Steven Emerson Discusses "Cultural Jihad" & Considers Australia Attack "Very Viable"

By Andrew Cochran

An outstanding profile of Steven Emerson has been published in the March 7 issue of "The Bulletin" in Australia. In it, Steve comments on the compromises by Western media with the jihadists over the Mohammed cartoons, labels an attack on Australia as "very viable" given certain factors, and criticizes the Karen Hughes-led effort to reach out to the Arab world. I've known Steve for over 4 years, and this is the best profile of his work and the implications for his personal life that I have read in that time. Steve, his staff at The Investigative Project on Terrorism, the experts whom I've come to know (starting with our Contributing Experts), and top counterterrorism officials in the U.S. government have one thing in common: they live, eat, and breathe this stuff out of love of country and fear of the next 9/11. I'm sure that the same is true of many of their counterparts in other countries. All deserve our respect and admiration. The profile also punctures some myths about Steve and the IPT perpetrated by his enemies. Some segments from the profile:

Emerson reserves some of his ire for the editors here and elsewhere who failed to publish the Danish cartoon capers of the prophet Mohammed. �Are they worried about their own skin or are they worried about the national interest? Are they worried about Australians being attacked overseas? And if so, how does that always dictate what they publish anyway? If they discovered that Australians were abusing Iraqi prisoners, would they withhold reporting about that? Absolutely not.�

And here Emerson bumps up against one of his principal anxieties: that the compromises the West has made with radical Islam are leading to a dilution of its own freedoms. He damns it as �cultural jihad� � the deliberate insinuation into Western society of fundamentalist Muslim elements masquerading as pluralist. While the West responds by tempering its own behaviour, the jihadis �by virtue of their vehemence and irrationality, [have] become much more leveraged in ... their ability to influence our behaviour � and I reject that!�

Emerson believes an attack on Australian soil is �very viable�. He says: �You�ve got two areas of vulnerability. You�ve got one, due to being in the target range of Jemaah Islamiyah. And two, you have a critical mass of jihadists on Australian soil ... [who have] sufficient conditions to create jihadist cells that are not connected to external hierarchies like al Qaeda.� He likens Australia�s circumstances to that of the US. Both countries are operating �in this enigmatic environment of not knowing who�s really a moderate�.

Despite broadly supporting the work done by US law enforcement agencies, Emerson alludes to an underlying malaise. �If I were to publicly disclose the degree to which there is a dysfunctional common denominator to agencies, people would not believe it.� Nor does he hold fire when it comes to Karen Hughes, whom George W. Bush hand-picked to repair bridges to the Muslim world. �When Karen Hughes runs into the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and says, �Oh forgive us, we�re on the same page. We can agree on our values�, we can�t agree on the same values with the Muslim Brotherhood! There�s no possibility of agreeing on their same values if they believe in the notion of sharia. I think that what she has done has been exceptionally detrimental to our national interest of upholding the rights of women, of pluralism, of democracy in the Muslim world.�

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