- Islamists claim their bloody siege of the U.S. Embassies in Cairo and Benghazi on the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks was catalyzed by an “anti-Islam” movie
- Experts say the real reason for the onslaught was not a movie mocking Islam, but part of a concerted “ten year plan” to make slandering Islam unlawful on an international scale
- U.S. administration’s hair-trigger reaction was to first apologize for offending Islam, rather than meet fire with fire over the act of war on U.S. soil
- A contingent of the Islamists waging the attacks were the very “rebels” America aided in the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and Libya
The bloody attacks on U.S. embassies in Egypt and Libya that left four American public servants, including a U.S. ambassador dead, have sparked international outrage and controversy. Islamists claim that the catalyst for the riots was the release of an American movie critical to Islam, but according to Middle East and foreign policy experts interviewed by TheBlaze, there is a more sinister motivation at play for these bloody acts of aggression than meets the eye.
The film, to experts, only served as a “convenient excuse” for Islamists — particularly Salafists and members of the Muslim Brotherhood — to escalate tensions to a fever pitch in the hopes of achieving their ultimate goal: To make “slandering” Islam unlawful on an international level.
If it sounds too far-fetched to come to fruition, those whose life work has been to study, analyze, and in many instances prosecute Islamic terrorists, provide some compelling food for thought. First it is important to understand the current complexity of the relationship between the U.S., Libya and Egypt following the Arab Spring uprising.
The genesis of Tuesday’s bloody attacks
While the Middle East has been no stranger to turmoil, the years 2010 and 2011 marked a significant turning point in the region, as the U.S., led by President Obama under the guise of NATO, intervened in Libya’s budding civil war between civilian rebels and forces loyal to the late Moammar Gadhafi. Preventing the carnage from overspilling further, America’s role in helping to overthrow the despot who ruled Libya with an iron fist for over four decades turned out to be a thankless job.
On Tuesday, militants — some of whom were likely part of the very rebel-base the U.S. supported against Gadhafi — breached the American Consulate in Benghazi, slaughtering four Americans including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. But a similar situation brews in Egypt. As with Libya, the Obama administration wholeheartedly signed on to aiding the “middle class folks” trying to catch a break in Tahrir Square as they waged an “Arab Spring” to oust then-President Hosni Mubarak. Again, Obama stepped in, aiding the very rebels who reports now indicate are largely Muslim Brotherhood operatives and other militants hostile to the West and Israel.
How did the newly “free” Egyptian “middle class folk” thank the U.S. for its efforts? Seize the U.S. embassy in Cairo, lower the American flag that had been flying at half-mast in honor of 9/11, and replace it with a black Islamic flag declaring jihad that read: ”There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger.” The configuration of the letters formed an emblem often used by Islamic radicals. Meanwhile, protesters chanted, “we are all Osama.”
Photo Credit: AP
The U.S. response
Islamists claim that the catalyst for both the attacks in Cairo and Benghazi were based on the release of an obscure American film critical of Islam.
Below is a trailer for the movie:
Even some members of the embassy’s staff took to Twitter to state that the U.S. government condemned the movie. The tweets were subsequently deleted and the State Department and the White House has since distanced itself from the comments.
Nonetheless, U.S. consulates and its employees — especially after three and half years — are indeed part of the administration, thus many believe the tweets in question reflect the overall view of the Obama White House: apologize for offending Islam rather than go toe-to-toe with enemies who carried out an act of war on American soil.
The president stated that while the United States “rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.” Hardly the kind of self-assured response one would hope for in a commander in chief following an act of aggression on this scale.
Motivations
Earlier on Wednesday, TheBlaze reported that experts assert the protests were planned by Salafists (an extremists sect of Islam) with the Noor party, which holds roughly one-quarter of Egyptian parliamentary seats, long before reports surfaced of the questionable “anti” Mohammed movie. Noor Party leader Nader Bakkar joined the rampaging crowd while simultaneously (and perhaps conveniently) condemning the onslaught. TheBlaze adds:
The protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was announced Aug. 30 by Jamaa Islamiya, a State Department-designated terrorist group, to protest the ongoing imprisonment of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
One also cannot avoid the fact that one of the very first responses to come out of the administration was not to assail those who waged an act of war against the U.S., but to apologize for offending Muslims — and therein lies the rub.
Consider the following.
A Reuters report on Wednesday following the attacks indicated that General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, actually spoke with Pastor Terry Jones by phone and asked him to withdraw his support for the film which allegedly mocked the Prophet Mohammad.
“In the brief call, Gen. Dempsey expressed his concerns over the nature of the film, the tensions it will inflame and the violence it will cause,” Dempsey’s spokesman, Colonel Dave Lapan, told Reuters.
U.S. military officials are allegedly concerned that the movie could incite violence against any of the 74,000 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan. In fact, earlier on Wednesday, the Taliban called on Afghans to do just that: “Take revenge” on U.S. soldiers over the film.
The idea put forth by experts is fairly straightforward: By proving time and again that slandering Islam will bear a hefty price-tag which includes the loss of American lives, Islamists believe that U.S. lawmakers will ultimately find it in Americans’ best interest to introduce legislation deeming it unlawful to slander Islam.
Photo Credit: AP
While many would consider such a push to be an assault on the First Amendment, progressives, already on full-throttle when it comes to their political correctness-agenda, could likely attempt to pass off such legislation, regulations or penalties under the banner of “protecting” the public, and further, military men and women from potential violence.
Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi indicated as much himself. While never fully condemning the U.S. embassy attacks, the newly elected Egyptian president did make demands on the U.S. to address, via legal channels, the alleged slight on Islam.
Reuters reports that Morsi asked the Egyptian embassy in Washington to take “all legal measures” permitted in the U.S. against the filmmakers for their supposed crimes.
Photo Credit: AP
So as the Muslim Brotherhood mouthpiece compels Egyptian embassies to place pressure on the U.S. government to prevent further insults to Islam using legal channels, the floodgates could soon open. You might also recall from TheBlaze’s “Rumors of War III” documentary and previous reports that the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining a foothold in American government and politics.
Expert analysis
Andrew McCarthy, former Assistant United States Attorney responsible for leading the 1995 prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman – a.k.a. the “Blind Sheik” — shared his thoughts with TheBlaze based on years researching Islamic extremism. He believes that President Obama has exacerbated “a longtime, bipartisan failure to confront the fact that Islamic supremacism is not a fringe ideology of terrorists.”
“It is the predominant Islam of the Muslim Middle East, and it is rabidly anti-American,” he told TheBlaze.
“Obama looks at it as something to be embraced. When it collides with American constitutional standards, like Sharia blasphemy laws do with American free speech, he would have our Constitution give way.”
In terms of the president’s foreign policy, McCarthy stated unequivocally that it “has been a debacle.”
“Sometimes it is amateur hour, sometimes it is the willful aiding and abetting of the Muslim Brotherhood and other anti-Western Islamists. In either case, the result has been to subordinate American interests to the interests of America’s enemies.” McCarthy, who was featured on TheBlaze documentary, “Rumors of War III,” added that GOP contender Mitt Romney is now well-primed, in the wake of the U.S. embassy-attacks, to show his leadership.
“Romney has no lines to worry about — and those who say he does are making a terrible mistake. He wants to be president of the United States, he needs to show that he will be an effective champion of American principles and interests.”
Cited as the Pentagon’s leading expert on Islamic law, Stephen Coughlin also caught up with TheBlaze to talk about the “ten-year plan” that was drafted by Islamists in 2005 intended to make Islamic slander a crime — not just in Islamic countries, but across the globe.
“And now they are putting that into action,” he said pointedly.
Coughlin explained that there was never an “Arab Spring,” but rather, a “Salafist-Muslim Brotherhood takeover” in the Middle East and that accepting that fact is key to understanding Islamists’ strategy.
He asked for people think back to the disproportionate outrage that ensued in the Muslim community over the Pope’s 2009 comments about Islamic tyranny, and to the fist Quran burning in Florida led by pastor Terry Jones.
Both incidents, according to the attorney and scholar, were actually first reported on in the Muslim world not Western media. The goal, he claimed, was to “manufacture an event” with which to incite violence and ultimately “subordinate the U.S. First Amendment.” It was engineered “to get President Bush, Obama, whoever…to say ‘sorry.’” Thus the goal is to compel the West to blame the West for bringing violence upon itself.
He added that there is a “total lack of situational and strategic awareness” in U.S. government and that groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) and American Islamists are actively attempting to “get us to defeat ourselves.”
“We have allowed ourselves to be surrounded by Muslim Brotherhood front groups” in government who are even affecting the training of our officials. His advice to Romney or any lawmaker moving forward is simple: “Jihadists are fighting in accordance with Islamic law…when they say they are jihadists, [at least] pretend that they mean it.”
To summarize his overall feelings on America’s enemies, Coughlin closed the interview with a quote from Abe Lincoln, in which the 16th president talked about “the dogmas of the quiet past” being “inadequate to the stormy present.”
“As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country,” Lincoln continued.
Could U.S. law really change to suit the Islamist agenda?
Whether or not Islamists would ever be able to achieve their ultimate goal of changing U.S. law to suit their theological agenda remains a long-shot, but they certainly seem to be trying. It is also worth noting that if such an event were to even happen at all, it would likely be carried out subtly, in stages.
Regardless of the outcome it would behove analysts, intelligence agencies, specialists and policy makers to not succumb to mores of political correctness and become willfully blind to the true face of Islam.
As Maya Angelou said: “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.”