ICC Note: Larry Elder interviews Brigitte Gabriel, who grew up in Lebanon and lived through the destruction of his country via Islamic radicals. He is the author of “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.” For the full interview, go to Larry Elder.
Because They Hate, Part II
Larry Elder: What caused Lebanon’s 1975 jihad invasion?
Brigitte Gabriel: . . . In the early ’70s, Lebanon was a majority Christian country . . . a republic very much like America. We prospered. We focused on growing our economy. We were multicultural, fair and tolerant, and had an open border policy. We welcomed everybody into our country, because we wanted to share the westernizations we had created in the Middle East. . . . Sadly, many people who came didn’t want to assimilate and adopt westernizations, but wanted to drag us down to their tribal Islamic culture. . .
By 1974, Christians stopped traveling. We became prisoners in our homes and cities because Muslims would set up fly-by-night checkpoints. . . . Our religion is written on our national ID. . . . So, Muslims would stop cars, look at their IDs and if a Christian family was traveling, they would shoot them in cold blood. The whole family. . . . Extremist Muslims started coming from all around the Arabic world to fight alongside the Muslims in Lebanon.
Elder: Tell us about Islamofascism in the West.
Gabriel: The Center for Religious Freedom went undercover last year and collected 200 publications from some of the most prominent mosques in the United States. Those books, provided by the government of Saudi Arabia to American mosques, teach Muslims living in an infidel land how to deal with infidels. These Saudi publications repeatedly exalt Muslims to, and I quote, hate them for their religion — meaning Christians, Jews, atheists and everybody in between. . . .
They say it is the religious duty of every Muslim to impose functionally Islamic government on every country in the world. This religious duty is binding . . . and a sacred obligation of jihad. . . . This is the religion of Islam. . . .
Elder: Are there moderate Muslims who condemn the radicals, who don’t feel threatened by democracy?
Gabriel: Yes. . . . I call it a practicing Muslim and a non-practicing Muslim. I think it is a better description than “moderate” and “radical.” A practicing Muslim goes to mosque, prays five times a day, doesn’t drink, believes God gave him women to be his property — . . . . He believes Christians and Jews are apes and pigs because they are cursed by Allah. He believes it is his duty to declare war on the infidels because they are Allah’s enemies. That is a practicing Muslim.
A non-practicing Muslim no longer goes to mosque or prays five times a day, has an occasional glass of wine and believes that a woman is equal to a man. . . . He believes he cannot murder his wife just because he wants to. He does not believe in taking four wives just for sexual pleasure. . . . He no longer believes that, as a Muslim, it is his duty to kill the apes and pigs that have been cursed by Allah.
A non-practicing Muslim is educated, an intellectual who believes the Koran — written in the 7th century — doesn’t apply to today’s standards, and Islam needs to be reformed. Those Muslims do exist and live in the West. However, they are such a minority — we estimate about 2 percent — they are irrelevant because it is the majority that is causing the problem now.
