cover image Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terrorist Network in the United States

Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terrorist Network in the United States

Harvey W. Kushner. Sentinel, $24.95 (256pp) ISBN 978-1-59523-002-7

Kushner, a Long Island University professor of Criminal Justice and Security Administration and a federal government counter terrorism adviser, blames the Clinton administration, the ""liberal media"" and political correctness for creating what he sees as a climate that fostered a vast, ""secret Islamic network"" of Muslim terrorists operating within American borders. In finger-pointing, accusatory prose, Kushner attacks Clinton, the ACLU and anyone else with PC leanings for allowing Islamic terrorist operations to gain a foothold on these shores, primarily through universities, mosques, Muslim charities and the prison system. Kushner singles out Democrats and liberals for blame, and praises President Bush and Republicans, even though he contends the secret terror network continues to operate today. The fault lies squarely, he says, with liberals of all stripes who speak out against such anti-terrorism tactics as the Patriot Act and law enforcement's use of racial profiling. ""The only explanation as to why we continue to ignore the secret Islamic terror network in America is that the demands of political correctness have made us so afraid of being branded racists that we force ourselves to be color blind, identity blind and gender blind till we end up, quite simply, totally blind,"" Kushner says. Aside from its author's overt partisanship, this short book's other main failing is that it appears that the authors did nearly all of their research on the Internet. Virtually all of the endnotes cite Web sites. While there is a large amount of well-documented, credible information on the World Wide Web, the net is also the home of a vast amount of misinformation, unverifiable information, myth and propaganda, and some may find Kushner's sources to be poor basis for such strong claims.