The Parisian Intifada and “The Project”

By Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, November 29, 2007

Paris is burning, yet again. The Muslim immigrant “youths” in the banlieues have taken to the streets to expand a Western front in the global jihad. This time, however, instead of just burning cars and throwing rocks, this week they have taken up arms against French police. As the Associated Press reported on the violence around Paris late Tuesday, noting the escalation beyond the car-burning intifada of November 2005, such that even apologetic Associated Press reporters are forced to describe the present rioters as “urban guerillas”:

Youths rampaged for a third night in the tough suburbs north of Paris and violence spread to a southern city late Tuesday as police struggled to contain rioters who have burned cars and buildings and — in an ominous turn — shot at officers.

A senior police union official warned that "urban guerrillas" had joined the unrest, saying the violence was worse than during three weeks of rioting that raged around French cities in 2005, when firearms were rarely used.

The urban warfare we are seeing in Paris, as well as the systematic violence by Muslim immigrants in other major cities throughout Europe, are in accord with the strategic planning documents drafted by the Muslim Brotherhood in recent decades in their hopes to establish a global caliphate through jihad.

Here I want to examine these recent events in light of the strategy articulated in two of these planning documents, one focusing generally on the West written in the early 1980s, and another elaborating on their “Civilization-Jihadist Process” developed in the 1990s. This process of confrontation also reflects a traditional Islamic view of constant warfare, muqawama, interspersed with temporary truces, hudna, to regroup for further conflict – a doctrine of warfare adopted by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In May 2006, I introduced FrontPage readers to one such Muslim Brotherhood document known in Western counterintelligence circles as “The Project”. FrontPage readers were the first to read the entire document in English translation, obtained during a December 2001 raid on the compound of Yousef Nada, a primary international Muslim Brotherhood figure and financier.

The document is self-dated December 1982, around the time that the Muslim Brotherhood was engaged in a comprehensive organizational reworking. During this period it was determined that rather than continuing confrontation with the Arab nationalist regimes in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood would direct their efforts elsewhere, particularly Europe, and later, the United States.

In fact, in my introduction to “The Project”, I noted the connection between this strategic planning document and the November 2005 French intifada, as well as other contemporary events in Europe:

What makes The Project so different from the standard “Death of America! Death to Israel!” and “Establish the global caliphate!” Islamist rhetoric is that it represents a flexible, multi-phased, long-term approach to the “cultural invasion” of the West. Calling for the utilization of various tactics, ranging from immigration, infiltration, surveillance, propaganda, protest, deception, political legitimacy and terrorism, The Project has served for more than two decades as the Muslim Brotherhood “master plan”. As can be seen in a number of examples throughout Europe – including the political recognition of parallel Islamist government organizations in Sweden, the recent “cartoon” jihad in Denmark, the Parisian car-burning intifada last November, and the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London – the plan outlined in The Project has been overwhelmingly successful.

The strategic plan outlined within “The Project” specifically directs the connection of Muslim minorities in the West with the global jihadist movements elsewhere in the world as the sole “suggested mission” under the document’s “Ninth Point of Departure”:

THE NINTH POINT OF DEPARTURE

To construct a permanent force of the Islamic dawa and support movements engaged in jihad across the Muslim world, to varying degrees and insofar as possible.

a-Elements:

To protect the dawa with the force necessary to guarantee its security at the local and international levels.

To make contact with all new movements engaged in jihad, everywhere on the planet, and with Muslim minorities, and to create links as needed to establish and support collaboration.

To maintain jihad and awakening throughout the Ummah.

b-Procedures:

To form an autonomous security force to protect the dawa and its disciples locally and worldwide.

To study movements engaged in jihad in the Muslim world, as well as among Muslim minorities, to better understand them.

c-Suggested Missions:

To build bridges between movements engaged in jihad in the Muslim world, and between Muslim minorities, and to support them insofar as possible within a framework of collaboration. [emphasis added]

This theme is also picked up in Eleventh Point of Departure where it directs Muslim Brotherhood leaders to continue to agitate their followers to keep them in what counterterror analyst Oliver Guitta has called a “jihad frame of mind” by leveraging the Palestinian jihad against Israel amongst their followers and “to breed a feeling of resentment towards the Jews and refuse any form of coexistence with them”.

This same template of continuously escalating agitation has been directed against French law enforcement. In the November 2005 intifada, the “hero” was a Muslim boy who electrocuted himself while trying to hide from pursuing police. This most recent incident over the weekend involved the death of two Muslim “youths” riding a stolen motorbike that crashed at a high rate of speed into a police vehicle. Riots around Paris began almost immediately.

Muslim leaders have used these respective incidents to cultivate a “jihad frame of mind” to incite to violence the Muslim immigrant youth in the French cities. Since the November 2005 riots, attacks against police officers have continued on almost a daily basis in the banlieues. Now the attacks have grown more violent as the “urban guerrillas” are using firearms to attack police.

What is happening currently in France, and the campaign of violence and crime used by Muslim leaders elsewhere in Europe (such as Malmo, Sweden, the third largest city in the country that has been paralyzed by violence from the Muslim community against non-Muslims), fits perfectly into the strategic framework outlined in another Muslim Brotherhood document published a decade after “The Project”.

The second Muslim Brotherhood document I want to examine came out of the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial this past summer as an exhibit for the prosecution. Entitled, “An Explanatory Memorandum: On the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America”, bears a publication date of May 1991, but indicates that it represents principles outlined by the Muslim Brotherhood as early as 1987.

Under Section Four of the document, “The Process of Settlement”, it identifies the “grand mission” of the organization as the “Civilization Jihadist responsibility”:

In order for Islam and its Movement to become “a part of the homeland” in which it lives, “stable” in the land, “rooted” in the spirits and minds of its people, “enabled” in the lives of its society and has firmly-established “organizations” on which the Islamic structure is built and with which the testimony of the civilization is achieved, the Movement must plan and struggle to obtain “the keys” and the tools of this process in carry out this grand mission as a “Civilization Jihadist” responsibility which lies on the shoulders of Muslim and – on top of them – the Muslim Brotherhood in this country. (page 5 of 18)

In that same section, it directs leaders to foster “understanding the role of the Muslim Brother in North America” as the destruction and “sabotaging” of Western civilization from within through the “Civilization-Jihadist Process”:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the means. The Ikhwan [the Arabic name for the Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is not escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal. (Page 7 of 18, emphasis added)

The critical aspect to the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” is that it works upon two separate lines: “their (non-Muslim) hands” and “the hands of believers”. The document further outlines how to exploit existing internal weaknesses within Western civilization: “we must possess a mastery of the art of ‘coalitions’, the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation’”. Through internal sabotage and creating their own external pressure (jihad/terrorism), they aim to topple the West. (I would highly recommend the respective detailed analyses of this Muslim Brotherhood document by my colleagues LTC Joseph Myers, Pentagon analyst Stephen Coughlin, and the researchers at the NEFA Foundation.)

The present violence we are seeing in France and elsewhere is undeniably the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Civilization-Jihadist Process” at work. As I previously noted, the violence in France never officially ended after November 2005, it just continued on a limited scale low enough to prevent a forceful response by authorities. With a new pretended provocation, the forces of jihad have re-inflamed their supporters, only in this case escalating matters even further by resorting to arms.

This jihadist pattern of intense peaks of violence, followed by extended periods of low-level conflict, then with even more intense violence, is a pattern used by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian arm, HAMAS, in their insurgency against Israel. As described by Yaniz Ofek here at FrontPage earlier this month, “The Islamic ‘Muqawama’”, the doctrine of muqawama is a “long, obstinate, and persistent struggle”.

But unlike conventional warfare, as Ofek notes, muqawama can be distinguished by four unique patterns:

1) Muqawama, whether in Israel or in the West, is seen as part of the larger global jihad;

2) Little emphasis is placed on territory;

3) Death is seen as an advantage;

4) Battle is almost conducted amongst civilians.

Ehud Yaari of the Washington Institute also explains (“The Muqawama Doctrine”) in this constant state of warfare, both HAMAS and Hezbollah have acknowledged that “when in need of a respite, it is permitted to reach hudna (armistice) agreements, valid for a limited period only.” These periods of hudna do not necessarily mean the complete cessation of hostilities, but reining in the violence to lower levels to prepare for the next expected period of assault without provoking confrontation with the enemy. This has been the official pattern of conflict followed for the past two decades by HAMAS.

The endgame of muqawama and the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” is “the erosion of the enemy’s resolve”. For this reason, as Yaari notes, “the essence is to spill blood, and since that is the case, it is better to focus on the civilian population as the primary target”.

The French intifada is taking place not only in the heart of France, but in the heart of Europe itself. Much like the 9/11 attacks that were directed at the financial and political centers of America, both symbolically and really, the constant campaign of violence by Muslims throughout Europe are intended to extend the global jihad to the deepest centers of the West. But rather than confront the West militarily, the battle against Western civilization that they have already enjoined is going to take place in the banlieues, not the battlefield. Various instruments of violence are being used, ranging from crime, rioting, and as we see in Paris today, urban warfare. Terrorism is currently used only occasionally to initiate peak periods, but we can expect its increased use as the conflict continues.

The difficulty for us on the working end of the “Civilization-Jihadist Process” is that our leaders have steadfastly refused to understand the nature of the threat and the interrelation between what is happening in Paris, France and Khandahar, Afghanistan. While different methodologies are being used, the endgame is still the same: the establishment of the global caliphate through jihad. We must come to terms with strategy and operations of radical Islam in the West, the manner in which they manage conflict, and realize the immanent nature of the threat already in our midst – a lesson the French are learning first-hand.

Until we do, the strategic planning of the forces of the global jihad, as expressed in “The Project” and other Muslim Brotherhood planning documents, will continue to meet with unimpeded success.