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April 14, 2002
REVIEW: Neighbourhood terrorist
IS your nice neighbour on the quiet tree-lined suburban boulevard a terrorist mastermind? That is essentially the question that controversial journalist Steven Emerson asks his readers in his new book American jihad: the terrorists living among us. Utilizing his almost two decades of experience in national security, intelligence and counter-terrorism issues, the author gives a compact why, where, who, and what of a dimension of global terrorism that was largely hidden from the world until the first World Trade Centre attack in 1993: the support, moral and financial, that rogue elements receive from middle class folks in many American cities.
Emerson, who now heads his own terror-hunting investigative project, goes on to illustrate in painstaking details the inside activities of organizations which have innocent sounding names like Muslim American Youth Association, Islamic Association of Palestine, and the World Studies Enterprise. The photographic and audio recordings surreptitiously made by his own undercover reporters show these groups to be discussing less of spiritual Islam in their annual gatherings and preaching more the overthrow of unfriendly regimes, destruction of American capitalism, annihilation of Israel, demonizing of Jews and Christians.
In some such conclaves, held in respectable metropolises like Chicago and St Louis, speaker after speaker makes thinly veiled calls to take up arms, financiers mention novel ways to fund Hamas and Islamic Jihad activities, and teenagers have ‘martyrdom dances’ with real assault rifles. The composition of these groups is made up of largely first or second generation educated Middle Eastern immigrants who otherwise enjoy the comforts and convenience of the very American suburb that they claim to loathe.
Yet, lest his readers jump to conclusions, Emerson points out on at least three occasions that America’s Muslims are overwhelmingly law-abiding, hard-working, decent people, no different from Christians and Jews. Their predicament, the author claims with authority, is that by default they have let a vocal, extreme, and narrow-minded minority to take over their community organizations, mosques and cultural activities. It is a predicament, Emerson concludes, that can only be resolved from within, that is, by American Muslims collectively waking up and reclaiming their organizations and, thus, restoring their good name in a multi-cultural and multi-religious society.
The breadth of the undertaking is amazing considering the conciseness of the volume itself. Steve Emerson masterfully reiterates the grievances against local corruption, immorality, or oppression that many immigrants from Palestine to Pakistan came to America with. Some, unfortunately, channelled this rage into helping fringe groups like Hezbollah and Lashkar-i-Toiba.
Knowing well that many Muslim groups consider him to be anti-Islam, Emerson gives a poignant picture of his long friendship with noted Pakistani-German Muslim Dr Khalid Durrani and Sheikh Hisham Kabbani, the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of America. Without being alarming, the book attempts to be both cautionary and, especially for America’s six million Muslims, exhortatory. The title and references notwithstanding, there are times that it reads like a call for America’s Muslims to wake up, shake out the cobwebs, and claim their justly deserved seat at America’s family table. For a book about a set of issues that are largely negative, American jihad has a surprisingly positive tone.
What the book cannot escape is the constant reminder by the author’s detractors that it came out just a few months after the September 11, 2001 tragedy. Some Muslim groups, already hostile to Emerson’s in-the-face style on television talk-shows, have dismissed the volume as another one of his efforts to get cheap publicity and, in the process, denigrate Muslims.
Civil libertarians have been appalled by Emerson’s questioning of the Bill of Rights, America’s most cherished individual freedoms, in the pages of his book. Both those accusations merit some thought and probably should be addressed by the author in the next edition. That said, the book itself is a largely dispassionate, well-written, well-researched, compact volume authored by America’s number one private sector expert on terrorism. It is a must read for anyone looking for added perspective to understanding the phenomena that led to September 11, 2001.
American jihad: the terrorists living among us
By Steven Emerson
Free Press
ISBN 0743233247
261pp.
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