The hijacked planes that plowed into the World Trade Center nine years ago and the mammoth mosque now cleared for construction only blocks away from the ruins of the towers both, despite vastly different appearances, actually represent degrees of the same goal: Islamic conquest.
Such is the warning of an author and expert with arguably the most unique terror insight imaginable.
"If they can establish (global rule) in a peaceful manner, that's fine," Mosab Hassan Yousef says of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. "But they are required by the Quran to establish this global Islamic state on the rubble of every civilization, every constitution, every government."
That threat, he says, is embodied in the controversial 9/11 mosque and emboldened in the era of the Obama administration.
Yousef should know. He's the son of a Hamas co-founder and former terrorist himself who became a Christian and a spy for Israel. Granted asylum in America after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tried to deport him, Yousef knows the many forms jihad can manifest. The author of the acclaimed "Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices," served as a consultant to the Holy Land Foundation terror-finance trial.
The 2008 Dallas trial, the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history, revealed intricacies of the Brotherhood's "100-year plan." Its crux: undermining American institutions, eroding Western civilization and establishing an environment for Islam to reign supreme over all religions. Integral to success were spin-offs whose true intents hid behind smiley faces – chiefly the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. (In that trial, CAIR and some of its leaders were confirmed by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators.)
On the strength of a six-month undercover penetration of CAIR, the best-selling WND Books exposé "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America" revealed in harrowing detail just how duplicitous a front CAIR puts up.
At the Holy Land Foundation trial, the FBI presented a transcript from a wiretap of a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia in which Hamas supporters sought to establish Muslim organizations in the U.S. "whose Islamic hue is not very conspicuous."
Thousands of pages of documents recovered in the "Muslim Mafia" investigation confirmed CAIR's coziness with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. And CAIR, never denying the book's findings, sued the investigators to recover the documents. But WND attorneys proved in court that from a legal perspective, CAIR actually doesn't even exist, following a name change to deflect negative publicity from the trial.
Still, according to Yousef, the battle for Islamic dominance assumes many forms. He points to the 9/11 mosque. Emotions run white-hot over the city-approved Cordoba House – aka Park 51 – and its $100 million construction budget as well as plans to accommodate as many as 1,000 worshipers.
When President Obama expressed support, then backed away, then reaffirmed support for the project, his public approval suffered a slump that still persists. While a recent CBS poll puts public disapproval for the mosque at 71 percent, the project enjoys strong support from many policy makers and opinion makers.
"This is plain and simple people trying to stir up things to get publicity and trying to polarize people so that they can get some votes," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently told Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show."
Expect the news coverage to project a turn in public opinion, predicts Chuck Morse, author of "The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism," especially following allegations of a New York City cab driver getting stabbed after being asked if he was Muslim.
Morse warns about the "Taqiyya," a sanctioned deception Muslims employ as long as it's "spoken in the greater interest of Islam." Morse recently cited how Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Sufi Muslim imam and the founder of the Cordoba Initiative, cuts a sympathetic figure to the left. With its mystical emphasis, Sufism appeals to liberals enamored with New Age leanings, he says.
Nevertheless, Morse explains, this doctrine "adheres to an absolute and literal interpretation of the Quran and Hadith, the holy books of Islam, with a particular emphasis on Shariah law."
More than once, Rauf blamed Sept. 11 on U.S. policies and refused to admit Muslims committed the attacks. During a July radio interview with Aaron Klein, WND senior writer and author of the New York Times Best-seller "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists," Rauf refused to affirm the U.S. designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization or call the Muslim Brotherhood extremists.
Yet as Yousef maintains, the two are one in the same – explaining Hamas specifically was created to engage Israel and protect the Muslim Brotherhood from the consequences of a direct confrontation.
"(T)hey choose people like my father, from the Muslim Brotherhood originally," he said, "and they ask them to establish an independent movement that shares the same exact doctrine."
Yousef worked alongside his father, Sheik Hassan Yousef, in the West Bank city of al-Ghaniya near Ramallah while secretly embracing Christian faith and serving as a Shin Bet spy. Since publicly declaring his faith in August 2008, he has been condemned by an al-Qaida-affiliated group and disowned by his family.
Describing Islam more as a subversive system than a traditional religion, Yousef advises resisting its advances.
"Even if it's a religion, and 1.5 billion people around the world believe in it, this doesn't mean that they are right; and this doesn't mean that we compromise with them," he said. "We tell them, 'You're accepted, but guess what? This is the red line: We don't compromise with your god. We don't compromise with your belief system.'"
Unfortunately, he says, American foreign policy under President Obama is capitulating and buying "the lie of Muslim groups who are trying to make Islam look good in the eyes of Westerners." This posture gives Muslims "the courage to come forward with a very aggressive symbol" in the Manhattan mosque.
"If it was any other American president," he said, "we wouldn't have this aggressive step."
