The Axis of Jihad

The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off on the opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in this world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.

—Qur’an 5:33

They wish that you reject Faith, as they have rejected (Faith), and thus that you all become equal (like one another). So take not Auliya’ (protectors or friends) from them, till they emigrate in the Way of Allah (to Muhammad ). But if they turn back (from Islam), take (hold) of them and kill them wherever you find them, and take neither Auliya’ (protectors or friends) nor helpers from them.

—Qur’an 4:89

And don’t be weak in the pursuit of the enemy; if you are suffering (hardships) then surely, they (too) are suffering (hardships) as you are suffering, but you have a hope from Allah (for the reward, i.e. Paradise) that for which they hope not, and Allah is Ever All-Knowing, All-Wise.

—Qur’an 4:104

And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world].

—Qur’an 8:39

On June 10, 2014 a previously little-known insurgent group calling itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) exploded onto international headlines by seizing control of the Iraqi city of Mosul. Although the group had already captured territories across Iraq, including the city of Fallujah, Mosul was “a bigger and more important prize, located at a strategically vital intersection on routes linking Iraq to Turkey and Syria.”1 With the capture of Mosul, the power and importance of ISIS could no longer be ignored by the international community—particularly given the embarrassing way in which Iraqi security forces abandoned their weapons and fled from the advancing insurgents. Flush from its victory, ISIS soon after declared that it had created a new Islamic state—a caliphate—in the regions under its control in Iraq and Syria.2

Two months later, the bloody cruelty of ISIS was demonstrated in terrible and dramatic fashion with the on-camera beheading of American journalist James Foley. The videotape shows Foley kneeling in a desert with a masked ISIS fighter behind him, armed with a knife. The fighter announces in a London accent that Foley will be executed in retaliation for recent U.S. airstrikes against his group in Iraq. After a brief confession, Foley is butchered and beheaded. The video ends with a promise of more murders to come.3

The murder of James Foley is in keeping with ISIS’s promise to attack Americans “in any place” if the U.S. went through with its plan to use air strikes to stall the group’s bloody advance through Iraq.4 But Foley’s murder pales in comparison to the scope of the violence surrounding Iraq’s religious and ethnic minority groups.

One of ISIS’s victims has been the Christian community of Mosul. For 2,000 years, Mosul was home to a Christian community. Although used to mistreatment and persecution from the Islamic majority, the community nevertheless survived. All that has been wiped away. When the ISIS jihadists seized control of the city they announced it would be run according to strict sharia law. The homes of Christians were marked and the inhabitants told they must convert to Islam or die. Although the total loss of life is not yet known, almost the entire community of Christians from Mosul are reported to have been driven out by threats and murders carried out by ISIS fighters.5

Even less fortunate have been the Yazidis, an ethnic minority group who also practice a faith that predates Islam. The United Nations observed early on that the ISIS approach to this group involved “hunting down and killing large numbers of minority Yazidis, acts which amount to genocide.”6 Whereas some Christians under ISIS control were given, according to literal Islamic law, the choice of paying a religious tax, converting to Islam, or suffering death, the Yazidis “are considered by Sunni militants to be infidels who deserve extermination.”7 Accordingly, ISIS killed hundreds of Yazidis and captured hundreds more (mostly women) to serve as slaves. By the tens of thousands, Yazidi tribe members in Iraq were forced to flee their villages and seek refuge in the mountains or face certain destruction.

Other Muslim groups are subject to similar treatment. In August, heavy fighting between ISIS and Shiite militiamen in Iraq’s Diyala province produced considerable casualties. The fighting culminated in the August 22 suicide bombing of a mosque during Friday prayers, which killed at least 68 people.8 As of this writing, sectarian violence between ISIS and other Sunni groups and the Shia majority in Iraq had the potential to draw the country into another bloody sectarian conflict.

Also in June 2014, Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni Muslim organization that governs the Gaza Strip, reignited the simmering Israeli-Palestinian conflict by arranging the kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenagers.9 The Israeli Defense Forces sprang into action, with a series of ground attacks and targeted air strikes aimed at Hamas cells. Hamas launched numerous rocket attacks at Israel. After U.S. efforts to broker a peace agreement collapsed, the IDF conducted a series of raids aimed at destroying tunnels used by Hamas and other militants to launch their attacks in the Gaza Strip. Only after many tunnels were destroyed and Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza did a 72-hour ceasefire begin on August 7.

The Gaza Strip is a heavily populated area, of course, so civilians were inevitably caught up in this conflict. As of August 2014 there were around 2,000 people dead and 10,000 more injured from the fighting. Estimates vary as of this writing, but as many as 80% of the dead and injured were probably civilians. Such loss of life plays into the goal of Hamas, which seeks to delegitimize and destroy Israel. Every civilian killed in their conflict only serves to stoke the fires of jihad.

In that same month of August, the U.S. lost its highest-ranking officer in the Afghanistan conflict. Major General Harold Greene was shot to death while on a visit to the national military academy in Kabul. A German brigadier general and two Afghan generals were also injured in the attack. According to Afghan officials, the assailant was a trainee who had served in the academy for more than two years.10 Greene had been spearheading efforts to train Afghan troops for the fight against insurgent groups such as the Taliban. He had two children.

THE UNSPOKEN WORLDWIDE SUNNI ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

All of these incidents are part of a worldwide revolution taking place today almost completely unacknowledged. No one seems to truly notice what is happening, or else they seriously underestimate the significance of what they’re seeing. Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that in every country the Muslim revolutionary group operates under different names. In Iraq and Syria its name is ISIS; in Israel, it is Hamas; in Afghanistan, it is the Taliban and al-Qaeda; in Nigeria, it is Boko Haram; in Egypt, it is the Muslim Brotherhood; in Indonesia, it is Jemaah Islamiyah; in India, it is the Indian Mujahideen and Students Islamic Movement of India; in Russia, it is Riyad-us-Saliheen; and in Pakistan, it is the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qaeda, and another 30 Muslim terrorist and extremist groups which all exist autonomously.

Unfortunately, too much attention is focused on these particular organizations and certain charismatic leaders like Osama bin Laden. While it is understandable for governments look to specific groups of people who constitute a direct threat to peace, when this institutional response is combined with misconceptions about the true threat from Islam it becomes difficult to effectively combat that threat. The danger of Islamic conquest is only made manifest by prominent groups and their leaders—it is not defined by them. Individuals come and go, groups may disband or reform or change their name. What is important is to focus on what the groups and the individuals have in common. Above all, we must consider the common ideology that unites them.

The ideology that unites these groups is nothing other than Islam itself. That is, every one of these groups is doing its best to follow the literal words of Islamic doctrine as laid out in the Qur’an, and in the sayings and biographies of the Prophet Muhammad. When applied to the current world situation, Islam is virulently anti-Western and anti-modern. In essence, all of these groups—whether one calls them jihadists, terrorists, literal Islamists, or Islamic fundamentalists—want the same thing. They want to return to the Islam of the seventh century. They want to restore the caliphate, the Islamic theocracy that ruled the entirety of the Muslim world during the first centuries after Muhammad’s death (then survived in a decayed form until it was finally abolished by Kemal Ataturk in the 1920s when he created modern Turkey out of the ruins of the old Ottoman Empire).

Every one of these groups is waging jihad in order to establish literal Islam and make it dominant, both in their own nations and around the world. The importance of jihad in this sense can be seen in Osama bin Laden’s 2002 letter to America. In this letter, bin Laden explains the reasons for al-Qaeda’s enmity with the U.S. and calls on Americans to embrace Islam:

It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah’s Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people.11

These words express the desire that animates all the Sunni revolutionary groups operating today: the desire to fight so that their brand of Islam will “reign Supreme” not only in Islamic lands but everywhere. They also express the idea that only one brand of Islam is acceptable.

The Hamas Charter explains why all so-called Islamic lands—and Israel in particular— must remain part of the Islamic world for all time. The reason is simply that such lands are “Islamic Waqf,” meaning something that is religiously given and cannot be abrogated. In the words of the Charter:

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection, no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it … This is the status [of the land] in Islamic Shari’a, and it is similar to all lands conquered by Islam by force, and made thereby Waqf lands upon their conquest, for all generations of

Muslims until the Day of Resurrection.12
So long as such metaphysical claims are accepted without question, Muslims will continue to cause trouble over Israel. It is impossible to form rational agreements with people who believe that some land belongs to them in perpetuity because their ancestors conquered it once.

In Syria and Iraq, ISIS has been trying to rally fighters from the worldwide Sunni revolution to its own banner. Declaring the area under his current military control to be a new caliphate, so-called Caliph Ibrahim issued a call to Muslims to join his state:

Know that we fight over a religion that Allah has promised to support. We fight for an ummah to which Allah has given honor, esteem, and leadership, promising it with empowerment and strength on the earth. Come, O Muslims … By Allah, if you disbelieve in democracy, secularism, nationalism, as well as all the other garbage and ideas from the west, and rush to your religion and creed, then by Allah, you will own the earth, and the east and west will submit to you.13

From such statements it is clear that al-Qaeda is just one of many groups aimed at establishing Islamic supremacy.

It is important to realize that these terror groups and their spectacular attacks are not aberrations. There has been a worldwide Sunni revolution steadily building since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This revolution itself is merely the continuation of a 1,400 year jihad against the non-Islamic world. Terrorism is only a means to an end in this jihad. The end is Islamic conquest of the entire world. To that end, “apostate” regimes such as Bashar Assad’s secular tyranny in Syria must be abolished in favor of “genuine” Islamic rule. The Arab Spring itself was not a democratic movement, it was an effort to replace secular rulers with religious ones.

While there were certainly many secular-minded men and women and even outright anti-jihadists involved in the popular protests which toppled governments in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, in every case their voices were subsumed and drowned out by the jihadists—who were more ferocious if not always more numerous. When governments fell, it was the jihadists who were best organized and most determined to establish a post- revolutionary order. The sudden rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to political control of Egypt perfectly illustrated the case. The Egyptian military’s subsequent removal of the Brotherhood from power shows that the situation is still in flux.

One of the clearest analyses of the situation comes from foreign correspondent and Middle East expert John Bradley, who remarked:

While most Western reporters considered unrest in the Middle East a step in the direction of democracy, I thought the opposite. It is the Islamists, who wish to create Islamic states and impose Islamic law, who will emerge triumphant from the present chaos.14

Bradley goes on to caution readers that the revolutions should be judged by their outcomes rather than by intentions. And as Middle East historian Benny Morris has shown, “the ‘Arab Spring’ has brought both Islamization and chaos.”15

What the media tried to call an Arab Spring was only an illusion. In reality, it would be more accurate to call it a Sunni Winter. It is nothing less than a global Sunni fundamentalist revolution, and the consequences of a loss in this conflict are nothing less than catastrophic.

THE AXIS OF JIHAD: DRIVERS OF THE REVOLUTION

What are the forces that drive and sustain this revolution? Here the answer is twofold. The first part of the answer is simply: Islam itself. The revolutionaries are under the sway of Arab imperialist thinking. This way of thinking says simply that Islam is a complete way of life—it tells followers how to behave in almost every situation in their lives. The way of life was supposedly revealed by God to the prophet Muhammad and human beings should accept it completely and live accordingly without change or deviation. Not only that, the whole world must be converted to the same view and must adopt the same customs and habits. Accepting anything less than this is to shirk one’s duty as a Muslim.

In behavior, Islam acts like the strangler fig tree. It attaches itself to a host culture like the strangler fig does to another tree. Then it grows along with the host culture, slowly drawing nutrients from it until it becomes strong enough to stand on its own. At that time, the host dies and rots away, leaving the strangler fig free growing by itself. Examples of this are common throughout Islamic history—the Hellenic culture of Asia Minor, the Coptic culture of Egypt, the Christian culture of Syria, the Assyrian culture of Mesopotamia, the Indian culture of what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Zoroastrian culture of Iran all were clung to, sapped of energy, and destroyed. This is the future of any nation that hosts Islam, and is the chief danger facing Western nations today.

The second part of the answer is this: the revolution is being driven by the Axis of Jihad. Behind the Sunni fundamentalist groups two nations stand head and shoulders above the rest in terms of their support. Saudi Arabia supplies money and Wahhabi ideology; Pakistan supplies logistics and muscle. The involvement of these two nations in the global Sunni fundamentalist revolution goes back to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. At that time, the U.S. conspired with both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to train, indoctrinate, arm, and supply jihadi warriors to oppose the Soviet army. The Saudis provided more than $10 billion worth of funds through charitable front groups alone.16 Meanwhile, Pakistan was a logistics base for the mujahideen, and used Saudi money to set up radical madrasas on its northwest border to spread literalist Islam throughout the region. Today, the people indoctrinated by those madrasas are everywhere and include some of the most prominent leaders of the Taliban and other radical groups.17

In the words of journalist Patrick Cockburn, “The price of the triple alliance between the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan was the jihadi movement.”18 The Wikileaks release of U.S. diplomatic cables exposed the extent to which the American government was aware of Saudi duplicity in the war on terror. “Private individuals in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states friendly to the United States are the chief source of funding for al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other terrorist groups” those cables revealed.19 Qatar was singled out as the worst in the Middle East when it came to restraining private funds from going to fund terror. Kuwait was identified as a “key transit point” for the movement of funds from individuals to terror groups.20

The Saudis remain out in front when it comes to funding terrorist groups worldwide, however. A leaked memo written by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2009 asserts that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”21 In mid-2014, the Iraqi government accused Saudi Arabia of supporting “genocide” efforts within its borders; the Shia government of Iraq believes the Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia were supporting ISIS in its efforts to murder Shias and destabilize the government.22 The Iraqi government has a point—it is known that the Saudis funded insurgent groups in Syria with America’s blessing, only to have ISIS emerge as one of the chief recipients of those funds. The situation is not unlike the funding provided to the mujahideen in Afghanistan, which benefitted from Western dollars only to blossom into al-Qaeda later.23

Meanwhile, in Pakistan demonstrators gathered by the hundreds to show solidarity with Bin Laden after he was killed by American Navy SEALs. Particularly since the military dictatorship of Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq (1977-1988), Pakistan has especially cultivated the identification of nationalism with Islamic fervor. As journalist and former diplomat Husain Haqqani puts it, “A whole generation of Pakistanis has grown up with textbooks that conflate Pakistani nationalism with Islamist exclusivism.”24 During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, militant Islamic groups were given free rein—with American support—to resist the invasion however they saw fit. Pakistan hoped in turn to make these groups instruments of Pakistani regional influence. Although it succeeded in this aim, the groups have become almost impossible for the Pakistani government to pacify, even if it wanted to. But it does not really want to, as then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta observed in 2012 when he warned that “it is difficult to achieve a secure Afghanistan as long as there is a safe haven for terrorists in Pakistan from which they can conduct attacks on our forces.”25

Even more galling to Americans should be the fact that alleged ally Pakistan seems to have sheltered Osama bin Laden for years. It has become increasingly clear since bin Laden’s discovery and death that Pakistan only makes “a show of cooperation with the American fight against terrorism while covertly abetting and even coordinating Taliban, Kashmiri and foreign Qaeda-linked militants.”26 Pakistan’s feared Inter-Services Intelligence agency is the key to this double game. It is only through observing how ISI operates to supply and coordinate terror groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan that the country’s “true relationship to militant extremism can be discerned”—a fact the U.S. has refused to face directly “for fear of setting off a greater confrontation with a powerful Muslim nation.”27

A list of the most significant state sponsors of terrorism would not be complete without mention of Iran. As a Shia state, Iran is not truly part of the global Sunni fundamentalist revolution. In fact, the Shia had their own revolution in 1979, and it brought them to political power in Iran. And part of the Sunni revolution actually involves killing Shiites over petty doctrinal differences as a way of acquiring and consolidating power. Nevertheless, when it comes to sponsoring radical Islam, Iran has been a major player since the foundation of the Islamic Republic. In fact, “At least eight of the fourteen Saudi ‘muscle’ operatives selected for the 9/11 operations traveled through Iran in the months before the attacks.”28

Iran’s most visible radical proxy group is Hezbollah, which it helped to create in the 1980s. Support provided to Hezbollah is estimated at around $100 million to $200 million annually. Iran is also suspected of provided arms and training to Taliban fighters.29 In recent years, according to expert testimony provided to the U.S. Senate in 2012, Iran has become even more aggressive in its use of terror groups for its own nationalist ends. It is motivated partly by fear of its equally aggressive Sunni neighbors and partly by a desire to take advantage of new opportunities presented by the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.30

Together, these three countries—Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran—make up what should be called the Axis of Jihad. Between them, they provide the lion’s share of the funding and training used by radical Muslims on each side of the Sunni/Shia split. It is not just the money, either. All three nations also use their money and influence to inculcate a literalist brand of Islam throughout the Muslim world (and even into the West, where Saudi-funded mosques and teachings are common). Thanks to the efforts of the Axis of Jihad, the Muslim world is more “Islamized” than it has been in a century. Instead of modernizing and secularizing, Muslim nations are going backward—back to the seventh century if the jihadists have their way.

THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM

Few people living in the world today appreciate the full scope of the problem presented by Islamic imperialism. The 20th century was dominated by the struggles between Western liberal democracies and two totalitarian forces, Nazism and Communism. In the 21st century the West faces a far more potent threat in Islam.

Nazism was an intense nationalistic force, but in the end it lasted less than 15 years and died with its founder. Adolf Hitler was a soldier not a philosopher and had no time to develop a coherent system. Furthermore, there was no metaphysics promising eternal life or heavenly rewards for its followers. Its racist and ultra-nationalistic policies were inherently self-destructive and non-viable.

In some ways, Hitler himself left little lasting mark on the world. During World War II his National Socialism was defeated and ultimately destroyed. He had no children. His closest surviving relatives are three great-nephews descended from his half-brother who live together on Long Island. Not one of the three men ever married or had children.31 Many relatives gave up the family name entirely, unwilling to live in infamy for their whole lives.

Unlike Islam, Communism is a dynamic system that allows for change and growth. Marxist thought claims to be scientific and reasonable and sees the world in a state of perpetual flux. The Soviets put the first man in space. Soviet Russians and Communist Chinese were fully trained in the physical sciences. Like Nazism, Communism has no place for metaphysics (Marxism is a strictly materialist doctrine).

The leading Communists likewise left comparatively little lasting mark on the world. In 2013 Lenin’s last surviving relative, his niece Olga Ulyanova, died in Moscow in 2011 at age 89.32 Stalin’s last descendent, daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva (known by her married name of Lana Peters), died in a Wisconsin nursing home, also in 201133 Mao Zedong’s only surviving male heir is a general in the Chinese Army, but something of a joke because of his poor school performance and obesity.34 Karl Marx himself was survived by only two of his children, and both of them committed suicide.35

By comparison, Muhammad’s descendants number in the tens of millions. In South Asia alone (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) there are an estimated 15 million Sayyids (people claiming descent from Muhammad).36 The title ‘Sayyid’, which roughly translates as “lord” or “master” indicates the honor in which such persons are held in the Islamic world. Some of his descendants are among the more virulent terrorists in the world. Abul A’la Maududi is an example. This Islamic scholar founded the terror group Jamaat-e-Islami and wrote several books articulating a literalist Islamic worldview.37 The self-proclaimed new caliph of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (also known as Caliph Ibrahim) also reportedly claims to be a descendent of the prophet.38 Ayatollah Khomeini, rose to political power in Iran’s Islamic revolution, was himself a purported descendent of the prophet. Almost all Muslim leaders claim some form of descent from the prophet as a way of seeking legitimacy in the eyes of other Muslims.

Islam is an infinitely more totalitarian system than either German National Socialism or Soviet Communism. Nazism died in its infancy without time to grow, mature, or reform. Communism lasted far longer, and was elaborated and developed by thousands of people, from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to Mao Zedong and Michael Suslov. Nevertheless, it too lasted less than 80 years in practice. In the end, it could not reconcile the internal contradictions within its static economic system and a moribund Marxist ideology that lost the ability to be self-critical and self-examining. Today, Nazism has been completely uprooted and has no presence in the political world. Former Communists have reevaluated their worldviews and embraced free market reforms to varying degrees.

In Islam, by contrast, such reform or change is impossible. Reform is heresy. Islam combines metaphysics with its political doctrines, and the metaphysics of Islam do not allow for any diminution of its political demands. This encourages totalitarianism far broader than either Nazism or Communism could dream of—one which completely governs the thought and behavior of the people who adopt it. It is also far more intolerant of dissent, because to dissent from Islam means to disagree with Allah’s holy design for human life, which is unacceptable.Through its metaphysics Islam has exerted a far stronger hold on people than Nazism or Communism could manage. It has lasted for 1,400 years and remains today the same as it was when Muhammad first articulated it. It is an eternally static doctrine, and necessarily so because it purports to be the final and true revelation of God. Because of this claim, it completely despises critical or scientific thought as enemies of faith. It is impossible in Islam to advance beyond the ethical world of seventh century Arabia because that is the world within which Muhammad declared his prophecy. To add to or change anything he said is complete anathema to Islam.

The literal words of Islamic doctrine command followers to kill or convert all unbelievers and take over the world. Muslims are told how to live, how to think, how to eat, how to dress, how to defecate, how to wash themselves, how to have sex, how to beat their wives, and so on. It is not permitted to question these directives or to change them or to fail to live up to them. For those who refuse to adopt the Muslim life there are two choices: pay an exorbitant fine (i.e., protection money) or die.

For those who choose to convert, Islam presents still another problem. It becomes necessary to learn Arabic (reading the Qur’an in translation is regarded as inauthentic), to adopt Arab customs, and inevitably to think of oneself as inferior to Arab people. There is a definite hierarchy, as this book as shown in several chapters, in the Islamic world whereby Arabs are higher than all others, and Quraysh (members of Muhammad’s tribe) higher than all other Arabs.

Many Western observers will concede these points only to claim that Islam presents no threat because of its lesser power compared with the West. This is an extremely short- sighted view. In fact, Islam is already undermining and destroying Western society from within by means of a long-range demographic conquest. It is not necessary to fire a single shot if Muslims can become a significant portion of the population simply by outbreeding and steadily replacing the native population. Westerners are having children at below replacement levels. In short, they are dying out while the Muslims they permit to immigrate to their countries have extremely high fertility levels (helped in part by generous welfare funding from European host nations).

If the global jihadists achieve their goal it will be the end not only of Western culture, but of all human progress. Human progress and Islam are simply incompatible. Islam is an inherently regressive theological and political force. Only static seventh century Arabian living will be permitted, as was the case under the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and as is the case now with the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia, ISIS in Iraq, and other assorted fundamentalist groups in Sudan and Nigeria.

What we need today is a global secular revolution to counter the Sunni fundamentalist revolution and defeat Islam. We need a united front of the victims of jihad. Whether Jew or Gentile, Asian or European, White or Black, Atheist or Religious, all have a common interest in resisting the totalitarian threat posed by Islam. It is up to the citizens of the free world to force their leaders to develop a cohesive, systematic, lasting, and comprehensive solution to the problem of Islamic imperialism.

The question of how will be addressed in the final chapter.