Austin, TX – (01/26/2017) – To bet­ter under­stand the crit­i­cal threat of rad­i­cal Islam­ic ter­ror­ism in Texas, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kyle Bie­der­mann host­ed a Home­land Secu­ri­ty Forum on Thurs­day at the Texas State Capi­tol to enact poli­cies and mech­a­nisms to bet­ter pro­tect Texas.

The forum enti­tled, “Defend­ing Against Rad­i­cal Islam­ic Ter­ror­ism in Texas,” was host­ed by State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kyle Bie­der­mann and focused on the threats of rad­i­cal Islam­ic ter­ror­ism and what Texas must do to be bet­ter pre­pared to defend against it. 

“With the rise of rad­i­cal Islam­ic ter­ror­ism through­out the world, our home­land secu­ri­ty must be our top pri­or­i­ty. When I took office, I assem­bled a Law Enforce­ment & Home­land Secu­ri­ty Advi­so­ry Coun­cil. The num­ber one pri­or­i­ty of the advi­so­ry coun­cil, and my top pri­or­i­ty, has been bor­der secu­ri­ty, and keep­ing Texas strong and secure. In recent years we have seen over 100,000 ille­gal aliens from coun­tries oth­er than Mex­i­co cross­ing over our south­ern bor­der annu­al­ly. These ille­gals hailed from coun­tries out­side of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, from places like Iraq, Iran, Syr­ia, Afghanistan, and Pak­istan. We have a respon­si­bil­i­ty as Tex­ans to secure our bor­der and to pro­tect against the seri­ous, and grow­ing, threats of ter­ror­ism. I’m eager to work with my col­leagues in the leg­is­la­ture to take swift actions to ensure Texas is safe and secure for all our res­i­dents,” said State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kyle Bie­der­mann.

Through­out the forum, experts from across the nation spoke on the dan­gers of rad­i­cal Islam­ic activ­i­ty in the state of Texas. More specif­i­cal­ly, its effects on Texas cit­i­zens and the his­to­ry under­ly­ing rad­i­cal Islam in the Unit­ed States and Texas were dis­cussed. The role of Islam­ic groups with con­nec­tions to ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions was also at the fore­front in respect to these issues.

The pre­sen­ters includ­ed sub­ject mat­ter experts: Dr. Zuh­di Jass­er — Pres­i­dent & Founder; Amer­i­can Islam­ic Forum for Democ­ra­cy; Non­ie Dar­wish — Pres­i­dent & Founder, For­mer Mus­lims Unit­ed; Chris Gaubatz — Vice Pres­i­dent, Under­stand­ing The Threat; Beth Van Duyne — May­or, Irv­ing, TX; Karen Lugo — Attor­ney at Law and Kamal Saleem — Koome Min­istries. The pre­sen­ters pro­vid­ed insight as the 85th Texas Leg­is­la­ture seeks solu­tions to rad­i­cal Islam’s neg­a­tive impact on Texas citizens. 

Speak­ing first was the Pres­i­dent & Founder of For­mer Mus­lims Unit­ed, Non­ie Dar­wish. An Egypt­ian-Amer­i­can human rights activist, Dar­wish focused on how lead­ers of the Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty in Amer­i­ca have refused to repu­di­ate the Islam­ic laws that pun­ish with exe­cu­tion, phys­i­cal harm, boy­cott and pub­lic humil­i­a­tion to those Amer­i­can Mus­lims who choose to leave Islam. 

“Accord­ing to Sharia law, Islam must con­trol the state (gov­ern­ment) and wher­ev­er Mus­lim lead­ers go they advo­cate that. And since Islam is not open to crit­i­cism, the Islam­ic state or gov­ern­ment must also not be open to crit­i­cism unless it devi­ates from Sharia. Any­one who leaves Islam must be exe­cut­ed in all four schools of Islam and the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Mus­lims agree with that. I per­son­al­ly have been threat­ened even though I am an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen I do not feel secure in my rights to life, lib­er­ty and pur­suit of hap­pi­ness. These are not the pri­or­i­ties of Islam­ic law, but jihad is the num­ber one pri­or­i­ty for all Mus­lims espe­cial­ly the Mus­lim lead­ers. Accord­ing­ly I found it dif­fi­cult to accom­mo­date my loy­al­ty to the US legal sys­tem and my loy­al­ty to Sharia and that was one of the rea­sons I had to leave Islam. But unfor­tu­nate­ly I have ostra­cized by the Islam­ic com­mu­ni­ty and lead­er­ship,” said Non­ie Dar­wish.

May­or Beth Van Duyne of Irv­ing, TX also spoke at the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Forum focus­ing on her city’s expe­ri­ence specif­i­cal­ly with Sharia. May­or Beth Van Duyne was hon­ored to be elect­ed May­or of Irv­ing, TX in 2011, hav­ing served as a city coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tive from 2004–2010. For­mer Deputy May­or Pro Tem, she estab­lished and chaired Irving’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mit­tee and has done exten­sive coali­tion build­ing among local, state and fed­er­al offi­cials and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers through­out the coun­try through her activ­i­ties with the US Con­fer­ence of May­ors, Nation­al League of Cities, Texas Munic­i­pal League and North Cen­tral Texas Coun­cil of Governments.

Karen Lugo, the for­mer Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Tenth Amend­ment Action at the Texas Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Foun­da­tion, focused on how Texas can work with the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty to aid the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion between Mus­lims who are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly com­pat­i­ble and those that seek to sup­plant it.

“Islamism pro­vides the smoke­screen behind which rad­i­cal­ism devel­ops into ter­ror­ism. We must join mod­er­ate and reform Mus­lims to ensure that Islamist efforts to under­mine con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dards in Amer­i­ca are iden­ti­fied, exposed and con­front­ed,” said Karen Lugo.   

Join­ing the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Sum­mit via Skype was Dr. M. Zuh­di Jass­er, an Amer­i­can Mus­lim, 11 year U.S. Navy vet­er­an, a physi­cian, and the founder of the Amer­i­can Islam­ic Forum for Democ­ra­cy (AIFD). A life­long con­ser­v­a­tive and advo­cate for indi­vid­ual lib­er­ty, Dr. Jass­er found­ed AIFD in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in order to orga­nize Amer­i­can Mus­lims and their allies against ‘polit­i­cal Islam’ which is the root cause of jihadist terror.

“As an Amer­i­can Mus­lim ded­i­cat­ed to both nation­al secu­ri­ty and to my faith, I look for­ward to shar­ing with Texas’ gov­ern­men­tal lead­er­ship the pro­found impor­tance of pub­licly engag­ing the Mus­lim Reform Move­ment in Home­land Secu­ri­ty. I look for­ward to work­ing on what our home­land secu­ri­ty should be doing to bridge the deep­en­ing gaps that exist in keep­ing us safe from the glob­al Islamist ide­olo­gies that threat­en our home­land,” said Dr. M. Zuh­di Jass­er.

Focus­ing specif­i­cal­ly on the the jiha­di threat, includ­ing jiha­di net­works in Texas, was Chris Gaubatz, Vice Pres­i­dent of Under­stand­ing the Threat. The major­i­ty of his pre­sen­ta­tion was focused on the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Hamas. In 2007, Chris began research­ing the threat of jiha­di orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States while intern­ing at the Coun­cil on Amer­i­can Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) in Vir­ginia. While work­ing at the CAIR office, Chris uncov­ered a fraud scheme being per­pe­trat­ed by CAIR’s “immi­gra­tion attor­ney” who was defraud­ing Mus­lims in the com­mu­ni­ty and lying about han­dling their immi­gra­tion pro­ceed­ings. In fact, he was not even a licensed attor­ney. When that office was shut down by CAIR in an effort to con­ceal this crim­i­nal activ­i­ty, Chris was invit­ed by Hamas/CAIR lead­ers to work at their head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. Chris’ entire sto­ry is fea­tured in the book Mus­lim Mafia authored by inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Paul Sper­ry and Dave Gaubatz (Chris’ Father).

“Per the largest ter­ror­ism financ­ing and Hamas tri­al in US his­to­ry, the US v. Holy Land Foun­da­tion, CAIR has been iden­ti­fied as a Hamas orga­ni­za­tion.  Hamas is a des­ig­nat­ed for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion by the US gov­ern­ment, and an inher­ent part of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood.  CAIR has the same agen­da as the Islam­ic State and Al Qae­da — a glob­al caliphate under Sharia.  Much of the war against jiha­di groups like Al Qae­da, the Islam­ic State, and the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (CAIR), is tak­ing place in the infor­ma­tion bat­tle­space; this is a war of nar­ra­tives.  By pos­ing as a civ­il rights group, CAIR is advanc­ing their agen­da with leg­is­la­tors and the media through infor­ma­tion cam­paigns like Mus­lim Capi­tol Day.  They must be opposed at every turn,” said Chris Gaubatz.

Also speak­ing at the Home­land Secu­ri­ty Forum was Kamal Saleem. Born into a large Sun­ni Mus­lim fam­i­ly in the heart of the Mid­dle East, Saleem was recruit­ed by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood at an ear­ly age, com­plet­ing his first mis­sion in Israel at the age of sev­en. Kamal left his fam­i­ly and home in the Mid­dle East as a young man to enter his mis­sion field; the Unit­ed States. He brought with him a tremen­dous pas­sion to con­vert as many Chris­tians and Jews as pos­si­ble for the glo­ry of Allah. He imple­ment­ed his plan, and worked effec­tive­ly in what we now know as “Stealth” cul­tur­al Jihad.

In 1985, Kamal’s world turned upside down when he was seri­ous­ly injured in an auto­mo­bile acci­dent. A Chris­t­ian man tend­ed to Kamal at the acci­dent scene, mak­ing sure he got the med­ical treat­ment he need­ed. Kamal’s ortho­pe­dic sur­geon and phys­i­cal ther­a­pist were also Chris­t­ian men whom over a peri­od of sev­er­al months min­is­tered the uncon­di­tion­al love of Jesus Christ to him as he recov­ered. The love and sac­ri­fi­cial giv­ing of these men caused Kamal to cry out to the God of Abra­ham, Isaac and Jacob acknowl­edg­ing his need for the Sav­ior. Kamal has since become a man on a new mis­sion, as an Ambas­sador for Christ. 

“I firm­ly believe rad­i­cal Islam is the most broad­ly dis­guised present dan­ger to Chris­tians, Jews and all non-Mus­lim peo­ple of the world,” said Kamal Saleem, of Koome Min­istries.

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