The Last Patriot - Brad Thor [24]
“Exactly.”
Ozbek had seen a chilling collection of classified evidence before it was made public in a terrorism financing trial in Dallas which laid out the Islamist agenda to take over the United States. The evidence contained a detailed strategy memo from the Muslim Brotherhood—the oft-cited parent organization of Hamas and al-Qaeda which was intimately tied to FAIR—laying out steps for how the U.S. Constitution and Western civilization could be destroyed from within and replaced with sharia law.
Ozbek remembered the words of an audiotape he’d heard played that detailed the Brotherhood’s paranoia about “securing the group” from infiltration by “Zionism, Masonry…the CIA, FBI, etc.” so that they could detect any outside monitoring and get rid of any such enemies.
The FBI had already floated a cursory theory of theirs to Ozbek and Rasmussen that Salam’s job was just that—to discover where American Islamist organizations were vulnerable and to infiltrate them in order to shore them up. The only thing was that Salam didn’t know it. He’d been purposely kept in the dark.
“Why did they pick you for this assignment?” asked Ozbek.
“I asked Riley the same thing,” replied Salam. “He said my thesis caught his attention.”
“What was it about?”
“It was about how the Islamists were slowly creating a specialized victim status for themselves whereby discussion of Islam, as well as their motives for Islamic supremacism, were quickly becoming no-go topics. I entitled it The Quiet War and paid special attention to how the Islamists had realized that they could further their agenda by playing upon Americans’ natural distaste for racism. They did it by creating a label that smacked of bigotry and which could be applied to anyone who called into question their true loyalties, motivations, religious texts, or ultimate end game—Islamophobia.”
“And what were your conclusions?”
Salam looked at him. “They weren’t good. The United States is doing nothing but ceding ground to the Islamists. It would rather be politically correct than victorious, and as long as it refuses to engage its enemy on every single front it will never win.”
“That’s a pretty serious charge,” said Ozbek.
“Sure it is. But it’s right on the money,” the man responded. “For the majority of its adherents, Islam is a beautiful religion. We not only don’t want to commit acts of violence, we don’t want anyone else to either, especially not in the name of our religion. If it were up to us, we’d gladly see the violent passages the extremists use to justify their actions removed from the Koran.
“The majority of Muslims in America and around the world are moderate and peaceful. Islam brings comfort and provides a noble path for over a billion people on this planet. It is the source of incredible goodness. We want to live in harmony with our neighbors, regardless of what their beliefs are.
“Everyone wants us, the moderate Muslims, to reform Islam, but no one does anything to help. They don’t seem to understand that the moderates who are brave enough to stand up are constantly drowned out by the Islamists who are more media savvy, better organized, and considerably better financed.”
Ozbek referred to his notes. “So that’s where this Operation Glass Canyon that you told the FBI about came in?”
“Yes,” said Salam. “Operation Glass Canyon was supposed to take the fight directly to the fundamentalists.”
“This was headquartered out of your firm, McAllister & Associates?”
“My part of it was. I thought the rest was being handled by the FBI.”
“What is McAllister & Associates?” asked Ozbek.
“It’s a P.R. and lobbying firm that specializes in Muslim clients. It was my cover, which allowed me to infiltrate the Islamist movement in America.”
“And were you successful?”
“Very,” replied Salam. “I placed or turned people in almost every hardcore Islamist organization in the country.”
“Didn’t you ever get suspicious that you weren’t really working for the FBI?” asked Ozbek. “According to what