The threat of Islamic terrorism in the United States did not die with Osama bin Laden. That’s the portrait Erick Stakelbeck paints in investigatory detail in The Terrorist Next Door: How the Government Is Deceiving You About the Islamist Threat. Stakelbeck, a reporter for the Christian Broadcasting Network, talks to NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about Osama bin Laden and the continuing threat within.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: Don’t you feel silly having a book with the title The Terrorist Next Door out during the month that the War on Terror (or whatever we call it now) officially ended?

Erick Stakelbeck: My timing couldn’t have been worse, right? According to some on the Left, the death of Osama bin Laden means we can now move on from our so-called terrorism obsession and concentrate on really important things like . . . climate change. And they’re serious. Yet al-Qaeda is already no doubt seeking to regroup, with scores of eager young recruits and wanna-be jihadists — including in the U.S. — marching to the online drumbeat of Anwar al-Awlaki and clamoring to avenge OBL’s death. Meanwhile, Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism is, at most, two or three years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and our own Pentagon says the mullahs could have ICBMs that can reach the East Coast of the United States by 2015. Of course, before that happens, Iran will likely unleash its terrorist proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, and provoke a regional war with Israel (in which event Hezbollah might very well be unleashed in Europe and the U.S. as well). Oh, and did I mention that the Muslim Brotherhood — the granddaddy of all jihadist groups — will likely emerge as the major power broker in Egypt by the end of the year, as its various front groups throughout the West continue to gain influence? But now that Obama got Osama, we’re told, all is now right with the world. Anyway, terrorism and jihad are so 2004.

Stakelbeck: This is not a “War on Terror,” as President Bush first christened it. And it is certainly not a “War Against Violent Extremism” or “Man-Made Disasters” as the Obama administration has laughably dubbed it. What kind of violent extremism, anyway? Hindu? Buddhist? Wiccan? In reality, what we are engaged in is a war against Islamism, an all-encompassing ideological system that seeks to subjugate the world to Islamic sharia law and reestablish a global caliphate. Every Islamist group, whether Sunni or Shia, seeks these two goals. Whether it’s al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian regime, or Hezbollah, the endgame is the same: sharia states and the elimination or subjugation of non-Muslims. President Bush was actually on the right track when, in a series of speeches in 2005 and 2006, he called this struggle a war against “Islamic fascism” and talked at length about the goals: the caliphate, etc. But by the end of his administration, this honest assessment had morphed, unfortunately, into “violent extremism.” Terrorism is only a tactic: There is a well-defined, long-established Islamist ideology behind it. That’s not just me saying that. As I recount in the book, I have interviewed al-Qaeda-linked terrorists who have told me as much to my face.

Lopez: In May 2011, where did Osama bin Laden fit in the global jihad?

Stakelbeck: He was not only a symbolic figure; he was apparently much more involved operationally than many had suspected, playing a sort of “Godfather” role in blessing attacks and devising plans for future strikes against the West. That said, his relative isolation — being confined to the same building for years and communicating only through couriers — undoubtedly hampered his effectiveness as al-Qaeda’s global leader. So did his lack of visibility. For example, I’ve investigated dozens of homegrown-jihad cases on U.S. and British soil over the past few years. In each case, the aspiring young jihadis didn’t have posters of bin Laden on their walls. Their inspiration, rather, came from the DVDs, CDs, and online sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born al-Qaeda leader based in Yemen. Awlaki is young, charismatic, Western-educated, and fluent in English. Those are just some of the reasons that federal agents were telling me as early as 2009 that Awlaki had surpassed bin Laden as the world’s most influential jihadist. For instance, in The Terrorist Next Door, I describe one incident in 2010 where I found dozens of Awlaki’s DVDs and CDs on display at a large Islamic supermarket in northern Virginia — just minutes from the White House. When I confronted the store’s owner, he explained, tellingly, that the Awlaki tracts were “very good sellers.”

Lopez: What is the global jihad and where do we fit into it, priority-wise?

Stakelbeck: The global jihad is the concerted push by Islamist groups, through both violent and non-violent tactics, to subjugate the world to sharia. Some, like al-Qaeda, have a “win now” strategy, while others, like the Muslim Brotherhood, are more patient in laying the groundwork and will work within the system to gain power and influence, all the while aided and abetted by naïve Westerners. The endgame, of course, is the same: Islamic states and second-class status, or death, for non-Muslims. And the “soft” or “stealth” jihadists, by the way, are not so restrained once they achieve sufficient strength in a particular country. The final stage for them, as for al-Qaeda, is violent jihad and the overthrow of infidel governments. It might take 100 years to accomplish it, but that is the goal and they have shown time and again that they are extremely patient. Priority-wise, the West is the ultimate prize. Israel is only the Little Satan. America is the Great Satan — that is a common refrain among jihadists of all stripes, be they Sunni or Shia. Take down America and you take down the final bastion of Judeo-Christian, Western civilization and the leader of the so-called “Crusade” against Islam.