Interview with Jeffrey Imm on Islamic Supremacism

Unto the Breach interviewed counterterrorism expert and former FBI agent Jeffrey Imm on Islamic Supremacism. The audio can be found here.

December 2, 2008

CHRIS CARTER: Alright. Jeffrey Imm, welcome to Unto the Breach.

JEFFREY IMM: Thank you.

CARTER: Glad to have you onto the show.

IMM: Glad to be here.

CARTER: The United States is fighting a powerful ideology in the long war. Some people call it the war on terror. I call it the Long War. It’s just kind of my personal thing, here. But this can really be tricky for the average man on the street to fully understand. But it seems that you’ve really found a way around this situation. you’ve put it in simple terms…that…that…to me it’s just very hard to argue with. You’ve got the Constitutional pillars of Liberty and Equality…in the things…in what you write about. How does Islamic supremacism threaten individual liberty and equality?

IMM: Well, the fundamental aspect that…that we have to understand – and which is frequently not understood – is that there is a perception that we’re…we’re dealing with a religious challenge. And when…when we look at that, we miss that there’s a bigger political aspect, here, that is…that is more important.

The challenge that we’re really facing is something that I call Islamic Supremacism: basically, the political ideology that is based on Shariah, that is based on the ideology of control of human conduct and human rights. And that…that whole concept of Islamic Supremacism as a political ideology is the key aspect to understanding our challenge. If we take a look at what we’ve seen with any identity based supremacist ideology, what we see is identity-based supremacists try to control the behavior, the mindset and the thinking of individuals. And especially supremacist ideologies, by definition, are against equality and they’re against liberty. So, one of the things I think that we need to do in understanding a supremacist ideology is understand that (for example) when you deal with these Shariah based Islamic Supremacists, they don’t view women as equal to men. There is not an equal view of people who have different religious beliefs. There is not an equal view of people that have different views on the world or willingness to speak out freely. We have people in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan who are jailed because of what they call blasphemy. We have people who are being arrested…just last week – Christians – who were going to prison in Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, for what they call blasphemy.

Islamic Supremacism is about a theocratic supremacist ideology. Any supremacist ideology, by definition, is against equality and liberty. And our nation is founded on defending the inalienable human rights – not just American rights, but human rights – of individual equality and liberty. So, what we need to understand is that we have an absolute conflict between Islamic Supremacism versus Equality and Liberty.

CARTER: We defeated two massive supremacist movements back in the twentieth century: the Nazis and the KKK. Would you say the ultimate goals of the KKK, the Nazis, and the Islamic Supremacists are the same?

IMM: I think the ultimate goal of all supremacist organizations are the same; and, that is to defeat the ideas of equality and liberty. They…they depend on a lie. And the lie, to them, is so important they have to do anything humanly possible to defend that lie, because it’s inherent to their identity. And the lie is that they – in their beliefs, whatever that supremacist belief is – [is] inherently superior in every way to all other humans. And the challenge with supremacist ideologies is that they are, of course, immediately contradictory to equality and liberty because they view themselves as superior to all other human beings.

And I think the challenge is that we’ve been looking at the issue largely from an issue of counter terrorism, from a homeland security perspective; but we really need to look at supremacism from a human rights perspective. Because I think when we look at the issue from a human rights perspective, we will see – as we did in challenging white supremacists in the 1960s when we put a full fledged push on it – that we had to deal with human rights, respecting individuals as equal. And Islamic Supremacists just continue this ongoing problem of superiority that we see with these identity based supremacist ideologies.

CARTER: Well, you’ve got the Nazis and the KKK, but you know, when we go back to the Nazis: we beat them. How did we…or…I’m sorry – why is it important to defeat the Nazi party…why was it important to defeat the Nazi party ideologically?

IMM: Well, I’m glad you also asked the other question to, because it is very important. First of all, you never really truly defeat a supremacist ideology. I mean, what you (can) do…is you can defame them, you can undermine their support, and you can show how irrational and how unreasonable they are. But there will always be fringe individuals that will always support some sort of supremacist ideology. And why it was so important to defeat the Nazi party ideology was because we were dealing with – in that time it was a fascist ideology, but it was – an Aryan Supremacist ideology that believed that it deserved to rule the world…it deserved superior control over all of humanity, and it really believed that. And, the thing is, those who respect equality and liberty had to confront that. They had to confront that in every part of the world. And, as we did then, we have to confront Islamic Supremacism in all parts of the world. And the reason why, from an American perspective, is that we are defenders of the Human Rights of Equality and Liberty. And from a human perspective, if we believe what the American Declaration of Independence says, “that all men are created equal” and that’s an inalienable human right, challenging the ideology of any supremacist group, whether it’s the Nazi Party, White Supremacists, or Islamic Supremacism is really just affirming our belief in the basic human rights of human kind.

CARTER: That’s why it’s so…to me…that’s why it’s so brilliant. The way you phrase this, you just totally make an end run around all of these complex situations. You boil it down…you boil it down to something…you know…who likes the Nazis? Who likes the KKK? Like you said, “fringe” elements…you know…they’re nuts. And that’s totally against the Declaration of Independence, and that’s – to me – what people are missing, here. What’s the best way, in your opinion, to confront the Islamic Supremacist movement?

IMM: I think there are a couple of ways to deal with it. My personal opinion is: right now, that we have lost so much ground within Washington D.C., within the federal government because of infiltration of either Islamic Supremacists or Islamic Supremacist appeasers, that I think the best way to confront Islamic Supremacism is to go to the public. And I think we need to go to the public on more than one level. We need to deal with it, not only from a[n] issue of security for America but we also have to deal with it as a human rights issue. I think the issue that a lot of the American public are not as well aware of are the continuing abuses by Islamic Supremacists around the world on a daily basis. Last week, the poor girls in Afghanistan having acid thrown in their face… You see it almost every day, people that follow the news. But, but the Supremacist abuses are an ongoing issue. And, I think, just as we were outraged when our nation finally agreed to confront as an ideology, White Supremacism…I think our nation needs to have the same level of outrage on a moral and human rights basis on Islamic Supremacism. And, I think the issue is we have to make sure the American public understands the value we have with Equality and Liberty. And…[the American Public should] understand…think about what their life would be like if they did not have that equality and liberty that they hold dear…that is a basis for their daily lives, daily plans, every aspect of their life. I think we need to approach it from more of a human rights perspective so that we can develop coalitions of women’s rights groups, religious groups, all sorts of groups that care about human rights issues to address the broader issue. Because, I think one of the problems is – I think, Chris – some people tend to think that if you’re against Islamic Supremacism you’re a person that is an “islamaphobe”, you’re a person that…you see, people that…critics think they hate all Muslims…pigeonholing in the mainstream media. I think we need to change that argument by looking at the supremacist nature of the threat.

CARTER: Awesome. Now, you talk about, you know, you mention the girls with the acid in their face. You know, their is stoning, like that little girl that was killed in Somalia a couple weeks ago…that, it…it is just totally tragic. But you’ve got, from a human rights standpoint the Muslims have somehow managed – and Jeffrey, this just totally blows my mind – but they’ve somehow managed to create a separate Human Rights document than the rest of the entire world. What does this Cairo Declaration of Human Rights accomplish for the Islamic Supremacists in terms of Human Rights?

IMM: Well, it goes back to the nineties. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam was signed August 5th 1990, and it was accepted in the year 2000 by a group of 57, representing 57 nations, called the Organization of the Islamic Conference, also known as the OIC. And the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam tries to do an alternative to what other Human Rights Organizations have posed to try and protect Human Rights, except the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights says that people have “freedom and right to a dignified life in accordance with Islamic Sharia.” And, so, the whole concept is: Yes, we’ll give you freedom as long as it’s within our Islamic Supremacist ideology.

Imagine, if you will, if White Supremacism had been the global force that Islamic Supremacism is and the people that supported apartheid had done a Declaration on Human Rights and they said, “We’ll give you freedom and right to a dignified life as long as it’s in accordance with apartheid.” Imagine how absurd and how widely rejected and renounced that would be around the world.

However, when the same thing is done with Islamic Supremacism and this Cairo Declaration, the United Nations talks about it, it’s considered an official document, it is viewed as a fine piece of work in the Human Rights field. And, of course, it’s not. What it is…is a phony document which uses the term “human rights” to try and justify Supremacism – an exclusionary, segregationist ideology. And it’s certainly something that all Human rights activists should be standing up against.

CARTER: I hope other people can kinda see the…how crazy this world is that we are living in and what they’re doing with all of this stuff. Now does the co…

IMM: Well, you…

CARTER:I’m sorry, go ahead…

IMM: …You know, it’s – just one thing – the thing is, it’s now 2008 going on 2009. We’ve really had this problem, with let’s say the Cairo Declaration for nearly twenty years. And, we’ve had the problem since 9/11 for seven years, so it’s taking time for people to wake up. But, I really think that we have to address Human Rights organizations because until we take a different tack, other than what we have…until we establish that we’re challenging Islamic Supremacism, so that we’re not accused of quote unquote being Islamophobes, [until we expose the Human Rights abuses of the Islamic Supremacist] political ideology, we are not going to make headway. And I think that is the key aspect, right there.

CARTER: Do you think the Koranic form of Shariah, that you mentioned earlier, and the Islamic Human Rights pose a threat to our equality and liberty?

IMM: Yeah, well, the thing is…Shariah is intended to be a lifestyle legal code, if you will. It is supposed to have…its based on the Koran, the Hadith, something called the ijma – its a consensus of Islamic scholars – and various reasoning that uses analogies to apply precedents from other holy texts not covered. So, it’s got those four components. But, in the basis for all of that, and people go into a lot of the detail…but, the basis for all of that, is to have a basis for governing all aspects of life.

And, I think the key thing that Americans don’t quite understand is that when they say all aspects of life, they mean all. They don’t mean some. There is no separation between the secular and the sacred. It is all aspects of life. And the challenge is – in dealing with Islamic Supremacism, you have a legal code which says that you have to do everything according to this legal code in your entire life. And that is the basis for ordering a society based on a supremacist ideology.

Now, in relativist terms, we have never faced a supremacist enemy that has been this organized, this detailed, and this structured…to have a legal code that basically defines the doctrine of supremacism. Certainly, we had legal codes in White Supremacist nations…certainly in various white supremacist states in the United States that adopted certain aspects of life; and, they were disgraceful, and we put them down and walked away from them – we’ve gone beyond that. But, Shariah is not just legal code for some aspects of life, it’s for every aspect of life. So, unlike the other threats that we have had and other supremacist ideologies we’ve faced, this one has a segmented legal code for every aspect of life. And that, I think, is the larger challenge; because, when people see things like Shariah Finance or they see other aspects of Sharia being promoted, they think “Well, this is someone else promoting just a religious view” and they don’t understand the actual supremacist legal code that it is actually trying to promote.

CARTER:Yeah, well we could probably do two or three shows worth of information on Shariah Law. That was hard enough to squirt it into this one. But, I kinda wanted to stay in the lane, here… I look at Europe as a good indicator of what not to do, really. It is bad enough over there, right now… You’ve got the United Kingdom – as a matter of fact they have just implemented some elements of Shariah Law, recently. Why do you think the UK is failing in their domestic struggle against the Islamic Supremacists?

IMM:Well, you know, one thing I think it is easy to forget, is that the United States has some real unique history. I mean, afterall, the reason the United States of America exists is because it decided to break away from the United Kingdom because the United States had a decision that it was going to defend the inalienable rights of equality and liberty no matter what the United Kingdom decided. So, I mean, I think you need to also remember that – in terms of historical perspective. Now, of course, over hundreds of years, Britain and the United Kingdom have changed, and certainly there has been more adoption of laws and growth in that country that has allowed it to appreciate and have a greater respect for issues of equality. But, if you take a look at their history and their legal aspects…I mean…I don’t think you’re going to find a place in London where you are going to find the words “All men are created equal” pounded in marble in the wall somewhere. That’s, that’s what the United States is about. We do more than just defend these ideas. We have monuments to them. They’re so important – so inherent to our identity – they define us differently from other parts of the world that don’t take it as seriously.

And, I think the challenge is the UK was historically an Empire. And, because it was historically an Empire, it tried to get along with diverse ideologies that it didn’t necessarily agree with because in having an empire, an international empire of countries around the world, it had to deal with groups, beliefs that it normally would not accept in its own country. Now, the challenge is: that empire mentality, as it started to scale back really came home to challenge the United Kingdom because a number of people from those former empire nations ended up migrating to the United Kingdom and bringing some of their ideologies with them. Now, the United Kingdom did not have as strong a backbone as say the United States did in these issues and because of that it was a greater threat.

The United Kingdom responded in the late twentieth century by trying to create something called a Covenant of Security. This has been documented, repeatedly, in numerous places. Basically, the idea was that the UK had what I guess we’ll call a “Gentleman’s agreement” (so called) between Islamic Supremacists and members in the UK government that listen – “As long as you don’t threaten us here in the UK we will let you continue to do your ideological development…and, particularly, if you want to do plans for actions in other parts of the world, we’re not gonna come down on you hard because we just don’t want you causing trouble here.” Unfortunately, that is a very cowardly position. The UK found out what that would mean in 2005 with the London underground bombings.

Unfortunately, you can’t undo the decades of appeasement the UK had towards Islamic Supremacism in three years. And so, they had this back and forth position of – they’ll get tough and then let somebody go, they’ll get tough and somebody will be ignored, they’ll get tough and Islamic Supremacism will rise again. So, they’re not consistent, if you will. And because of that, they’ve been trying to find out…”Well, where can we go? How can we move this forward in some sort of a consistent path in dealing with Islamic Supremacism?” And what they’ve basically decided to do is adopt something called counter-radicalization. And the idea behind counter-radicalization is to try and use tactics of engagement and support within a community to prevent someone from “radicalizing”. And what they mean by radicalizing is not what we would mean by radicalizing. What they mean by “radicalizing” is someone who will promote violence specifically to the United Kingdom. What we might view as “radicalizing” is somebody who promotes Islamic Supremacism. That doesn’t mean the same thing over in the UK.

So, the idea behind counter-radicalism is an extension, if you will, of this Covenant of Security…where, basically, the idea is if we can sort of bring people into the fold of political activity, even if they’re supremacists, that’s ok, because at least we can avoid them from having violence over seas. The same thing you’ll see – which is why Hamas has been so powerful in the UK and why Hezbollah just recently was named as a Terrorist Organization in the past couple months – you’ll see that these groups that have – Islamic Supremacist groups that have jihadi activities that are largely outside of the UK have significant power base in the UK because they believe that they provide a basis, a safe haven if you will, as part of this continuing Covenant of Security. The problem is, in the U.S. is that some American counterterrorists have come to believe that they should use the same tactics in our country.

CARTER:There’s another show right there. I’ll tell you what…when you look at it in the terms that you frame it in with Islamic Supremacism, the Nazi movement, the KKK…I can’t imagine the UK – going back to World War II – saying, “Hey, we’ll talk to Goebbells; we’ll talk to Hitler as long as they promise that they are not going to attack us.” It’s like they have got their head in the sand…

IMM:Well, you remember a UK with Winston Churchill. And, you know, if you take a look before Winston Churchill – when you look in the Chamberlain years that basically was the type of UK you had. The reality is, the reason why Chamberlain was elected PM was he was popular. He represented the belief of a lot of people of that time. So, there were a lot of people that were supporting and in support of Chamberlain. So, I think the thing is what happened to the UK with Churchill, who was half American, was that Churchill helped deal with an immediate threat, ok. And I think that is certainly a part of the UK mentality. They are certainly willing to defend themselves. You know, but it has been so long since Churchill…it’s tough to see if that’s gonna come back, it’s not there now.

CARTER:Yeah, it seems like we’ve kind of subsidized them ever since the Cold War and the end of World War II and they’re just kinda sittin’ back on their hands, they don’t wanna do anything anymore…and that goes for all of Europe. But, then, looking at that, what does the United States need to do for us to win the war of ideas against Islamic Supremacism?

IMM:Well, the first thing they need to do is they need to recognize there is a war of ideas, and as we’ve probably mentioned, the Authorization for Use of Military Force previously…We don’t really name the enemy. That’s huge. You can’t fight a war where you don’t define an enemy. And basically it was a reaction with the nineteen – I’m sorry – the 2001 September Authorization for Use of Military Force, which talked about us taking action against (quote)”those responsible for the attacks launched against the United States, including those nations, organizations, or persons” the President determines were responsible for the attacks on 9/11.

The challenge is we never went back to that other than the 9/11 Commission Report and actually said “these are the groups that we are at war with, now, guys, ok.” We never amended that Authorization for Use of Military Force. So, we have never really defined who the enemy is. Now, the 9/11 Commission Report does make an attempt to do that – but it’s buried. It’s buried on page 562 of all places. It talks about something called “Islamist Terrorism, being a derivative of Islamism, which is an anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic vision of Islam whose final aim is the restoration of the Caliphate.” Now, that should have been on page 1, ok…and it should have been discussed throughout the text…the truth is, it’s buried in the Notes. And, I mean, it is very hard to find any type of official definition of the enemy. And, unfortunately, I keep referring to this part of the 9/11 Commission Report. I have never, yet…heard anybody else who refers to it. And that’s very sad. I mean, that is a key part of the 9/11 Commission Report. But there is not a single one of our American government leaders that I have heard of that is taking that part or Islamic Supremacism per se and saying, “We must define the enemy as X.” You can’t leave an enemy undefined and win a war of ideas against it.

But, beyond the American governmental leaders, the United States is much more than that. America, the United States, is its people. And what we need to do to win the war of ideas against Islamic Supremacism is we have to look at our own lives, we have to look at what does equality and liberty mean to us, our neighbors, our friends, our families…is it worth fighting for? We need to make that decision, on a personal – one by one basis – and I think if we did examine the importance of equality and liberty to the import, to the value, to all of our relationships, the coherence of our society, the very basic nature of what it means to be an American…I think the American public would be able to better confront the supremacist enemy.

But, I think a couple things have to happen: they have to identify how valuable equality and liberty is in their life and then they have to say, “Listen, we are not going to let it happen here.” And we have to start with the United States and say, “Ok, maybe we can’t change all the world but we can change the United States.” And those people who are Islamic Supremacists in the United States, we are going to treat them like we would treat the KKK or neo-nazi individuals marching up and down the street, we are going to show them the same amount of contempt, the same amount of disrespect and the same amount of ridicule that their anti-equality ideologies would get.

And I think, when we start to treat Islamic Supremacists, in the United States, the same way as we would treat any other supremacist ideology – and I don’t mean…not just the public…but our government and all the aspects of our businesses our finance. When we treat supremacists equally, whether they’re Islamic Supremacists, White Supremacists, Aryan Supremacists or any other supremacist ideology – when we treat supremacists equally, then we will begin to win the war of ideas.

But, I think we cannot treat Islamic Supremacists off on a side differently than we would treat any other supremacist organization. Can you imagine the Dow Jones setting up a special financial organization to track White Supremacist stocks and finance? They’d be run out of business. And can you imagine our government having relations with – and bringing up to Capitol Hill – White Supremacists to argue why their ideology is right? Or sending our government representatives to conferences to meet with and engage with White Supremacist Organizations. It wouldn’t happen in today’s America. And we have to be consistent. We have to be equal. That’s what we’re about. We’re about equality. And, if we treat all supremacist organizations equal, then we have to treat Islamic Supremacism just like we would treat any other supremacist organization…and that is how we will win the war of ideas.

CARTER:Man, you are spot on. I keep going back to your philosophy. I mean, you talk to people about the War on Terror, the Long War…and they’ll say “This whole Islamic thing…I know plenty of nice, moderate Muslims.” You totally take that away with your tack – nobody is really going to say, “I know plenty of really nice neo-nazis, they don’t hurt anybody.” That just totally undermines that whole pedestal that they can stand on.

IMM:You know, here is the thing Chris. At the end of the day, there are some people that believe that we can have some type of reform within Islam. Whether that’s ever to happen or not is up to Muslims in the world. But you cannot have reform if you do not confront Supremacism. In the sixties, a lot of people had to change their point of view. And the issue with White Supremacism was going on for a long time in America, but we fought a hundred year war over it. After the civil war was over, we continued that battle right up through the 1960s and all the way to today. So, I mean, we fought a long war and finally got serious about it and said “Look, we are going to have to change our point of view.” And the reason why people changed their point of view was they finally came to the recognition that they had to live up to the courage of their convictions that all men are created equal.

And if it wasn’t for that fact, that we treated all people equal, we wouldn’t be the country we are today. And, I think it is very important to stress to people of all political persuasion and all aspects of life that Equality is fundamental to our values and our identity. We wouldn’t have…Barack Obama wouldn’t be President, today, if we didn’t believe that all men were created equal in the fundamental definition of the United States of America. And if we believe that we could confront that supremacist ideology, where a majority – or certainly a large portion in the United States – it wasn’t a small minority, ok…there were 1.4 million members of the KKK, so it wasn’t a small minority, so called – it was a huge number. If we could confront that, we can confront Islamic Supremacism.

And we must do it here in the United States, now. If we don’t confront Islamic Supremacism in the United States, asking other countries to confront Islamic Supremacism is kidding ourselves because they can say, “Oh, well what have you done?” And if we’ve got people that are in Islamic Supremacist organizations going up to Capitol Hill and speaking without any criticism, then we can’t have the moral justification to criticize those who will support Islamic Supremacism in other countries. So, it is imperative in winning the war of ideas that we confront Islamic Supremacism here in the United States.

CARTER:That’s right – we got serious in the war of ideas against the White Supremacist movement. You know, we’ve done it before. We can do it again. You’re absolutely right. And it is just going to take getting serious about it. Identifying who the enemy is – the most basic thing, I would think. You know, when you go to battle: Who’s the enemy? That’s the first thing you need to know. And I’m sure we’re probably going to get a lot of reaction to this, Jeffrey Imm, but the one question I would imagine is on a lot of people’s minds right now: Is there anything that the average man on the street can do to join this war of ideas…you know, just the average Joe…Joe the Plumber, Joe the whatever…can do to join this war of ideas against the supremacism of Islam?

IMM:Yeah, I think the issue is…I addressed this a while back in an article called “Courage in the Long War Against Islamic Supremacism and Jihad”. I think the first thing that we need to do as individuals and individual communities we need to identify where we see problems with Islamic Supremacism in our communities, we need to identify where we’ve got challenges in our communities on a city by city, county by county, state by state basis. We need to get together as groups of individuals to try and confront the issue. I know there are groups that are starting to expand in different states in the country, that are trying to build up coalitions to confront Islamic Supremacism – and I think we need to join those groups, identify and find out where they are…and we have to set up groups in our individual cities and our individual towns that will address the issues and make sure that when there are people that support this ideology – we are standing against it. The other thing we have to do is we have to have discussions at libraries and townhall meetings and we have to be able to – if we have to have marches in the streets or rallies – but we have to make the public aware that we are dealing with a supremacist ideology. Because, the challenge is – we have to overcome this incredible amount of denial by some of our leadership, by the mainstream media, to try and re-educate people as to what the real threat is. So, we are going to have to do it on a multiple tier level. I believe what we actually have to do is we have to have a political action organization to fight this on Capitol Hill as well. But we can do it one little group and one small town at a time, going to shopping malls, going to libraries, going to…to having rallies. We can do it with small groups of individuals and we can make a difference.

CARTER:Well, folks…listeners at Unto the Breach radio, here…I hope that your mind has been blown by Jeffrey Imm because not only has he told you something – made something so simple that was complex – I mean, we also have a plan to move forward. Jeffrey Imm, I thank you so much for showing up on the show…tell us where we can go to read – you’ve got fantastic articles, man…where can my audience go to read your articles?

IMM:We have two websites…one is the Anti Jihad League of America at anti-jihad.org and the other website is UnitedStatesAction which also has all of my articles and has additional information on emergency preparedness – again that’s UnitedStatesAction.com and the other website is anti-jihad.org.

CARTER:Well, Jeffrey, thank you so much for coming on the program. Hopefully, we can get together and do this again. There is so much that you write about that I wanted to incorporate into this interview here, but like I said…I needed to stay in my lanes and kinda keep it tight, but we look forward to talking to you again some time.

IMM: Thank you very much, Chris…I look forward to talking to you.

CARTER: Awesome, thank you very much.