Written by Kathy Shaidle
May 20, 2009
Part Nine: A Summary of Right Side New's Islam in America Series
By Kathy Shaidle
RightSideNews Copyright © 2009
Beginning in January, RightSideNews has run a series called "Islam in America."
In the final installment of the series, we talk to Frank Salvato of the Basics Project. According to their mission statement:
Basics Project is a non-profit, non-partisan 501(C)(3) research and educational initiative whose mission is to re-introduce the American public to the basic elements of our constitutional heritage while providing non-partisan, fact-based information on relevant socio-political issues important to our country, specifically the threats of aggressive Islamofascism and the American Fifth Column.
Frank Salvato agreed to help us sum up the "Islam in America" series by explaining where we stand and where the battle is headed. His views are sobering, to say the least.
"We are definitely losing ground against fundamentalist Islam here on American soil," said Salvato in an exclusive interview.
"While the media will point to successes in garnering convictions against terror cells like the Liberty City group or the Lackawanna group or the group in Bly, Oregon, the Holy Land Foundation, CAIR and others, what we are blind to is the incremental encroachment of the Islamic culture into the fiber of Americanism."
Salvato recommends a Basics Project video about what he calls the "American Fifth Column, "the neo-Marxists determined to undermine Americanism at all cost."
The term "fifth column" refers to a group working to undermine their own nation. Frank Salvato explains that, "in America, the term refers to American citizens who are ideologically aligned with anti-American organizations, sentiments, principles and values, who work individually or in concert with various organized movements in an effort to undermine American interests, counter official American policy, erode American confidence at home and abroad, or in any way aid and abet America's enemies, while publicly proclaiming all of it to be an act of patriotism."
Those who make up the American Fifth Column often describe themselves using noble sounding terms like "conscientious objector", and are fond of using expressions such as "Dissent is patriotic."
These academic, political and media elites are "complicit in fundamentalist Islam's advance on American society and government."
As for violent jihadis on US soil," says Salvato, "the notion that we have been kept safe since the attacks of September 11, 2001, only applies to violent and spectacular attacks. That jihadis exist on American soil has been established by almost every honest individual and organization that studies the issue."
In fact, one installment of the "Islam in America" series looked at the spread of Jamaat al-Fuqra compounds across the nation.
Of course, the spread of radical Islam tends to take much subtler forms. Echoing stories recounted in the "Islam in America" series, Salvato says:
"Almost on a daily basis, we read and hear stories about how fundamentalist Islamists demand special treatment in our society. From their demands that government construct and install foot baths and prayer rooms in public places like airports and governmental buildings - at taxpayer expense - to one women in Florida insisting that she be allowed to wear her abayya in a drivers license photo, Muslim cab drivers refusing to accommodate fares who possess liquor and Muslim store clerks refusing to handle pork products and liquor, Islamists have manipulated governmental bodies into acquiescing to the intricacies of their religion, even at the marginalization of other religions and in the face of the separation of Church and State."
That taxpayer dollars help facilitate this "cultural surrender" is what Salvato calls "the bitter irony."
Salvato warns that Islamists will "use the tool of immigration and non-assimilation when plausible to create voting blocks in order to elect Islamists to government. In the case of the latter, the pro-open border neo-Marxists play an integral role. Once Islamists attain a working majority in our legislative bodies (...) they will be able to institute, incrementally, elements of Sharia Law from within the constraints of the American system of government."
Salvato says that this encroachment is being inadvertently abetted by "a grossly apathetic American populace." However, he adds, "the United States will survive this challenge. I believe in the American people; that once effectively motivated they will rise to the challenge."
So how can ordinary people fight back? Salvato cites four essential tools: "Education, information, utilization and support."
In terms of education, says Salvato, his organization, the BasicsProject.org "uses only first-source, fact-based information in the material provided. We believe that by affording the American people - and the people of the world - the basics elements of the pillar issues (Constitutional Literacy, the threat of radical Islam and the dangers of the encroaching American Fifth Column) the public will become motivated to learn more. The more they learn the more confident they will become in the understanding of the issue, which leads to disseminating information.
He believes that by sharing information with friends and family, Americans can begin a word of mouth, grassroots revolution in thinking.
The third step, "utilization", involves political action and civic responsibility. Politicians must be educated, then pressured into safeguarding American values and institutions.
Salvato places particular emphasis on becoming " engaged in the local education process via oversight of school curriculum instruction. Local school board members must be educated and informed on the facts, especially in the face of the politically correct culture prevalent in our schools today. We must insist that curriculum be based on fact instead of emotion and that ideological indoctrination be limited to the principles and philosophies used in the creation of our founding documents. If religious or political ideology is to be presented it should be in an overview form of a historical examination, complete with its vulnerabilities and negative aspects, not to promote one over another; not to promote the failed ideologies of the past over the exceptionalism of the American philosophy."
"Support" is the final step, and a challenge, especially in these trying economic times.
"Organizations such as ours struggle on a daily basis to achieve the most meager of operational financing," explains Salvato.
"Where organizations like Heritage and CATO run multi-million dollar budgets, gathering capital investments only to utilize their efforts in effecting change inside the beltway, grassroots organizations like ours struggle to engage to actual citizenry. Where $100 to Heritage of CATO amounts to a very minute percentage of their annual fundraising, $100 means significantly more to non-profit organizations like the Basics Project."
Besides the Basics Project, other grassroots organizations exist that are trying to fight back against the growing influence of radical Islam throughout America and the world. We've mentioned them throughout this series:
* ACT! for America - Dedicated to preserve the democratic values of Western Civilization, against the threat of radical Islam.
* Refugee Resettlement Watch - exposes underreported stories on Muslim immigrants' efforts at imposing stealth sharia in American workplaces
* International Free Press Society - because "defeating jihad depends fundamentally on free speech,"
the IFPS is dedicated to fighting radical Muslim attempts to stifle criticism of Islam.
Right Side News encourages its readers to support these organizations with their loyal readership and their finances.
Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new book, The Tyranny of Nice: How Canada crushes freedom in the name of human rights - and why it matters to Americans, features an introduction by Mark Steyn. Shaidle is also an advisor for the International Free Press Society