Writing in 2002, she said:

“Perhaps the best parallel is with early communism. Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing long-term strategy to defeat it.”

The Iron Lady nailed it.  Though the terms Islamo-fascist and Islamo-nazi are used these days with regularity, perhaps Islamo-bolshevik should become part of our vocabulary.  Though Islam and communism as ideologies bear little resemblance to each other, beyond a mutual affinity for subduing and controlling others, they do have much in common methodologically. 

It is a mistake to think of terror as the only weapon in the Islamist arsenal.  It is a very public one, indeed – and horrifying.  But behind the ugliness of terrorism lies a persistent and pernicious pattern of deceit and manipulation.  The term taqiyya refers to the practice of deliberate deceit in the service of Islamist goals.  The ends justify the means, in other words - lying, fraud, stealing, cheating, all things that most religions commonly consider sins, are perfectly appropriate in the pursuit of jihad. 

John J. Dziak, Ph.D., a professor at The Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., has written extensively on Russian Intelligence.  Last year, his article, Islamism and Stratagem, appeared in The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies.  He drew parallels between the methods used by current day Islamists, and those used ninety-plus years ago by Lenin and company:

“The Bolshevik regime was a conspiracy come to power.  The Soviet Union in practice was a seventy-one-year old counterintelligence operation raised to the level of a state system.

Organic to such a counterintelligence system is the widespread practice of provocations, diversion, deception, disinformation, ‘maskirovka’ (military focused deception), penetration, and other active measures of a highly aggressive nature.”

He also noted that, “from its earliest history Islam has practiced what westerners label stratagem, deception, dissimulation, concealment, etc., in its dealings with not only the Infidel but with other Muslims, as well.”  He identified Islamism as, “the twenty-first century heir to the counterintelligence state traditions of the totalitarian systems of the last century.”

During a recent radio interview, Brigitte Gabriel, author of the new book, They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It, told me, “history reveals very clearly that the apathetic give way to the passionate, and the complacent are subdued by the committed.” 

I have written before about the love Islamists have for a spurious document called, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  This anti-Semitic tract, though long-ago exposed as a forgery created by the Tsar’s secret police to foster anti-Jewish sentiment in early 20^th century Russia, has long been a favorite of demagogues from Adolf Hitler to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

The ironic thing is that, though the idea of a vast Jewish conspiracy to control the world has been so clearly proven as false, a group called the Muslim Brotherhood actually did write a plot of their own.

And this document is no forgery.

Brigitte Gabriel devotes an entire chapter to this in her book and it is chilling to read.  Discovered in Switzerland just a few weeks after September 11, 2001, “The Project,” as it has come to be known, outlines a century long plan “to dominate the West and establish an Islamic government on earth.” 

It is a 14-page “How To” manual about infiltrating a society en route to eventually subjugating it.  Among its instructions are such motivational nuggets as:

• Avoiding open alliances with known terrorist organizations and individuals to maintain the appearance of “moderation.”
• Infiltrating and taking over existing Muslim organizations to realign them toward the Muslim Brotherhood’s collective goals.
• Using deception to mask the intended goals of Islamist actions, so long as it doesn’t conflict with Sharia law.
• Involving ideologically committed Muslims in democratically elected institutions on all levels in the West, including government, NGOs, private organizations, and labor unions.
• Instrumentally using existing Western institutions until they can be converted and put into the service of Islam.
• Collecting sufficient funds to indefinitely perpetuate and support jihad around the world.

Lenin could not have said it any better in What Is To Be Done.