Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (5 page)

My presentation on Capitol Hill was one of the most important presentations I have ever given. The room filled quickly after the 9/11 ceremony on the steps of the Capitol. I began speaking at 7:30 P.M. There were no journalists, no cameras, and no C-SPAN. I was more candid than I have ever been in any public presentation. I knew I had only one chance to drive the point home to these influential representatives who make decisions about our country that impact our safety and our future. By the time I was done speaking and finished another hour answering questions, I was standing in the company of brothers and sisters who share the same concerns for the welfare of our nation, our children, and our grandchildren.

It was obvious my message was like a breath of fresh air. Our representatives hear from CAIR,
Moveon.org,
and similar organizations, but as many of them told me, there is
no one
—no other organization on the Hill—that carries the message I brought to them.

My presentation on Capitol Hill was the beginning of a partnership between American Congress for Truth (ACT) and those of our elected officials who are interested and are listening. They welcomed us to bring issues to their attention, and to become more involved in writing bills and resolutions to protect our country and its citizens. Finally, we are no longer working on the outside and hoping they hear us. We are working together, hand in hand on the inside.

I also had the privilege of visiting Australia on a speaking tour and speaking with Prime Minister John Howard, when I presented the keynote address at a dinner gala in Melbourne. It was surreal being escorted by security through the bowels of the Crown Palladium Grand Hotel kitchen as protestors screamed and shouted “Brigitte Gabriel and John Howard are Islamophobes.” They held protest signs and chanted pro-Palestinian slogans in their attempt to upset and disturb people entering the hotel. Afterward, I had the opportunity to meet with key patriotic Australian businessmen and women and community leaders, one of whom was a member of ACT and who had flown from around Australia to meet me in Melbourne. Together we all sat in the living room of my hotel suite and strategized about mobilizing Australia and creating a branch of American Congress for Truth, the organization I started here in America. Out of that meeting Australian Coalition for Truth was born, an Australian grassroots movement to counter the Islamic threat within Australia.

Recent events around the world support the facts I discuss in
Because They Hate,
and about which I have been lecturing. Events are unfolding around the world fast and furious parallel to the rise of Islamic radicalism in every continent. On August 14,2007, two journalists were kidnapped in Gaza—Fox News correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wig—and were released only after being forcing to convert to Islam on their knees with their faces down as they recited the
Shahada.

Muslims viciously attacked the Pope around the world for quoting in an academic speech a Byzantine Emperor on how Islam was spread by the sword and through forced conversion. The Pope’s comments started a wave of global upheaval: priests in Islamic countries were killed, churches were burned, the Pope was burned in effigy as well, and a nun serving in a hospital was shot dead in the back by two gunmen in Mogadishu.
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But the most frightening developments have been from the terrorist activity rising from within England and America.

Our enemy is not an organization of people living overseas plotting to attack. Our enemies are the neighbors next door, the doctors practicing in our hospitals, and the workers who share our lunch break. Our enemies are terrorists driven by a dangerous ideology and clothed in deception who operate under cover and laugh about the advantages our sensitivity training, gullibility, and political correctness give them.

Who would have thought that in June 2006 the words “Those who heal you will kill you,” spoken to an Anglican priest in Iraq by an Al Qaeda spokesman would come to haunt British citizens in their own cities.
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Londoners woke up to hear that another attack on British citizens had come close to taking lives again. Luckily the terrorists bungled their first two attempts and authorities discovered the unexploded devices and disarmed them; the third attempt went off at the entrance to Glasgow Airport but injured no one except the terrorist himself. With amazing speed, Scotland Yard rounded up the terrorists and we all discovered the prophetic implication of the reported threat “Those who heal you will kill you.” The perpetrators were all Muslim doctors.

I have always firmly believed that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with economic position or status in life. This event in Britain reinforced these views as my heart went out to a nation of people facing days of fear and uncertainty. During the Lebanese war, doctors in Lebanon slaughtered hand in hand with the terrorists in the name of jihad. This is a very difficult concept for Western minds and especially Western intellectuals to accept and understand or even believe. I remember when I started speaking out about my experiences during the war, I would share how our neighbors—doctors and lawyers who we had known for years—became radicals overnight and started massacring us the next day. People looked at me with disbelief as if I were making things up just to make the Muslims look bad.

Both my experiences in Lebanon and the UK bombings planned by doctors strongly bolstered my opinion that Islamic terrorism is a religious, jihad doctrine-driven effort to murder or subdue and subjugate non-Muslims. The familiar arguments of Western liberals that “it’s a class struggle” or “the West is bad and economically oppressive” no longer have purchase.

Not only did doctor terrorists shock the world, but radical Islam also turned parents into coldhearted terrorists bent on mayhem. What else could drive a mother and father with their six-month-old child to willingly carry liquid explosives onto an airplane, hiding the liquid in the child’s baby bottle? This scenario unfolded in August of 2006 when police arrested twenty-four British-born and -raised Muslim citizens who had plotted to blow up as many as ten planes headed to the United States using liquid explosives. Officials say details of the plan were similar to other schemes devised by al Qaeda. Accounts such as these remind us of just how determined our enemy is.
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Back at home in America, a group of ten Islamic radicals conspired to kill U.S. servicemen at New Jersey’s Fort Dix Army Base. The plot was disrupted thanks to the FBI infiltration of the terrorist cell. In January 2007, a vigilant video-store worker contacted the FBI after a customer brought in a DVD to be duplicated that showed ten young men in their early twenties “shooting assault weapons at a firing range in a militia-like style while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic
Allah Akbar
(God is Great)."
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Within six months, the FBI had placed two cooperating witnesses within the terrorist cell, and they recorded meetings and phone conversations with the plotters. The terrorist cell reportedly surveyed Fort Dix, the Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station and Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and a Coast Guard building in Philadelphia. They also reportedly considered an attack timed to the annual Army-Navy college football game in Philadelphia.

One of the charged conspirators, Serdar Tatar, was familiar with Fort Dix because his family owns a pizzeria nearby and he delivered food to the base. He used his position as a pizza delivery boy to become a terrorist undercover agent committed to kill those to whom he brought food. The potential jihadists often viewed terror training videos, clips featuring Osama bin Laden, and a tape containing the last will and testament of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. They also viewed tapes of armed attacks on U.S. military personnel and erupted in laughter when one plotter noted that a Marine’s arm was blown off in one such ambush.
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Shortly after, on June 4th, a terror plot unfolded at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. Three Muslim men living and working in the United States planned to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, its fuel tanks, and a jet fuel artery. One of the plotters was a former JFK air cargo employee.
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In all of these events, one striking similarity shines through: the terrorists' belief in an ideology that is based on the belief, faith, and teachings of Islam as it is written in the Koran. The common denominator within all the plots mentioned above is that these people were Muslims dedicated to becoming martyrs, to advance Islam, and to kill infidels regardless what country they came from, what culture they were raised in, what society there were living in, or what level of education they had.

Unless we understand the source from which this ideology of hate toward our Western cultures and nations is coming from, we will not be able to fight the cancer that is plaguing our international body. This cancer is called Islamofacism. This ideology is coming out of one source: The Koran.

What all terrorists are trying to achieve is the advancement of Islam and the establishment of an Islamic caliphate throughout the world ruled by
sharia
or Islamic law. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the number two man of al Qaeda, repeatedly states that “Our cause is one cause, and we have the responsibility of unifying this
umma
(Islamic Nation), Allah willing, and establishing Allah’s religion on his earth . . ,"
¹³

Polls taken around the world show that a majority of Muslims in large Islamic countries support the establishment of a
sharia-based
Islamic caliphate regardless of their approval of al Qaeda or any other Islamic terrorist organization.
¹⁴
Their loyalty is to Islam and not to any specific organization. This flies in the face of the image presented to us by leaders in the Western world that most Muslims are mainstream and do not share al Qaeda’s convictions that have hijacked a peaceful religion and twisted it to serve their purpose. Our elected officials continuously ignore the jihad teaching of pure Islam. Our Western leaders continuously ignore the fact that most Muslim countries in the twenty-first century are moving more and more into radicalism in their culture, which oppresses women and minorities and is pushing to impose
sharia
law as it is written and instructed in the Koran.

In his September 2007 video address Osama bin Laden wanted you to believe the lie that it is our presence in Iraq and our foreign policy that is causing Muslims to be enraged worldwide and wage jihad on us, and that if we just withdraw from Iraq and repent of our evil foreign policy ways and convert to Islam we will all live peacefully ever after. What most people miss here is that Osama bin Ladin wants us out of not only Iraq and Afganistan, but also out of every base, every presence we have on Muslim soil regardless what country we are in. That means our infidel U.S. soldiers must be out of Bahrain, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia. He does not want any Western influence or any Western cooperation between us and most Muslim leaders whom he despises. This will give Al Qaeda the opportunity to topple those regimes which Al Qaeda considers not Muslim enough, and establish an Islamic caliphate linking the
umma
(Islamic nations) together as one. By asking the West to convert to Islam, Osama was following the teaching of the Koran. Muslims are mandated by the prophet Mohammad in the Hadith to invite the enemy to convert to Islam before you attack.

Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war. . . When you meet your enemies who are polytheists, invite them to three courses of action. If they respond to any one of these, you also accept it and withhold yourself from doing them any harm. Invite them to (accept) Islam; if they respond to you, accept it from them and desist from fighting against them. . . . If
they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the jizya [the tax on non-Muslims specified in Qur’an 9:29]. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. (Sahih Muslim 4294)
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There is no time for any more delusions. There is too much at stake. America needs to wake up from a gullible state of ignorant bliss and start learning Islamic history. We must expose the truth and must get involved in ensuring that our elected officials know that they have our support to throw political correctness in the garbage. We must clearly state that we are sick and tired of the lies and deception, that we want to know the truth about the enemy we are fighting and what we can do to win this war. Only then will we have a chance of winning this battle. Once our elected officials know that they can count on our support and they will not be demonized for stating the facts, they will be more courageous in coming out in the open and declaring war on our enemy.

I urge all of you to get involved in ACT for America (
www.actforamerica.com
) and become an active voice affecting your community and our nation. Because of the huge success of
Because They Hate,
I realized that there is a huge need for a citizen’s action network, a national grassroots organization that will give power to “we the people.” ACT for America has connected, mobilized, and organized concerned citizens into one of the largest lobbying voices on Capitol Hill focused on and dedicated to America’s national security.

Join us in our defense of America.

—Brigitte Gabriel

It’s 1978.I am thirteen years old. My family is in the third year of living in this bomb shelter, a tiny underground room that sits off to the side of a bombed-out pile of rubble that was once our beautiful home. Tonight the shelling is the heaviest it has been in two and a half years. The three of us, my elderly father and mother and me, sit in the dark on the corner of the bed.