When we launched The Grand Jihad last week, one of the first interviews I did was with my buddy Steve Malzberg. It was fitting because the top news story of the day was the community board vote to approve the erection, over the ruins of the Twin Towers, of a mosque named after the Caliphate that conquered Spain and ruled it, often brutally, for over half a millennium. It would be a major advance in what the Muslim Brotherhood has called its “grand jihad” to “sabotage” the United States from within — exploiting, among other things, Western freedoms and the co-opting of the legacy media by Islamism’s Leftist allies.
It was fitting to be talking with Steve because he was front and center the last time public opinion had to be roused in opposition to would-be Islamist triumph in lower Manhattan. That was the Obama administration gambit to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other 9/11 plotters a civilian trial in federal court down on Pearl Street. When an impressive throng of protesters descended on the courthouse despite terrible rain and wind on a dreary December day, it was Steve who officiated over the two-hour demonstration. Especially impressive was the depth of dissent in New York, a city as blue as they come … except, apparently, when its self-interest and security are so clearly at stake.
That dissent was enough to forestall the trial, but it will have to be even more energetic to stop the mosque — whose construction would be a classic instance of supremacist Islamists building their icons over those of the non-Muslims they mean to vanquish. As I explain in the book, this is not a case of me drawing an inference from the facts we can observe, although those facts are obvious enough. Leading Islamists — not just terrorists but Muslims who adhere to very mainstream Brotherhood ideology — insist that they will “conquer America” and turn it slowly into a shariah society. As we try to prevent that, I am grateful to have friends like Steve on our side.