This report on our Homeland Insecurity was posted today at the Sharia TipSheet in a slightly different form.

DHS Willfully Blind to Islamic Threats to the Homeland

October 16, 2019

The Department of Homeland Security is to be commended for expressly naming what it calls the “Radical Islamist Terrorist Threat” in its new Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence. However, once again, DHS comes up woefully short in recognizing significant aspects of the threat.

The Framework discusses the threat at length (pp. 9-10), but confines its discussion to foreign groups such as the Islamic State (IS), Al Qaeda, and Hezbollah, their internationally mobile returning fighters, and the ‘homegrown violent extremists’ (HVEs) these groups inspire domestically.

No mention is made of the threat posed by Islam’s core doctrine of jihad or of the fact that many mosques in America have been rated Dangerous, Very Dangerous, or Extremely Dangerous by Dave Gaubatz, a well-known author and analyst with national security credentials. Apparently, in DHS’ view, a threat is not a threat if it’s a political hot potato. (The Justice Department and FBI so far refuse to cough up any records regarding their view of mosques in a pending FOIA case.)

Instead of parsing the threats posed by Islamic core doctrine and sharia (Islamic law), the DHS Framework descends into more of the same homogenized CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) mush it spouted during the Obama administration. DHS began to move away from CVE and return to reality-based counterterrorism analysis and training early in the Trump administration. Unfortunately, the Department halted that work and reversed course once again towards CVE under former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The Framework is replete with CVE concepts and terminology such as, for example, when it discusses “a more holistic approach to preventing terrorism.” (p.1) CVE has been heavily criticized elsewhere for years, but one problem with treating all terrorist threats — from animal rights activists to jihadis — as the same is that it leaves counterterrorism personnel ill-equipped to deal with the specific means and methods employed by each discrete group of terrorists.

Finally, no mention at all is made of the Muslim Brotherhood or its U.S. front groups. Any Framework that fails to address this unsurpassed threat to the homeland is doomed from the outset. The Brotherhood’s main front group in the U.S. is CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). CAIR poses as a civil rights group but its true nature is indicated by its status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial.

According to a recently published report on CAIR:

a “number of individuals associated with CAIR have been convicted of terrorism-related charges over the years”

“CAIR’s [Nihad] Awad has publicly allied himself with both the PLO and HAMAS terrorist groups in the past, and CAIR refuses to denounce HAMAS.”

“As urgent as international threats undeniably are and will continue to be, top level U.S. national security leadership attention must be turned to the domestic insurgency threat posed by the subversive, jihadist agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of the Islamic Movement in this country. CAIR is undoubtedly the lead Brotherhood front group driving this threat, but its top position within the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) and, in turn, its close working relationship with the pro-Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS-supporting regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, add a further and foreign dimension to the threat that must not be ignored.”

“The Trump administration must confront the Muslim Brotherhood’s many tentacles in the U.S. Federal law enforcement should begin a renewed effort to investigate Brotherhood groups in the U.S. and at the very least, revoke CAIR’s tax exempt status. It is plain from this report that CAIR is not a “civil rights” organization, but one intent on imposing the Muslim Brotherhood’s malevolent ‘… 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…’”

DHS and the entire U.S. government need to go beyond merely naming the “Radical Islamist Terrorist Threat” and deal with the multi-faceted dimensions of the threat, starting with bringing back fact-based training that educates counterterrorism personnel on the specifics they need in order to counter the threat. Until that happens, DHS and the federal government are dismally failing at job one — keeping the U.S. homeland safe.

DHS, go back to the drawing board and get real.