years for example in terms in regard
to Pakistan that they’ve been turning around
and taking a great deal of it and giving it
to the people they’re supposed to be using
it to fight.
So not only do we need a reconfiguration of
our international alliances but a general
re-evaluation of our stance of also of course
ultimately toward states like Saudi Arabia.
It’s very clear of course that the president
is playing a very delicate game, a dangerous
game, but one that probably has to be played
in working with the Saudis against Iran.
At the same time we have to recognize that
the Saudis ultimately are only going to be
our friends to a certain degree and that after-
after that there is the jihad imperative that
overrides any possibility of any long-standing
or deeply fruitful cooperation.
But none of this can happen unless we recognize
the problem to start with.
It was because of this that I wrote this book.
I hope that it will spark discussion on these
issues in places where it can make a difference
and I thank you all for coming out to consider
these things with me.
If you have any questions, comments, death
fatwas, whatever I am all ears.
Thank you very much.
Robert R. Reilly:
By the way I want to honor a late arrival,
Bud McFarlane.
Rough transcription: Q&A:
Robert Spencer:
The immortal Dr. Ho.
Audience member:
[Inaudible]
Robert Spencer:
Thank you.
That’s a great question.
He doesn’t really have to say anything as
far as I’m concerned it’s much more important
what he does and I just mentioned in passing
that Obama’s mandated that all mention of
Islam and jihad be scrubbed from counter-terror
training.
This is unbelievable.
People have trouble believing this but it’s
absolutely true.
You can go online and look at the countering
violent extremism program.
There is no mention.
There’s no hint in it that there’s any
problem with Islamic Jihad.
It doesn’t exist.
It’s actually an elaborate exercise in pretending
that it doesn’t exist.
That’s what he should address.
What I’ve been so signally disappointed
by and I hesitate to say this because he started
so remarkably well and surprisingly well in
so many ways moving the embassy to Jerusalem,
standing up to the violent intimidation that
is hamstrung American foreign policy for so
many years in that and so many other things
but I’ve been sort of surprised and disappointed
that he has not addressed to this he needs
to open up mandate perhaps by an executive
order or whatever engine would do it effectively
mandate that the FBI, that DHS, that the CIA,
the Pentagon, all of them that they not only
are allowed to study Islam but that they must
and that it must not be from these smooth
apologists, from the Council on American-Islamic
Relations and so on that have demonstrable
ties to our enemy.
But it has to be from people who are gonna
speak about it honestly and realistically.
Now he’s gonna catch hell for that because
of course all the people who speak about and
honestly and realistically our hate group
leaders according to the Southern Poverty
Law Center and so that has to be directly
opposed and rebuked and an unapologetic setting
out of the necessity going back to sunsuit
that you have to know your enemy we have to
understand this and he could even say you
know I- I wouldn’t have any objection at
all if he were to say that this might be a
completely wrong understanding of Islam I
grant you this is this could be twisted hijacked
false Islam and real Islam is as cuddly as
as it could possibly be but we have to understand
the motivating ideology of the enemy and this
is what it is and so we’re going to study
it in depth instead of pretending it doesn’t
exist and the Muslim Brotherhood elements
of course in the US government that has to
be also addressed as well that people like
his shawm Islam who made sure that major Stevens
Shawn Islam was the I believe Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense adviser to Gordon England
who was the Assistant Secretary of Defense
in George W. Bush’s administration that
he obviously he had ties to the Brotherhood
and so on and so why was he wielding this
influence he’s the one who got major Coughlin
fired when major Stephen Coughlin who I’m
sure many of you know was the own Pentagon’s
only expert on Islamic law and so this is
an issue that he needs to be made aware of
but I don’t know that there’s anybody
around him who is telling him about it I think
we have to wait for the microphone sorry thank
you yes that’s right yes yeah Stanford yes
I’m supposed to go to Berkeley in a couple
weeks I’m really looking forward to that
no when I get invited to speak at universities
it’s by the college Republicans or young
America’s Foundation a group like that and
I’ve never been invited by the university
administrators ever and when I am invited
to a university it’s as if Jack the Ripper
has been invited and there is an uproar like
you wouldn’t believe and it’s very clear
that what we see is the fruit of indoctrination
that these children have been told that Islamophobia
is a big problem an Islamic Jihad terror is
really something that’s just a manifestation
of a reaction to American imperialism and
the State of Israel and this is this so this
is one of the reasons why I wrote the book
I know that probably most college students
will never hear about it some of them will
yeah absolutely but I you know I can’t I
don’t have any control over who how much
it’s distributed or who reads it but this
is one of the reasons why I wrote it as a
contribution to try to correct this you’re
absolutely right that thank you really up
until about 1970 everybody knew that what
I was what I mean I wasn’t saying it there
and I was eight but in everybody knew that
what I’m saying is true everybody knew that
Islam was not a religion of peace Winston
Churchill says this John Quincy Adams Thomas
Jefferson and John Adams despite the myth
making of that Thomas Jefferson nowadays everybody
took these things for granted it was obvious
but there has been a concerted effort at disinformation
and rewriting of history that has been remarkably
effective and that we need to be energetically
counteracting thank you well you know no I
didn’t but it’s a good title terrific
title I wish I had in any case what do we
do that’s right treble out what do we do
about this of course we have to be true to
our own principles and that means that took
something like massive deportation or something
of this kind this is not even on the table
of course nowadays what we need to do are
some things that I think would be very simple
and effective and ought to be common-sense
measures that would do go a large way a long
way to solving this problem one is enforce
our own laws and be consistent in that enforcement
there is should be one law it was actually
the great achievement of Western civilization
that there’s one law for everybody that
this is the Magna Carta people you know that
there’s not one law for the noblemen and
the other law for the commoners it’s one
law for everyone everyone is responsible in
the same way and so if we were to enforce
that then polygamists for example would be
arrested those who practice female genital
mutilation those who violate any number of
other American laws that are already at variance
with Sharia principles if we were to make
it clear that those laws would be enforced
then the followers of Sharia would have the
choice to either renounce those aspects of
Islam in a genuine and sincere way or leave
the country but they’re not going to be
able to have both also of course you have
laws against subversion and Sedition which
would mean that even there’s preaching that
Sharia ought to be the law of the land eventually
would be something that would be legally actionable
these things are already laws that are on
the books it’s just that they’re not being
applied Ibrahim Hooper of care that was a
house fire few years back in the Bronx and
this guy was killed and his wives and so the
New York Times rather blandly noted he had
three or four wives he was a Muslim and Ibrahim
Hooper was trotted out from the counsel on
there llama Croatians to say yeah there I
believe he said 50,000 Muslims and polygamous
arrangements in the United States and then
the New York Times moved on of course to something
else probably Islamophobia backlash but wait
a minute that’s illegal in the United States
the Latter day Saints Church had to change
its doctrine to get the Utah admitted as a
state and so why are we tolerating this now
and these questions remain unanswered why
indeed why has there been no prosecution why
are there only two doctors now that it’s
only been in the since Trump took office that
anybody was ever prosecuted for female genital
mutilation these two doctors who were still
on trial in Detroit you can’t tell me they’re
the first ones that ever did it in the United
States there are thousands of people who have
suffered this in the United States and nothing’s
been done so my first recommendation is enforce
our own laws thank you yeah what’s his name
Oh puss I have him in the book yeah yeah he’s
the guy who told pelea I don’t mean that
if you were gonna tell the story go ahead
polio was the last holdout I hope he will
all be polio as if it comes to this when all
of Spain was conquered there was this one
guy and he wasn’t gonna play and he went
up on top of a mountain with a small band
of followers and the Muslims tried to get
at him but he was up a mountain and so he
was able to rain down stones from the jihadis
and keep them from coming up and eventually
they said what do we care about this band
of barbarians perched on a rock they’ll
die off but Abbas was a bishop a Spanish bishop
in the tradition of Pope Francis and he went
to Pelayo and he said I believe that you now
understand how the aren’t entire army of
Goths cannot resist the force of the Muslims
how then can you resist on this mountain listen
to my advice abandon your efforts and you
will enjoy many benefits alongside the Muslims
Pope Francis is Amin he had to have peace
he’s the worthy successor of Oh bless the
bishop this thing yeah there’s no doubt
about it I mean obviously I am classifying
Pope Francis as chief among them that in shaming
the Christians of Europe and telling them
that they’re not good Christians unless
they accept the Muslim migrants and saying
that there should be no walls well tear down
your Vatican walls pal but you know the Vatican
walls were put up in the year 846 after the
Muslims sacked Rome they couldn’t actually
get in because of the existing laws and the
ones that are there are reinforcements of
those because they made some breaches and
they sacked st. Peters which was outside the
walls at the time and st. Paul outside the
walls so he should think back on the example
of his predecessors but he’s the local Pope
and he’s not going to do that yes ma’am
you play in sports oh my their team is the
bomb well see these things are all allowed
in America now because we’re not enforcing
the laws the ACLU fought for decades to get
Christian prayer out of the schools right
and now in Texas there’s a public school
that has an Islamic prayer room and the Attorney
General of the state of Texas wrote to them
and said you know we have this thing separation
of church and state you got to close down
the Islamic prayer room and they refused so
what’s he gonna do call out the National
Guard he didn’t do anything they still have
their prayer room and he ought to get police
and going there and say this is illegal but
instead it’s happening all over the country
I was debating a couple of Imams a few years
back in University of Michigan Ann Arbor and
I went into the men’s room there’s a public
university there’s a foot bath for the Islamic
prayers and I looked around there were no
holy water fonts it was very strange it seems
as if there’s only accommodation at public
expense of one religion only but I’ll tell
you something there is I don’t I thought
there’s a single university in the country
that speaks honestly about these issues I
was at Cal Poly I was speaking at Cal Poly
University San Luis Obispo California very
pretty place and I was speaking about this
how the universities today they’re one-party
states and there’s only one point of view
allowed and that’s the far-left point of
view and the corollary idea that Islam is
a religion of peace that has as Hillary Clinton
said nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism
and so I was at Cal Poly and I was challenging
them about this and I said for example I’ll
bet that the point of view that I represent
that there are texts of the Quran and teachings
of Muhammad and rulings of Islamic law that
justify violence against unbelievers and have
been acted upon by Muslims throughout history
that is nowhere ever discussed in any of your
classes that touch on Islam and this one girl
said oh no we talked about your book just
last week and I said oh really and what did
you say and she said that hate speech is not
free speech and see what they taught them
was that I was purveying hate speech which
ought not to have First Amendment protection
it ought to be forcibly suppressed by government
agencies and this is very very common in American
universities today and I think that well of
course the corruption of the Academy started
in earnest in the 1960s with the long march
through the institution’s that the hard
left began at that time and it becomes a self-perpetuating
thing one leftist professor gets in and then
he recommends his friend and then we’ll
a little while later they’re there the hiring
board and they only hire their own people
and now it’s all completely closed off to
truth about these issues of course then also
there’s the Saudi money Georgetown University
as the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for
Muslim Christian understanding they got I
believe it was 12 million from Al Waleed who’s
a Saudi prince 220 i I thought it was 20 half
to Harvard and half to Georgetown now 22 Georgetown
great and so if you look at their the al belief
centre and the bridge initiative that comes
from it’s all dedicated to fighting Islamophobia
and got dossiers on all the people who are
so evil who talk about how they get the crazy
idea that Islam is not peaceful and they’re
trying they they do bamboozle a lot of people
in this way of course Georgetown is the worst
but there are many many other universities
have to take in the Saudi money yes sir oh
sorry the microphone yes I forgot about hey
I think I know you back in the dark how are
you likewise sure Linda Sarsour of course
is one of the most interesting and paradoxical
figures of our time I know she’s really
irritating but just if just a minute if you
ponder with me a feminist icon who wears a
hijab the leader of the women’s march on
Washington the day after Trump is inaugurated
and she’s wearing this and says that’s
my choice and meanwhile there are untold numbers
will never know the number of women who’ve
been brutalized and killed for not wearing
the ADEA we know that except our MS and Mississauga
Ontario in 2007 was strangled to death by
her father and her brother with the hijab
she would not wear we know I have a long list
that I keep current at jihad watch whenever
I come across a story and now it’s this
long of women who have been threatened who’ve
been killed who have been brutalized for not
wearing the hijab the very idea of the hijab
is inherently misogynistic do you know why
women have to wear the hijab yes they have
to it’s a woman’s responsibility to make
sure a man is not tempted and so apparently
the temptation in here’s in the hair so
the hair has to be covered the harmful air
rays have to be extinguished and if the man
is still tempted if the woman is raped or
attacked it’s her fault she did not succeed
in extinguishing the temptation and that is
why we have the niqab and the burqa because
if the hijab doesn’t do it then cover the
face if the covering the face doesn’t do
it cover the eyes and what you have then is
an inherently misogynistic a garment that
is a symbol very neatly and clearly of the
oppression of women and the second-class status
of women in Islamic law so you have this woman
who’s wearing it very proudly and lying
about it she’s openly Pro Sharia she’s
got familial ties to Hamas she has said that
she wants to mutilate the women who are opposing
jihad she named for G Gabrielle and Ayaan
Hirsi Ali and this is somebody who celebrated
as a great hero she was just arrested a couple
days ago at the hearing for she wanted to
get arrested it was a stunt that she was showing
again how terrible this Cavanaugh is and how
the the part of the breakdown of the civility
in the American society and the polar extreme
polarization but what she’s trying to do
actually is normalised tell them I’m not
here is normalized the idea that just snug
them I wouldn’t answer either anyway normalize
the idea that the hijab is completely ordinary
is something that we’re going to have to
get used to see that it is something that
represents the marvelous diversity of American
culture and you notice that this diversity
is in favor of this radically oppressive and
intolerant belief system you also have you
asked about the Kopernik how do you say his
name I don’t follow football but I know
I looked it up the other day that the the
49ers when he was quarterback in 2016 were
one in ten and not it’s it’s interesting
to note that the great football fan mahmoud
ahmadinejad tweeted the other day that this
is the best quarterback in the league and
he doesn’t have a contract obviously this
is the Iranians want to exploit the divisions
in American society and so they take this
anti-american figure and exalt him and of
course everything is so confused and polarized
in America today you even have Nike exalting
him and it’s good to see that Nike lost
drinking of what it was a three and a half
billion dollars today so there are still some
there are still some people who object but
these are directly anti-american initiatives
the exultation of these people is directly
anti-american and in service I think aqua
Meena jods tweet about Kapernick they it shows
vividly that this what this is about is in
service of the jihad to weaken American society
so that ultimately it collapses and can be
replaced by a Sharia State that may be fanciful
but the efforts to destroy American society
and service of that fanciful goal is not fanciful
at all yes thank you okay sure the primary
person that you can credit although his influence
is it has to come from other sources the fact
that he became so wildly influential but the
primary person responsible for the obfuscation
in Middle East Studies for the extinguishing
of true teaching about Islam and the introduction
of all these politically correct falsehoods
is Edward Saeed Edward Saeed of course was
a Christian Arab who was the author of a book
called Orientalism in which he explained that
it was essentially a colonialist enterprise
to criticize Islam that if you were criticizing
Islam it was only in service of destroying
the Islamic world such that it could be colonized
by the West and that therefore all criticism
of Islam essentially had to be rejected by
anybody who was against imperialism yeah it
was a theological at all on his part I mean
you can’t really sustain the idea that Islam
as a religion of peace in any honest manner
I tell you something I sometimes I mean I
get people telling me I’m an idiot all the
time and maybe they’re right but tahir-ul-qadri
is a Pakistani theologian who wrote a 512
page fatwa proving that Islam is a religion
of peace and I get people even even now especially
when it came out I would get people writing
me every couple days saying why don’t you
be talking about country and then you will
see that you are Islamaphobe and so I read
it and it was very doubtful that it was available
in a PDF excuse me that was searchable so
I searched I searched for to 191 which is
kill them wherever you find them I searched
for 489 which is kill them wherever you find
them I searched for 95 which is kill the idolaters
wherever you find them I searched for 929
which is fight against those who don’t believe
in a law in the last day and do not forbid
what he is forbidden even if they are of the
people of the book until they pay the jizya
with willing submission and feel themselves
subdued I searched for 47 for when you meet
the unbelievers strike the necks I searched
for 860 strike terror in the hearts of the
enemies of Allah research for three fun with
151 soon we will strike terror we beating
Allah in the hearts of the unbelievers and
on and on and on not one of them was mentioned
so 512 pages of blather where he never even
addressed the passages of the Qur’an that
G Hadees used to justify violence and make
recruits among peaceful Muslims that’s how
they convince people that Islam is a religion
of peace and so some non-Muslim reads to hero
Qadri and thinks oh well this is a respected
Islamic theologian who’s showing that as
long as the religion peace he doesn’t know
what’s in the Quran he doesn’t know those
verses to search for they fall for it and
there are many many examples of expositions
of that kind you don’t find you can’t
find because Islam is not a religion of peace
any honest appraisal of how these the Qur’an’s
violent verses don’t really have any force
in the modern age you will find people saying
oh that only applies to the 7th century which
in the first place contradicts the idea that
the Quran is the perfect book that’s the
perfect guide for human behavior for all time
and then we hear oh yeah but large portions
of it only apply to 1400 years ago it doesn’t
make any sense but secondly if you say that
the Quran is passages only apply to a very
strictly circumscribed period of time then
you’ve got to deal with the fact that all
throughout history Muslims misunderstood that
and behaved violently on the basis of these
passages and so you’ve got the most spectacular
failure to communicate the truths of the religion
that has ever been in the history of the world
in any religion and so it just doesn’t make
any sense either way anubias yes sir thank
you yes well the intelligence community is
done a grave disservice to our understanding
of the threat by partnering with people who
represent aspects of the threat I mean you
have the extraordinarily strange situation
of the Justice Department determining that
care the Council on american-islamic relations
and ISTA the Islamic Society of North America
are tied to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood
and then you have the FBI having them to lunch
and consulting with them and it the the amount
of interaction is actually extraordinary people
don’t know we did Pamela Geller and I did
a Freedom of Information Act years ago way
back in 2011 or 12 we did a FOIA request on
the interaction of the FBI with care and isne
and we got a stack of documents this high
that they said this is the first volume we’ll
get you the rest later they never did but
in that in that there was nothing much that
was explosive and there was a great deal that
was redacted but what came through was the
friendly daily interaction and Eric Trina
and the Department of Homeland Security and
others writing to these emailing these care
and it’s not operating and saying lunch
is on us today and what are you guys having
and and and they’re they’re bringing them
in to consult on a regular basis and this
is like if if FDR had had the German American
Bund Fritz Kuhn come into the White House
and chat after the United States declared
war on Germany yes well you’ve got a point
there there are precedents yes hi how are
you it’s just more of the same short-sighted
realpolitik that we think that we can deal
with these people on the basis that we deal
with France or Germany that it really comes
from the postmodern notion that everybody’s
good at heart and if we just sit down and
talk about our differences we’ll be able
to find common ground and that really of course
guides so much of Western policy that the
the Ayatollah Khamenei and Hassan Rouhani
they’re just guys like us and we can strike
a deal we just have to come to an understanding
the idea that there might be people who have
radically different values radically different
priorities no interest really in being pals
it doesn’t enter their minds but this is
a deeply entrenched State Department idea
that goes back to the the hearts and minds
initiatives that we pursued in the third world
in the Cold War and it’s just been transposed
now to a new context where it’s even less
effective because there’s no way and with
a certain kind of Islamic mindset now people
are people everywhere and human nature is
always the same you might be able to win over
some hearts and minds somewhere but generally
that you’ve got also to deal with Wilson
clerics who will tell you that the infidels
will come and try to seal your Islam away
by giving you roads and hospitals and basketballs
and such and you have to take them all the
more when they come to you with all their
largesse but take it and so it’s it’s
ultimately just a waste of time and waste
of money and it’s not going to get us anywhere
and I can guarantee you that and if I – those
guys today they would say we you you you don’t
know anything you’ve never been a diplomat
you’ve never been in the Foreign Service
you have to leave this to the experts but
the fact is they what they have done and the
basis on which they have done it has failed
again and again and again and again and again
and I am advocating here for some very simple
and obvious truths that if they were to base
their actions upon rather than their wishful
thinking and fantasy based policymaking that
they’re pursuing today they might end up
being more successful and I would submit that
when we look back on this when our children’s
children look back on this after that paid
the jizya they will see that this whole establishment
foreign policy establishment was wrongheaded
and I hope that we wake up to that before
it’s too late yes yep so consider Keith
Ellison I don’t really know the story about
why he’s leaving Congress it would seem
to me that being the member of the House of
Representatives is better than being Attorney
General in the state of Minnesota my immediate
guess as to why he’s moving down is because
perhaps of the allegations against him I don’t
know but imagine but think about what damage
he can do as Attorney General of the state
of Minnesota which has been a hotbed of jihad
activity and a Shabaab recruitment Isis recruitment
right in Minneapolis among the Somali community
if he puts an end to investigations of that
it can proliferate and he could be in a position
to do that very easily we have to be able
to speak forthrightly about these issues but
right now that’s why they’ve done been
so indefatigable in making sure that speaking
forthrightly about these issues has been so
terribly stigmatized and anybody who speaks
out about this or raises concerns or says
wait a minute do we really want a hijab wearing
Muslim in the United States Congress what
are the implications of that and then it’s
of course you have to deal with the charges
of racism and bigotry in Islamic obeah well
if you are willing to brave that then you
can speak about the nature of Sharia and of
women’s rights and the implications of wearing
a de jab such as I outlined a little hasar
sword and tried to frame Ilhan Omar the hijab
wearing congressional candidate of course
she’s running unopposed so it would just
be a matter of trying to call attention to
these issues she’s going to Congress but
framing what show her to be what she really
is as an instrument of oppression and somebody
who is trying to make the world worse for
women and that we have to go on the offensive
in this regard the problem is then all these
problems become interrelated and then the
problem of RT being deplatformed and not being
able to have a voice in social media becomes
a very salient issue so we can only hope that
some of this is going to break our way but
the D platforming is very serious because
if we can have the best arguments in the world
but if we can’t get them out then we’re
done for and the social media giants today
control the means of communication to a greater
degree than any totalitarian state ever did
I don’t actually I haven’t heard anything
maybe Clare knows or or Chris but I haven’t
heard anything about what grover norquist
has been doing many of you know I’m sure
that he was involved with Abdul Rahman Alamoudi,
the al Qaeda financier.
He had connections to other people who were
very questionable in regard to their going
connections to Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood
and so on and he’s always been very very
dismissive to anybody notably Frank Gaffney
who has called attention to this and just
accused them of racism and Islamophobia and
that’s the end of the story and this kind
of thing is I think emblematic of the fix
that we’re in that these kinds of discussions
that we need to have if Grover really is compromised
with all his power and influence then that’s
a very important question but we can’t even
ask it just like when Michele Bachmann asked
about investigation ask for an investigation
of Muslim Brotherhood infiltration into the
United States government st.
John McCain denounced her on the floor of
the Senate and shut it down yes I do think
that the Sunnis that she is they’re certainly
cooperating mm-hmm I don’t know where the
ultimate orchestration comes from but there
is orchestration I could tell you that because
I’m constantly trying to answer their arguments
on an intellectual basis at jihad watch my
website and various articles and such and
I noticed that there are certain times when
many many Muslim spokesmen say the same thing
you know Ibrahim Hooper will make a statement
the Muslims are the new Jews and then three
days later Reza Aslan will say the Muslims
are the new Jews and a couple days after that
Keith Ellison will say the Muslims are the
new Jews and I think okay who told them to
say the Muslims are the new truth and I don’t
know who’s coordinating it but there is
coordination it seems to me to be clear and
yes the Sunnis and Shia are cooperating of
course the most obvious example of that is
9/11 when the Saudis and Iran collaborated
in worked in working with the 9/11 hijackers
there’s documentation of this much of it
thanks to Clare Lopez in the book the History
of Jihad and of course the Iranians the Islamic
Republic of Iran which is Shiite today funds
Sunni Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as having
also funded al-qaeda and the Taliban which
are Sunni.
There’s an old proverb ‘my brother against
my brother but both of us against our cousin’
and Sunnis and Shia hate each other but they’ll
always- I’ll always collaborate against
infidels.
Thank you.
