Most U.S. Mosques Teach Violence

Most U.S. Mosques Teach Violence
by Robert Spencer
06/14/2011

Last week came new confirmation that mosques in the U.S. aren’t quite holding potluck suppers and teaching civic pieties. A new study has demonstrated that 80% of mosques right in this country are teaching jihad warfare and Islamic supremacism.

Researchers Mordechai Kedar and David Yerushalmi reported in the Summer 2011 issue of Middle East Quarterly about a new survey that found that “51% of mosques had texts that either advocated the use of violence in the pursuit of a Sharia-based political order or advocated violent jihad as a duty that should be of paramount importance to a Muslim.” Another 30% of mosques in the United States “had only texts that were moderately supportive of violence,” while only “19% had no violent texts at all.”

This yet again contradicts the universally held assumption that U.S. mosques are completely benign institutions, in all respects equivalent to churches and synagogues. As long ago as 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department open forum in January 1999 declaring that Islamic supremacists controlled most mosques in America .

“The most dangerous thing that is going on now in these mosques,” Kabbani said, “that has been sent upon these mosques around the United States—like churches they were established by different organizations and that is okay—but the problem with our communities is the extremist ideology. Because they are very active, they took over the mosques, and we can say that they took over more than 80% of the mosques that have been established in the U.S. And there are more than 3,000 mosques in the U.S. So it means that the methodology or ideology of extremists has been spread to 80% of the Muslim population, but not all of them agree with it.”

Terrorism expert Yehudit Barsky affirmed the same thing in 2005, saying that 80% of the mosques in this country “have been radicalized by Saudi money and influence.” The Center for Religious Freedom in 2005 found a massive distribution of hateful jihadist and Islamic supremacist material in mosques in this country. The Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study likewise found that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.

And in June 2008, federal investigators found that the Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia, despite promises to stop teaching such material, was still using books that advocated that apostates from Islam be executed and that it was permissible for Muslims to kill and seize the property of “polytheists.”

What is most arresting about these studies is their unanimity. Although each was conducted independently of the others, they all came to the same conclusion: that around three-quarters of mosques in this country are teaching what amounts to sedition. And yet the mainstream media has shown about as much interest in the new survey as they did in the others—that is, none at all.

Maybe they figure that it could be worse. After all, in recent years we have seen mosques used to preach hatred, to spread exhortations to terrorist activity, to house a bomb factory, to store weapons, to disseminate messages from Osama bin Laden, to demand that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions, to fire on American troops, to fire upon Indian troops and to train jihadists. But most of that took place outside the United States, so who cares? We know the mosques inside this country are different! And on what do we base this certainty? Why, nothing, nothing at all except for the bland and smiling assurances of Muslim leaders in this country that mosques are simply places of worship, no more, no less, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a greasy Islamophobe.

It is time to be more realistic. At the very least, reporters all over the country should be asking pointed questions of local mosque leaders about the books they’re using and what they’re teaching in general. And they should call on them to give honest, verifiable answers.

It is more likely, however, that this study, like the others, will simply be ignored. But don’t let that happen. Call upon your elected officials and the media to take notice of this new survey. Our freedoms depend on it.