Steve Emerson: "Jihad Is Jihad"

I've featured Steve Emerson on this site before,and regular members of Joshua's Army need no introduction. For those of you who do, Steve Emerson is one of the foremost experts we have on Islamic terrorism, an investigative reporter who predicted a major strike by jihadis on the US before 9/11 and a best-selling author, whose books include American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (2002) and Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US (2006); he was also the creator of the prize-winning documentary film Jihad in America (1994).

Here we have an exclusive interview with Emerson in the Jerusalem Post, where he was in the middle of attending the 7th annual conference of International Institute for Counterterrorism (ICT) in Herzliya,Israel.

According to Emerson, radical Islam is alive and well in America -thanks to government agencies that embrace the every groups they should be investigating.

I urge you to read the whole thing, but here are a few juicy bits to whet the appetite:

{..}"The new book and documentary film I'm working on - The Grand Deception - is about how the US government, the media and the intelligentsia are witting and unwitting enablers of radical Islam, by accepting front groups for the Muslim Brotherhood or for Hamas as credible and legitimate. This is particularly egregious at the highest levels of the government - such as the State Department, Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and the FBI - who meet and greet groups they should be investigating, not embracing. This sends a terrible signal to genuine Muslim moderates and the Muslim rank-and-file, reinforcing their sense that it is the radical groups who are respected by the government.

There is a criminal trial presently under way in Texas of a suspected Hamas charity. The revelations that have emerged in the trial - probably the most striking findings since those that came out in the 1949 Alger Hiss trials - are that the Muslim Brotherhood had secretly set up shop in the US under the cover of "charitable" organizations, with the specific purpose of waging jihad from within and subverting the United States until it became a Muslim country. Yet, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post published these findings." {...}

"{...} dollar-for-dollar, Islamist terrorist attacks are cheaper than any other type of terrorism....because it's not done for profit. Take the 9/11 attacks. At a cost of $500,000, they caused $500 billion worth of damage. That's a great rate of return. Even though the US Treasury has done a good job of seizing terrorist assets, al-Qaida is on the resurgence, and Saudi Arabia, despite the ritual slap on the wrist, continues to pump tens of millions a year into radical Islamic groups." {...}

"The sad reality is that the vast majority of institutional organizations in the hierarchical Muslim spectrum represent the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabis or the Salafists. It's a microcosm of the Muslim world. And we deceive ourselves into believing that the American Muslim community is somehow insulated from the "paranoia propaganda" that exists in the Muslim world as a whole - that which claims the Christians and the Jews are out to subjugate Islam.

"{..}There's virtually nobody in the established Islamic hierarchy that will support any Muslim who denounces holy war. Of course, there are the ersatz moderates who assert that jihad does not mean holy war - that it only means striving. These are the propagandists who whitewash Islamic extremism."

A true perspective by someone who really knows firsthand what he's talking about.

An absolute must read for Joshua's Army members.