Expert: Terrorists Aim at Global Domination

When Islamic terror struck the heart of Brussels, the timing fooled authorities. But for others, it wasn't a total surprise.

"Everybody knew that the next attack was only a question of not if but when," Daniel Schwammenthal, director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute, told CBN News.

He says the roots of Belgium's problem go far beyond March 22.

"The roots are really a violent ideology that is spreading among Muslim communities," Schwammenthal explained. "What we see here is that a nexus exists between Salifist ideology, funded and sponsored, and it goes back to the 1960s already funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries and elements within these countries."

A mosque in the heart of Brussels is one example of how money from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries is being spent to spread Wahabbism, a brand of Islam from which ISIS got its roots.

Some see this way of spreading the Muslim faith as even more dangerous than the violent strategy of the Islamic State.

"That has managed to really turn around moderate Muslim community to... a hot bed for radical Islam," Flemish parliamentarian Sam Van Rooy told CBN News. "The religion of Islam, which is more of a political ideology than a religion like Judaism or Christianity, we kind of embraced it."

Van Rooy, a conservative, says when Belgium and the rest of Europe enacted its open-door policy decades ago, it didn't realize the consequences.

"You can build your mosques, you can have your Koran and you can worship your god here and everything, and of course that was a major mistake because if you start doing that then Sharia [Islamic] law will follow sooner or later and jihad, violent jihad will follow sooner or later," he said.

Van Rooy warns the problem runs deep.

"It's very deep. We have cities in Belgium and other countries in the West of Europe where Muslims are a majority and these cities and areas and are really Islamized," he explained. "If you walk there as a woman not dressed in a Muslim way, then the chances are very big that you will get harassed, attacked or whatever. Or if you are a Jew walking there, then the chances are very big that you will get attacked.  That is Islamization."

The Jews of Belgium are particularly concerned. 

"You don't have an evening with friends without someone raising the issue," Valerie Teitelbaum with the Brussels Parliament told, CBN News. "Should we stay? Can we stay? Can we stay and don't we have a responsibility toward our children?  Is there a future for them in this country where our parents put down their luggage?"

Teitelbaum says the threat to the Jews is just the beginning. 

"We have been facing those attacks because Jews are usually the first target but never the only target," she said.

Schwammenthal says the ultimate goal of these attacks is global Islamic domination.

"It's to create a caliphate to -- in their mind clearly -- there needs to be an Islamist rule certainly in now what is the Muslim world but even beyond," he said. "At the end of the day they believe that Belgium and Britain and even the United States need to be part of it. There is only one truth in their mind."