Islamic Rules for Radicals

"I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

-- Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's current communications director

Reading through David Horowitz’s 51-page pamphlet, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model*, one is struck almost immediately by the similarities between Saul Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” to more effectively disrupt and bring down “the system,” and the methods employed in the cultural and political jihad employed by such “radical” organizations as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of North America (ISNA), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), among other affiliated Muslim “civic” entities.

I was so amazed by the similarities that I thought this remarkable pamphlet deserved a few words. It is an invaluable primer for understanding not only President Barack Obama and his policies, but also the arsenal of deceit, fraud and misrepresentations with which Muslim organizations are waging a war of sabotage and subornation in this country.

I have often written before on the methodology of Islamic jihad, particularly in “A Nexus of Nihilism,” in August 2010 on Rule of Reason and other blog spots, in which I explore the curious and sometimes startling alliance between Islam and the Left. But I was too close to the subject to see the parallels in tactics, even after having read large portions of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (which I guiltily bought on Amazon, reluctant to reward the Alinsky estate, if one exists, with a few pennies, before I learned I could read it online).

Horowitz does not discuss Islam in his pamphlet, but the methodology recommended by the patron saint of the New Left, Alinsky, is so eerily simpatico with Islam’s that they are virtual doppelgangers. And, as Horowitz explains Alinsky’s principles, one can see that the means and ends of communists, socialists, fascists and other “radicals” are not dissimilar from Islam’s methodology and ends. Here is a quotation from the seminal Muslim Brotherhood memo of 1991:

The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" with all the word means. The Ikhwan [brothers] 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 so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.

A global caliphate is the end sought by Islam, a “heaven on earth.” Leftists also pursue such a “heaven on earth” (an ideal world of “social justice,” a preserved planet, the equalization of wealth, a guaranteed existence, etc.) and are also willing to wage not only violent war against the “system” to bring it about, but practice their version of taqiyya, or double-speak, or the policy of saying one thing in public and meaning something else entirely. Until that global or universal caliphate is accomplished, Islam will wage continual war against everyone who has not submitted to Islam or been subjugated by it.

So have Alinsky’s radicals worked to bring down the “miserable house” of America and replace it with their own “caliphate” of totalitarian rule.

For Alinsky, politics is a zero-sum exercise, because it is war. No matter what Alinsky radicals say publically or how moderate they appear, they are at war. This provides them with a great tactical advantage since other actors in the political arena are not at war....By contrast, Alinsky radicals have an unwavering end, which is to attack the Haves until they are finally defeated. In other words, to undermine the system that allows them to earn and possess more than others. Such a system, according to the radicals, is one of “social injustice,” and what they want is “social justice.” The unwavering end of such radicals is a communism of results.

Or, “heaven on earth.” The Marxist Dar Al-Islam, or Land of Islam. A land of peace and plenty in which no man has more than his brother, and in which selfishness has been controlled or eradicated.

Horowitz states in the beginning that Alinsky was fundamentally a nihilist. He hated America and the freedom it enjoyed. He simply wished to corrupt, compromise and destroy the system that made it so exceptional: capitalism (or what there was of it in mixed economy). He was not too particular about the cause. It didn’t matter to him whom or what radicals demonstrated against or targeted, isolated, and polarized, just as long as it was a “Have” or a “Have’s” institution, such as private property or constitutionally protected rights.

Alinsky distinguished between “rhetorical radicals” and “realistic radicals,” and believed that “rhetorical radicals” might mean well but would accomplish nothing because they refused to compromise their principles. “Realistic radicals,” however, were pragmatists willing to make compromises and concessions, so long as they corrupted the principles of their opponents. Horowitz writes, citing Alinsky who regarded “idealistic” radicals as naïve and impotent to effect “change”:

“’Power comes out of the barrel of a gun’ is an absurd rallying cry when the other side has all the guns. Lenin [one of Alinsky’s heroes] was a pragmatist; when he returned to what was then Petrograd from exile, he said that Bolsheviks stood for getting power through the ballot but would reconsider after they got the guns.”

And power was the ultimate and sole end of radical activism. Nothing else. The cause was immaterial. It could have been “decent” housing, or factory working conditions, or slum landlords or banks. The target was interchangeable. Alinsky did not necessarily hope it was communist power, or a socialist, or fascist power that triumphed. Any political system that wielded total power over men was fine with him. So, he was not only a nihilist, advocating destruction for the sake of destruction; but he was a political whore, as well.

What do the Islamists seek? Power. Political power. Total power with Sharia law installed and enshrined as the ultimate and only moral code, piecemeal at first, nation by nation, and then globally. The establishment of Sharia law is their notion of “social justice.”

Although he was never formally a Communist and did not share their tactical views on how to organize a revolution, his attitude towards Communists was fraternal, and he saw them as political allies…

By his own account, Alinsky was too independent to join the Communist Party but instead became a forerunner of the left that emerged in the wake of the Communist fall….

For Alinsky, the revolutionary’s purpose is to undermine the system and then see what happens. The Alinsky radical has a single principle – to take power from the Haves and give it to the Have-nots. What this amounts to in practice is political nihilism….

This attitude also characterizes the methods of Islamists in this country. One never really knows where or when they will strike next. It doesn’t matter to Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR what the issue is. He and his stealth jihadist ilk will take advantage of any opposition to the Islamification of America. Lacking opposition or provocation, he and his ilk will invent a cause. Alinsky advocated that tactic, too. Wherever there are Muslims – at jobs, in a park, in a restaurant, in school, in the military, reading newspapers, during standard holidays – the venue is immaterial but rich in exploitive potential.

"Islam is a revolutionary faith that comes to destroy any government made by man. Islam doesn't look for a nation to be in better condition than another nation. Islam doesn't care about the land or who owns the land. The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. Any nation or power in this world that tries to get in the way of that goal, Islam will fight and destroy." – Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi, founder of Pakistan's Fundamentalist Movement

Citing Hillary Clinton’s Wellesley adulatory senior thesis, “There is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model” (1969), and an SDS radical who wrote, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution,” Horowitz puts his finger on the core motivation of radicals, secular or Islamic. The cause is irrelevant, and solely a means of achieving political power, which is always the end. Horowitz notes:

In other words the cause – whether inner city blacks or women – is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution. That was the all-consuming focus of Alinsky and his radicals.

And still is. Observe the agenda of the Democratic Party and Occupy Wall Street. Political power is also the end of the Islamists. Just as radicals insinuated themselves into the welfare state establishment and became “respectable reformers,” and in academia to teach watered-down Marxism cum Progressivism, but in fact had never given up on the “revolution,” Islamists pose as champions of freedom of religion and freedom of speech – except when it’s someone else’s religion or speech.

For example, CAIR and other Muslim organizations are opposing a movement among states to forbid state courts from using any but U.S. law. The movement is specifically aimed at prohibiting Sharia law from being employed or considered in any judicial decision, Sharia being treated as foreign law. Indeed, it is “foreign,” not only because of its Mideast, Islamic origins, but because it is a brutal, primitive legal code that does not recognize individual rights, only the “rights” of Allah and Muslim men, and so is alien to American concepts of liberty. The opposition to a ban of Sharia law can only be described as a quest for political power.

“Realistic” and “pragmatic” Islamists wisely and pragmatically work within the system, as Alinsky advised his radicals. They don business suits and acquire a knowledge of American law. They infiltrate the system, pretending to be moderates representing liberal causes. They get elected to office, from Congress to mayor to alderman. They “bore within the system” to achieve the same end as “idealistic” plane hijackers and bomb-makers, which is the disintegration of the system.

Horowitz writes that Alinsky’s method was indeed revolutionary;

Alinsky’s advice can be summed up in the following way. Even though you are at war with the system, don’t confront it as an opposing army; join it and undermine it as a fifth column from within. To achieve this infiltration you must work inside the system for the time being. Alinsky spells out exactly what this means: “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people”….You do this by proposing moderate changes which open the door to your radical agenda….

Think of all the socialists, Marxists, and nascent totalitarians who have held office in Congress, in state governments, in the multitude of bureaucracies. They apply the same policy of ambiguity and dissimulation. They pose as “moderates” to advance their own radical agendas.

Advocates for the Islamization of America employ the same methods. All they want is “social justice”: a foot bath and prayer room in an office or factory here; the removal of Christian symbols from the sight of Muslims there; the “right” of Muslim men to beat their wives in “marital disputes”; the derogation and cessation of all unflattering spoken and written criticism of Islam and its practices. All little, “moderate” things that begin to pile up and which inure Americans to an Islamic presence, a presence which is a measure of conquest but which Islamists claim with a straight face is “freedom.”

After all, Ibrahim Hooper might argue, we don’t mock the Amish, or the Baptists, or the Catholics. Why are Muslims the object of so much trepidation and discrimination and defamation? It might have something to do with the fact that the Amish, Baptists and Catholics are not waging a war against the rest of American society for the purpose of bringing it down and converting it to their preferred faiths.

Horowitz relates a revealing story about Alinsky and his approach to teaching radicals how to pursue their own preferred paradise of “social justice”:

The following anecdote about Alinsky’s teachings as recounted by The New Republic’s Ryan Lizza nicely illustrates the focus of Alinsky’s radicalism: “When Alinsky would ask new students why they wanted to organize, they would invariably respond with selfless bromides about wanting to help others. Alinsky would then scream back at them that there was a one-word answer: ‘You want to organize for power!’”

There are so many more gems and nuggets of observation in this pamphlet that to discuss them here would result in a pamphlet equally as long as Horowitz’s. Suffice it to say that the Alinsky principles in the pursuit of socialist or totalitarian power are no less applicable to Islamic stealth jihad. One may observe them in both the socialist realm and the Islamic realm. I end this review with my own observations, from “The Nexus of Nihilism”:

Islam is no stranger to socialism. In fact, as Daniel Pipes and other observers have noted, Islam has made common cause with communism and socialism in the past. Islamic scholars and intellectuals have endorsed socialist trends in countries they wished to see Islam triumph. The phenomenon of America’s liberal/left making cause with Islam is just another episode of that on-again and off-again alliance.

Had Alinsky, who died in 1972, lived long enough to see the progress Islamists had made in their pursuit of power in America, he might have suspected that they had read his books, and sent them congratulatory notes. After all, to him, it mattered not who acquired power, just as long as the “system” was targeted, isolated, polarized – and destroyed.

* David Horowitz Freedom Center. Sherman Oaks, Ca, 2009.