Walid Phares - Dr. Walid Phares is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he focuses on Middle East history and politics, global terrorist movements, democratization and human rights. Dr. Phares also leads the foundation's Future of Terrorism Project, which considers how the Jihadi-Islamist threat will mutate over time and what can be done to defend against new, more deadly strains of terrorism.
Dr. Phares is the author of ten books on terrorism and the Middle East. His latest book, The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad was published in 2008, War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy was published April, 2007. His book, Future Jihad, Terrorist Strategies Against America, has been listed on Foreign Policy magazine's best selling titles for three months.
In addition, Dr. Phares serves as a Fox News Channel Middle East Contributor. A fluent English, French, and Arabic speaker, he is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel, CNN, the BCC, al-Jazeera, al Hurra, al-Arabiya, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CTV, Global TV, and hundreds of radio programs. Previously Dr. Phares served as a terrorism analyst for MSNBC.
He writes frequently for academic publications and newspapers, including Global Affairs, Middle East Quarterly, International Journal of Security Studies, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Philadelphia Inquirer, National Review, and Chicago Sun Times.
A frequently consulted expert, for more than two decades Dr. Phares has been called upon by European Commissioners, European Parliament members, as well as French, British, Belgian, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, and Cypriot legislators, officials and Diplomats.
He has served as an expert for the Dutch Government on Terrorism. He has also testified to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Middle East and South East Asia, the House committees on international relations and Homeland Security and regularly conducts congressional, State Department, Department of Defense, and Department of Justice briefings.
Dr. Phares is also a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy, a policy institute based in Brussels that is dedicated to defending democratic values, promoting freedom and addressing the ideologies of terrorism.
Dr. Phares is an Adjunct Professor at National Defense University School for National Security Executive Education (SNSEE). From 1993 to 2006, Dr. Phares was a professor of Middle East Studies at Florida Atlantic University. He has also held teaching positions at Florida International University and the University of Miami.
He holds degrees in law and political science from Saint Joseph and the Lebanese Universities in Beirut, a Masters in international law from the Universite de Lyons in France, and a Ph.D. in international relations and strategic studies from the University of Miami in the United States.
Encyclopædia Britannica Article
jihad
In Islam, the central doctrine that calls on believers to combat the enemies of their religion. According to the Qur'an and the Hadith, jihad is a duty that may be fulfilled in four ways: by the heart, the tongue, the hand, or the sword. The first way (known in Sufism as the “greater jihad”) involves struggling against evil desires. The ways of the tongue and hand call for verbal defense and right actions. The jihad of the sword involves waging war against enemies of Islam. Believers contend that those who die in combat become martyrs and are guaranteed a place in paradise. In the 20th and 21st centuries the concept of jihad has sometimes been used as an ideological weapon in the effort to combat Western influences and secular governments and to establish an ideal Islamic society.
In The Confrontation, Dr. Phares turns his attention to what the West must do to turn back the Jihadist threat.
The war against Jihadism has to be redefined, he writes, and the West will need to rethink its approach, leading to an economic and diplomatic revolution needed to prevent the terrorists from using our own systems and needs against us.
It will also need to seize every common ground with potential allies against the Jihadi forces, including Europe, Russia, and India.
Finally, there needs to be a much stronger and united Western response to support the democratic and antiterrorist sectors of Muslim societies - our real allies in this conflict.
The Jihadists, he argues, have skillfully isolated the United States through a worldwide war of ideas blaming democracies for the problems of the Middle East and driving terrorism.
The goal must be to reverse the formula and isolate Jihadists in the court of world opinion and within the societies that they have made their home bases- Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
this video, altho long, delivers an important and potent message: that the USA and rest of the Free World must wake up to the challenges presented by an enemy to our way of life,i.e. Islamis Jihadists, who have a 10 yr. headstart on us. Educate your friends & relatives.
The israel front that all islam is the threat is true to the israeli who has brought the Americans into this confrontation. Yet the tides are changing an soon israeli AIPAC will lose it's power with the American
peoples.
Mr Walid Seems To Forget To Mention That In The 20s When Thesse Groups Emerged The Islamic World Was Facing The British And French Colony:it Was Never The Point Of Thesse Groups To Atack The West,rather Deffend Its Land
These groups are attacking the west although colonies have long gone. So it is not about a defense against colonialism. It's about global jihad, i.e. enforcing Allah's will, Shariah law, all over the world. Shariah law is incompatible with liberal democracy and universal human rights, for example second class dhimmi status (equality before the law), stoning of the adulterer, execution of the apostate (freedom of conscience), beating of women non-obedient to their husbands (freedom of will). Islam means submission, it is against freedom. Therefore, this is an ideoligical struggle between universal values, dignity of man, and islamic "values": "killing the apostate".....
member. 
