A new report challenges government officials to reassess their view of "moderate" Muslims who support advancing Islamic law in American society. The Center for Security Policy Report, "Shariah – The Threat to America," was put together by a group including former CIA Director James Woolsey and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy.

In a Washington Times column promoting the report, the authors argue that American policy makers fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Shariah law and those who advocate it. Advocates "see the West as an infidel enemy to be conquered, not a culture and civilization to be embraced or at least tolerated."

Because they do it through incremental political and legal methods, and not necessarily through violence, government officials mistakenly characterize Shariah advocates as moderates worthy of cooperation.

Support for Shariah, or the incorporation of Islamic law into society, is a fault line dividing Islamists who seek a takeover of Western society and true Muslim moderates who embrace pluralism and the separation of mosque and state, the authors say:

"It is vital to the national security of the United States that we do what we can to empower Islam's authentic moderates and reformers. That cannot be done by following the failed strategy of fictionalizing the state of Islam in the vain hope that reality will, at some point, catch up to the benign fable of a thriving moderate Islam beset by a mere handful of aberrant "extremists." Empowering the real moderates requires a candid recognition of the faux moderates and the strength of their Shariah agenda, just as defeat of 20th-century totalitarian ideologies required a gimlet-eyed appreciation of their malevolent capabilities."

The full report can be read here.