National Review asked Mary Habeck, Victor Davis Hanson, Zuhdi Jasser, Daniel Pipes and me to contribute some brief reflections on the Fort Dix jihad case. Here are the submissions from Pipes and me:
Daniel Pipes
I draw two lessons. First, that immigrants seeking refuge in the West must be grilled for their attitudes toward our civilization, our religion, and politics. Whether it be Somali refugees in the United Kingdom, Algerian ones in France, or Balkan ones in the United States (remember the Salt Lake City shooter in February, as well as four of the current six accused terrorists), individuals given the privilege and benefits of a new life then with some regularity turn around and attack their adapted fellow citizens. This unacceptable pattern has to be scrutinized to prevent future such atrocities.
[…]
Robert Spencer
Four of the Fort Dix plotters are in the United States because of America’s support for the jihad of the Kosovo Albanian Muslims. They are among those who have taken advantage of American officialdom’s refusal to consider the implications of the flow of jihadists from Afghanistan and elsewhere into the Balkans in the 1990s, and of the ideological affinity between the Kosovar jihadists and jihadists elsewhere. While the U.S. supported the Kosovo jihad, it was infiltrated and ultimately co-opted by al Qaeda; after that, members and supporters of the jihadist Kosovo Liberation Army were allowed to enter this country with little or no scrutiny.
The Fort Dix episode thus illustrates how foolish it is for the U.S. to assume that it can ally with jihadists, or at very least use them in order to defeat enemies who are perceived as being a more urgent immediate threat. By concluding such alliances America will never win, in any significant numbers, hearts and minds away from the jihad ideology of Islamic supremacism, which ultimately views all non-Muslims as to be converted to Islam, subjugated as inferiors, or killed. The Fort Dix plot is just the latest illustration of how seriously jihadists take that imperative.