It is now the future. Al-Qaeda has managed to smuggle into the United States six nuclear devices, each one smaller than a refrigerator. “Sleepers” living for years in the United States received that phone call to activate their jihad which they sworn themselves to long ago.
These jihadists lived in suburbs with their families, held jobs, played football, go shopping at the mall like everybody else. No one suspected anything till six mushroom clouds appeared in six of America’s largest cities. This is the nightmare scenario that I hope will never happen.
Yet the danger of something like this happening is increasing each day. How well protected are the nukes in Russia? Will they get stolen? Pakistan already has nuclear weapons and we all know that Pakistan is rife with sympathizers of Al-Qaeda, even in the government.
Assorted bad guys like Saddam Hussein, the Mad Mullahs of Iran and not least Osama bin Laden himself have been trying to get one. North Korea may already have one or close to getting one.
If drug cartels can smuggle drugs into the United States by the tons, why can’t Al-Qaeda smuggle in a nuclear device? Given the rising danger, I fear that America’s civil liberties are going to take a knock, dragged down by Islamic militancy. Years from now, historians will regard September 11 as the high water mark for human rights.
America is going to find out why human rights and democracy are so hard to take root in Muslim countries. Like everything else in life, civil liberties that we all cherish come with a price.
There has to be a trade-off between our civil liberties and our security. For example, we all agree that torture should be banned. But what if the FBI captures an Al-Qaeda member who knows where a nuclear device is hidden in Los Angeles. You have 48 hours to find it before LA gets incinerated. Do you torture him?
All countries must strike a balance between its security needs and its human rights or civil liberties. In order to save lives and win the war on terror, America may have no choice but to cut back on its civil liberties. Already America’s high standards have eroded in the war against terrorism because security must rightfully take priority after September 11.
Jose Padilla, an alleged terrorist, is being held without trial. His lawyer said that he is being denied his constitutional rights and he is right. There was also a report in the Washington Post that the US has sent Al-Qaeda suspects to Egypt, Jordan and Syria to be interrogated. We all know the kind of tender loving care the security forces there give to suspects.
It was not so long ago that the Japanese Americans were interned for the duration of World War 2. It was left to a comfortable future generation that has not known the tingling sensation of fear to apologize for this infringement of civil liberties and to swear, “Never again.”
As in the title of a James Bond movie, never say never again. Should the threat of a nuclear attack become acute or one actually occurs, I can imagine Muslims in America either interned or expelled.
Can we maintain our civil liberties and still deal with an unprecedented threat to our civilization? Or will America abandon or scale down the civil rights to fight terrorism? What can we do with men who welcome a martyr’s death as the key to paradise?
Let me remind you of a hadith in Sahih al Bukhari that says, “Know that Paradise is under the shade of swords”.
Deterrent does not work with people like that. The terrorists in Al-Qaeda are quite happy to die thinking that they will earn their tickets to paradise filled with virgins for their pleasure. At least the Soviets in the Cold War days wanted to live.
They did not believe in God and planet earth was all they have got. The threat of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was enough to keep the peace long enough for the people behind the iron curtain to know that communism does not work. With these Muslim militants yearning to die a martyr’s death, MAD will not work and Muslims will not have enough time to find out that Islam does not work either.
Besides who are we going to retaliate against? Al-Qaeda is a supranational organization. It has no borders. It is a group of medieval men scattered around the world who cannot cope with modernity. Some of them are living amongst us.
That is why the work of the Faith Freedom web site is so important. The first objective of this web-site is to persuade Muslims to give up Islam. Islamic militancy is rooted in Islamic scriptures. It is threatening world peace and beginning to corrode the high standards of civil liberties that took the west many centuries to develop.
Secondly, it seeks to educate non-Muslims about Islam. The Chinese strategist said, “Know thyself, know thy enemy. One hundred battles. One hundred victories”.
There are those who think that Islam can be reformed. This is based on a superficial comparison with other religions. Their wait for a Muslim Martin Luther is in vain, in my opinion. In all religions, the founder is the defining figure. Millions of followers emulate the example set by the founder.
If Jesus had ordered his followers to murder the Pharisees or Judas Iscariot, then Martin Luther would not have succeeded in launching the Reformation.
In the case of Prophet Mohammed, we have countless stories of his violence. For example, the Prophet once asked his followers to kill a poetess who composed an unflattering poem about him! This explains why Salman Rushdie still lives in fear.
Prophet Mohammed is unique in that he alone among the founders of major religions was a man of violence. Islamic reform therefore becomes very difficult if not impossible.
The Koran is peppered with verses like the following: “Fight against such of those to whom the Scriptures were given as believe in neither God nor the Last Day, who do not forbid what God and His Apostle have forbidden, and do not embrace the true Faith, until they pay tribute out of hand and are utterly subdued”.
It is words like these that inspire people like Ayatollah Khomeini to say: “But those who study Islamic Holy War will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those (who say this) are witless.”
If not for the proliferation of nuclear weapons, America can preserve its civil liberties and still fight terrorism. But I fear that the day is coming when nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction will fall into the wrong hands.
Civil liberties can only survive in the oxygen of security. The spread of nuclear weapons will eventually mean that a relatively small group of men hiding amongst us can destroy the US economy. Security needs will then take precedence over civil liberties.
Under such circumstances, I foresee that America will have no choice but to torture prisoners for information, incarcerate people without trial and become the evil it fights against. What a sad day that will be.
It may not happen overnight. But Muslim terrorism will be take away people’s feeling of security making them willing to accept curtailment of their civil liberties. Americans will become more accepting of intrusions to their privacy, of detention without trial, of press censorship and even of torture. As acid rain can corrode the most beautiful marble, Islamic militancy can corrode the civil liberties of the strongest democracy.
Let me end by saying that this web-site has set itself a very difficult, if not impossible task – the eradication of Islam by exposing Islam to the light of truth. The success of this struggle will also preserve the freedoms we all treasure.
Disclaimer: The articles published on this site represent the view of their writers.