‘Every conspiracy against Islam and scheming against Islam and the Muslims — its source is America.”
“Jihad is Jihad. There is no such thing as commerce, industry, and science in jihad. This is calling things other than by its [sic] own name. If Allah says, ‘Do jihad,’ it means do jihad with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenades, and with the missile. This is Jihad. Jihad against Allah’s enemies for Allah’s cause and his word.”
“Why do we fear the word ‘terrorist’? If the terrorist is the person who defends his right, so we are terrorists. . . . The Koran mentions the words ‘to strike terror,’ therefore we don’t fear to be described with ‘terrorism.’ . . . We are ordered to prepare whatever we can of power to terrorize the enemies of Islam.”
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This rhetoric was not at all unusual. It was the sort of thing you’d hear on any given Friday at mosques in Brooklyn or Jersey City. Nor is there anything ostensibly criminal about it, at least according to the hash the Supreme Court has made of the First Amendment.
That wasn’t the case in the speaker’s native Egypt. There, Omar Abdel Rahman had been notorious for such fiery Friday sermons. There, the imam known as “the Blind Sheikh,” a renowned scholar of Islamic jurisprudence, had been jailed several times for inciting Muslims — urging that they kill regime officials for allying with America and for failing to implement sharia, Islam’s legal system.
But not here, not in the land of free expression: In the United States, the authorities regarded Abdel Rahman as a respected community leader. The federal government put out its welcome mat despite his appearance on its terrorist watch lists. Federal authorities never consulted the police force responsible for protecting the New Yorkers he would attack; they just issued him a green card to work as a “religious teacher” and sent him on his way.
It was Ray Kelly, one of the great police commissioners in American history, who finally arranged to place the blind sheikh in handcuffs. This was during the summer of 1993, when Kelly was in his first go-round as NYPD commissioner.
The sheikh was holed up in a favorite New York City mosque, surrounded by his followers — at least those of them who were not already in prison or on the lam for multiple bombing plots. As I recounted in Willful Blindness, when Attorney General Janet Reno green-lighted the arrest that we prosecutors had been seeking for weeks, it was Kelly and his savvy city cops who defused the potentially explosive situation. The NYPD spoke to people in the community, the sheikh was coaxed out of the mosque, and federal immigration agents took him into custody without incident. This was no small thing: In the two decades since, dozens of innocent people have been killed by zealots demanding his release.
What I most remember about that day is Kelly’s quiet confidence, instilling calm in a room full of NYPD cops, FBI agents, and immigration officers — not to mention a thirtysomething government lawyer who happened to be on hand. A panicky supervisor from INS (called ICE now) groused that the sheikh’s arrest — initially on immigration charges — would have to wait until he could get clearance from his office. I was speechless. After all, the attorney general had already made her decision — why would we now have to wait on a midlevel bureaucrat? Because, it turned out, INS had sent the wrong bureaucrat to the meeting, the New York supervisor instead of the guy from across the river who was in charge of the INS end of the investigation. “You don’t understand,” the supervisor muttered as he reached for a phone, “the case belongs to New Jersey.”
“Yeah,” countered Commissioner Kelly, “but the streets belong to me.”
Kelly is now in his second tour of duty as commish, and New Yorkers are extraordinarily fortunate that their streets have belonged to him for most of the decade since September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 of our fellow citizens were murdered. You mightn’t think so, however, if all you had to go on was the hatchet-job published by the Associated Press last week.
By the AP’s lights, Kelly is running a rogue domestic-spying operation. To the contrary, the commissioner has crafted an unparalleled counterterrorism strategy. Ever mindful of civil rights and respectful of Islamic culture — just as the police must be respectful of the variegated cultures in the Big Apple’s ethnic goulash — Kelly has kept the world’s No. 1 terrorist target safe from mass-casualty attacks. He has managed this despite 13 known attempts — and who knows how many others that cannot be spoken of without compromising intelligence sources.
Andrew McCarthy is easily the most credible anti-Islamist terrorism voice in America in my eyes.
Just think about it. This man was a federal prosecutor in the state of New York. He fought one of the toughest legal battles of his career - and against the stacked odds of prosecuting a terrorism spiritual head/inciter in U.S. civilian court - successfully putting away the Blind Sheik.
Following that experience, McCarthy has focused his considerable expertise emerging as one of the most prolific and relentless watchmen standing guard against Jihad in America.
After seeing the nature of the threat up close and personal, this is how McCarthy has responded to protect the nation. I am really thankful for his dedication.
“The police are a society’s manifestation of the determination to govern itself in accordance with its rule of law. They are there to protect and to serve, not to be passive observers of the society’s surrender.”
The latter is indeed our historic first Islamic apostate president’s policy.
The only cynically political adjustments to it consists of tweaking perceptions of his surrendering our country to decline with a slope slightly less deliberately steep in the hope he can slip through reelection disguised as a bystander.
Reflecting back on your recent article"Losing Malmo". President Obama's policy re the global war brought on by Islamist terrorists could well be called "Let the 'Malmoizing' begin".
He is famous, make that infamous for many statements confirming this. Space doesn't permit listing them all but his "Let's not jump to any conclusions" comments when it is crystal clear terrorist acts are done by Islamist terrorists says it all.
I agree with DonnaDiorio. Andrew McCarthy is easily the most credible anti-Islamist terrorism voice in the public square. Keep up the great work Andy.
Andrew McCarthy and Ray Kelly working at the grass roots New York City level have an excellent, hardheaded, pragmatic view of both crime and the reality of militant Islamic terrorism. They have both racked up solid wins in this very real battle with militant Islam.
Andrew McCarthy is a national treasure with a wealth of information from his experience prosecuting terrorists. And you are a dimwit. Most likely a leftist dimwit.
Ms No, this paragraph from McCarthy's post is the type of crud that Kelly and other careful and reasonable people disdain...
"This is not the way the Obama administration wants things done. The president’s strategy warns against singling out any particular brand of “violent extremism” for special attention — jihadist terror is not to be regarded as any more a threat to America than other sources of violence. Obama miniaturizes the threat as “al-Qa’ida’s hateful ideology” — as if the Islamist challenge to the West were a fringe movement. He waves off concerns about Muslims’ support for Islamists with the peremptory declaration that “Muslim American communities have categorically condemned terrorism” — as if that were an incontestable proposition or one that told the whole story."
He would not agree with the erroneous conclusion that McCarthy attempts to draw about the Obama admins statements about Islamist terror.
That conclusion isn't based on the administrations words or actions and it's just McCarthy being a jerk.
Kelly would also be clear in telling you that the majority of Muslims do not support terror and do not want to see terror in New York. He would tell you that Muslims are overwhelmingly good and peaceful citizens who support our society and support the police.
Kelly is not the type of blueshirt artist who ignores the evidence and who likes to try smearing the majority of New York's Muslims. McCarthy of course likes to flirt with bigotry by going beyond all evidence and pointing a suspicious finger at all Muslims.
Kelly's a careful cop who gathers evidence and studies probabilities before opening his mouth......
McCarthy is something else.
Kelly is a strongly moral man reluctant to denigrate the religious and moral views of others.
I don't know Ray Kelly or enough about him, so I take yours and McCarthy's word for it.
However, I do think you are reading too much negativity into McCarthy's writings. I have read him and do not find bigotry (or flirting with...) and his interpertation of this administrations stated views and actions to be reasonable....given what I have seen and heard independent of others interpertaions.
How is it erroneous or bigoted to judge fanatics by their own words and stated goals and the actions of their adherents. No where has McCarthy said ALL muslim are such...though he has lamented the lack of widespred refutation of the more...how shall we say....literal practice of some major tenents of Islamic belief? How is it racist to point out that in many parts of the world, what is preached by the "extremists" is practiced? And not just practiced but established law of the land and that there are a goodly number of vociferous believers of such things who want to establish such practices here as law?...and will do whatever is necessary, legal and illegal to achieve that goal?
Sorry, but you will have to have far more evidence than what you presented thus far to indite McCarthy on charges of bigotry, racism, slander, libel, etc...,etc..,etc...
Perhaps I am dense but I would need to see chapter and verse of false/bigoted statements with detailed, factual refrutations.
It's too easy to take someone's words out of context, or with no context and call them false or bigoted without anything to backup the claim other than one's feelings.
You may not like his interpertation but your not liking it does not, in itself, make his interperation and concusions bigoted.
I do my best to keep an open mind and don't swallow what others say whole cloth. I like evidence and factual information from all sides of an issue. Differences of opinion happen all the time. Based on the facts, I will exaiming what I know and believe and adjust my opinion accordingly.
Thanks for the response. I have a better understanding of your views now.
OK, somebody gets jihad, but everybody is missing something here. Islam is a menace, but it's not going to wipe out the country. Everybody is so focused on a group that could kill thousands, that they forgot about the groups that could kill millions - Russia and China.
Thanks to Bush and Obama, we have never been so vulnerable to attack from Russia and China. Both Russia and China tell us that they hate us. We are their number one enemy, and we are disarming at the same time. Not too smart if you want to stay around awhile.
So go ahead and focus on the insignificant stuff. Just make sure you ignore the really important stuff.
China and Russia are indeed external threats - but hardly the job of the NYPD. And while you easily dismiss "thousands" of deaths, I suspect that the citizens of New York City would be grateful to know that Commissioner Kelly is focused on keeping them safe day to day from those who would love to repeat the thousands of deaths of 9/11.
Concern over a national threat should not over ride all concerns of local threats.
You conveniently ignore the fact that neither Russia nor China are likely to attack US interests directly, much less mount an attack on US civilians inside the United States itself. Neither of these countries is a military threat to our nation. They cannot afford to be. Even when they disagree with us politically, both nations 1. know they are tied to us economically and 2. know that, even if they could rationalize a war with the US to their people, they couldn't win one. Even as stretched as our military is currently, it is still far superior in technology to either country, and in manpower to that of Russia. Even with China's well-publicized advances in stealth technology, they know that they could not win a ground war with the US.
Which brings in the nuclear option. In the modern world, due to politics and geography, potentially ONE nation could attack another sovereign nation and not be destroyed for it. That nation is the US. Mostly due to the vast size of the country and the spread of our resources, both economic and military, across the nation. China nor Russia have this luxury. Therefore, a nuclear attack on the US would be suicide for the leaders of both countries, even in the unlikely event that their own citizens didn't overthrow the government as soon as it became known what they'd done.
Let's be honest about it. If China or Russia nuked the 9 largest cities in the US, including DC, our country could survive. The retaliatory strikes taking our Beijing or St Petersburg and Moscow would decapitate both potential enemies governments and end further hostilities.
