Assassins' Trilogy
Schwartz, Joel
Assassins’ Trilogy Life and death in the Islamic Republic of America. BY JOEL SCHWARTZ Sins of the Assassin A Novel by Robert Ferrigno Scribner’s, 400 pp., $24.95 With the publication...
...As if God cares...
...The] president himself apologized...
...While no force of arms could defeat the armies of the West, it was their moral and spiritual void that ultimately vanquished them...
...In sum, Ferrigno’s novels offer a depressing contrast between the bad old days and the bad new days...
...What led most of Ferrigno’s America to Islamize...
...Joel Schwartz is an adjunct senior fellow at the Hudson Institute...
...I believe we have to act as if Paradise awaits the good and the brave, and that the hottest fi res of hell await those who do evil in God’s name...
...Afraid they’re going to do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, think the wrong thing...
...A war without heroes, without victories...
...Having already shown how Ferrigno faults contemporary America, I’ll conclude by briefl y discussing his critique of Islamicized politics...
...BY JOEL SCHWARTZ Sins of the Assassin A Novel by Robert Ferrigno Scribner’s, 400 pp., $24.95 With the publication of Sins of the Assassin, Robert Ferrigno is now twothirds of the way toward completing a series of thrillers—with plenty of graphic violence, and some graphic sex—that also comprise a serious work of dystopian fi ction...
...On the other hand, he also says the following of himself: “I believe that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is his messenger...
...Reunifi cation...
...Furthermore, the Old One worsened the carnage of Hurricane Katrina by having “a dozen small explosive charges placed under the levees of the Ninth Ward...
...In the Assassin novels the Old One conspires to overthrow the comparatively moderate leadership of the Islamic republic...
...In that context it is worth pointing to two hints dropped in Sins...
...In particular, he was a member of the still-more-elite shadow warriors (troops trained to infi ltrate the Bible Belt...
...I remain a Muslim...
...His interactions with his girlfriend and later wife call to mind the byplay between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in their movies...
...The former regime never recovered...
...This critique of moral relativism and national self-doubt is one of many aspects of the Assassin novels that testify to their—and Ferrigno’s—conservatism...
...we should fi nd out next year...
...In addition, the Islamic regime is economically and technologically backward...
...Like any work of dystopian fi ction, the Assassin novels should be judged less by their predictions than by their assessments of the weaknesses of our world...
...instead it is an accurate summation of the plot of Prayers, to be found in Steyn’s review of it (and in America Alone, which includes two excerpts from Prayers...
...That is all I am certain of...
...In an ironic reversal of today’s culture wars, Ferrigno goes out of his way to inform us that San Francisco— now known as New Fallujah— is perhaps the worst fundamentalist hotbed: “Harlots and homosexuals, witches and Jews dangled from the high beams” of the Bridge of Skulls— formerly known as the Golden Gate...
...The as-ifs may explain why Rakkim is said by the narrator to be “a Muslim in name only...
...America before the Islamic takeover was a “country without shame,” whereas America after the takeover is a country in which people are scared...
...To premise the novels on an Israeli attack on the United States would not, of course, be one of those aspects...
...The Islamic republic is comparatively moderate, but there are limits to that moderation because moderates don’t hold sway in many localities...
...Not a good Muslim, but a believer all the same...
...Wonderful things...
...Today’s left pins less blame on Halliburton than Ferrigno assigns to the Old One...
...Only 70 percent of the Islamic republic’s citizens are Muslim, and the remaining 30 percent are almost entirely Catholic...
...In the words of a minor character, “We used to lead the world in science and technology...
...Whether or not massive numbers of moderate Muslims exist in real life, a truly impressive specimen inhabits the Assassin novels...
...If so, will the sacred documents of the former regime be rediscovered...
...Inquiries into the mysteries of the universe...
...The immediate cause was the devastation wrought by suitcase nuclear bombs that destroyed New York and Washington (and, for good measure, Mecca) in 2015...
...Breakthroughs in science and medicine...
...To describe Ferrigno’s brilliantly realized fi ctional universe, I’ll draw on Prayers as well as the newly published Sins...
...The man chosen by Allah to appear at the End-Time, chosen to create a oneworld caliphate under sharia law, and usher in an age of peace and piety...
...He] had been able to insure the lives of the converts, but no one had been able to insure their treatment...
...Those who monitored TV stations] never saw a hero, only the dead...
...The First Amendment was “gutted, . . . and the former protection of the others [in the Bill of Rights] limited...
...In fact, Ferrigno says that he is “proud to be a footnote” to the Steyn controversy: The complaint blames Steyn, in part, for asserting that “America will be an Islamic Republic by the year 2040...
...We must show that we are more humane than the terrorists, he said...
...In the early 1970s his donations to politicians and journalists led to the massive increase of Muslim immigration to Europe: “The slow-motion conquest of Europe, the nearly bloodless transformation into an Islamic continent, had been perhaps his greatest victory...
...at one point the search is said to be for “the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the most sacred documents of the former regime...
...Ferrigno has also made his conservatism clear outside of his books...
...His best friend is a Roman Catholic policeman...
...By contrast, the principal villain is a Muslim who does evil in God’s name: The fabulously rich Hassan Muhammad—also known as the Old One—who is “far beyond a hundred, very far, possessed of a God-given vitality enhanced by organ transplants and the best science money could buy...
...It was clever of Ferrigno to make his hero a Muslim: How can his books be deemed “Islamophobic” if they celebrate a Muslim hero...
...military won every battle [in Iraq], but they had no voice, no message that could be heard...
...Yes, the Americans [before the takeover] were drunk on freedom...
...Stay tuned...
...Our manufacturing plants are outdated, our farm productivity falling, and patent applications are only forty percent of what they were in the old regime...
...Needless to say, some readers nevertheless fi nd the books Islamophobic, but their complaint would surely be greater if the books pitted a Christian or Jewish hero against a Muslim villain...
...Now, every year we have fewer graduates in engineering and mathematics...
...In his self-conception the Old One was the man come to lead the world, the Mahdi, the twelfth imam, the Islamic messiah come to guide the world away from materialism and idolatry...
...Furthermore, Rakkim is monogamous: Occasionally he tells acquaintances that he has only one wife because one is all he can handle...
...The Islamic republic is predictably most dangerous for women and Jews...
...Rakkim also works closely with a family of Jewish scientifi c geniuses who live underground to avoid persecution...
...After the nonbelievers were put to the sword...
...In the words of a historian quoted in Sins: Western churches, rather than offering moral guidance, were weak and vacillating, unwilling to condemn even the most immoral behavior...
...These attacks were blamed on the Mossad...
...More recently, it was “the Old One who fi ne-tuned bin Laden’s clumsy plan” for September 11...
...The Iraq debacle broke the nation’s spirit, hobbled its ability to defend itself...
...Hard to believe, isn’t it...
...It was clever of Ferrigno to make his hero a Muslim: How can his books be deemed ‘Islamophobic’ if they celebrate a Muslim hero...
...The Islamic republic witnesses frequent political assassinations...
...He has spoken out on his web site to defend Mark Steyn against the human rights complaint launched by the Canadian Islamic Congress...
...Only petty atrocities infl ated for all the world to see, clucked over by millionaire news anchors and fatuous movie stars...
...He is appealingly cynical, something of a Bogart fi gure...
...Rakkim is tolerant...
...How old is the Old One...
...Most of all, Rakkim is horrifi ed by violence in the name of religion: “I believe we have to act as if God is watching,” he says...
...Ferrigno began his projected trilogy of popular fi ctional works on this theme with Prayers for the Assassin, which appeared in 2006...
...But Rakkim is more than someone with superhuman skills in armed combat...
...Subsequently, it was the Old One’s money, “fi ltered through numerous fronts, that had fi nanced the academic think tanks and jihadi legal defense teams” that opposed the war on terror...
...yet so great is Rakkim’s prowess that he survived six years before leaving his post...
...A devout Muslim woman unescorted by a brother or husband could be whipped on the streets of Seattle, and adulterers and fornicators were stoned to death in the countryside...
...Women who attempt to fl ee from their fathers or husbands fall prey to bounty hunters who forcibly seek to return them to their homes...
...While Seattle [the republic’s capital] and Southern California were bastions of moderation, even in the capital, the Black Robes [the religious police, resembling the Saudi Commission for the Protection of Virtue and Suppression of Vice] enforced their dictates on the fundamentalist population...
...Both Prayers and Sins tell the story of a battle between a Muslim hero and a Muslim villain...
...It will be interesting to see if, in the trilogy’s concluding novel, a regime can be created in which Americans again feel appropriate shame but not inappropriate fear...
...Yes, they lacked shame, but they did glorious things too with that freedom...
...Most of the deeply Christian South— the Bible Belt—resists Islamic rule and secedes...
...In particular, the Second Amendment was completely eliminated: “No guns allowed, not for private citizens...
...The books take place in the 2040s, when most of what is now the United States has become an Islamic republic...
...Furthermore, Sins implies that the fi nal novel will explore the efforts of people in the Islamic republic and the Bible Belt to put “aside their differences for one goal...
...Furthermore, one of Ferrigno’s characters adds the following analysis of what, for us, are current events: The U.S...
...Be ashamed of the war and soon you will be ashamed of the warriors—the warriors got that message soon enough...
...But the “Zionist Betrayal,” as it came to be called, was not enough by itself to promote massive conversion to Islam...
...Jewish converts—and, for that matter, Catholics—suffer considerable discrimination...
...But since the dust jacket for Prayers alludes to “shocking evidence that the nuclear attacks might not have been planned by Israel,” I don’t think I’m giving away the store by intimating that the Israelis may have been framed...
...Islam offered a bright light and a clear answer, and the faithful could not build mosques fast enough to satisfy the need...
...The hero in question is Rakkim Epps, formerly a member of the Fedayeen, “a small, elite force of genetically enhanced holy warriors...
...In Ferrigno’s portrayal, Islamic rule decreases security, freedom, prosperity, and innovation...
...This is not, however, a claim that Steyn himself has made...
...As for Jews, the moderate chief of state security insisted in the early years of the republic “that any Jews who converted to Islam must be spared...
...Good fortune beyond the . . . wildest dreams [of America’s opponents], an enemy who wanted to be loved...
...Most signifi cantly, Rakkim is the quintessential moderate Muslim...
...Fundamentalist redoubts like . . . Milwaukee and Chicago were worse—governed by the most extreme sharia law...
...The Islamic republic is, of course, far less free than America today...
...Will the sectarian Muslim and Christian polities reunite on some nonsectarian basis...
...the concluding work is due out next year...
...In short, the Old One is a walking conspiracy theory...
...Furthermore, the orderly transfer of political power that we take for granted has also disappeared...
...Shadow warriors are typically discovered and killed within two-andahalf years of their fi rst mission...
...Much of Sins concerns a quest for something that is hidden in the Bible Belt...
Vol. 13 • May 2008 • No. 35
