Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Features an interview with former CIA officer Bruce Tefft, director of CRA’s Threat Assesment Center.

…As the prime minister of Turkey recently said: There is no radical nor moderate Islam. That is an insult to Muslims. There is only Islam…

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bruce Tefft, the Director of CRA’s Threat Assessment Center. He retired from the CIA as a case officer in 1995 after 21 years, 17 working in Stations abroad. He was a founding member of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center in 1985 and has been involved with terrorism issues since then. After his retirement, he continued studying Islamic terrorist techniques and training more than 16,000 first responders, law enforcement, military and intelligence officials in terrorism awareness and prevention. For a two year period following 9/11, he was the Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence advisor to the New York Police Department.

Tefft: Following 9/11, my former company, Orion Scientific Systems, provided some anti-terrorist software to the NYPD. I was detailed to help upload some data and then for the next two years my services were donated to the NYPD free of charge by the President of Orion as a patriotic gesture. I would commute to NY weekly from Virginia, my salary, hotel, air fare and all expenses covered by Orion. As an intelligence officer my focus had always been proactive, to find out what was going to happen. Law enforcement is traditionally reactive, looking for the criminal after a crime had taken place. My work with the NYPD was to provide the police officers some additional proactive capabilities in their fight against terrorism. The key to pro-action is awareness which is based on knowledge of the enemy.

Since I retired from the CIA in late1995, I have concentrated on studying Islam and terrorism from open sources, or OSINT (Open Source Intelligent). I receive about 1600 emails a day from around the world, containing articles and commentary on politics, war, intelligence and terrorism. As a result of my personal work I would disseminate 50-100 pertinent articles, sometimes with comments, to others who shared my interest in learning about terrorism. Over the years I gradually built up a readership of some 10,000 or so people who would receive my emails. Whenever I met people with an interest in terrorism, or provided training, I would always offer to add anyone to my email list who wished.

While in NY, I continued this practice with New York Police Department officers, including an Egyptian Muslim who asked to receive my emails. Naturally, since we are dealing with Islamic terrorism, most of the articles were critical examinations of Islam and terrorism. Although he requested to be placed on my list, and never asked to be removed, the Muslim officer, whose career was not advancing, decided that my emails (and comments) had created a hostile work environment where he could not be promoted and suffered emotional stress, so he brought a suit against the NY Police Department and myself last December to get my anti-Muslim terror work stopped. So far my legal bills have exceeded $65,000 and we have not yet gotten to trial.

FP: Well, we’ll get back to your lawsuit in a minute. Let’s talk a bit about the terror war. It appears that the West is in a serious dilemma. It thinks it can wage a war against an enemy without naming the enemy. Your thoughts?

Tefft: The “War on Terror” and the use of the terms “Islamofascism” or “radical Islam” are basic examples of faulty nomenclature. One terrorism is a tactic, used by an enemy. One wages war on the enemy, not the tactic. During WWII we did not wage war on the “blitzkrieg” or “kamikaze pilots” — we fought a war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japanese. We are fighting a 14-century year old war against Islam and its adherents, Muslims. And it is a war that they have declared on all non-Muslims as part of their religious mandate, their ideology, to make the whole world Islamic, under the Caliphate, and to convert, kill or enslave all non-Muslims.

The two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shi’ite have both, as the initiation of the Third Jihad (Holy War) of the modern Islamic resurgence, have repeatedly declared war against the U.S. and the West — the Sunni with bin Laden’s 1998 Declaration of War and the Shi’ites when Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah and attacked our Embassy (sovereign U.S. territory under international law) in 1979. Ignoring the fact that we are indeed at war with Muslims, and not simply a tactic of war that they use, leaves us vulnerable to infiltration, subversion and other forms of attack and makes it impossible to defeat the enemy.

FP: Well sir, your point is well taken in the sense that we have to be honest in acknowledging that there are elements of Islam itself that inspire terror and that Islamic terror therefore is an outgrowth of Islam and cannot be washed away without a re-haul of Islam itself.

At the same time, when facing our enemy, surely it is crucial to use terms such as “Islamofascism” or “radical Islam” to understand and confront the enemy because what we are facing is also a political movement and definitely not an entire religion or every Muslim. Let us remember that millions of Muslims were and are victims, just like we are, of the radicals and fanatics in their midst. Many of them want to defeat the Islamo-fascists just as much as we do and it would be crazy and self-destructive for us not to ally ourselves with them.

Let’s also keep in mind that the term “Islamo-fascism” was created by moderate Algerian Muslims who were being terrorized by Islamic fanatics who sought to impose Sharia law in Algeria. And the term is historically based – since radical Islam is linked to fascism. After all, Hassan al Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (from which today’s radical Muslim groups descend) was an open admirer and supporter of Adolf Hitler — as was the principal theorist of the modern jihad, Sayyid Qutb.

In any case, without doubt there is a serious problem with the theological roots of Islam, since the instruction for all believers to wage war against all unbelievers in found in the Qur’an in Suras such as 9:29 and 9:5. All the schools of Islamic jurisprudence teach that it is part of the responsibility of the umma to subjugate the non-Muslim world through jihad. And yes, Islam rejects the separation of Church and State. So definitely, as you suggest, Islam itself and what it teaches is a serious problem. But much of our hope lies in those Muslims who want — and practice — a relaxation of their theological beliefs and who seek to lead some kind of reformation in their religion and cancel out the calls for violent jihad in their religious texts etc. Whether or not this can be done remains the painful and agonizing question, seeing erasing large segments of Islamic teaching, and overturning 1,400 years of history, is by no means an easy task.

Tefft: I understand what you say, and I’ve heard this argument before: “radical” Muslims kill and terrorize other Muslims as well so they must be different from the “moderates” that they are terrorizing. I don’t think so. As with any group of human beings, there are factions in Islam and personal ambitions and petty egos of various leaders which will them to power. So there are conflicts between Muslims as well as between Muslims and everyone else. However, those Muslims killing other Muslims (which is forbidden in the Koran) do not view the “others” as true Muslims but rather as ‘takfir’ or apostates, thus not true Muslims and therefore subject to the same killing as the rest of us.

Like Nazism, Islam is an ideology one chooses to adhere to. Were there “good” or “moderate” Nazis? If not, then no one can claim that there are good or moderate Muslims as they are voluntarily subscribing to an ideology that advocates murder, torture and jihad and does not permit its follower to cherry-pick which parts they believe in. The requirement to accept the Koran as the literal word of God also carries with it the obligation to accept it all. And as you say, the Koran instructs all Muslims to wage war against non-Muslims and all schools of Islamic thought instruct the subjugation of the non-Muslim world through jihad. Therefore, I do not believe it wise to attempt to create artificial distinctions between Muslims that don’t really as far as their attitudes towards non-Muslims is concerned.

As the prime minister of Turkey recently said: There is no radical nor moderate Islam. That is an insult to Muslims. There is only Islam.

Read the rest of this interview at FrontPage.