National Security and Conservative Leaders Congratulate Gov. Jindal for His Leadership in Countering the Global Jihad Movement and Shariah

(Washington, D.C.): Dozens of national security professionals and conservative thought leaders have signed a letter to Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana congratulating him on his recent remarks to the Henry Jackson Society in London, during which he forthrightly identified the threat posed by the Islamic jihadist movement and the shariah doctrine it seeks to impose globally, and the fundamental incompatibility of that doctrine with American Constitutional freedoms.

The letter, organized by the Center for Security Policy, states in part:

“We want to congratulate you for your recent remarks at the Henry Jackson Society in London in which you exhibited exemplary clarity of thought, commitment to truth and dedication to our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees. The fact that you are being severely, and reprehensibly, attacked for doing so in connection with the central threat of our time – the Islamic supremacist doctrine of shariah and the global jihad being conducted to impose it on all of us – is an indictment of your critics, not of you. To the contrary, such criticisms should be regarded as a badge of honor.

In particular, it was enormously heartening to hear, at last, a senior and highly influential American political figure make the following, entirely accurate observation:

‘We have to stop pretending that right and wrong do not exist. For example – shariah law is not just different than our law, it’s not just a cultural difference, it is oppression and it is wrong. It subjugates women and treats them as property, and it is antithetical to valuing all of human life equally. It is the very definition of oppression.  We must stop pretending otherwise.’”

Among those who signed the letter are:

• Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, US Army (Ret.), Former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; Executive Vice President, Family Research Council
• Andrew C. McCarthy, Former Chief Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York; Bestselling author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad and The Grand Jihad
• J. Kenneth Blackwell, Former U.S. Ambassador, U.N. Human Rights Commission
• Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
• Brigitte Gabriel, Founder & CEO, ACT for America
• Hank Cooper, High Frontier
• Col. Kenneth J. Benway, US Army Special Forces (Ret.), Co-Founder, Special Operations Speaks

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, stated:

“Gov. Jindal has done a tremendous service for the national security of the United States by articulating, unapologetically, that the ideology of shariah is fundamentally incompatible with American democracy and our way of life. It is our hope that other potential candidates for the presidency will follow Gov. Jindal’s lead, and that policymakers will take his watershed remarks as a starting point from which to craft policies recognizing that the threat we face comes not singularly from a nation-state like Iran or a non-state actor like the Islamic State, but from the shariah ideology connecting and motivating them and so many other adversaries, both violent and non-violent, who share the goal of supplanting our way of life with theirs.”

The full text of the letter can be found below.

In addition, Mr. Gaffney transmitted a copy of the open letter to Gov. Jindal to other potential Republican and Democratic candidates for the presidency, inquiring as to whether they support his stance on the threat posed by Islamic supremacism and the global jihad movement. A copy of one such accompanying transmittal letter is also attached.

Joint Letter Thanking Gov. Bobby Jindal

Frank Gaffney letter 12215