   |
  
Follow the Middle
East Forum
|
||||
|
Please take a moment to
visit and log in at the subscriber
area, and submit your city & country location. We will use this
information in future to invite you to any events that we organize in your
area.
Mexican Jihad
  Be the first of your
friends to like this.
As the United States considers the Islamic
jihadi threats confronting it from all sides, it would do well to focus on
its southern neighbor, Mexico, which has been targeted by Islamists and
jihadists, who, through a number of tactics—from engaging in da'wa,
converting Mexicans to Islam, to smuggling and the drug cartel, simple
extortion, kidnappings and enslavement—have been subverting Mexico in order
to empower Islam and sabotage the U.S.
According to a 2010 report, "Close
to home: Hezbollah terrorists are plotting right on the U.S. border,"
which appeared in the NY Daily News:
Mexican authorities have rolled up a
Hezbollah network being built in Tijuana ... closer to
American homes than the terrorist hideouts in the Bekaa Valley are to
Israel. Its goal, according to a Kuwaiti newspaper that reported on the
investigation: to strike targets in Israel and the West. Over the years,
Hezbollah—rich with Iranian oil money and narcocash—has generated revenue by
cozying up with Mexican cartels to smuggle drugs and people into the U.S. In
this, it has shadowed the terrorist-sponsoring regime in Tehran, which has been
forging close ties with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who in turn
supports the narcoterrorist organization FARC, which wreaks all
kinds of havoc throughout the region.
Another 2010 article appearing in the Washington
Times asserts that, "with fresh evidence of Hezbollah activity
just south of the border [in Mexico], and numerous reports of Muslims from
various countries posing as Mexicans and crossing into the United States from
Mexico, our porous southern border is a national security nightmare waiting
to happen." This is in keeping with a recent study done by Georgetown
University, which revealed that the number of immigrants from Lebanon and Syria
living in Mexico exceeds 200,000. Syria, along with Iran, is one of
Hezbollah's strongest financial and political supporters, and Lebanon is the
immigrants' country of origin. Just like only 19 jihadists were necessary to
cause the devastation of September 11, 2001, only a handful of these 200,000
are necessary to wreak havoc north of the border.
A jihadist cell in Mexico was recently found
to have a weapons cache of 100 M-16 assault rifles, 100 AR-15 rifles, 2,500
hand grenades, C4 explosives and antitank munitions. The weapons, it turned
out, had been smuggled by Muslims from Iraq. According to this
report, "obvious concerns have arisen concerning Hezbollah's
presence in Mexico and possible ties to Mexican drug trafficking
organizations (DTO's) operating along the U.S.-Mexico border."
As far back as 2005, an article entitled
"Islam
is gaining a Foothold in Chiapas" showcased the inroads of Islam in
Mexico:
Long a bastion of Catholicism, southern
Mexico is quickly turning into a battleground for soul-savers. Islam, too, is
gaining a foothold and the indigenous Mayans are converting by the hundreds.
The Mexican government is worried about a culture clash in their own
backyard… Muslim women in headscarves have become a common sight….
To appreciate the significance of the fact
that Muslim headscarves "have become a common sight" in Mexico,
consider the words of former jihadist Tawfik Hamid, who personally knew
al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri. In his book, Inside Jihad,
he writes: "The proliferation of the hijab [Muslim headscarves] is
strongly correlated with increased terrorism…. Terrorism became much more
frequent in such societies as Indonesia, Egypt, Algeria, and the U.K. after
the hijab became prevalent among Muslim women living in those communities."
After discussing an increase in converts to
Islam, the article continues by saying: "It's a development that is
beginning to worry the Mexican government. Indeed, the government even
suspects the new converts of subversive activity and has already set the
secret service onto the track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President
Vincente Fox has even gone so far as to say he fears the influence of the
radical fundamentalists of al-Qaida" [emphasis added].
Kidnappings, as part of a drug cartel or as
part of a jihadist operation, which legitimizes crimes such as kidnapping and
child slavery, have become increasingly common. To convert non-Muslims to
their cause, Islamists also whip up—and then exploit—a sense of
"grievance" against the "white man."
In addition, according to counterterrorism
experts in this report, Islamic
terrorists blend in better with Mexicans than with Europeans, thereby
enabling them to sneak into the U.S. across the southwest border. This Muslim cleric, for
example, discusses how easy it is to smuggle a briefcase containing anthrax
from Mexico into America, thereby killing at least some 330,000 Americans in
a single hour.
Similarly, Michael Braun, formerly assistant
administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA), said
that the Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and
human trafficking in South America; however, it is relying on Mexican
narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.
Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document
traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels."
Only a few months ago, Washington announced
that FBI and DEA agents disrupted
a plot to commit a "significant terrorist act in the United
States," tied to Iran with roots in Mexico. The increased
violence—including beheadings, Islam's signature trademark—is even more
indicative that Islamists are well ensconced in Mexico's drug cartel.
The threat is not limited to Hezbollah; back
in 2006, according to ISN,
"Mexican authorities investigated the activities of the Murabitun [a da'wa,
or missionary-outreach, organization named after historic jihadists along
Spain's borders] due to reports of alleged immigration and visa abuses
involving the group's European members and possible radicals, including
al-Qaeda."
Even innocuous reports, such as this Muslim article,
are cause for concern: "Today, most Mexican Islamic organizations focus
on grassroots da'wa. These small organizations are most effective at
the community level, going from village to village and speaking directly to
the people." Although this may not sound problematic, the strain of
Islam being spread by many of these da'wa organizations is the
radical, "Salafist," anti-American variety. Here,
for instance, is a popular Egyptian TV cleric saying that while Muslims must
never smile to non-Muslims—who, as "infidels," are by nature the
enemy—they are free to do so if the Muslim is engaged in da'wa, trying
to win over the infidel into the fold of Islam, especially if the potential
convert can help empower Islam in any way.
These are but a few of the many reports on
Islam in Mexico. The evidence that many Islamists in Mexico are plotting
against the U.S., using all means—such as drug trafficking, which is not
forbidden in Sharia law if it serves to empower Islam—is overwhelming.
Under various methods—from the violent to the
subversive to the exploitative—Islam allows Muslims to lie and commit other
duplicitous acts in the furtherance of Islam. Taqiyya [dissimulation]
permits Hezbollah and other Islamists to engage in Mexico's drug cartel, just
as "pious" members of the Taliban in Afghanistan pursued the heroin
trade. Aside from sheer violence, justified as "jihad," or holy
war, tactics pursued by Mexico's Islamists include:
In using subversive elements for da'wa,
Muslims might comfortably use false arguments to turn Mexicans against their
northern neighbors. For instance, they often argue that Islam is a religion
of "racial equality," whereas Christianity is the "white
man's" religion, imposed on their ancestors by racist whites who sought
to keep them "impoverished" beyond the border. Islamist strategies
in Mexico amount to trying to win the unbelievers over to their side, whether
through conversion or just cooperation. For those who refuse to cooperate,
they are infidels to be used in any way that seems appropriate.
Raymond
Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
|
|||||
|
To subscribe to the MEF mailing lists, go to http://www.meforum.org/list_subscribe.php |
|||||
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment