Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West

by Robert Spencer

In "Onward Muslim Soldiers," the author of "Islam Unveiled" reveals why the threat of violent jihad is growing daily, despite America's recent victory in Iraq. Spencer uncovers the cause of global violence as he goes straight to Muslim sources

Genres: Islam, Islamism

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2003

About the author

ROBERT SPENCER is the director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the author of seventeen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies). Coming in November 2017 is Confessions of an Islamophobe (Bombardier Books).

Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Justice Department’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the U.S. intelligence community. He has discussed jihad, Islam, and terrorism at a workshop sponsored by the U.S. State Department and the German Foreign Ministry. He is a consultant with the Center for Security Policy.

Spencer is a weekly columnist for PJ Media and FrontPage Magazine, and has written many hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism. His articles on Islam and other topics have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Post, the Washington Times, the Dallas Morning News, Fox News Opinion, National Review, The Hill, the Detroit News, TownHall.com, Real Clear Religion, the Daily Caller, the New Criterion, the Journal of International Security Affairs, the UK’s Guardian, Canada’s National Post, Middle East Quarterly, WorldNet Daily, First Things, Insight in the News, Aleteia, and many other journals. For nearly ten years Spencer wrote the weekly Jihad Watch column at Human Events. He has also served as a contributing writer to the Investigative Project on Terrorism and as an Adjunct Fellow with the Free Congress Foundation.

Spencer has appeared on the BBC, ABC News, CNN, FoxNews’s Tucker Carlson Show, the O’Reilly Factor, Megyn Kelly’s The Kelly File, the Sean Hannity Show, Geraldo Rivera Reports, the Glenn Beck Show, Fox and Friends, America’s News HQ and many other Fox programs, PBS, MSNBC, CNBC, C-Span, CTV News, Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News, France24, Voice of Russia and Croatia National Television (HTV), as well as on numerous radio programs including The Sean Hannity Show, Bill O’Reilly’s Radio Factor, The Mark Levin Show, The Laura Ingraham Show, The Herman Cain Show, The Joe Piscopo Show, The Howie Carr Show, The Curt Schilling Show, Bill Bennett’s Morning in America, Michael Savage’s Savage Nation, The Alan Colmes Show, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Neal Boortz Show, The Michael Medved Show, The Michael Reagan Show, The Rusty Humphries Show, The Larry Elder Show, The Peter Boyles Show, Vatican Radio, and many others.

Robert Spencer has been a featured speaker across the country and around the world and authored 17 books. Spencer’s books have been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Finnish, Korean, Polish and Bahasa Indonesia. His Qur’an commentary at Jihad Watch, Blogging the Qur’an, has been translated into Czech, Danish, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Spencer (MA, Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) has been studying Islamic theology, law, and history in depth since 1980. His work has aroused the ire of the foes of freedom and their dupes: in October 2011, Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups wrote to Homeland Security Advisor (and current CIA director) John Brennan, demanding that Spencer be removed as a trainer for the FBI and military groups, which he taught about the belief system of Islamic jihadists; Brennan immediately complied as counter-terror training materials were scrubbed of all mention of Islam and jihad. Spencer has been banned by the British government from entering the United Kingdom for pointing out accurately that Islam has doctrines of violence against unbelievers. He has been invited by name to convert to Islam by a senior member of al-Qaeda.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 3 out of 5]

A PROMINENT CRITIC OF ISLAM LOOKS IN SOME DETAIL AT THE ‘ISLAMIC STATE’

Robert Bruce Spencer (born 1962) is an American author and one of the key figures of the ‘counter-jihad’ movement. His website, ‘Jihad Watch,’ reports on purported ‘Islamic extremism.’ (He is also a Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and has written several politically conservative books.)

He wrote in the ‘Author’s Note’ to this 2015 book, “Just four days after I submitted the manuscript of this book to the publisher, I was with Pamela Geller at the American Freedom Defense Initiative/Jihad Watch Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest when two jihadis… opened fire outside the venue for our event. Fortunately, thanks to the … security team, the only people killed were the jihad attackers… Ultimately, the justification for the cartoon contest… as well as for the quixotic idea of writing a breezy book about a group devoted to mass murder, rape, slavery, and other far-from-light-hearted topics, is this: In the face of evil, especially evil that demands respect and obeisance at the point of a gun, mockery is not only justified, but required.”

He wrote in the Introduction, “one jihad terror group has outdone them all by actually establishing the Islamic state---and embarking upon a reign of terror unmatched in recent memory… This … is the group that calls itself the Islamic State, that most of the rest of the world calls ISIS… ISIS constitutes a threat to the U.S. greater than that of … all other jihad groups combined… The Islamic state has become the first jihad terror groups to rule over a significant expanse of territory got any extended period… The Islamic State’s conquests have been accompanied by savage brutality that commands the attention of the world. ISIS beheaded Americans on video, burned a captured Jordanian pilot in a metal cage, and made sex slaves of thousands of women and young girls. It executes men for smoking and tortures women for the tiniest infractions against covering themselves in public.” (Pg. xxii-xxiii)

He continues, “In this book I explain the roots of its success---in the political situation… but also in the deep currents of Islamic thought. I demonstrate how the Islamic State’s rapid success would have been possible without its claim to reconstitute the caliphate, claim that has proven to be extraordinarily potent among Muslims worldwide… I’ll take you inside the mindset of the leaders of ISIS… I show what constitutes its appeal among young Muslims, and why the condemnations of ISIS from Muslim groups have been completely ineffective in stopping young Muslims from travelling thousands of miles from all over the globe to join the group. The Islamic State… can be defeated, and … in this book, I’ll detail how it can be stopped, and what is likely to follow in its wake once it is defeated. You’ll also discover the shocking extent of the nature and magnitude within the United States. Above all, I show why the Islamic State is nothing less than the most pressing danger of our time.” (Pg. xxv-xxvi)

After quoting some principles articulated by ISIS founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, he comments, “These principles would become the hallmarks of the Islamic State: that any means were acceptable in fighting against and killing non-Muslims, which was an Islamic responsibility, and that it was acceptable to kill fellow Muslims in service of the goal of implementing Islamic law over the world.” (Pg. 31)

He reports, “While a disturbing number of Muslims in America and Europe are heeding the call to make their jihad at home, a much larger number are flocking to the Islamic State. ISIS is so appealing to many young Muslims that by the end of May 2015, nearly thirty thousand from one hundred countries had joined it in Iraq and Syria… These numbers included as many as 150 Muslims from the United States… A significant and growing number of these foreign jihadis are coming from Europe.” (Pg. 67-68)

He observes, “The Western analysts who note the Islamic State’s propaganda skill generally fail to observe the obvious fact that the substance of all this slick propaganda is wholly and solely Islam. The Islamic State bases its appeal on Islamic teachings, and its propaganda demonstrates an intimate knowledge of Islamic tradition---an appealing feature to the young and devout… The Islamic State is thus positioning itself at the harbinger of the end times—of the final and decisive battle between the Muslims and the enemies of Allah, from which Muslims will emerge victorious, after which peace… will prevail all over the earth. It’s this religious content that appeals to young Muslims far more than the slick and highly professional presentation---the deep knowledge of Islam, the fanatical loyalty to it, and the unapologetic claim of the Islamic State to be the fulfillment of the desires of so many Muslim hearts for so long. Not only does it embody the restoration of the caliphate, it is the harbinger of the end times.” (Pg. 71-72)

Later, he adds, “The Muslims who have flocked to the Islamic State from all over the world have done so because they long to be warriors for the restoration of the great caliphate, the center and the unity of the Muslims worldwide… just as young men have always flocked to join great causes throughout history. ISIS gives their lives meaning and purpose. This movement to join the global jihad is not about poverty or lack of economic opportunity; it is about living a life that means something.” (Pg. 101)

He notes, “The resurgent global jihad of the twentieth century and twenty-first centuries has always been powered by oil. In the mid-twentieth century, the Saudis began spending their oil billions to spread the virulent Wahhabi understanding of Islam throughout the Islamic world, confronting head-on the relatively benign and peaceful forms of cultural Islam that had become dominant in areas of Central Asia, East Africa, and elsewhere. The foremost child of this ideological campaign has been the Islamic State…” (Pg. 107)

He explains, “The names ‘ISIS’ and ‘ISIL’… are really misnomers---not just because the Islamic State has dropped the ‘in Iraq and the Levant’ part of its name, but also because the Islamic State is no longer just in Iraq and Syria. It now commands the allegiance of jihad groups the world over. Here again we see the appeal of the concept of the caliphate…” (Pg. 191)

He points out, “Why… does the Islamic State behead anyone at all, much less film the beheadings and post them on social media? Because from their standpoint, beheadings are a recruitment tool---one that is rooted in the Quran. The Muslim holy book says straightforwardly, ‘When you meet the unbeliever, strike the necks.’ (47:4) The Islamic State knows that young Muslims who are aware of that verse will not recoil in horror and disgust from their beheading videos, but rather realize that the Islamic State is acting in fidelity with the Quran. Thus the beheadings will bolster the Islamic State’s claim to constitute the new caliphate.” (Pg. 226)

Later, he adds, “aiding and abetting this generational shift was the European embrace of multiculturalism, which led to the rejection—as ‘racist’ and ‘ethnocentric’---of the earlier idea that immigrants must be assimilated. Immigrants into Europe (and the United States as well) were encouraged to keep and celebrate their own cultures and traditions rather than embrace those of their new home—an idea that played right into the hands of those who believed that all earthy loyalties must take a second place to the believers’ adherence to the ‘global Ummah’ that ‘transcended all national boundaries.’” (Pg. 255)

He concludes, “The Islamic State is not just a challenge to Judeo-Christian Western civilization, It is a challenge to civilization itself---to the very idea of civilization. And that is why, for all the advantages it enjoys today, it is doomed to fail. Like will always conquer death in the end… Getting to that victory will not be easy. Besotted with propaganda and distraction, the West still doesn’t know what it’s up against… Yet if free souls prevail, and they will, the fight will not have been in vain.” (Pg. 295)

This book will be of interest to those seeking critiques of Islam in general, and ISIS in particular.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just like the people on late night TV, this guy is selling his wares, ”as seen on TV”.

[Dp4s · Rating 3 out of 5]

Political
-Islam

[Gini · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wrote a looong review for this book, maybe I'll post it later, but basically what it comes down to is:
Robert Spencer is a dick.