An incredible interview..

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Because they hate

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Posted: April 12, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

"Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America," is written by Brigitte Gabriel. This is an edited version of our interview.

Larry Elder: You are of Christian Lebanese descent. When you heard what Rosie O'Donnell said, that Christian extremism is as bad as Islamic extremism, how did you react?

Brigitte Gabriel: Well, I do not know what land she is living in, but I do not recall when the last time I saw a Christian behead anybody on television, or behead somebody and advertise it on the Internet. I do not recall hearing a Christian preach that Muslims are apes and pigs because they are cursed by Jesus, the way that Muslims are teaching that we are apes and pigs. I do not recall the last time a Christian went into an elementary school, hijacked children and started shooting them in the back like the Muslims did in Beslan in Russia when they went into a schoolyard and took over the children and started butchering them and killing them. [Rosie] better be thankful that she is living in America, because if she were living in Iran and spoke against her country – or any Arabic country – she would be beheaded or actually buried halfway in the ground, to be stoned to death.

Elder: Did you study Islam?

Gabriel: No, I did not study Islam; I lived Islam. I lived in the Middle East. I read the Quran in the Arabic language – I do not need translation. There is something about living in a place and being an eyewitness and coming from a culture and blowing the whistle on that culture, and that is very different from someone majoring in Islam and living in the Middle East for two months so they can write their thesis.

Elder: You were raised in Lebanon. You were 10 years old and living in southern Lebanon when militant Muslims ... poured into your country and declared jihad against Lebanese Christians such as yourself.

Gabriel: Yes, my 9-11 happened to me in 1975 when I was a 10-year-old child, living and minding my own business [in] a small town in south Lebanon. I was an only child to a businessman and his wife. I was blessed with a wonderful childhood. ... They showered me with love and everything life had blessed them with. However, our lives were turned upside down because in 1975, the Muslims declared holy war on the Christians of Lebanon. My home exploded around me, buried in the rubble, wounded as the perpetrators shouted, "Allahu Akbar" [God is great]. My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. I learned at 10 years old the meaning of the word "infidel." I had a crash course in survival not in the Girl Scouts, but in the bomb shelter that I lived for seven years of my life in freezing cold, pitch darkness, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. I remember at the age of 13, I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends, who were slaughtered by Muslims.

Elder: You call your book a wake-up call. Tell us what the West does not understand about what I call Islamo-fascism. And, do you think "Islamo-fascism" is an appropriate term?

Gabriel: Yes, it is an appropriate term. We are fighting Islamo-fascism, we are fighting a war that is much worse than Nazism, anything we have fought before, because even the Nazis did not encourage their children to strap bombs onto their bodies and then rejoice at their deaths, as well as the deaths of their victims. Islamists are encouraging their children to die.

Elder: There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world. I want you to analyze them by ideology.

Gabriel: Not all of them are radicals. We estimate that the radicals are between 15 and 25 percent; that translates to between 180 and 300 million people like Mohamed Atta who are willing to strap bombs to their bodies and commit martyrdom operations. Now, that is still a minority, 15 to 25 percent, but 300 million Mohamed Attas ready to unleash their blood upon the West. ... Now, the rest of them ... despise the West, they hate our westernization, they think we are morally corrupt, that we are corrupting the world, and they think we are such a bad influence on the world that we need to be stopped at any cost. They may not be willing to commit martyrdom operations themselves, but they will sit there and cheer on and rally those who are willing to kill us.

Elder: Are we winning?

Gabriel: No, we are losing.

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 Islamo-fascism 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 that democracy, justice, freedom, brotherhood and equality cause all of the world's problems. This is being taught in the mosques. And it gets worse. 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. ... Many people do not realize that under the banner of Islam the Muslims killed children in Israel, massacred children in Lebanon, killed cops in Egypt, murdered Armenians in Turkey, killed Hindus in India, and expelled over 900,000 Jews from Arab land. All that happened before they turned their eyes to the West and before Sept. 11, 2001. ... 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 – to beat, to stone to death. ... 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 Quran – written in the seventh 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.

Elder: What should be done?

Gabriel: Shut our borders. We have terrorists coming through our borders. Al-Qaida is working with the MS-13 gang [El Salvadorian gang Mara Salvatrucha], smuggling al-Qaida terrorists into the country. Hezbollah is doing the same. ... We estimate thousands have already been smuggled into America. ... Hamas is here. ... They have cells in over 40 states. ... We also need to reform our immigration and visa programs. We need to monitor who is coming into our country and why. ... We need to increase human intelligence. ... To get that human element that gets you the information, it takes years to establish trust with the enemy in order to get the secrets out of them. ... As for profiling, I want everyone who fits the terrorist profile to be profiled. We have men between the ages of 16 and 40 who have committed terrorist acts around the world in the name of Islam. They are not little old ladies from Ohio with blue hair. They are not children going to Disney World on their Easter vacation.

Elder: What happens if a Democrat wins the 2008 election?

Gabriel: We are doomed. Our enemies want the Democrats to win. This last election, jihadist websites were playing victory songs and declaring the Democrats are our allies in the war against America. ... Whoever comes next is going to have to deal with the same things Bush is dealing with.