The threat is real

Guest View
John Rudolph
Special to The Augusta Free Press


This op-ed was inspired by the D.C. Watson piece, An open letter to Islamic organizations in America (Tuesday AFP), which was a real eye-opener.
Hopefully by now, all who read his piece have become acutely aware that the threat is real.
Prior to 9/11, I had never heard of a man named Dr. Daniel Pipes. Then again, most of us hadn't. For years prior to 9/11, Dr. Pipes was discussing Islamism - the rise of Islamic fundamentalism against the West, via books and articles. While we were aiding the Mujahideen by giving them arms and logistics in Afghanistan against the invading Soviet Union, Dr. Pipes was busy working on getting the word out. You see, Daniel had a vision. His vision soon caught on after 9/11, and people started to become aware that there is a rising tide of hate. This rising tide of hate is coming against America and the free world.
Look up the names on the Internet. Daniel Pipes. Robert Spencer. Andrew Whitehead. What are these men talking about? If you're not aware of what they are saying, you're not listening. Look them up for yourselves.
Enter post-9/11. Since then, bloggers and writers on-line, thousands of them, have been writing about strange topics like Dhimmitude, Islamism, Wahhabism and so on. What they've been saying, much like Mr. Watson has been doing in his recent article posted here in The Augusta Free Press, is extremely important.
They speak the truth.
It is writers such as Mr. Watson and myself, and the many others out there, who could possibly become tomorrow's political prisoners. Sometimes, it takes writers to stir a nation's consciousness. We could end up as Muslim apostates would over in Saudi Arabia - being strung up by the neck because we are speaking out against an intolerant and unjust way of life.
We might end up staying over at the poorhouse because our government stood by and watched us get sued by Islamist watchdog groups because we're speaking out using our First Amendment rights and telling the truth.
We could also become victims of our own form of justice as we are locked up for inciting hatred - but it would again be the ignorant who make sure that we are punished for merely speaking out the truth.
Others might claim we're the soothsayers and paranoid people, claiming that the sky is falling. There are Islamist organizations out there that decry against us as being "Islamophobes" just because we are speaking the truth. A year ago, my wife told me that I needed to calm down and relax, insinuating that I believed that the sky was falling. She thought that I was being a bit too worried over nothing. The other day, she said to me as she watched the evening news that I what I was ranting about a couple of years ago is becoming the truth. What I was telling her back then is just now coming out to the public via the media, but it was people like Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer who were talking about this threat long before 9/11.
I came into the awareness of the threat against our nation a bit late. It took major attacks on our country, and the murders of my Pentagon Navy buddies, for me to finally wake up and smell the coffee. They were murdered in the name of a false prophet. After 9/11, I came to see the threat with my own eyes. Come to think of it, anyone can see that the rise of Islamism in this country and abroad is becoming an experience each and every evening as we sit down to watch the world's events unfold before our eyes.
You hear about it everywhere. Terrorist attacks. Islamists. Insurgents. Suicide bombers. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Intifada. Imams and clerics who preach violence against the United States of America.
Names like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden; if you're not hearing about this new threat, then perhaps you aren't keeping a close enough watch on current events.
Check out this on the Internet. Use key words like Islamists, Militants, Insurgents, Terrorists, Dhimmitude, Wahhabism, Jihad, Terror Squads, Mujahideen, Suicide Bomber, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Anti-CAIR, Daniel Pipes, and you will begin to see an ugly picture that is being painted.
But there are those who don't want us to see this picture as it is being painted behind the lines. In their views, we are not allowed to discuss the truth. We are not allowed to use our First Amendment rights.
For a minute, let's take a brief look and go back to some of the threats we faced as a nation from the early '50s on through the decline of the Soviet Empire. We were facing nuclear strikes. We'd look up into the sky and imagine seeing missile trails coming down toward Earth. We'd write books about the Soviet threat. As kids, some of us were trained through air-raid drills in school, and we were told to hide behind or underneath our desks. While books like Alas Babylon by Pat Frank frightened us with tragic scenarios of a post-nuclear way of life, there were the movies like The Day After (1983) and Threads (1994) that scared us but made us realize that the threat of nuclear holocaust could possibly come true.
Back in the '50s, our parents might have been busy building bomb shelters. We were a nation of fear to a certain extent. We held air-raid drills as our B-47 and B-52 bomber forces in the Strategic Air Command were waiting on-station and in mid-air for a counter-strike against the Soviet Union. Our nuclear submarines, both fast-attack and missile boats (boomers), brought to us by a visionary Navy admiral named Hyman G. Rickover, were busy patrolling the coast of the Soviet Union, listening in like spies, waiting for nuclear tests and also tapping their phone lines under the cold arctic waters.
We were fighting a different war back then; but today, things are much different.
Today, we are facing a far different threat. This threat sits amongst us and has already infiltrated us through attempts of assimilation and "education." Here in the Shenandoah Valley, we might not see the threat directly, but it's there. Now, instead of our government building bomb shelters against this new threat, they are trying to build up on Homeland Security. This new threat doesn't come at us with warheads. They come at us with horrifying scenarios.
Imagine for a minute that you're riding the D.C. Metro. You're on the orange line running from Vienna to Arlington Cemetery. Suddenly, you are overcome with a burning sensation in your eyes. You are going to die from inhalation of poison. That's because the seemingly normal looking guy in the Metro car ahead of yours has just opened up his briefcase and dumped a half-liter of cyanide gas into the open air. This man is an Islamist, and he is angry at the evil United States - the Great Satan.
Although you are an innocent civilian, this man who works for a group called Hamas entered the United States with a mission about a year ago, and you are a soldier that he is fighting against. So are your children and grandchildren. You are a legitimate target in his sights just as Israeli innocent women and their babies were on those bus bombings that you heard about in the news.
It's attacks such as these that we're worried about. This new rise of Islamism in the Middle East is coming soon, and they want to strike directly at us. It will come as the seemingly simple to do attacks - and it will come against our civilian population. Forgive me for being possibly prophetic here - it's the dropping of poison into the local water treatment plant at 3 a.m. while we're all asleep. It might come as the sudden, unexplained explosion of a bus that killed 30 people in downtown Harrisonburg. It could be the gassing or bombing against hundreds in downtown Waynesboro during our Fall Foliage Festival.
Or how about the horrific, unexpected and difficult-to-talk-about-the-possibilities-of the kidnapping of our children over in one of our local high schools, who are being held hostage by a group of angry Chechens who snuck into America via the open border down in Mexico a few months ago? If you think these scenarios are impossible here in the Valley, think again. It is time for you to wake up and realize the threat that now surrounds us. Preposterous, right? That could never happen here. We're too good of a people for this to happen to. Right? Please convince me this will never happen. It's too horrible to even think about. Not in my town. Never.
Think again, my friend.
And I hope this opens the eyes and ears of our local government here in Augusta County.
Although it might be difficult to believe that any Muslim civil-rights group could possibly have ties to future attacks such as the scenarios posted above, it is not so hard to realize that such a Muslim civil-rights group actually was birthed from the same ideologies who can bring these attacks to the heartland of America. Such a group, one might say, is doing well for peaceful Muslims and looking out for their right to enjoy freedom from hatred in America. After all, this civil-rights group hosts fund-raising dinners and shakes the hands of local police officers and town mayors. They are friends of citizens and look good to us in the public eye. They even provide our libraries with puff-piece reading material about Islam.
Such a group, one might say, has good citizens, who are merely trying to make a better life for themselves. They are playing along to the tune of "let's be friends" while ulterior motives are being managed in the shadows. One can rightfully say that such a group has already had some of their officers arrested for terrorism, yet they are still allowed to remain as an effective political organization. Why is this allowed to happen?
But isn't this a brilliant, devious and a frighteningly insidious scheme to work as a Muslim civil-rights organization? People will leave them alone, as they go about their business. In the eyes and minds of apologists and the tolerant, they are accepted. Expect groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the media to protect them.
It so happens that this group is located less than two and a half hours from us here in the Shenandoah Valley.
This so-called Muslim civil-rights group has a lot of confidence in themselves. They are labeled as "an outspoken Muslim civil-rights organization." This group has launched hundreds of lawsuits against the people who have utilized their First Amendment rights to speak the truth about the threat of Islamism upon this nation. One of the people who was sued by this "civil rights group" was Rep. Cass Ballenger, R-N.C. I wonder if Rep. Ballenger has ever discussed this with Rep. Bob Goodlatte over at the House?
Why is this group suing so many people? Where are they getting the money to have this ability to sue so many people who speak the truth? What is their agenda? Their agenda is to silence those who speak the truth about Islamism and the Muslim fundamentalist cause to hate America. This group doesn't want people like us talking about them in this manner.
While Mr. Watson tells us that he doesn't believe all Muslims are bad, he is absolutely correct. What is bad, however, is the rise of Islamism in the world today. It just so happens that this Muslim civil-rights group was started up from money from Hamas, the same terrorist group that blows up innocent civilians in buses over in Israel. They started out as a group called the Islamic Association of Palestine (the IAP). In short, the IAP maintained their own terrorist track record abroad. They were in support of Yasser Arafat, the father of modern-day terrorism. Arafat was the man who perfected aircraft hijackings. I would hope that at this point, readers could begin to see the evil linkage between this Muslim civil-rights group and terrorism.
This "outspoken Muslim civil-rights group" has even had some of their officers arrested under terrorist charges - yet they are still allowed to exist and operate in our nation's capital, and many more branches throughout America. This is what angers me the most; I do not understand the rhetoric that allows this group to move on as it has been for many years now. I wish that my government could see this threat.
But we saw it coming. Enter some information that I never thought I'd bring to focus into the public eye.
Allow me to introduce one of my closest friends and colleagues. Back around 1994 I met a guy named Andrew Whitehead. We met in an unlikely place - a naval communications station over in Iceland. This was during those dark, wintery months. Like myself, Andrew was a U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class. We had been in the Navy for quite a while. We had younger guys and gals work for us (I prefer to say with us). Andrew and I shared a common goal: Do our best, take good care of those younger petty officers who worked with us in our divisions, and finish up our 20-year careers in the Navy with a clean solid record.
Andrew, like myself, was pretty good at discussions, and we could put up a good and honest argument. Whenever it came down to geopolitical discussions, Andrew and I were usually found to be in the thick of it. We enrolled ourselves into the geopolitical science and government college courses. But back then, we hardly knew about words like Dhimmitude, Wahhabism or Islamist.
As time marched on, we finished up our naval tours of duty. In 1996, Andy left the Navy after 20 years of service as a decorated veteran. He left Iceland and went home to his wife and children (Andy's Icelandic tour was unaccompanied - his family remained in the States during his tour of duty). I would soon follow Andy's footsteps of retirement in 2000. We remained in touch via e-mails and phone calls. I would visit Andy whenever I found myself coming down to Norfolk for Navy IT and telecommunications courses.
Following 9/11, Andy and I followed the news very closely. We discovered that the news wasn't telling us the complete story. We joined an on-line group called "Anti-Jihad International" whose mission was to tell the truth about the rising threat of Islamism. We were the bloggers and ranters who spoke out against Islamist intolerance, but there were some in our group that wanted to bring violence to innocent Muslims. Andy and I realized that it was time for us to bail, and bail quickly and quietly we did. We didn't believe in violence. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the levels of Islamist terrorists. This was not our mantra because we do not believe in violence. We had no beef against innocent Muslims - it was only the violent, intolerant Muslims we hated.
Andy and I used to joke about seeing ourselves in prison orange; but we realized that the joke could have very well happened if we stuck around like fools in this group. Luckily, some of the members who were making perceived threats against innocent Muslims never carried out these threats. Maybe it was common sense. Maybe they realized that it is not such a good idea to lower themselves to the level of the Islamists who preach violence against America.
Andrew and I came to form a new organization. Realizing that these thugs we chose to expose called themselves a Muslim civil-rights group, we found out that they held ulterior motives, and that some of their own people had actually gotten arrested on charges of terrorism. One of them even said that.
"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future. ... But I'm not going to do anything violent to promote that. I'm going to do it through education."
Ah, yes - the old ideological approach. Don't use violence against the masses. Better to corral them into believing we are good people. After all, Americans will believe anything that you tell them.
Taking this statement as any American would as being a threat against our Constitution, we launched our own group and we called it Anti-CAIR (www.anti-cair-net.org). Someone had to reveal them, and we took it upon ourselves to do so. Along with us, more people we had met from our initial group joined us in fighting against this group and bringing the word out. Since our inception, we've done our very best to bring the truth to the public about them. Go and visit our site and see what we are talking about.
As Mr. Watson pointed out in his article, "why have American citizens had civil suits brought against them for speaking out against the activities of Muslims?" That is because they want people who are telling the truth about this Islamist group to shut up. Intimidation from the threat of a lawsuit is their tactic - this "civil-rights" group is suing my friend, Andrew Whitehead, the director of Anti-CAIR, for $1.3 million. You see, it's because Andrew is telling the truth, and the truth hurts, especially if you're an organization that pretends to be doing one thing but is abiding to other motives.
They are creating a false image of themselves. They are sending out their people into our public schools who are teaching our children a puff-piece on Islam, making it appear peaceful while at the same time they violate the very principles of conflict between church and state. Mr. Watson addressed this in his op-ed:
"While I’m aware that constitutional legal barriers haven't been crossed, I'm also aware that Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists are prohibited from promoting their faith in public schools. So, why are Muslim guest speakers gaining entry into American public schools to discuss Islam with our children, when church and state are separate in America?"
If you have an answer to this question, please speak now. If you ever hear of Muslim guest speakers coming into Augusta County schools, it is too late. Our local government will have already been cowed into falling for the false impression that it is a good idea to teach our children about Islam while at the same time it is illegal for them to learn about Christianity and other faiths.
This Muslim civil-rights group is suing Andrew Whitehead because he has come out and publicly told the truth about them. This is why they want him silenced. The truth is hurting them. The truth cramps their flowery, sweet image. While they might try to pull the wool over the public eye and call themselves a Muslim civil-rights organization, they have an insidious plot; I see right through it. They want to change the minds of Americans and make them believe that their brand of Islam is good for America while they launch ridiculous lawsuits against speakers of the truth. Yet at the same time they have criticized nearly every process that our government has carried out in the name of homeland security. They want to try to convince us that Islam is a religion of peace. Read Mr. Watson's article again. He is speaking volumes of truths.
This isn't a liberal, conservative, middle-of-the-road time to think. This isn't me speaking out as a conservative. There are no Bush, Kerry, Badnariks or Cobbs in the mind today, folks. This is me speaking as an American to my fellow Americans, and it doesn't matter what side of what fence you sit on. Become aware of the threat against your way of life and your freedoms, and become aware that there is something that you can do to fight against it.
I encourage all of you to sit and read Mr. Watson's article again. Afterward, sit down and think about writing to your congressional representative (if you're concerned, and you should be). I have been doing that for a while now. I have written letters to Bob Goodlatte about the rising threat of Islamism. I am certain that the Honorable Goodlatte is well aware of who I am by now. Make your congressman aware. They may not yet know.
Tell your congressional representative that you're concerned about these potential terrorist groups and the acceptance of such groups into our country. Tell them you're openly aware and concerned that this Muslim civil-rights group, who has had some of their people arrested for terrorist activities, are still allowed to remain in existence and continue to be active against our own citizens through the use of lawsuits merely because they are speaking out and telling the truth.
That is why I am encouraging my fellow Americans to take part in a letter-writing campaign. If any of you want to learn more about our concerns, you can e-mail me with any questions, requesting more information and what you can do as a U.S. citizen to fight against this rising seed of hate. You will be hearing more about Islamism in the upcoming months in newspapers and on television. Mark my words on that.
Because, my friend, in the near future, be it next Saturday or a couple of years down the road - you will remember what I said here today.
This hatred against America happened a long time ago, and we have been hated for many years. They don’t like the way that we live. They don't appreciate us because we're predominantly a Christian nation. We do not, and will not accept their intolerance against other religions while they file lawsuits against us because we're speaking the truth. We cannot conform to their way of life and their way of practicing their form of religion.
Mr. Watson couldn't have said it any better:
"Although the religious majority is overwhelmingly Christian, we're tolerant of all races and religions. You’re welcome to practice your faith here, but you can forget about dominating anything.
"You can stay, as long as you respect our laws and our citizens. Understand that it's not our responsibility to adapt to your culture. It's your responsibility to adapt to ours. You're in our house, so you follow the house rules."
Stand by. Do not expect Islamists to follow our house rules. We're in for one big ugly battle, and the battle is to begin here at home.


John Rudolph resides in Stuarts Draft. He can be reached at bassizzzt@yahoo.com.

The views expressed by op-ed writers do not necessarily reflect those of management of The Augusta Free Press.

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(Published 12-08-04/Opinion)