Interviewer: What had you been taught up until that point and what are the Islamic schools teaching young kids?
Nonie Darwish: There's cursing of the infidels and cursing of the Jews almost all the time at the end of the sermon. "May God destroy the infidels and the Jews, the enemies of God." We'd hear that very commonly and believe it or not, it used to sound normal. It sounded normal. Because when you grow up on it all the time, you think this is right.
Interviewer: This is in the textbooks, isn't it? I mean, this is in the textbooks. This is what they learn.
Darwish: It's in the textbooks, and it's in the preaching of holy men in the mosque. There is something every American must understand, after 9/11 especially, that there is nothing that America has or has not done that causes terrorism.
Terrorism is violent jihad, and it's the duty of every Muslim. And that's why many Muslims are silent. Because they feel if they speak against terrorism, then they must be speaking against jihad. And that's why they have a conflict to speak out. And that's why Americans should never doubt their own value system or their own country or their even own foreign policy.
Interviewer: Well, you make a good point too, because after 9/11 and after some of the horrible things that we've seen on the news with the killing of Daniel Pearl, the journalist, we think, is it something about us? Why do they hate us so much? Why are we this great enemy? And it really is just...
Darwish: It is, we have an open system, and they have a closed system. Their existence here is their right to Islamize us. That's how they view us. They are here because they feel they want to Islamize us, and they give us no access into their country. Absolutely, if our... they consider non-Muslims as filth on their land. It's called najis [unclean, filth]. And that's why when our soldiers, American soldiers, went to feed the hungry in Somalia, instead of being appreciated, these people were starving by their own government. Muslim against Muslim brutality. America was in Somalia not because they wanted to occupy Somalia. They wanted to feed the hungry. And what did we get for this? We didn't get a thank you from the Muslim world or from the Arab street. But our soldiers were dragged, tortured, and killed.
Interviewer: We hear about the Islamic, the Muslim mosques in America and think, no big deal, it's just practicing religion. But it really is a breeding ground for terrorism, isn't it?
Darwish: It's true. A lot of people think Islam is just a religion. There is a major part in Islamic education, or even the main part, is conquering the world to Islam. It is the utmost honor for every Muslim to believe in jihad, and it's done through jihad, through the sword, actually. And if you look at the Saudi flag, it has a sword on it, and it's the symbol of opening countries to the sword, opening countries through the sword.
Interviewer: Do Americans get this?
Darwish: Because we judge everybody by our own value system. We have to understand that we have an open society, an open democracy. We give access to all nations into our country in America, but we have no access into the Arab world, into the Middle East. They come here, and they are welcomed as citizens right away. They open their mosques. They preach even violence and jihad. When I attended two mosques in America after I moved here, I was told we are not here to assimilate in America. We are in America to spread Islam and to change the Constitution of the United States to the Quran.
They've been warning the West for decades.