Islamists In Their Own Words

Ahmad Nawfal, a leader of the Jordanian Muslim Bretheren who frequently speaks at American rallies, has denigrated the US as a country that “has no doctrine and no ideology, no thought, no values , and no ideals,” then proceeds to say that if Islamists “stand up, with the ideology that we possess, it will be very easy for us to preside over this world once again.”--Lecture in Arabic at a MAYA convention in Kansas City in 1989. Available on commercial video tape entitled Shaikh Ahmad Naufal, Rabita, Kansas City 1989.

“We are neither socialist nor capitalist, but Muslims.” Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo), 2-8 February 1995.

Zaid Shakir, formerly the Muslim chaplain at Yale University, has said that Muslims cannot accept the legitimacy of the secular system in the US, for it “is against the orders and ordainments of Allah…the orientation of the Qur’an pushes us in the exact opposite direction.”--The Role of Muslims in the American Political Process, video tape distributed by the International Institute of Islamic Research, Burlington, NJ, 1992.


“Tommorrow I will be mayor, the day after president of the republic.” Told to a reporter by a French woman of North African origins. Jeune Afrique (Paris), 15 March 1989.

When asked what the ultimate goal of the Young Muslim Organization is in England, Harunur Rashid Tipu editor of a Bengali-language newspaper responded: “to build an Islamic society here.” The Independent, 20 February 1989.

“If the Americans are placing their forces in the Persian Gulf, we should be creating another war front for the Americans in the Muslim world--and specifically where American interests are concentrated.”--Mohammad Al-Asi, leader of the Washington Mosque and head of the Islamic Educational Center in Washington, D.C., explicitly calling on Muslims to vanquish the US during the Kuwait crisis of 1990-91as quoted in on Steven Emerson's PBS documentary Jihad in America, 21 November 1994.

Several outspoken Muslim leaders in America apparently support the ideas of Islamists in the Middle East more than they condemn them.

“I am not an American.--Malcolm X, Cleveland, 3 April 1964. George Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (New York: Grove Press, 1965), p.26.

I will “lead an army of black men and women to Washington, DC, and we will sit down with the president, whoever he may be, and will negotiate for a separate state or territory of own.”--Louis Farrakhan the leader of the Nation of Islam in The New York Times, 22 April 1984.

“Ultimately we can never be full citizens of this country…because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.”--Ihsan Bagby, a prominent black American convert to Islam speaking on behalf of Muslims. Quoted in Steve A. Johnson, “Political Activities of Muslims in America,” in Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, ed., The Muslims of America (New York: Oxford University Press , 1991), p.115. 5.

“You are not American citizens.”--Nation of Islam long time leader, Elijah Muhammad told his people, Message to the Blackman (Atlanta: Messenger Elijah Muhammad Propagation Society, 1997), p. 130. *compiled from Daniel Pipe's "Militant Islam Reaches America" 2002