THE WARNING – AT 10:20 P.M. ET:  I was at an off-the-record briefing tonight on radical Islam, and am now back in White Plains, which is about 22 miles north of Manhattan.

The briefing was delivered by a British citizen of Middle East origin who was sucked into radical Islam and became an influential activist, before breaking with the movement and joining a campaign against it.  He told how he got in, and how he got out.

One member of the audience said, and I agree, that this gentleman's description of his journey reminded him of how people got involved in the Communist Party in the thirties and forties, and how some of them saw the light and left, or tried to leave.  Trying to get out, of course, is much harder than getting in because you're subjected to ridicule, shunning and threats...and so is your family.  Ronald Reagan used to relate stories about how, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was visited by members asking for his help in getting them out of the Communist Party. It wasn't like resigning from the school board.

The most important point to come from this expert tonight was his seasoned view that homegrown radical Islam is becoming a major threat to the United States, that we are where Britain was 20 years ago.  He feels that the Obama administration projects weakness – something we've discussed here many times – and that weakness simply encourages the jihadists to organize.   He also feels that the Obamans, and many other Americans, have little idea how to deal with a fanatical ideology because they don't understand the concept of ideology at all.

I came away deeply impressed with the speaker's knowledge and history, and deeply depressed by his assessment of the age of Obama.  Britain has had a terrible time with homegrown radical Islam, a movement mightily helped by radical leftists in universities, who consider the Islamists simply "oppressed."  I'm afraid it's our turn, and we're not ready.

Sadly, there are too many "sophisticates" who don't want us to be.

April 11, 2011