At last, someone who knows the truth and is unafraid to say it. But of course, he isn’t in the CIA anymore. From the Canadian Jewish News, with thanks to Ali Dashti:
A former top official of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency paints a menacing picture of the relationship between Islam and terrorism.
“Islamic terrorism is based on Islam as revealed through the Qu’ran,” keynote speaker Bruce Tefft claimed in a panel discussion at the University of Toronto on jihad and global terrorism. The session, held late last month, was sponsored by the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Speakers Action Group.
Tefft, a founder of the CIA’s counter-terrorism center and now an advisor to the New York Police Department’s intelligence and counter-terrorism divisions, said that without Islam, the long-term strategy of Al Qaeda and its followers make little sense.
Linking Osama bin Laden to the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, Tefft said: “To pretend that Islam has nothing to do with Sept. 11 is to willfully ignore the obvious and to forever misinterpret events.”
In a harsh indictment of Islam – the world’s fastest growing religion and the second-largest faith after Christianity – Tefft said that while there may be moderate Muslims, Islam itself is immoderate.
I have said the same thing so many times here that I wonder if Tefft is reading Jihad Watch. Or reading the works of the ultimate source of his statement, the great Ibn Warraq.
And, he added, “There is no difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, which is a totalitarian construct.”
According to Tefft, the Qu’ran enjoins Muslims to believe that the whole world should be governed by the principles of Islam, an expansionist religion that has historically grown through conquest.
All infidels are to be converted, enslaved or killed, he said, drawing on the knowledge of Bernard Lewis, a Jewish historian who has written books about Islam and Islamic history.
Although I am not at all sure, unfortunately, that Lewis himself would endorse Tefft’s analysis.
Tefft, whose career at the CIA spanned 21 years, argued that Islam was a religion of peace and tolerance in its formative phase, but has since grown intolerant of non-Muslims.
This is correct if Tefft locates the change within the lifetime of Muhammad, since it actually came around the time he moved from Mecca to Medina and became, for the first time, the leader of an army and a polity.
Islam cannot be reformed because its teachings, as revealed through the Qu’ran, are regarded as the word of God, and to be a Muslim, a believer must accept the Qu’ran on a literal basis, Tefft said.
This is very close to what I argued in Islam Unveiled: that Islamic reformers will always be reproached — effectively — by radicals with the charge that they are disloyal to the Qur’an and Hadith. This makes any thoroughgoing worldwide reform of Islam a longshot at best — and emphasizes that any such reform must be a clear and emphatic rejection of Qur’anic literalism.
He said Islam views Judaism and Christianity as failed religions and itself as the only true religion.
Indeed — and that also is abundantly attested in the Qur’an (see, to take just one example, 9:30).