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The Wages of Extremism: Radical Islam’S Threat to the West and the Muslim World

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The Wages of Extremism: Radical Islam’S Threat to the West and the Muslim World SECURITY & FOREIGN AFFAIRS The Wages of Extremism: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West and the Muslim World By Alexander R. Alexiev March 2011 The Wages of Extremism: Radical Islam's Threat to the West and the Muslim World Alexander R. Alexiev Visiting Fellow, Hudson Institute March 2011 © 2011 Hudson Institute Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan, independent policy research organization. Founded in 1961, Hudson is celebrating a half century of forging ideas that promote security, prosperity, and freedom. www.hudson.org Table of Contents Chapter I: Introduction................................................................................................................ 3 Chapter II: The Nature of the Threat......................................................................................... 8 Chapter III: The Ideology of Radical Islam............................................................................. 12 Sharia Law and Radical Islam............................................................................................... 12 Sharia Law – Profile of a Radical Doctrine........................................................................... 13 Key Doctrinal Concepts: External and Internal Enemy, Islamic Vanguard.......................... 20 Chapter IV: The Limited Scope of Sharia in Past Muslim Empires ..................................... 27 Sharia in Muslim History ...................................................................................................... 27 The Umayyad Empire............................................................................................................ 28 Sharia Under the Abbasids .................................................................................................... 30 Islamic Law in the Ottoman Empire...................................................................................... 34 Sharia Under the Mughals ..................................................................................................... 38 Chapter V: Radical Islam Resurgent........................................................................................ 41 Origins and Early Evolution of the Modern Islamic Movement........................................... 41 Wahhabism – Profile of an Extremist Creed......................................................................... 41 Islamism Comes of Age ........................................................................................................ 44 Chapter VI: Islamism in Europe............................................................................................... 46 The Muslim Population Explosion........................................................................................ 46 Chain Migration and Political Asylum.................................................................................. 49 Illegal Immigration................................................................................................................ 52 The Urban Dimension ........................................................................................................... 56 The Radicalization of European Islam .................................................................................. 58 Chapter VII: Islamism in America: Strategy and Tactics...................................................... 65 Building the Islamist Networks ............................................................................................. 67 1 Abdurachman Alamoudi – Profile of an Islamic Revolutionary in America........................ 69 The Islamic Center of Tucson – Profile of an American Islamist Institution........................ 73 Taking Over the Muslim Establishment................................................................................ 74 King Fahd Mosque, Culver City – Profile of a Wahhabi Mosque ........................................ 76 Proselytism and Indoctrination.............................................................................................. 80 Tablighi Jamaat – Profile of an Islamic Missionary Movement ........................................... 83 Deobandism – Profile of a Radical Islamic Creed ................................................................ 85 Infiltrating Infidel Society ..................................................................................................... 89 Chapter VIII: Supporting Jihad through Sharia Finance ..................................................... 93 Sharia Finance as an Instrument of Islamization................................................................... 93 Islamic Finance: Myth and Reality of a Bogus Concept....................................................... 95 Islamic Finance in the Service of Extremism...................................................................... 102 Promoting Sharia Finance and Parallel Societies: Two Profiles ......................................... 105 Mufti Taqi Usmani – Profile of a Sharia Finance Guru ...................................................... 105 Bassam Osman – Profile of an American Sharia Banker.................................................... 112 Chapter IX: Political Warfare against Radical Islam........................................................... 118 Political Warfare vs. Public Diplomacy .............................................................................. 119 Radical Islam as an Enemy of Muslims .............................................................................. 123 Islamism Undermines Islam ................................................................................................ 124 The Economic Costs of Islamism........................................................................................ 124 Radical Islam and Education ............................................................................................... 126 Islamic Extremism and Human Rights................................................................................ 127 Bibliography.............................................................................................................................. 129 2 Chapter I: Introduction It is the starting premise of this study that the United States government’s focus on what came to be known as the “war on terror” after 9/11 has been fundamentally wrong. The main enemy is not “terror.” Nor is it al-Qaeda, despite President Obama’s assertion in January 2010 after the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt that “we are at war against al-Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” The main enemy is radical Islamist ideology or Islamism. A change of emphasis would allow us to see clearly that defeating this enemy cannot be accomplished by counterterror strategies and kinetic means alone, but requires a sophisticated strategy to defeat the ideology of Islamism by delegitimizing it in the eyes of its current and potential supporters in the Muslim community. The essential prerequisite to achieving this objective is to understand the nature of the threat presented by radical Islam, its ideological underpinnings, and its strengths and weaknesses. Chapter II looks past our current fixation on terrorism as the main threat and argues that the gradual takeover of the Muslim establishment by radical Islam and its present dominance as the main religio-political idiom in the Muslim world are by far the most intractable long-term threats faced by the West and mainstream Muslims. This troubling phenomenon is expressed in Western countries and the United States by the increasing dominance of the same radical idiom in Muslim diaspora communities and the emergence of hostile, isolated, parallel societies that completely reject Western secular and democratic values and seek to destroy them. The analysis in Chapter III shifts to an examination of the ideology of Islamism, its origins, evolution, and the key factors facilitating its unprecedented spread worldwide in the past three decades. In particular, the analysis points out that while Islamist ideologues make a concerted effort to couch their ideology in traditional Islamic terms, so as to secure a degree of religious legitimacy among Muslim believers, their ideology has more in common with the twentieth- century totalitarian doctrines of Nazism and communism than with Islam as traditionally practiced. In pursuing support and legitimacy among the Muslim religious establishment and the believers, the Islamists are particularly keen on establishing their bona fides as promoters of “authentic” 3 Islam, including in particular some of the most extreme tenets of sharia law. Indeed, understanding the relationship between Islamism and sharia is a key to the understanding of radical Islam as it exists today. Simply stated, the militants present sharia law and some of its injunctions, such as the obligation to carry out violent offensive jihad, the goal of establishing worldwide Muslim rule (the Caliphate), or the requirement of the death penalty for apostates, as both the centerpiece of the Islamist creed and the putative panacea for all real or imagined problems of the Muslim community (ummah). None of these injunctions, however, are to be found in the Quran, and, far from being “God’s sacred law,” sharia itself is a post-Quranic, man- made doctrine designed to serve the political interests of Muslim potentates in the post- Muhammad dynastic period. The orthodox Muslim clergy (ulema), however, has traditionally promoted it as a God-ordained, immutable, and mandatory
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