“All warfare is based on deception,” Sun Tzu said.

Radical Islamists who are bent on establishing a global caliphate employ a deceptive type of war against Western civilization. It doesn’t use bombs or bullets—yet its tactics are just as effective in weakening the West in its war against terror. This type of war is called “lawfare.”

Lawfare is the legal counterpart to terrorism. Rather than instilling fear into Western democracies and influencing their actions with random acts of violence, radicals who use lawfare aim to instill change in the democracies by misusing its own system against it.

The radical Islamists have always had two powerful weapons at their disposal: violence and politics. Both weapons are only as effective as their targets allow them to be; both have their advantages and disadvantages, but by using violence and lawfare together, radical Islamists have found a winning combination.

The deceptive goal of the lawfare is the same as that of the violence. Despite claims to the contrary, the ultimate goal of Islamist lawfare is the implementation of Islamic law and customs in Western societies—in short, the creation of a worldwide caliphate. However, because practitioners of lawfare don’t use violence, it can be harder to discredit their organizations for what they are in the same way you can discredit people who shoot and blow up women and children.

Western democracies, the targets, are so desperate to appease Islamic minorities and avoid violence that they simply cannot or will not acknowledge the true motives of these political groups.

The belief that radical Islam’s participation in democracy is a sign of moderation is the deception. And lawfare is the specific tool with which these Muslims pull the wool over Western eyes.

Violence has achieved limited success for radical Islamists, and only in Islamic countries. The revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini to power in Iran, the coup d’état in Sudan and the Taliban’s rise through the civil war in Afghanistan are examples where radical elements took control of a nation through violent force.

This method, however, hasn’t forced a single regime change in any of their greatest enemy nations. That is because it requires the magnitude of overwhelming force that Islamists simply don’t have.

The second method, using the democratic system, and working through it, has yielded fewer results. The Muslim Brotherhood hasn’t toppled Mubarak, nor did Yasser Arafat get the deals he wanted.

However, the combination of violence and lawfare puts a powerful option at radical Islam’s disposal. In fact, this combination is exactly what Arafat ordered up for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process after the failure at Camp David, stating: “They can occupy us by force, because we are weaker now, but in two years, ten years, or one hundred years, there will be someone who will liberate Jerusalem” (memri, Aug. 28, 2000).

This deadly combination of lawfare and terrorism called for by Arafat was employed with tremendous success within the Palestinian Authority itself.

Daniel Pipes, in a speech about radical Islamic methods at the World Summit on Counter-Terrorism at Herzliya, Israel, last month, noted that the Hamas terrorist organization—known for its refusal to negotiate with the West—took control of Gaza’s government through democratic elections. Then the group, which the West applauded for its democratization, took dictatorial control of the Strip with bullets.

It was a one-two punch, and Israel and its Western allies stood by doing nothing, holding on to their pipe dream that such a thing as a democratic terrorist organization could exist. It amounted to lawfare just buying time for all-out warfare. Israel is in danger of allowing the same thing to happen again in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

This “violence with lawful tactics” is the future of radical Islam, according to Pipes. Even the radical Islamists recognize the use of lawfare. When the Organization of the Islamic Conference (oic) met in Senegal last March, it began planning a “legal instrument” to fight against criticism of Islam. “Islamophobia cannot be dealt with only through cultural activities but [through] a robust political engagement,” declared the oic’s Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu.The oic defined Islamophobia as any criticism of Islam, whether through political cartoons or by citations of the Koran’s violent calls to behead unbelievers as a possible motivation for terrorism.

In the absence of Western democracies taking action against this deadly combination and working against radical Islam’s political wings as well as its terrorist wings, radical Islam will evolve from a security threat to a strategic threat.

And the threat isn’t just to Western democracies. The Hamas takeover in Gaza destroyed any pro-West democratic elements among the Palestinians. Pakistan faces a serious threat from radical Islamic groups, such as the Taliban, that terrorize its people and could undermine its weak democratic government. And while the Muslim Brotherhood hasn’t yet succeeded within Egypt’s democratic system in overthrowing Mubarak’s pro-Western government, it is still a threat and is capable of using violence in combination with its democratic guise to finally establish an Islamic theocracy in Egypt.

It does not look like the United Kingdom will wake up any time soon. After the London Transit System terrorist attack on July 7, 2005, the British government, softened by years of successful lawfare and political correctness waged by groups like the Muslim Council of Britain, did everything it could to blame anything but Islam. The government was even advised to pacify the Muslim community by bringing British culture and policy closer to Islam.

Three years later, citizens can now be tried in sharia courts backed by the force of law in certain domestic cases if they agree to it. Even the archbishop of Canterbury says Britain will have to adopt sharia law, and Gordon Brown’s government is in the process of approving sharia-compliant “Islamic bonds.” The bonds, approved by Muslim clerics, avoid conventional interest payments in accordance with sharia law, which forbids charging interest.

This is all made possible by the anti-Western ideology that has been preached for decades in universities and politics under the guise of multiculturalism and cultural relativism, combined with years of lawfare and one terrorist attack.

What makes lawfare so difficult to combat is that the perpetrators of it know the system and are working it. For example, Khalid bin Mahfouz, a rich Saudi banker, sued American author Rachel Ehrenfeld, an adviser to the U.S. Department of Defense, for writing a book exposing how his charities funded terrorist organizations with tens of millions of dollars. A British court claimed jurisdiction because copies of the book were sold in Britain. In this case, a resident Saudi brought a British libel suit on a book published in the U.S.

Ehrenfeld denied British jurisdiction, but is now shunned by publishers who fear a future British suit. Radical Islamists have effectively suppressed any media coverage exposing terrorist financing with their legal tactics. As Ehrenfeld put it, “They know our laws very well, and they use them in order to subvert them, in order to undermine them, and in order to silence us.” Bin Mahfouz has the highest record of using libel suits to suppress his critics, having received 41 apologies and retractions.

The vigilance needed to combat this warfare is woefully lacking in Britain. No number of counterterrorism conferences or speeches from enlightened thinkers like Daniel Pipes will change the decrepit mindset of Britain.

How can we know for sure? The Bible prophesied both the sickly condition of Israel’s peace process and the state of Britain in Hosea 5:13: “When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah saw his wound, then went Ephraim to the Assyrian, and sent to king Jareb: yet could he not heal you, nor cure you of your wound.” Ephraim is the biblical name for modern Britain and Judah is the modern nation called Israel, as proven in The United States and Britain in Prophecy (request your free copy).

The peace process, which has only brought more danger and terror to Israel, is the wound talked about it in this prophecy. It’s a wound brought on, in part, by Israel’s lack of will to deal decisively with the Palestinians and acceptance of the facade the Palestinians put on with their lawfare. The Palestinians are turning the “peace process” into a slow war of attrition against Israel.

In the context of Judah’s wound, Britain’s sickness is mentioned. This indicates that Judah’s wound is closely linked to Britain’s sickness. How? In both cases, it appears to be caused in part by failing to deal with radical Islam’s powerful combination of lawfare and terrorism.

Hosea’s prophecy demonstrates that Britain will eventually “see” its sickness. Apparently Britain will finally wake up to the deception of lawfare, but by then it will be too late: Radical Islam will have weakened Britain’s culture and government so much it will not be able to do anything about it. Just as Israel will feel it has to, Britain will turn to Germany, modern-day Assyria, whose identity is proven in our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.

That is because Germany won’t fall for the lawfare deception. Just look at the multitude of right-wing parties that gathered in the German city of Cologne on September 19 for an “Anti-Islamification of Europe Congress.” While Cologne officials put a stop to the rally for fear of large-scale violent clashes, right-wing parties are gaining ground in governments across Europe. Though Britain will finally recognize its “sickness,” it will not recognize Germany’s radical element, and Bible prophecies reveal that Britain’s seeking of German help will prove a disastrous mistake.

Once before, Britain faced a radical Germany, and it became almost too late for it to wake up to the German threat. If it wasn’t for Winston Churchill, the nation would have succumbed to Adolf Hitler’s deceptive “peace” agreement and seen all of Europe swallowed by Nazism. The Bible prophesies it will happen again, but this time, there will be no Churchill to save the British.

Still, you personally can wake up to what is happening to Western democracies. The Bible foretold thousands of years ago of this very conflict between the West and radical Islam, including a rise in terrorist attacks and the successful inroads Islamists have made through lawfare. As shown, the Bible even foretells how Britain and Israel will seek to solve their problems, and their eventual betrayal by Germany. If you want to have these events explained in more depth, request our two pieces of literature mentioned above.