Ever wonder how people could be so duped about the true nature of Islam and the threat it poses to Western Civilization? Are you having trouble wrapping your brain around the the level of infiltration that Islamists have been able to achieve in all levels of our government and civil institutions? Well here is the answer. I encourage you to read the whole interview.

By Jamie Glazov:

FrontPage Interview’s guest today is Bill Siegel, a lawyer and business executive. He has been a producer of several documentary films and assists numerous non-profit organizations. He is the author of The Control Factor: Our Struggle to See the True Threat.

Excerpt:

FP: Describe the threat we face in our Islamic enemy. And you talk about the three levels of jihad against us. What are they?

Siegel: Simply stated, our Islamic Enemy seeks the totalitarian domination of Islam throughout the world – Islamic supremacy. It seeks to have the West submit to Islam. Obviously, this does not mean that everybody becomes a Muslim. Islam, in all its varied expressions, permits dhimmis- those Christians, Jews, and some others who are permitted to remain as protected non-Muslims as long as they submit to an inferior status. What is critical is that Shariah (Islamic Law) ultimately rules the world.

Jihad, loosely, is the effort/struggle to see this vision through. The most obvious method of Jihad is through violence; it is the one most familiar to most Westerners and almost all of the Koranic references to Jihad are based in violence.  The Violent Jihad includes al-Qaeda and its offshoots as well as other groups that formed around the globe independent of al-Qaeda. It also obviously includes the violence from Islamic nations such as the Islamic Republic of Iran whose constitution specifies such vision. It also includes, however, various militant groups and training camps here in the US as well as ad hoc efforts of individuals.

Since 9/11, there have been something in excess of 15,000 Violent Jihadic attacks across the globe. However, as terrible as this is, we have a tendency in the West to think that the only dimension of threat we face comes from violence. While the Bush administration helped initiate this thinking, the Obama administration has actively abused it by limiting any discussion of the threat we face to al-Qaeda and some other terrorist groups abroad. As frightening as these groups are, we can get some ease from thinking they are a band of “extremists limited in number, weaponry, sophistication, and means. Stunningly, Hillary Clinton recently estimated that there are only about 50,000 “homicidal” violent extremists around the world who simply have been able to project power much greater than their number should allow. Here the Control Factor makes the threat appear more easily manageable.

Jihad, however, is pursued in other often even more effective ways which I have grouped into three “levels.” A second more insidious level of threat is what the Muslim Brotherhood itself called the “Civilization Jihad.” It is the effort to infiltrate all aspects of our society, peacefully according to our laws, in order to later be in position to sabotage and destroy it from the inside. The Civilization Jihadists have learned the culture and rules of the territories they seek to command and use those rules to maneuver—specifically using our freedoms to destroy our freedoms. They use “lawfare” to seek changes in our laws so as to push Shariah into our society. Your readers should read Daniel Pipes and Brooke Goldstein’s Lawfare Project material and others to fully appreciate how cancerous this activity has become. This includes intimidating in a variety of ways anyone who speaks out against them or Islam and seeking to squelch our treasured broad right to free speech so as to ultimately prevent any criticisms of Islam. Once criticism of Islam is prohibited, little can stop it from cascading throughout the culture.

The Civilization Jihad includes situating such Jihadists in critical positions in the society, in the government, in the legal system, the military, and elsewhere. It includes the control over university programs that distribute propaganda about Islam and Islamic history which then filters down throughout textbooks for even younger students. It includes control over most of the nation’s mosques and local Imams guiding the messages engaged Muslims are receiving. Most troublesome are the Muslim groups (CAIR, ISNA, MSA and others associated and/or joint venture partners with the Muslim Brotherhood) supposedly interested in “outreach” which know how to appear Westernized and interested in the goals of Western Civilization. They have fooled a large part of our authorities and media due in part to their patience and willingness to chip away, one airport prayer room, one frivolous intimidating lawsuit, one Congressman or CIA officer, one mosque, one ruling at a time.

Particularly in the US, given our deep attachment to freedom as well as cultural and psychological tendencies toward diversity, Western guilt and expectations of truthfulness, this effort is devious and difficult to uproot. The Civilization Jihadists present one face to the American public which is completely at odds with their true agenda and how they deal in private. Jamie, you and David and others such as Steve Emerson, Frank Gaffney, Andy McCarthy and others have done so much to uncover this level of Jihad that your readers should be urged to review as much of their work (including Steve’s recent excellent documentary, The Grand Deception, and Frank’s important web video course, The Muslim Brotherhood in America) as possible.

Finally, there is a third level – the International Institutional Jihad. Here the most powerful international institutions such as the UN and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and others seek to push into America from without those changes which are difficult to complete from within. The OIC is the largest Islamic institution in the world. It essentially controls the vote in the UN’s General Assembly and thus explains in part the absurd and abject pro-Islamic, anti-Israel thrust of that organization. This level seeks to use the power of Islamic nations to work from outside the West to force changes within the West. While there are various conflicts between many of the nations, being Islamic majority states, there is a great deal they agree upon which becomes the focus of these efforts. Just as the Obama administration is beginning to cooperate with international efforts to control gun ownership, so has Hillary Clinton’s Istanbul Process become a dangerous step in the effort to restrict speech critical of Islam by norm (or possibly even treaty) when it may not be fully executable by domestic action alone.

I should point out that Stephen Coughlin, the former Pentagon officer who has an important must-see presentation of Islamic Law, uses different names for these same three levels – Jihad, Dawa, and Ummah. Had I seen his work before I wrote my book I would have conformed to his categorizations.

We must learn how powerful language has become on all three levels. Words such as “peace,” “freedom,” ”terrorism,” and phrases such as “human rights” have different meanings for us and for our Islamic Enemy. To oversimplify, “peace” is not something for now but that which comes when all the earth is submitting to Islam. In the context of battles, “peace” is at best a temporary ceasefire. “Freedom” is best understood as having the freedom to fully submit to Islam, not to choose whatever beliefs one desires while respecting the same right in others. We’ve all seen how ”human rights” and “terror” really only apply among Muslims, not to non-Muslims. Our enemy fully understands these differences and uses them at all levels to paralyze us.

Look simply at how the phrase “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” has equalized the two parties, making it all the easier to ascribe features of one to the other and view the problem as a simple-to fix division of assets into statehoods but for personality problems among the leaders. The simple truth is that this is and has always been a one-sided Arab war against Israel as Ruth Wisse and others have described and, as Bibi Netanyahu made clear, the ONLY state truly at issue here has been the State of Israel that the Arabs have refused for over half a century. Nonetheless, the Control Factor hypnotically abuses the mind’s susceptibility to the intricacies of language.

Even the label “Peace Process” has been damaging language. While most focus upon the first word, turning this into a “process” has helped ensure that peace is never obtained. It is more appropriately called the “Extortion Process” because all that results is that violence is used over decades to extract concessions from Israel.

These three levels must be understood for their differences while united by a single goal. While these levels often operate together and assist each other, we must avoid “level confusion” which the Control Factor employs to curtail our fears. If the Obama narrative is swallowed- that the only threat is the Violent Jihad- we will miss the other contamination fomenting within our borders. We must appreciate how these levels work together and even unite with other forces such as the global Leftist movement that you, Jamie, have described so forcefully in United in Hate.

FP: You write about how we like to talk of “Good Muslims” and how we are always on the eternal search for “moderate” Muslims (Khatami, Mousavi, Abbas, etc), while we stress how the “extremists” are the real problem and how “few” they really are. All of this is connected to the Control Factor. Enlighten us.

Siegel: The Control Factor seeks to have us feel in control of the situation. The easiest way to do this is to simply minimize the number of potential enemies. We have been lectured for years about how Islam is a “religion of peace” and that the violence we see (remember that we have already improperly limited the problem to violence) is the product of a small number of “crazies” (remember Hillary Clinton’s 50,000) who have distorted Islam. I call this the “Peaceful Muslim Disclaimer” as virtually everyone in the press and government has been bullied into making some statement of the kind to silence those who will pressure them that they are “Islamophobic” and Islam is being attacked. (These are the Islam hustlers who operate on the same principles that black race hustlers so effectively used to extort concessions over the last six decades or so).

Nobody has done any real work to support this proposition, nor is it clear exactly how it would be tested. My view is that the grammar “Islam is x” is itself problematic because Islam has expressed itself throughout history in a variety of fashions. It is more useful to talk in terms of how seriously engaged with Islam, the Koran and other texts, a Muslim is. What is significant is how Muslims today are using Islam and most of those who are in power either throughout a large territory or within a small community tend toward, if not fully advocate, the very supremacist ideas that we try to tell ourselves are reserved for the few ”extremists.”  Presumably most Germans did not wish to see all Nazi atrocities carried out but in the end they fell in line because they had to. Those our politicians and press call the “extremists” are in one sense more accurately the “good” Muslims who are following their Islamic beliefs dutifully.

Read it all at Front Page