An Impressive Record of Success

SINCE I started Citizen Warrior, I've been trying to find things an ordinary citizen can DO that will actually help defeat the third jihad. ACT! For America (AFA) is the best thing I've found so far. They are organized and they are successfully defeating Islam's relentless encroachment in one of the most important places: In the political arena.

As it says in AFA's brochure, "ACT! for America is a nationwide organization of concerned Americans who want to be informed, who want to inform others, and who are uniting together to speak out against and resist the rising tide of Islamofascism — and the 'political correctness' that excuses it, rationalizes it, dismisses it, or blames America for it."

In a series of messages from the founder of AFA, Brigitte Gabriel, she wrote about what AFA has accomplished so far. The following are quotes from her recent letters:

Less than 14 months ago we launched ACT! for America, and we now have close to 50,000 members and nearly 230 local chapters.

In January we launched a petition and legislator-contact effort to help get “Rachel’s Law” passed in the New York state legislature. “Rachel’s Law” was introduced to protect New York authors from intimidation lawsuits filed against them in foreign jurisdictions. Thousands of members signed the petition and/or contacted New York legislators, and in late March the bill passed and was signed into law. The momentum from this victory led to the introduction of similar legislation, entitled “The Free Speech Protection Act,” in the U.S. Congress.

In the spring, with the help of the erstwhile leadership of former board member Jerry Gordon and our colleague Joseph Shahda, some key terrorist websites were taken offline by their American internet service providers. Later in the year this “dynamic duo,” working closely with the staff of Senator Joe Lieberman, helped bring about a new policy at Google/YouTube, which will no longer allow the posting of videos depicting terrorist acts perpetrated against Americans.

In March news stories reported that a charter school in Minnesota, the Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA), appeared to be engaging in impermissible promotion of Islam at its taxpayer-funded school. Through email alerts, the actions of our central Minnesota chapter, and other efforts aimed at the Minnesota Department of Education, we called on the Department to take action. It did, launching an investigation of the school. The investigation resulted in the Department of Education issuing two citations to the school for violations of law.

In June we launched a nationwide petition calling on Congress to convene hearings to review extremist materials found in American mosques, a petition we will present to the new Congress in early 2009.

In early August we learned that a Tennessee Tyson Foods plant had negotiated a labor contract with its employees that removed Labor Day as a paid holiday and replaced it with Eid al-Fitr, the Islamic holiday closing the month of Ramadan. In response to an email action alert we sent out, countless ACT! for America members called and emailed Tyson Foods to object to this action. Three days later Tyson Foods issued a press release reinstating Labor Day as one of its paid holidays and removing Eid al-Fitr as a required paid holiday for all employees.

So I want to thank you for all you did to help make all of this possible. When you forwarded one of our emails, or made a contribution, or contacted a chapter leader, or took action on one of our action alerts, you helped move us forward. You helped make these accomplishments possible. We are steadily growing, and our collective voice is getting stronger and harder for politicians to ignore.

We’ve had over 1,500 people sign up on our website to be members in just the past couple of weeks. Kelly Cook, our National Field Director, tells me we’ll add twice as many new chapters this month compared to the last six months.

In the words of our Founding Fathers, “these are the times that try men’s souls.” These are the times that test and strengthen our character. Thankfully, as difficult as things now appear they’re not yet as trying as the times our founders faced. We still have so much to be grateful for.

But we can’t afford to forget that our radical Islamist enemies not only welcome but thrive on chaos and confusion. They’re hoping we get so caught up in the economic challenges facing us that we’ll forget about them. They’re hoping we won’t see them using Shariah-compliant finance to exploit America’s financial challenges and uncertainties. They may very well launch a major terrorist attack in the very near future, calculating that a nation coping with economic distress led by a new President, inexperienced in foreign policy, will lack the will to respond. And without question they will accelerate their efforts to infiltrate every level of our government to manipulate public policy in their favor.

AFA is doing what needs to be done to overcome the political barriers to an effective defense against Islam's relentless encroachment. I urge you to sign up for the AFA newsletter, to tell your friends about AFA, to join a local chapter in your area, and to read her two books.

Whoever is the most organized is going to win.

And please, those of you in other countries who know of a similar organization in your country, please leave contact information for the organization in the comments to this article. Thank you.