An Award-Winning Documentary About Islamic Terrorists Becomes Hate Speech

by Steven Emerson, IPT

At what point over the past 20 years did citing statements and literature by Islamic terrorists become banned “hate speech?”

A documentary that I produced in 1994 for PBS concerning civilizational jihad won numerous awards, yet YouTube in recent days removed a video posted by CounterJihad that covered the very same topic in much more limited scope.

Both my film, “Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America,” and CounterJihad’s “Killing for a Cause: Sharia Law & Civilizational Jihad” expose the Islamification of the West waged by the Muslim Brotherhood and its front organizations in the U.S. The Brotherhood, born in Egypt in 1928, is the fountainhead of nearly every deadly Islamist organization on the planet today.

I quoted Abdullah Azzam, the Muslim leader most responsible for expanding the jihad into an international holy war, speaking in Brooklyn, N.Y.:

“The jihad, the fighting, is obligatory on you wherever you can perform it. And just as when you are in America you must fast – unless you are ill or on a voyage – so, too, must you wage jihad. The word jihad means fighting only, fighting with the sword.”

CounterJihad quotes from a Brotherhood governing document:

“The (Muslim Brotherhood) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers.”

YouTube in its “hate speech” policy explains that it refers “to content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on certain attributes, such as: race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, sexual orientation/gender identity.”

Neither project did any such thing.

All that’s changed over the past two decades is the ability of Muslim Brotherhood front groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to successfully exert their will on a very sensitive and politically correct media and cultural elite.

YouTube eventually reposted CounterJihad’s video, but the exercise is telling.

CAIR and its cohorts — including the Muslim Public Affairs Council and the Islamic Circle of North America — spend millions to portray all Muslims as the real victims of every Islamic terrorist massacre against innocent Westerners.

After every Islamist terror attack, they rush to the microphones to blame U.S. foreign policy for inciting the sadistic killers, often before law enforcement confirms anything. They reinforce recruitment propaganda that says the West has engaged in a “war with Islam” and therefore deflect responsibility from the murderers themselves.

Their latest stunt is a report on the contrived term “Islamophobia,” which suggests that those who fear Islamic terrorism are racist and behave irrationally toward Muslims.

They have become incredibly effective at inflaming tensions between Muslims and Westerners, who by and large harbor no ill will toward each other.

Their “war on Islam” and claims of Islamophobia distract from the underlying agenda of Islamic terrorists.

They intend to establish a global empire known as a Caliphate governed by Sharia law. They are engaged in a full-scale overt and covert war to cripple every Western ideal that stands in their way.

CAIR sabotages prospects of unification by telling Muslim Americans to not cooperate with law enforcement. They assist in raising money for radical mosques and their fiery imams in the U.S. through their actions. They preach solidarity with their Middle Eastern terrorist overseers.

CAIR’s roots are firmly planted in a Hamas-support network in the U.S. created by the Muslim Brotherhood. Every statement it issues includes that asterisk at the end, although one would be hard-pressed to find anyone working in the media brave enough to cite it.

San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook and Orlando gunman Omar Mateen found resonance in the videos of the late al-Qaida ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki, which indoctrinated them with radical Islamist teachings and instructed them to become martyrs. The jihadists behind the carnage in Brussels and Paris were all directed and influenced by ISIS.

Let’s stop the nonsense.

By portraying all non-Muslims as enemies, CAIR and its allies fail to educate anyone about the true nature of Islamic terrorism.

If CAIR and its fellow travelers were truly concerned about Muslims in the U.S., they should reject assaults on the values of Western culture and condemn those who exploit Islam as the inspiration for horrific murders.

That’s not hate speech. It is a truth that was just as valid 20 years ago as it is today.

Steven Emerson is the Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.