New Shariah study documents Islamist threat

A nearly complete ground-breaking study has documented an alarming fact:

It appears that the majority of American mosques are operated by adherents to the doctrine of Shariah law, and in these mosques where compliance to Shariah law is observed, a violent jihadism is preached.

While the study suggests that most American Muslims do not attend either these sorts of institutions or the substantially smaller percentage that promote a peaceful, tolerant and law-abiding form of Islam, the preponderance of mosque-going Muslims in this country are being regularly exposed to a potentially violent jihadist strain of the faith.

The "Mapping Shariah" (MS) study is managed by David Yerushalmi, an accomplished attorney-litigator specializing in public policy and Shariah law, and overseen by retired career U.S. Air Force counterintelligence agent, David Gaubatz, who serves as its Director of Field Research, in conjunction with the Center for Security Policy’s Islamist Project.  In recent months, on-site investigations of more than 100 of the roughly 2,300 facilities in the United States, selected randomly, have been conducted under Mr. Gaubatz’s supervision by trained counterintelligence professionals, many of whom have Arabic, Farsi or Urdu language skills.

Based on preliminary evaluations of the first 102 mosques, there are grounds for serious concern about jihadist activities in more than seventy percent of these religious institutions.  According to the research protocol, approximately forty percent of these Islamic facilities were assessed at a threat level requiring placement on a law enforcement watch list or more specific surveillance.

Carefully developed protocols were observed at all times in accordance with the study’s exacting and empirical methodology.  Where it was legal, audio and/or video recordings were made of interactions with imams and others associated with the investigated institutions.

Final results of the first research sample of the investigators’ observations will be published in late March.  In the meantime, this chart illustrates the data from the initial 100 mosques under investigation, and the high correlation between the observance of so-called "Shariah law" and jihadist activities.

Center for Security Policy President Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. observed: "The Mapping Shariah study is the first of its kind – an effort systematically to observe and report on what is happening in America’s mosques.  While the data produced in the first tranche of this study is still being prepared for publication, its results are deeply disturbing:  Under the guise of protected religious practice, most mosques in this country appear to embrace a seditious program for replacing our Constitution with a theocracy known as a caliphate, and embrace the use of violence if necessary to achieve that agenda.  If so, it is time for those sworn to uphold our Constitution – law enforcement agencies, the courts and the executive and legislative branches – to monitor such activities and, where appropriate, take corrective action."

The first 102 mosques and other facilities were chosen on the basis of a stratified random selection.  Drawing upon publicly available data bases, all known mosques were put into a data base. Census and demographic data were used to determine the states with the highest Muslim populations (as a percentage of the total population, as estimated by census).  Mosques were then stratified and ranked by population and state and the number of mosques chosen for each state were determined by the Muslim population ratio among the states.  Finally, the mosques within each state were randomized for selection.  (When a mosque was closed or abandoned, the next nearest mosque from the list or based upon field data was chosen as a replacement.)

The study seeks to examine the correlation between Shariah law-adherence and the call for violent Jihad. The researchers carefully document data on Shariah law-adherence – the independent variable. Data is also collected on the call for violent jihad in the form of materials given out at the mosque or promoted by the local imam or mosque leadership – the dependent variable. The study to date has established a very high positive correlation of 0.86 (1.0 being a perfect correlation and 0 being none) between Shariah law-adherence and the call for violent Jihad.

The protocol followed by Mapping Shariah researchers began with open-source research being conducted prior to visits to each of the mosques selected for research (including surveys of information available via the Internet, phone calls to mosque, etc.) Wherever possible, a determination was made of the institution’s sect affiliation (Shi’a or Sunni) and dominant foreign language, if any.

Law enforcement-trained personnel engaged as Field Researchers then visited the mosques and evaluated them on the basis of pre-determined indices of Shariah law observance.  Observations as well as literature and audio-video material were collected where available.  In addition, notes were made of conversations undertaken with imams and others associated with the mosque leadership.  All data obtained was then recorded into field research forms or entered into a digital data base for subsequent evaluation and entry into the Shariah-Jihad Threat Level Matrix for scoring on a score of 1 through 10.

For the purposes of interpreting the data shown on the attached chart, Shariah adherence is considered strict over 4 and typically Salafist over 7.  Jihad levels are worrisome over 3, dangerous at 5 and reportable at 7.  Threat levels over 4 should be on a law enforcement watch list and 7 or higher have been reported to law enforcement and/or intelligence agencies for surveillance. There have been more than a half dozen cases where the legal team for Mapping Shariah issued a Serious Incident Report when specific calls for violent Jihad were promoted directly to the Researcher.