Experts Warn of Homegrown Jihadism And Spread Of Sharia Law

As terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamist extremists continue to proliferate across the U.S., experts and lawmakers are raising the alarm over the increase in homegrown jihadist views and activism to implement Sharia law in America, which directly contradict the tenets of the U.S. Constitution.

In the weeks following the Trump administration's strike on Iran on February 28, four terrorist attacks were carried out by Islamist radicals across four different states. In the early morning hours of March 3, Senegalese national Ndiaga Diagne killed three and wounded 14 others after he opened fire at a bar in Austin, Texas before he was killed by police. Diagne was wearing a sweatshirt with the words "Property of Allah," and a search of his car and home found a Quran, an Iranian flag, and pictures of Iranian leaders.

Four days later on March 7, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi attempted to detonate explosive devices full of metal shrapnel near a protest occurring at Gracie Mansion in New York City. They later professed their allegiance to the Islamic State terror group after being arrested. Then on March 12, Lebanese national Ayman Mohamad Ghazali rammed a truck through the front entrance of a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, exchanged gunfire with a security guard, and set off fireworks before killing himself. 

It later came to light that Ghazali's brother was a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon. The next day, Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a former Virginia National Guard member, shot and killed ROTC instructor Lt. Col. Brandon Shah at Old Dominion University in Virginia and injured two others before being subdued and killed by ROTC members. Jalloh "previously served prison time for attempting to aid the terrorist group ISIS."

Experts like Robert Spencer, who serves as director of Jihad Watch and as a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, say that it is no coincidence that the reoccurring pattern of terrorist acts are being carried out by extremist practitioners of Islam.

"These recent attacks come after 49,000 jihad terror attacks around the world since 9/11," he pointed out during Tuesday's edition of "Washington Watch." "Now people like to say, 'Oh, every religion has extremists,' but in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, you don't see people who hold to those religions carrying out terror attacks at all, much less 49,000 of them in 25 years. ... Islam has a developed doctrine and theology and legal system mandating warfare against unbelievers. No other religion has anything like that."

Spencer went on to highlight what undergirds the jihadist mentality within Islam.

"Jihad means struggle," he explained. "There are a lot of struggles in Arabic, just like there are in English. You know, you can have a great struggle between civilizations, but also struggle to lose weight or quit smoking or something like that, and it's the same thing in Arabic. But the primary meaning of jihad in Islamic theology and law is warfare against non-Muslims to establish Islamic law over them. And Islamic law denies basic rights to non-Muslims. 

It mandates a second-class status that denies the freedom of speech, denies equality of rights to women, discriminates against non-Muslims in all kinds of ways. As a matter of fact, to this day, Christians in Pakistan are colloquially in the country known as sweepers, because all the kinds of jobs they get are things like sweeping the streets, because they're not allowed to hold authority over Muslims. That's part of Islamic law. They can only hold the most menial jobs in society. Part of the mandate of Islamic law for Christians and others is humiliation, so that they will realize the cost of rejecting Islam."

Spencer further noted that "every major sect -- Sunni and Shia and then also the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia -- every last major group of Muslims of Islam ... with the exception of some tiny groups, they all teach warfare against unbelievers and the necessity to subjugate them as second class under the rule of Islamic law."

Spencer recognized that there are "a lot of peaceful Muslims, there's no doubt about that. But there's no peaceful form of Islam. ... Unfortunately, there are violent teachings and supremacist teachings of Islam that Islamic jihadis can and do point to to make recruits among peaceful Muslims, or at least to keep the peaceful Muslims off balance and afraid to speak up because they're the ones who are not the good Muslims by the likes of the Quran. And that's why we don't see massive Muslim opposition to jihad violence."

Meanwhile, a growing cohort of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are raising concerns over signs that Sharia law, the Islamic legal code, is being implemented within some U.S. communities. Republicans in the House of Representatives recently organized the Sharia-Free America Caucus, which has so far been joined by 43 members. Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) have also introduced legislation to halt the spread of Sharia Law in the U.S., which House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently pointed out is the "opposite" of the freedom of religion that is promised to every American by the U.S. Constitution.

Spencer concurred. "You 'kill the infidel.' ... That's said four times in the Quran. 'Kill them wherever you find them.' And one of those four says very clearly, 'Kill the polytheists wherever you find them.' ... In the Islamic scheme of things, Christians and pretty much everybody who's not Muslim is a polytheist. But there is also the other possibility that the non-Muslims submit to the rule of Islamic law and are subjugated, and that is acceptable. ... But there is no possibility in Islamic law for non-Muslims and Muslims to live together as equals in a secular society. ... With the rising Muslim population, you're also going to have a rising population of people who believe they have a command from the only God to impose Islamic law over this country by violence, if necessary, and by stealth."

But as Spencer observed, many Americans on the Left "decided long ago ... that to talk about Islam's violent supremacist aspects is racist and bigoted and Islamophobic. Now that's a lot of nonsense. ... But the Left completely bought into that. So did many on the Right as well. And many people to this day have been conditioned to think, 'Well, I can't talk about jihad violence. I can't talk about Sharia oppression of women and non-Muslims, because that would be Islamophobic.'"

Spencer concluded by arguing that the tenets of Sharia law are incompatible with the Constitution.

"Religious freedom is not some kind of a license or get out of jail free card to break all the other laws and ignore everything else that makes our society free," he contended. "And so, we have to recover a real sense of what religious freedom actually is and say, 'You're perfectly free to live as Muslims here and practice your religion. You're just not free to wage jihad. You're not free to oppress women. You're not free to do the other aspects of Islamic law that contradict U.S. constitutional laws.'"

Originally published at The Washington Stand