I wanted to read Brigitte Gabriel’s book, Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America, because of a listing I saw in World Magazine that led me to believe it might be similar to the Diary of Anne Frank. Ms. Gabriel, a journalist turned activist, was a teenager who grew up in a bomb shelter in Lebanon. She is from a Christian family in a Christian village. But her home, and the bomb shelter near it, were in the line of fire of Palestine Liberation Organization artillery positions and a Lebanese Army base.
During the many years spent in a bomb shelter, living through day after day of shelling, deprivation, watching the toll on friends, family and neighbors, living in constant fear, Ms. Gabriel developed beliefs that are understandable, but in themselves a bit frightening. Nevertheless, her book is worth reading. While some of her conclusions, as noted below, are not acceptable, her experience should teach us caution. Her rendition may also teach us a bit more about Israel and its circumstances.
The first several chapters of Ms. Gabriel’s book are a fascinating description of her life in southern Lebanon, Israel, and in Lebanon’s Christian society. The rest of her book is her indictment of Islam. Her argument is that Islam, if read in its original and literal form, commands the murder of all non-Muslims, as well as the murder of all Muslims who do not support the Muslim agenda.
Ms. Gabriel argues that the Muslim agenda is to abolish all governments that do not adopt Sharia law, establish caliphates in place of those governments, and destroy all competing religious systems. Her argument is that “moderate†Muslims do not exist, or if they do, cannot influence their religion to a more modern interpretation. Therefore, she argues, there is no option but to rename the “War on Terror” to the “War of Islam.”
Even if Ms. Gabriel’s life experiences justify her conclusion that Islam is oriented toward aggression, murder and despotism, and that there is no working movement of moderation in Islam, her proposals are, though understandable given her life experiences, not quite American. For example, she proposes a return to McCarthyism in the U.S., by rounding up Islamic fundamentalists, rounding up their books and literature, and suppressing their mosques. She proposes closing not only the border with Mexico, but the border with Canada. Ms. Gabriel is confident that Christian Arabs and non-Muslim Arabs would not object to such investigations if it resulted in the end of the threat she perceives from Muslims.
However, Ms. Gabriel’s proposed McCarthyism is unnecessary. Put simply, Ms. Gabriel does not understand Americans. Americans cannot be compared to the Lebanese from which she came, or much of anyone else. Americans may let the bad guys draw first, but we do not lose gunfights. Ms. Gabriel assumes that Americans do not understand the threat, or simply dismiss it, but that is not true. Americans are simply willing to tolerate the Islamic worldview that she describes — as long as it is not carried out. Once that worldview, a world view that accepts the murder of innocents, suppression of other religious systems and the subjugation of women, manifests in action, American law, American firepower and American troops will obliterate them.
Ms. Gabriel also underestimates the Canadians, who would react likewise. Ms. Gabriel may even be underestimating the Mexicans, many of whom are devout Catholics and are likely to react as violently as U.S. citizens to an incursion by radical fundamentalist Muslims.
