Kerby Anderson

Andrew McCarthy asks, Who Is the Radical? He felt the need to revisit a topic he has addressed many times: radical Islam. He was the U.S. attorney that led the 1995 prosecution of the terrorists who planned the first attack on the World Trade Center. He has researched Muslim terrorism and wants Americans to clearly see these threats.

He begins by reminding us of the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy. It is “integrate but don’t assimilate.” It was the subject of his 2010 book, The Grand Jihad. The plan is “to use the West’s own freedoms and culture against it — destroy us by our own ‘hands’ as well as the ‘hands’ of ‘the believers’ (sharia supremacists) operating from within.”

He also discusses the idea of classical sharia by quoting from an Islamic document. For example, it teaches that “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims.” It also explains that “The testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man.” And “A Muslim woman may marry only a Muslim man; a Muslim man may marry up to four women.”

The document prescribes “The penalty for homosexual activity is death.” And “The penalty for theft is amputation of the right hand.” The document also calls for “The establishment of a caliphate,” which is a sharia-governed state with a Muslim leader at its head. He acknowledges that there are moderate Muslims who choose not to follow those dictates.

After a jihadist attack, we usually hear the question, “How was he radicalized?” Andrew McCarthy instead asks, “Who is the radical?” Radical Islam isn’t radical or a deviation from Muslim teaching. It is prescribed in the Qur'an and in other Islamic texts. We need to understand the current teachings of Islam.