This interview is re-printed with permission of Frontpagemagazine
Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine’s editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror. Email him at [email protected].
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Vijay Kumar, who is currently running for the U.S. Congress as a Republican candidate for Tennessee 5th Congressional District. The Primary vote comes on August 5 of this year, and the General Election is on November 4. When he ran before, in 2008, he received about 30% of the vote in Republican Primary. His website is kumarforcongress.com. Visit his blog at kumarforcongress.net.
Kumar
FP: Vijay Kumar, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
You are one of the rare individuals running for office in America who is actually making the issue of Islamic Jihad a significant part of your campaign. Tell us your view of Islamic Jihad and the background you have to make you see it the way you do.
Kumar: I am a native of Hyderabad, India, which is where I first encountered the Muslim culture. We have a substantial number of Muslims there, a higher percentage than most other parts of India, and I began to observe things that troubled me. Later, I traveled a number of Islamic nations, and I lived in Iran from 1976 to 1979, during the Islamic Revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini. I immigrated to the United States in 1979. All my life, I have been interested in political thought. During my travels, I came to realize that Islam is unlike any of the other world religions for a variety of reasons, and they summate to the Islamic ideology behind Jihad.
First, Islam was conceived as a world empire to govern all mankind. It teaches that all the world, and everyone and everything in it, already belongs to Islam–some people just haven’t been made to understand that. Until they have, according to Islam, they are considered “infidels” and inferiors. Put another way, the Islamic view is that all of us in the world are subjects of the Islamic Empire, and those of us who do not acknowledge our subjugation to it must be overcome and brought to submission, through conversion or force. No other religion in the world has such a purpose of world conquest and domination.
Second, Islam does not allow any introspection or self-criticism. It calls for total acceptance, total submission. The very word “Islam” means “submission,” and the word “Muslim” means “one who submits.” The other side of submission, of course, is domination. Islam seeks to dominate every individual and every nation into submission. In that, it shares a key element of slavery, which the civilized world has properly decried and abolished. Such submission is a political act. I am a freeman, and I refuse to submit to Islamic hegemony.
Third, Islam does not have any exit policy for its believers. The act of submission required to become a Muslim is held to be final, irrevocable, and permanent. So criticizing or questioning Islam or its teachings or leaders, or attempting to leave Islam, all are considered severe crimes against Islam, punishable by death.
In contrast, non-Islamic religions allow for dissenting views, introspection, and reasoned debate. In non-Islamic religions, if you so choose, you can leave the faith you were born into without being threatened with physical violence or death. In Islam, both criticism of the faith and apostasy are capital offenses.
All of that is what drives Jihad: Jihad is a permanent war against the unbeliever and his land to bring about his submission. It has been going on for fourteen centuries all over the world, which is why I coined the term “Universal Jihad.” Islam’s Universal Jihad is the single greatest threat to Western civilization and to the entire non-Islamic world in general. It is more dangerous than Nazism and Communism combined.
FP: More dangerous than Nazism and Communism combined? Please explain this perspective.
Kumar: Nazism was in power for 15 years or so. Communism was in power for about 70 years. Today, Germany, Japan, and Russia, our former adversaries, are now our allies. Also, they are liberal democracies.
Nazism, Communism, and Islam are all three totalitarian ideologies. Communism and Nazism, though, lack a system of transcendental metaphysics, which Islam has. Nazism and Communism do not claim to be religions, and there is no threat of hell-fire to hold over its adherents. By contrast, Islam is a totalitarian form of governance that also claims to be a religion, and so has proved to be far more sustainable than any other form of aggressive totalitarianism.
The doctrine and politics of Universal Jihad have been assaulting the world for 1,400 years. It is exactly what launched the Christian Crusades, which were an attempt to save European civilization from the relentless onslaught and wholesale murder of invading Muslim forces.
Under Universal Jihad, non-Muslim civilizations have been annihilated. To mention just a few examples: Turkey was Christian; Iran was Zoroastrian; North Africa and the Middle East were predominantly Christian; Afghanistan and Central Asia were Buddhist; Pakistan was Hindu; Egypt was Coptic, orthodox Christian. All have fallen prey to invasion by Islam.
Today, Universal Jihad has been brought to the West–not just by overt violence, but through every strategy and tactic conceivable. Islam is not just the faith of another immigrant group; it is a complete political and paramilitary ideology. Political Islam is here to Islamize the Western nations, and that includes the United States.
So Universal Jihad is a permanent form of warfare against the infidels, their nation-states, and every non-Islamic form of government in the world. It has been Islam’s mandate for 1,400 years that other cultures must submit to it. Islam is devoted to an eternally-unchanging doctrine: it is obligated to conquer entire world.
No one needs to take my word for it. Syed Abul A’ala Maududi, a Pakistani, was arguably the most influential Muslim theologian and thinker of the 20th Century. He said the following point-blank:
“Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and program . . . [T]he objective of Islamic Jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un-Islamic system and establish in its stead an Islamic system of State rule. Islam does not intend to confine this revolution to a single State or a few countries; the aim of Islam is to bring about a universal revolution.”
Any Muslim or apologist who claims otherwise, or who insists that Islam is just “a religion of peace” is not arguing against me: they are arguing against their own most revered leaders and experts on Islam and its true purpose. They are spreading Islamic propaganda that has no other purpose than to lull the infidel into a false sense of friendship and security.
Such propaganda is a primary and vitally important tool of Islam’s psychological warfare. Syed Abul A’ala Maududi also spelled out clearly how many different ways Universal Jihad is to be waged against ”the infidels”:
“In the jihad in the way of Allah, active combat is not always the role on the battlefield, nor can everyone fight in the front line. Just for one single battle preparations have often to be made for decades on end and the plans deeply laid, and while only some thousands fight in the front line there are behind them millions engaged in various tasks which, though small themselves, contribute directly to the supreme effort.”
Unlike any other religion anywhere in the world, Islam’s clear, inarguable overarching purpose is Universal Jihad and global conquest, using any means. It is not waged just through terrorism and violent conflict. That is an extraordinarily naive view. Islam also uses psychological warfare, propaganda, covert operations, infiltration, and demographic saturation.
Universal Jihad exists and no amount liberal “political correctness” is going to wish it away. It is here on the soil of the United States right this minute. Its openly-declared goal is to destroy the United States as a system of government, to tear up our Constitution, and subject us all to Islamic totalitarianism under Sharia law.
FP: Let me ask you this: World War I was won in four years, World War II was won in six years. But the Israel/Palestine and the India/Pakistan conflicts have not resolved after 62 years. Why do you think?
Kumar: It’s simple: Muslims do not want peace, they want conquest. When they enter into an alleged “peace accord,” it is only a ploy to buy time to build their position for ultimate conquest. This is by their own creed: in Islam’s system of “ethics,” it is perfectly acceptable to lie to mere infidels.
In the case of Israel, the West has never been 100% behind Israeli sovereignty. Both the West and Israel have always only wanted to buy truce with the Islamic nations–never peace. It is an endless case of appeasement that puts Neville Chamberlain to shame.
As I have said before, and as history proves conclusively and invariably, Islam does not recognize pluralism, and Islam never wants a lasting peace with any non-Islamic people or states. When Muslims are in a relatively weak position they may offer truce–a temporary agreement–but never lasting peace. Even a cursory study of the treaties made by Muhammad proves at once that every Islamic treaty is merely another tactic toward ultimate conquest and domination. He set the standard for using treaties as a path to conquest.
Since then, Islam has been waging a relentless war for the past 1,400 years against every non-Muslim within their reach. In the last century, technological advances have extended the reach of the Muslim world considerably. Anybody who believes that it’s suddenly going to change–for any reason, through any amount of “diplomacy”–is either grossly uninformed or delusional.
Islamic imperialists have no desire at all for peaceful coexistence with Israel. They want to annihilate the “Zionist Entity.” By the way, during the last 60 years, Israel has absorbed more than a million Sephardic Jews from Arab countries. The Arab nations, on the other hand, refuse to absorb two million Palestinians. It’s a sad irony that two million Palestinians are considered so important while at the same time the suffering inflicted upon 50 million Kurdish people by Muslim nations goes almost unnoticed, unremarked.
Muslims do not recognize the right to existence of either Israel or India. They simply consider them roadblocks to world conquest that need to be removed, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes. Universal Jihad is infinite, endless war against the infidel. It has been formally, blatantly declared. To the Muslim, Jewish Israel and Hindu India are nothing more than inferior infidel nation-states that must be torn down and brought under Islamic control.
Remember this: Kashmir was a Hindu land continuously for 5,000 years. That’s over twice as long as the time that has passed since the birth of Christ. Islam went there as an imperial force, subjugated the local people, and conquered them, both politically and demographically, after 5,000 years of Hindu peace and civilization. Hence, today the Kashmiri Hindus are refugees in their own land. They have been reduced to a minority.
It is not Kashmir alone. Now Muslims of India wants Mughalstan, the Land of Mugal empire. They want to build an Islamic state from Pakistan to Bangladesh that includes the entirety of north India.
Every year, we are paying Islamic tribute to Pakistan, Egypt, and Palestinians in hopes of maintaining a tenuous truce. We are not really giving them “aid.” It is nothing but Islamic tribute to keep them at bay.
It’s really too simple for anyone to try to complicate it: Islam wants the entire world to submit. India and Israel are simply two obstacles or roadblocks to that goal. If they can get Israel and India to disappear from the face of earth, Islamic Umma–community, or “nation” in the larger sense–would be one unified imperialism from Morocco to Indonesia. Then it would be Europe’s turn to be annihilated.
FP: How do we best win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in your opinion?
Kumar: It can’t be overstated or said too many times that these are merely the current fronts of open conflict in Universal Jihad. In fact, it plays into the purposes of Universal Jihadists for the Western world to be fixated on isolated actions in various geographical locations, and thereby never see the bigger picture.
Universal Jihad is an ideology, a doctrine, that is fixed and unchanging. Waging battles of force and military action alone– especially on Islam’s home turf–and continuing to send troops out as reaction to the latest flare-ups or hot-spots in Islam’s endless war will never succeed. Never.
That’s also why the idea of a “War on Terror” is absurd. Terrorism is nothing more than one of the many technique and tactics used to advance Islam’s political ideology. On this subject of terrorism, groups like the Taliban are a bunch of obedient foot soldiers. They are what Karl Marx called the “lumpen-proletariat.” Allow me to direct your attention to the fact that we never see Islamic Imams–religious leaders–blowing themselves up. If martyrdom is such a high holy act, as Islam’s leaders preach, why aren’t they the ones strapping on the explosives? It’s a curious case of “do as I say, not as I do.”
Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan form the Axis of Universal Jihad. Unless and until we address the leaders of this Axis of Jihad, and the militaristic ideology of world domination that is their chief export, there is no possibility for peace in the future for humanity.
The real power behind Universal Jihad, in all of its manifestations, lies with the Pakistani ISI–the intelligence services of Pakistan–along with the Pakistani military, the Pakistani feudal elite, and the Islamic theological leaders. As a nation-state, Pakistan exists for two reasons: its pathological hatred of India and Hindus, and its parasitic dependence on American aid. Their leaders’ battle cry is always “Islam in danger” when they want to stoke the fires of Jihad, and of course Muslims are commanded by the Quran to go forth immediately when called to fight by their Islamic leaders.
Make no mistake: you can only solve the problem of Afghanistan when you address the problem of Pakistan, because Afghanistan is a client state of Pakistan. And you can only solve the problem of Pakistan when you address the problem of Saudi Arabia, because Pakistan is a client state of Saudi Arabia.
The Pakistanis are being sponsored by the hedonistic rulers of Saudi Arabia. Saudi rulers are materialistic hedonists in their practice, but preach Wahabi Islamic fundamentalist doctrine to the world.
The bottom-line is this: The hedonist Saudi ruling elite form the epicenter for global terrorism, because it is they who fund all mosques and madrasas around the world–and that includes the United States.
They export oil and worldwide Islamic fundamentalist revolution.
That fundamentalist revolution is Universal Jihad, and its entire force comes solely from its ideology, an ideology that was born right in the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the only real war, and the war that is winnable, is against the ideology that is the doctrine of Universal Jihad.
All three of these nations that make up the Axis of Jihad are ready for internal revolutions. We, the West, are not taking advantage of that situation.
In Iran, for example, a majority of the Iranian population is under 25 years old. They were born after the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. All of those young men and women are ready to be liberated from the totalitarianism that prevails at the hands of the Ayatollahs. We must appeal to their reason and their own human desire for freedom, liberty, and the right to free will.
Similarly, the Saudi regime is ready to collapse because of its own corrupt system. It is beginning to come under assault from Islamic fundamentalists for its hedonistic life style. Instead of kowtowing to the Saudis, we should be shining a bright light on the rampant hypocrisy.
FP: What do we do then to confront Jihad effectively?
Kumar: To reach a lasting solution to Universal Jihad, and to all the violence and terror and misery it causes throughout the world, the goal of the Western world should be to demilitarize, secularize, and democratize the Axis of Jihad. Anything short of that goal is like putting a band-aid on leprosy. For starters, we should do the following things:
1. Stop all immigration from the Axis of Jihad nations.
2. Stop paying Islamic tribute–so-called “aid”–to Pakistan, Egypt and the Palestinians.
3. Support those moderate, secular, Muslims–there are many—against theological fundamentalists.
4. Build a United Front of Victims of Jihad. That is where Jew and Gentile, Saxon and Slav, Hindu and Buddhist, Norwegian and Nigerian, Catholic and Protestant, Evangelical and Orthodox, have common ground. All can unite to contain the extremist ideology, because all historically have been victims of Universal Jihad.
The United States and Israel have many allies and friends in this cause. All we have to do is look around.
Together, there are many ways we can fight the ideological war and win it with reason, and with appeal to the human quest for freedom. That is our strongest ally.
The first ideological hurdle to overcome is a clear recognition by our own leaders that the only real enemy is Universal Jihad and the three seats of its power: Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan. It is an existential crisis for all non-Muslim nations, and for all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. This transcends all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political boundaries. Islamic imperialism draws no distinctions between “infidels.” Until we win this war, we are all targets for takeover.
FP: You mention immigration. Expand on your thoughts on demographics when it comes to Islam.
Kumar: Demographic conquest is the most permanent form of Islamic conquest. Before the expansionism of Islam, by force and infusion, Egypt, North Africa, and the southern coast of the Mediterranean were Christian. There was a Buddhist monastery in Alexandria, Egypt. Turkey was Buddhist and Christian. Persia–now Iran–was Zoroastrian. The Hindu culture covered an area of the world twice as large as it is now.
The fatal flaw of every one of these nations that has fallen before Islamic invasion has been to open its arms to Islam, only to be stabbed in the back.
Islam primarily is a political and military doctrine, dedicated to world conquest, that wears the cloak of religion. The religious cloak is the Trojan Horse it uses to infiltrate the cultures and nations and civilizations it seeks to destroy and replace with Islamic totalitarianism.
Liberals and progressives in those target nation-states become the water-carriers for Islam’s demographic tactics, demanding that immigrant Muslims be granted all the “rights” they need to kill off the host country and take over. The irony is that the liberals who tout the Islamic cause are the first victims when Sharia takes its grip around the throat of a nation. But this appeal to liberals for sympathy and support is a key part of Islam’s ideological war.
Unrestrained legal and illegal immigration is tearing apart the very fabric of Europe and the United States and Canada. To survive, the West must ban immigration from all Muslim nations where Sharia is the law of the land. The only exceptions should be apostates and refugees from Islam. We must pass laws to denaturalize and deport all those advocates of Sharia from the West. Europe is already becoming Eurabia, and in Europe multiculturalism means submitting to Islamic supremacy.
FP: Your perspective on Islam’s dualistic ethics?
Kumar: The Quran, the Islamic holy book, has two sets of ethics. One set of ethics is for believers, the other set of ethics for the Kaffirs–their name for infidels, non-Muslims. The Quran has no good news for the infidel.
In Islam ethics are based upon a simple formula: “good” is whatever advances the cause of Islam, and “evil” is whatever resists the cause of Islam.
In Islam, all Muslims are brothers who should be kind and honest to each other. But Allah hates the infidel; Allah plots against the infidel, so Muslims should, too. Over 60% of the Quran is devoted to the Kaffir, and every mention is negative, demeaning, insulting, or hateful. It teaches war in the name of peace, hate in the name of love.
“Ethics” in Islam is an ideology of double standards, internally warring dichotomies, and endless contradictions. Even its own Imams war among themselves on what is correct “interpretation.” That is why it can be fought with reason and overcome.
FP: Let’s finish up by talking some more about what can be done. Expand on the best way that free peoples who want to remain free can defend themselves against Sharia and Islamic Jihad. What is the wrong way to do it? What are the consequences?
Kumar: The wrong way to do it is for the liberal media and politicians to keep inhaling the opiate of Islamic propaganda about “peace, peace, peace, peace be upon you,” and blowing that toxic smoke all over the world. If we don’t shake them out of their narcoleptic slumber, their own children, or their children’s children–and ours as well–are going to be bowing in submission before the tyranny of Islamic domination and Sharia law on our own soil.
Here’s how the liberals and progressives can help: they should start an organization like the Peace Corps, called Free Americans for Islamic Rehabilitation–F.A.I.R.–that sends volunteers to all Islamic nations to demand tolerance and equal rights in those nations for all other religions, for women, for minorities, and for homosexuals. Now there would be true liberalism in action. We’ll see how far they get putting their money where their mouth is in an Islamic nation.
Meanwhile, those of us who are already awake have got to energetically build a coalition of free nations and people around the globe, regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, politics, or religion, and begin an information campaign that is more relentless and eternal than Universal Jihad. That sums up why I am running for Congress. I want to help build that coalition and help raise people’s awareness.
Our leaders have to come to grips with the fact that the seats of power of Universal Jihad are Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Pakistan. These are the command centers. They are openly declared enemies of every principle our nation was founded upon. We must treat them as such, or Universal Jihad will continue unabated around the world, flaring up endlessly as we pour more money and innocent blood down the drain.
We can win this war, and we can win it decisively, but we have got to recognize and name the true enemies of mankind and freedom, and take effective action in combating the ideology that drives them. Right now, our own State Department and government agencies are spending enormous amounts of dollars and energy defending the very ideology that wants to wipe them and our whole form of government from the face of the earth!
This is why I say repeatedly, as a central part of my campaign, and why I fully believe that war against Universal Jihadists can be won globally in less than five years, that it can be won for less than one billion dollars, and that can be won without any more loss of American or Western lives.
There are two great forces at work in this war. One is the totalitarian ideology of Islamic theocracy, which permits of no separation of church and state, no true freedom of thought, freedom of speech, or equal rights under the law. The other is our own Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, which proclaim and guarantee human freedom, sovereignty, dignity, and basic inalienable human rights.
These two ideologies are diametrically and irrevocably and irreconcilably opposed. It is a war of ideas. It is a war of philosophies. They are mutually exclusive. One of them is going to win over the other.
Which will it be?
FP: Vijay Kumar, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.
