Brigitte Gabriel: Because They Hate

Brigitte Gabriel and her parents lived in an underground bomb shelter in Lebanon for seven years. They had no running water or electricity and very little food; at times, they were reduced to boiling grass to survive. It all started in 1975. Gabriel was 10 years old and living in Southern Lebanon. That’s when militant Muslims from throughout the Middle East poured into her country and declared jihad against the Lebanese Christians. Lebanon was the only Christian-influenced country in the Middle East, and the Lebanese Civil War was the first front in what has become the worldwide jihad of fundamentalist Islam against non-Muslim peoples.

— Brigitte Gabriel, American Congress for Truth —

Gabriel lost her childhood to militant Islam. Now she is giving her adult life to warning people that Islamic extremists want to replay the Lebanon coup in nations the world over. Gabriel is an ardent advocate against terrorism and author of “Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America.” To understand her passion, it helps to understand her life and her love for Israel and America.

Despite her Lebanese origins, Gabriel fervently defends Israel’s right to self-defend. Gabriel’s departure from the anti-Israel mindset of her Arabic culture followed her 1982 visit to Israel in search of medical care for her mother. Faced with the compassion, respect and humanity of the Israelis, Gabriel denounced her government’s propaganda about the Jews and the Israeli people. Gabriel returned to Israel two years later and began her career as a journalist. She quickly rose to the position of news anchor for “World News,” an evening Arabic news broadcast. She covered the Israeli security zone in Lebanon and the Palestinian uprising in the West Bank.

After marrying an American war correspondent in Jerusalem, Gabriel relocated to the United States where she started a television production company and advertising company. Her clients included ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News, CNN, Discovery, TLC, History Channel, “Oprah Winfrey Show,” “20/20,” “World News Tonight” and “Good Morning America” to name a few. Now, she’s a New York Times best-selling author...

“Because They Hate” is a political wake-up call told through a very personal memoir frame. Gabriel warns that the United States is threatened by fundamentalist Islamic theology in the same way that Lebanon was – radical Islam will stop at nothing short of domination of all non-Muslim countries. Gabriel saw this mission start in Lebanon, and she refuses to stand silently by while it happens in the U.S.

Gabriel sees in the West a lack of understanding and a blatant ignorance of the ways and thinking of the Middle East. She also points out mistakes the West has made in consistently underestimating the single-mindedness with which fundamentalist Islam has pursued its goals over the past 30 years. Fiercely articulate and passionately committed, Gabriel tells her own story as well as outlines the history, social movements, and religious divisions that have led to this critical historical conflict in her book.

After the tragedy of September 11th, 2001 Gabriel founded American Congress for Truth (www.americancongressfortruth.org) a non-profit organization dedicated to educating millions of uninformed Americans about the threat of radical Islam to world peace and national security. Gabriel’s work is of international scope having brought her in contact with world figures such as Margaret Thatcher, George H. Bush, Queen Nour El Hussein, Itzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres.

The Voice magazine sat down with Gabriel to discuss why fundamental Islamists hate the West and what the U.S. should be doing to prevent what happened in Lebanon from happening on American soil.

THE VOICE: Are we ready for radical Islam’s dominion agenda or are we ignorant to Islam’s devices?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: We are ignorant because in Western nations we have no point of reference to hatred and the way hatred is taught in the Middle East, especially in the Koran. Many people in the West have never read the Bible, let alone the Koran, so they are basing their knowledge of the Koran on what they have heard or what they are hearing from Muslim talking heads or Western media giving them a watered-down version of the Koran by quoting them half-truths. Yet those who can read the Koran in the Arabic language understand that Islam is a threat to Western civilization because Islam is not compatible with Western civilization. That is very clear in the Koran. Many people think that Islam’s war is only with the Jews, but it’s also against the Christians. America needs to wake up and start realizing that we need to throw political correctness in the garbage where it belongs and start to truly look at what we are fighting, how deep the threat is.

THE VOICE: What’s behind the hatred in radical Islam?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: The Koran states very, very clearly that the infidels are the enemies of Allah. Prophet Mohammed states it very clearly in his teachings that it is the duty of every Muslim to fight the infidel and kill them. All you have to do is read the scriptures of the Koran and you will be able to see where the hatred is coming from. When you look at the moderate Muslims who are speaking today, the majority of them are atheists and those are the ones who are educated, who are willing to stand up and say, “You know, the Koran was written in the 7th century. We are in the 21st century. Those words do not apply today.”

THE VOICE: Are you saying there is a move within the Muslim world to stop this violent dominion agenda?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: Well, the move is within the Western worlds, especially America. Muslims in America do have the freedom of religion, do have the freedom of speech, do have the freedom of the press, and are protected by our Constitution. People like Dr. Wafa Sultan who is an atheist, Ibn Warraq who is an atheist, Nonie Darwish who used to be a Muslim who has converted to Christianity; those types are able to come to the forefront and say, “We do not accept this ideology we do not accept this hatred. Islam needs to be reformed.” However, many people do not listen to them. The mainstream media is not listening to them because it has been so infiltrated by the likes of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the political correctness.

THE VOICE: Some people point to peaceful Muslims. Is there such a thing as a peaceful Islam?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: A peaceful Islam is an oxymoron. Islam and peace do not exist together in the same word unless the non-Muslims who are living under Islamic law, the Christians and the Jews, pay a tax for their protection, buying their livelihood literally and their safety. This is still happening today in Iraq in certain provinces. Sadly, the mainstream media does not want to report on this because it’s not politically correct and again, political correctness is a disease and this disease, unless we fight it, it’s going to kill us.

THE VOICE: What do you think are the biggest myths in the Christian mindset about the Islamic religion? Why don’t more Christians see the evil?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: Christians are not seeing it because they are such good-hearted people. They cannot believe that such hatred can exist because in the Christian heart and mind, we cannot hate. Jesus told us to love, to forgive; whoever slaps you on one cheek, you turn the other one. Do not judge lest you be judged. We refuse to see the hatred and the ugliness of the Islamic world. There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Not all of them are radicals who are bent on destroying us. However, we estimate in the intelligence community that the radicals are between 15 to 25 percent of the Islamic population worldwide. That translates to between a 180 to 300 million people who are willing to strap bombs on their bodies and kill thousands of us in the name of Allah. Sadly, many Christians are not willing to give up their lives to die for their Christ or to defend their nations and their Western values.

THE VOICE: It seems like there is a tolerance for everything except Jesus. My daughter got persecution for bringing her Bible to school.

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: Exactly. Why are they teaching the Koran in American public schools? In California they are making American students recite the Shahadat, which is the conversion to Islam and pick up Islamic names and practice fasting during Ramzan and be introduced to the Islamic way of life. That is tolerated in American Public Schools, yet the nativity scene is not allowed, the cross is not allowed and the Bible is not allowed. Our founding fathers are turning in their graves and I believe we as a Christian Body need to wake up and start speaking authoritatively and forcefully. Our country was founded on freedom of religion where people from all nations who are persecuted because of their religion can come to America and build a mosque and build a temple and build a church. However, sadly, Islam is using its mosques to preach hatred against Christians and Jews. They are calling Christians and Jews pigs because they are cursed in the name of Allah.

THE VOICE: What else is Islam doing here of which most Americans aren’t aware of?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: The terrorists are using our borders to infiltrate our country. Al-Qaeda is working with the MS-13 gang to bring in terrorists through the Mexican border because our borders are very porous. Al-Qaeda is paying between $25,000-50,000 per terrorist to be smuggled into our country. Hezbollah is doing the same thing. We estimate thousands of terrorists have been smuggled into America. On American soil, our government has arrested 300 Hezbollah operators in recent years. One of them was a general smuggled through the Mexican border. Of all the terrorist organizations that have set up shop on American soil, the top three are Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Hamas has the largest infrastructure on American soil. Hamas has cells in over 40 states in the United States. In Article 22 of the Hamas charter, which was published in 1998, talks about the enemy organizations to be destroyed. It mentions the Lions Club and the Rotary Club as destructive espionage organizations to be destroyed. How many people in the heartland of America who are members of the Lions Club know that they are mentioned in the Hamas Charter, the largest terrorist organization on American soil? Then there’s the systematic Islamic funding of our universities to brainwash our students. The Saudis have been meddling in our universities for the last 16 years. Saudi Arabia is pumping millions of dollars to influence the opinions of our youth to turn them against America and against Israel.

THE VOICE: What’s it going to take for America and other nations to wake up to this threat?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: It’s going to take a nuclear attack or a biological attack on the nation to wipe out a major city or multiple cities in our country. Only then will we wake up – and it is coming. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. They are not talking about little suicide bombers going into malls. They are talking about a major biological or nuclear attack against a city in the United States. For the first time since the Cold War, the Department of Homeland Security has instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb shelter in your home on its Web site. Now, the Department of Homeland Security put that up on their Web site two years ago for a reason and this is what we are facing; this is what we are facing. Americans are complacent and apathetic. They are more interested in watching TV programs like American Idol or the news about Britney Spears and Anna Nicole Smith. Osama bin Laden was watching American television and laughing his brains out. Anna Nicole Smith was the news for 24 hours a day for 2 weeks.

THE VOICE: Have you come under attack for speaking out the truth like this?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: Yes, anytime you speak the truth you are going to receive life threats from those who want to silence you. I have received life threats many, many times from many, many people. I live in secrecy. I try to protect myself and my family to the best of my ability. I travel under different names. When I speak at functions, I need bodyguards, security officers, CIA undercover agents, and canine units to sniff the place for bombs. It’s a sad day in American history when any American speaker has to feel they have to protect their lives when they go to speak on an American college campus about any subject. But this is the state of affairs that we are in today.

THE VOICE: What can Americans do to stop the attack?

BRIGITTE GABRIEL: Rise for your principles. Rise for your heritage, for your Judeo-Christian values. Our values are such wonderful values. Thou shall not kill. Honor your father and mother. Treat others the way you want to be treated. The Ten Commandments are such great principles for people to follow. Unless we stand up and defend those values, we are going to lose our freedom and we are going to lose our nation.

This is not a Christian issue. This is not a Democratic issue. This is not a Republican issue. The issue of terrorism is an American issue. It’s a Western nations issue and this issue bring us all together as civilized people, as educated people, as those people who respect all other religions and cherish the freedoms of all other religions to practice in our nation.

Muslims love their way of life and are willing to die for it far more than we love and appreciate our way of life and are willing to even give up an evening of Anna Nicole Smith to stand up and defend our values.

This is affecting every single American, regardless of whether we are Democrats or Republicans or Libertarians or whatever. The issue of Islamic fascism affects us all. The terrorists who flew the airplanes into the Twin Towers in New York never stopped once to ask the people on the airplane, “Are you a Republican or a Democrat?” They didn’t make provisions for one or the other.

Those who bombed the trains in Madrid never stopped for a second to ask those people if they were leftists or rightists. I didn’t see any of the beheaders who beheaded hostages in Iraq stop once to ask those people, “Are you a Jew? Are you a Christian?”

The issue of terrorism affects every single one of us. All those people were killed because they were Westerners, because they were infidels, because it didn’t matter if they were Democrats or Republicans, leftists or rightists. They were Westerners and that’s why they were killed. We need to wake up and stand up.