Moscow Suicide Bombers

The Growing Threat from Female Suicide Bombers

IPT News
March 29, 2010

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1882/the-growing-threat-from-female-suicide-bombers

Two women believed to be Chechen rebels blew themselves up in Moscow’s metro during morning rush hour Monday, killing at least 35 people and injuring 100 more.

Law enforcement officials in Washington and New York beefed up security in their respective subway systems in response.

The attacks at Lubyanka and Park Kultyty stations come on the heels of a recent threat assessment issued by the Office of Intelligence and Operations Coordination at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency.

The Investigative Project has reviewed the sensitive, but unclassified, assessment, Female Suicide Bombers, which puts the attacks in Russia in the context of a broader threat. Referencing open source reporting, the primary finding of the threat assessment is that:

“al Qa’ida terror cells have trained a group of female suicide bombers to attack Western targets including airlines. These women may have a non Arab appearance and may be traveling on Western passports.”

These “bombshells” are part of an evolving terrorist threat challenging U.S. law enforcement to reassess not only the physical and psychological characteristics of terrorists but also the methods available for concealing explosives.

As the report details, while the Moscow bombing is the most recent, it falls into a long line of attacks by female suicide bombers. “Since 1985, there have been in excess of 262 women suicide bombers,” it says.

The first known female suicide bomber may have been 16 year old Sana’a Youcef Mehaidli, a member of the secular Syrian Social Nationalist Party. On April 9, 1985, Mehaidli drove an explosive laden truck into an Israeli Defense Force convoy, killing two soldiers and injuring another two.

On May 21, 1991, Thenmozhi Rajaratnam a female militant with the Tamil Tigers, carried out a suicide bombing which resulted in the assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Of interest, the Tamil Tigers have used more female suicide bombers than any other militant group.

In July 1996, the Kurdistan Workers Party, utilizing a female suicide bomber, attacked a military parade marching through the eastern town of Tunceli, Turkey. As Turkish soldiers were walking by, an apparently pregnant woman stepped from the crowd, revealed that she was carrying a bomb and not a baby under her dress, and detonated it, killing nine and injuring 20 others.

Between 2000 and 2004, female Chechen rebels, known as “Black Widows” repeatedly attacked Russian military targets on subways, at concerts and on airlines. For example, two women, dressed head-to-toe in black, carried out an attack on an annual music festival in July 2003, killing 14 people. Both bombers tried to enter the concert but were denied entry, and instead detonated the explosives at the venue’s entrance.

On May 1, 2008, a female suicide bomber from al Qaida in Iraq blew herself up at a wedding reception in Baghdad. The bomber, imitating pregnancy, detonated the explosives while members of the passing wedding party played music and danced.

A November 2008 attack in Baghdad which left five people dead and 17 wounded was carried out by a female suicide bomber outside the green zone in Baghdad. The attack occurred as people were waiting to go through a security checkpoint.

In February of 2010, a female suicide bomber walking among Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad detonated an explosive belt, killing at least 54 people and wounding more than 122. The bomber hid the explosives underneath an abaya, and detonated the bomb while waiting with other women to be searched by female security guards.

Reviewing these and other cases, the Office of Intelligence and Operations Coordination, identified the following commonalities among female suicide bombers:

• The majority of female suicide bombers are young, primarily between the ages of 17 and 24, however, the overall range in age for female suicide bombers is from 15-64.
• Female suicide bombers come from various educational, religious, social, and personal backgrounds.
• Education places a role, with the “more educated” females such as lawyers, paramedics, or students accounting for the greatest percentage of suicide attacks.
• Most tend to be of average economic status and are rarely impoverished.
• Some may be “dishonored” through sexual indiscretion, or unable to produce children.
• Some appear motivated by revenge or grief from losing husbands or children.

While their socioeconomic background and motivations may vary, one thing is clear. Terrorist groups have been more than happy to welcome female militants into the fold. Both Osama bin Laden and Egyptian radical cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi have endorsed the recruitment of women to attack U.S. and Western interests. Even Hamas, which initially forbade the use of female operatives, sponsored female suicide attacks, acknowledging females suicide bombers as fellow martyrs.

Female Terrorists Pose New Obstacles

With female suicide bombers becoming more and more common, it is important to realize that not only will females have different – or possibly greater – access to particular locations, but they will be able to conceal bombs in different ways. As the threat assessment explains:

“[T]he continued use of female suicide bombers indicates that terrorists judge this tactic as effective in increasing defenses and thwarting security measures, referring to the advantage that female suicide bombers have over male counterparts in their ability to conceal explosives as well as their capacity to approach their targets with less scrutiny.”

Nowhere are these benefits clearer than in a recent story detailing how terrorists could use exploding breast implants to blow of airplanes.

In the past, terrorist groups primarily utilized many of the same mechanisms that were available for male suicide bombers. As the threat assessment demonstrates, explosive devices concealed on women in the past had the following characteristics:

• A simple toggle or push button switch commonly used to complete the electronic circuit. If the individual was hesitant, the device could be triggered remotely allowing an experienced cadre to retain control until the desired detonation time.
• Included shrapnel, such as nails, glass, fragments, marbles, or other small metal pieces. In many suicide attacks, the dispersal of fragments is the primary mechanism that causes death.
• Closely attacked to the body by use of a vest or belt. Explosives have also been concealed in a backpack or pocket book.

But now, terrorist groups are taking advantage of the “benefits” of using women to carry explosives. A recent news account revealed that MI5 discovered that doctors have trained at Britain’s leading hospitals and have returned to their own countries to fit individuals with surgical implants filled with explosives. Reportedly, al Qa’ida has already experimented with placing PETN in plastic bags and surgically implanting them in female’s breasts to give the impression they have undergone breast augmentation.

Monday’s attack in Moscow wasn’t the first example of female suicide bombers, and as the threat assessment reveals, it is not likely to be the last. U.S. law enforcement officials recognize that the deadly tactic one day may make its way to America.

VIDEO: What a Billion Muslims Really Think

DOJ: Department Of Jihad?

Investor’s Business Daily | 25 Feb. 10

War On Terror: The Justice Department employs nine lawyers previously involved in the defense of terrorist detainees. This is a colossal conflict of interest. Just whose side are they on?

From the dropping of a voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party to the decision to try 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Muhammed in a civilian court within blocks of where the World Trade Center once stood, the actions and attitudes of the Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder toward the thugs and terrorists who threaten us has grown curiouser and curiouser.

We may now have a clue as to why. Last November, Sen. Charles Grassley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked the Justice Department how many of its lawyers had defended terrorist detainees over whom the department holds sway.

Grassley knew from earlier press reports of two such lawyers who worked on behalf of detainees at the liberal organization Human Rights Watch. He wanted to know how many more there were. Last Friday, Holder answered nine.

“To the best of our knowledge, during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees,” Holder said in a letter dated Feb. 18. “Four others contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.”

So the decision to Mirandize the Christmas bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab, and to quickly get him lawyered up was made by a department populated by leftist lawyers who believe terror is a law enforcement matter and who have tried to get off those actively trying to kill us.

We still have no official answer to what the Justice Department would do if Osama bin Laden were captured.

“It’s like they’re bringing al-Qaida lawyers inside the Department of Justice,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was the pilot of the plane driven by terrorists into the Pentagon, following KSM’s plan.

We still have not been told all the lawyers’ names. Like the detainees they represented, presumably they have the right to remain silent. So much for transparency.

Lawyers in private practice are free to choose their clients and their reasons for defending them. But these lawyers are in the employ of the American people and have the task of prosecuting those who try to kill them. Some chose to defend enemies who are making war on America. We have a right to know who they are, who their clients were and why they defended them.

As Michelle Malkin reports, Holder is a former partner at Covington & Burling, a law firm that contributed more than 3,000 hours to detainee litigation in 2007 alone. The firm has worked on behalf of a dozen Yemenite detainees who are seeking civilian trials on American soil.

Holder played a central role in the granting of clemency to 16 FALN terrorists in 1999, when he worked for the Clinton Justice Department. The terrorists claimed responsibility for more than 130 bombings and incendiary attacks in the U.S. and Puerto Rico from 1974 to 1983, killing six and wounding scores.

As deputy attorney general, Holder was responsible for signing off on all clemency matters forwarded to the president. In this case, he recommended that clemency be granted despite vehement opposition from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Prisons and his own Justice Department.

We are reminded of the case of Lynne Stewart, attorney for Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “blind sheikh” who was the architect of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. She was later found guilty of charges she had illegally “facilitated and concealed communications” between Rahman and his fellow terrorists.

We wonder if she could have found a job in the Holder Justice Department.

Video: Progressive Islam | Tom Trento | Florida Security Council

Dear friends,  Please watch this important video and pass this link to your email contact list.  Thanks

SHORT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/yefe6fk

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Mark Steyn: The Absurd Trial of Geert Wilders

Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine.

The absurd trial of Geert Wilders

Feb 18, 2010 by Mark Steyn

At a certain level, the trial of Geert Wilders for the crime of “group insult” of Islam is déjà vu all over again. For as the spokesperson for the Openbaar Ministerie put it, “It is irrelevant whether Wilders’s witnesses might prove Wilders’s observations to be correct. What’s relevant is that his observations are illegal.”

Ah, yes, in the Netherlands, as in Canada, the truth is no defence. My Dutch is a little rusty but I believe the “Openbaar Ministerie” translates in English to the Ministry for Openly Barring People. Whoops, my mistake. It’s the prosecution service of the Dutch Ministry of Justice. But it shares with Canada’s “human rights” commissions an institutional contempt for the truth.

As for “Wilders’s witnesses,” he submitted a list of 18, and the Amsterdam court rejected no fewer than 15 of them. As with Commissar MacNaughton and her troika of pseudo-judges presiding over the Maclean’s trial in British Columbia, it’s easier to make the rules up as you go along.

And in Amsterdam the eventual verdict doesn’t really matter any more than it did here. As Khurrum Awan, head sock puppet for Mohamed Elmasry, crowed to the Canadian Arab News, even though the Canadian Islamic Congress struck out in three different jurisdictions in their attempt to criminalize my writing, the suits cost this magazine (he says) two million bucks, and thereby “attained our strategic objective—to increase the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.” Likewise, whether Mijnheer Wilders is convicted or acquitted, a lot of politicians, publishers, writers and filmmakers will get the message: steer clear of the subject of Islam unless you want your life consumed.

But at that point comparisons end. Had the CIC triumphed at our trial in Vancouver, the statutory penalty under the B.C. “Human Rights” Code would have prevented Maclean’s ever publishing anything on Islam, Europe, demography, terrorism and related issues by me or anybody of a similar disposition ever again. I personally would have been rendered legally unpublishable in Canada in perpetuity. But so what? I’m an obscure writer, and my fate is peripheral to that of the Dominion itself.

Geert Wilders, by contrast, is one of the most popular politicians in the Netherlands, and his fate is central to the future of his kingdom and his continent. He is an elected member of parliament—and, although he’s invariably labelled “far right” in news reports, how far he is depends on where you’re standing: his party came second in last year’s elections for the European Parliament, and a poll of the Dutch electorate in December found it tied for first place. Furthermore, if you read the indictment against him, you’ll see that among other things Wilders is being prosecuted for is proposing an end to “non-Western immigration” to the Netherlands: the offending remarks were made in response to a direct question as to what his party would do in its first days in office. So the Dutch state is explicitly prosecuting the political platform of the most popular opposition party in the country, and attempting to schedule the trial for its own electoral advantage. That’s the sort of thing free societies used to leave to Mobutu, Ferdinand Marcos and this week’s Generalissimo-for-Life.

To put it in Canadian terms, it’s like the Crown hauling Michael Ignatieff into court. Well, except for the bit about being the most popular politician in the country and ahead in the polls and whatnot. But imagine if Iggy was less tin-eared and inept and his numbers were terrific—and then the Ministry of Justice announced it had decided to prosecute him for his policy platform. That’s what’s happening in the Netherlands.

It gets better. The judge in his wisdom has decided to deny the defendant the level of courtroom security they afforded to Mohammed Bouyeri, the murderer of Theo van Gogh. Wilders lives under armed guard because of explicit death threats against him by Mr. Bouyeri and other Muslims. But he’s the one put on trial for incitement. His movie about Islam, Fitna, is deemed to be “inflammatory,” whereas a new film by Willem Stegeman, De moord op Geert Wilders (The Assassination of Geert Wilders), is so non-inflammatory and entirely acceptable that it’s been produced and promoted by a government-funded radio station. You’d almost get the impression that, as the website Gates of Vienna suggested, the Dutch state is channelling Henry II: “Who will rid me of this turbulent blond?”

There’s no shortage of volunteers. In the Low Countries, whenever anyone seeks to discuss Islam outside the very narrow bounds of multicultural political discourse, they wind up either banned (Belgium’s Vlaams Blok), forced into exile (Ayaan Hirsi Ali) or killed (Pim Fortuyn).

It’s remarkable how speedily “the most tolerant country in Europe,” in a peculiarly repellent strain of coercive appeasement, has adopted “shoot the messenger” as an all-purpose cure-all for “Islamophobia.” To some of us, the Netherlands means tulips, clogs, windmills, fingers in the dike. To others, it means marijuana cafés, long-haired soldiers, legalized hookers, fingers in the dike. But the contemporary reality is an increasingly incoherent polity where gays are bashed, uncovered women get jeered at, and you can’t do The Diary of Anne Frank as your school play lest the Gestapo walk-ons are greeted by audience cries of “She’s in the attic!” Speaking as a bona fide far-right nutcase, I rather resent the label’s export to Holland: Pim Fortuyn wasn’t “right-wing,” he was a gay hedonist; Theo van Gogh was an anti-monarchist coke-snorting nihilist; Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a secular liberal feminist; Geert Wilders says he’s opposed to Islam because of its hostility to gay equality, whereas the usual rap against us far-right extremists is that we want the godless sodomites to roast in hell.

It’s not “ironic” that the most liberal country in western Europe should be the most advanced in its descent into a profoundly illiberal hell. It was entirely foreseeable. Geert Wilders is stating the obvious: a society that becomes more Muslim will have fewer gays. Last year, the Rainbow Palace, formerly Amsterdam’s most popular homo-hotel (relax, that’s the Dutch word for it), announced it was renaming itself the Sharm and reorienting itself to Islamic tourism. Or as the website allah.eu put it: “Gay Hotel Turns Muslim.” As a headline in the impeccably non-far-right Spiegel wondered: “How much Allah can the Old Continent bear?” It’s an interesting question, albeit if an increasingly verboten one. The Wilders show trial is important because it will determine whether the subject can be discussed openly by mainstream politicians and public figures, or whether it will be forced underground and manifest itself in more violent ways.

Yet, despite its significance, the trial has received relatively little coverage in the Western media, in part because, for those of a multiculti bent, there’s no easy way to blur the reality—that this is a political prosecution by a thought police so stupid they don’t realize they’re delegitimizing the very institutions of the state. Still, the BBC gave it their best shot, concluding their report thus: “Correspondents say his Freedom Party (PVV), which has nine MPs in the lower house of parliament, has built its popularity largely by tapping into the fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants.”

Gotcha. This democracy business is all very well, but let’s face it, the people are saps, gullible boobs, racist morons, knuckle-dragging f–kwits. One-man-one-vote is fine in theory, but next thing you know some slicker’s “tapping into” the morons’ “fears and resentments” and cleaning up at the polls.

Strange how it always comes back to a contempt for the people. Whenever the electorate departs from the elite’s pieties, whether in the Netherlands or in Massachusetts last month, it’s because some wily demagogue like, er, Scott Brown has been playing on the impressionable hicks’ “fears and resentments.” To the statist bullies at Canada’s “Human Rights” Commissions, their powers to regulate speech are necessary to prevent hate-mongers like me tapping into the fears and resentments of the Dominion’s millions of birdbrained boobs. Yes, that would be you, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe of 22 Dufferin Gardens. Sure, you’ve voted for the Liberals every year since Expo, but c’mon, in your heart you know even you might be…susceptible…impressionable.

In the old days—divine right of kings, rule by patrician nobility—it was easier. But today’s establishment is obliged to pay at least lip service to popular sovereignty. So it has to behave more artfully. You’ll still have your vote; it’s just that the guy you wanted to give it to is on trial, and his platform’s been criminalized.

To return to where we came in, what does it mean when the Ministry of Justice proudly declares that the truth is no defence? When the law stands in explicit opposition to the truth, freeborn peoples should stand in opposition to the law. Because, as the British commentator Pat Condell says, “When the truth is no defence, there is no defence”—and what we are witnessing is a heresy trial. The good news is that the Openbaar Ministerie is doing such a grand job with its pilot program of apostasy prosecutions you’ll barely notice when sharia is formally adopted.

Tags: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, B.C. Human Rights Code, Canadian Islamic Congress, Fitna, Freedom Party, Geert Wilders, inflammatory, Islam, Netherlands, Openbaar Ministerie, Pim Fortuyn, PVV, Spiegel, Theo van Gogh, trial, Vlaams Blok

http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/02/18/the-absurd-trial-of-geert-wilders/ printed on Feb 19, 2010

Kamal Saleem Testimony – Rabbi Jonathan Bernis

Kamal Saleem – Why I Left Islam

Part 1 of 2

Part 2 of 2

IMPORTANT READ: Bare Warning

Bare Warning

IBD| 4 Feb. 2010

Homeland Security: When it comes to foul balls, a “heads up!” is no big deal. But when the government warns of imminent and “certain” attack by al-Qaida, complacency is not an option.

A chilling spectacle just took place before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Panel Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked, “What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S. homeland in the next three to six months, high or low?”

And one by one, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta and FBI Director Robert Mueller all agreed an attack was “certain.”

But log onto the Department of Homeland Security’s Web site and all seems fairly calm. The first news item listed says, “Secretary Napolitano Announces More than $23 Million in Recovery Act Funding for Fire Station Construction Grants.” And three of the other four news items on the main page tout the ways the department’s $56.3 billion fiscal year 2011 budget request would be spent.

You have to look for the fine print and click a couple of times to find out the nation’s terror alert condition — yellow or “elevated,” like during most of the time since 9/11.

But if an attack is “certain” as the U.S. intelligence community tells us (but only after being asked by a senator), then shouldn’t there be a bit more urgency than this?

Far from scrambling to stave off sure and impending disaster, this administration is bragging that its ill-advised policies haven’t yet done harm.

We shouldn’t be releasing anyone in our custody who could end up returning to terrorist activities, but White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan was touting “significant improvements to the detainee review process” for Gitmo prisoners in a Monday letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Even if the recidivism rate is zero among the dozens of POWs that have been released, as Brennan reports, we saw on Christmas Day that it only takes one terrorist to kill hundreds. This is exactly what would have happened over the skies near Detroit had a little luck and a lot of guts from passengers not been on our side.

The administration boasts that Undiebomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is now “cooperating” — as if they didn’t blow the chance for a treasure trove of lifesaving information from him about al-Qaida’s structure and future plots by reading him his Miranda rights, getting him a lawyer, and allowing him to clam up less than an hour after being detained.

The president’s answer to legitimate unease about homeland security is to ask the concerned to “put aside the schoolyard taunts about who’s tough.”

Last April, the president visited CIA headquarters to boost morale. “Speaking before some of the very intelligence officers he had publicly accused of complicity in torture,” as Bush White House chief speechwriter Marc Thiessen writes in his new book defending the CIA’s enhanced interrogation, “Courting Disaster,” President Obama admitted to them that under his new policies, “you’ve got a harder job.”

“The president has, by his own admission, forced the CIA to operate with one hand tied behind its back” — Obama’s own analogy — and “made the agency’s job of protecting us from terror harder,” adds Thiessen.

At the risk of being accused of a schoolyard taunt, does the certainty of another attack have anything to do with one of America’s hands being tied?

Video: Muslims Threat to Geert Wilders

Video: Refresh: Geert Wilders’ Warning to America

Jihad in Haiti

Islamic Relief USA and the Islamic Circle of North America, both groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is dedicated in its own words to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within,” are operating in Haiti — ostensibly working in relief efforts, but no doubt doing a good bit of dawah on the side. Creeping Sharia has the story (thanks to herr Oyal) – source: jihadwatch.org

The Greening Of Osama Bin Laden

The Greening Of Osama Bin Laden | IBD: 1 Feb. 2010

Global warming fanatics have an unwelcome new ally: Osama Bin Laden. AP View Enlarged Image

Al-Qaida: Global warming fanatics have an unwelcome new ally: Osama bin Laden. Unlike enviro-leftists, the terror master recognizes that the green agenda can cripple the U.S. economy.

In the Obama worldview, fighting climate change will “finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” In the Osama worldview, it will “bring the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.

The president spoke those words to Congress last week during his State of the Union message; the head of al-Qaida was delivering his latest rant for broadcast to his followers.

The president and the Democrats running Congress fail to see the dangers that environmentalist extremism poses to the U.S. But bin Laden has concluded it is a powerful weapon that can destroy us.

The Saudi-born patriarch of Islamist terrorism, from whatever cave he currently calls home, devoted his entire latest audiotape message to global warming. “Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,” bin Laden declared. “All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”

Bin Laden even bashed ex-President George W. Bush for opposing the Kyoto Protocol at the behest of big business; he must have gotten hold of the Democratic National Committee’s talking points.

How do we prevent the promised worldwide calamity of temperatures going up and up? “Drastic solutions” are in order according to the reclusive al-Qaida chief, as opposed to “solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change.”

The world must “stop consuming American products,” he advised, and “we should stop dealings with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible.”

That will have “grave ramifications,” bin Laden admitted, “but it is the only means to liberate humanity from slavery and dependence on America.” Doing so would have the added bonus of hurting U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, he added.

As George Mason University atmospheric physicist Fred Singer and Hudson Institute agricultural economist Dennis Avery point out in their book, “Unstoppable Global Warming,” Kyoto would create some jobs, “but far more would be lost through the economic stagnation and the higher taxes required to ration energy use.”

As Singer and Avery note, Americans “have been reluctant to commit the United States to the cost of building an entirely new energy system when the old energy system was still working, the alternative fuel systems recommended by environmentalists were expensive and erratic, and the science of global warming was still uncertain.”

Of course, in the wake of last year’s Climategate e-mail scandal, in which hacked communications between climatologists revealed the intentional skewing of scientific evidence regarding warming, plus other tendentious misconduct, the science backing climate change alarmism is more uncertain than ever.

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., former chairman of and now ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, argued on the Senate floor in November that “developing countries like China and India will never be masochistic enough to subject their economies to the West’s climate neuroses. Meanwhile, Europe has proved with Kyoto that the only emissions quotas it will accept are those that don’t actually have to be met.”

He added, “the U.S. will not support a global warming treaty that will significantly damage the American economy, cost American jobs, and impose the largest tax increase in American history.”

Inhofe spoke for many when he said that “given the unemployment rate of 10%, and given all of the out of control spending in Washington, the last thing we need is another thousand-page bill that increases costs and ships jobs overseas, all with no impact on climate change.”

Environmentalist extremism has made the leap from a politically-correct fetish of leftist utopians who resent capitalists to an economic weapon highly recommended by America’s international Public Enemy No.1.

Who wants to bet it’s only a matter of time before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad follows bin Laden’s recommendation and echoes the call to use global warming policies to topple the Great Satan from its position as the world’s lone superpower?

A bad treaty, after all, can be nearly as destructive as a nuke.

IBD: Miranda Wrongs

Miranda Wrongs

IBD: 25 Jan 2010

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair says just because the new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group failed to swing into action in the… View Enlarged Image

Homeland Security: For months, our new “High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group” has supposedly been on call. Why was it AWOL before the Christmas Day bomber was improperly read his right to remain silent?

The White House is against Bush administration-style enhanced interrogation. But is it so dominated by the quasi-constitutional mind-set of the American Civil Liberties Union that it’s really against any kind of interrogation?

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week that “we should have automatically deployed” the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), set up by President Obama last year, against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian is the suspected al-Qaida agent who allegedly tried to blow up a U.S. jet with nearly 300 passengers aboard on Dec. 25.

CAIR wants lawmaker to meet with Islamic leaders

PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEOS:

Senator’s call to profile angers ‘Muslim Mafia’

CAIR wants lawmaker to meet with Islamic leaders to explain

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Posted: January 23, 2010

By Art Moore

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WorldNetDaily

Sen. James Inhofe, R, Okla., at hearing Thursday

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Oklahoma chapter is calling on Sen. James Inhofe, R.-Okla., to meet with Muslim leaders to discuss his statement during a congressional hearing in favor of using religion and ethnicity as factors in profiling airline passengers.

“It is disturbing to hear a member of the United States Senate suggest that entire religious and ethnic groups should automatically be considered terror suspects,” said CAIR-OK Executive Director Razi Hashmi. “Our nation’s leaders have a duty not to exacerbate the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in American society.”

Cartoon: Terrorists have the right to remain silent

Navy Seals trial moved to Iraq

source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/01/navy_seals_trial_moved_to_iraq.html

Jane Jamison

The Newport News DailyPress.com reports :

Two of the three Navy elite commando SEALS who are facing military court martial for their arrest of an Islamic terrorist are going to have trials in Iraq so that they can exercise their right to  confront their accuser face-to-face.

Special Warfare Operater 2nd Class Jonathan Keefe, Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Julio Huertas and Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Matthew McCabe are accused of mistreating Ahmed Hashim Abed after arresting him and denying wrongdoing in later statements to commanders.

Abed is the accused Islamo-terrorist mastermind of  the ambush, torture, murder, burning and hanging of 4 Blackwater contract personnel who were making a food delivery in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004.    The American men, most of them former U.S. military, were dragged behind vehicles, burned and hung from a Euphrates river bridge while town crowds cheered.

U.S. Military commanders, (who apparently suffer from the same “politically-correct”  illness as the President of the United States) allege that SWO2 McCabe may have punched Abed after his arrest.  The alleged “crime” of the other two SEALS is, apparently, that they didn’t rat out their fellow soldier.  Abed may have also suffered a cut lip in the incident.  Background on this story is here and here.

In the past few weeks, military prosecutors have sought to delay the trials of the SEALS and also tried to simply try the SEALS on the basis of a taped deposition of Abed.  Attorneys for the SEALS demanded the right to confront and question their Muslim terrorist accuser in person at trial.  The fact that the SEALS have to be flown to Iraq to protect their rights, their careers, their names and the SEALS’ reputation is a shameful waste of time, expense and effort.   The Christmas Day bombing attempt on an American jetliner shows the U.S. government has much more important business than prosecuting soldiers who were doing exemplary work tracking down a Muslim terrorist murder suspect.

The clock keeps ticking, the Obama administration has had plenty of time and still has more time to drop these charges and make this all go away.   American soldiers being treated like terrorists.   Terrorists being treated like soldiers.   The silence from this White House on this matter is shameful.

Steven Emerson: Combating Radical Islam

Steven Emerson: Combating Radical Islam
Defeating Jihadist Terrorism

by George Michael
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2010, pp. 15-25

http://www.meforum.org/2578/steven-emerson-combating-radical-islam

On Christmas afternoon in 1992, Steven Emerson, then a staff reporter for CNN, noticed a large group of men in traditional Arab clothes congregating outside the Oklahoma City Convention Center. At first, he thought they were extras for a movie—until he remembered the date. So, he explored a bit; inside, he discovered a conference sponsored by the Muslim Arab Youth Association. The vitriol of the speakers, replete with hateful rhetoric against Jews, Israel, and America mixed with exhortations of violence toward these enemies, alarmed him. Spontaneous shouts of “Kill the Jews” and “Destroy the West” came from the audience throughout the event.[1]

Steven Emerson has emerged as a powerful independent force, working with U.S. security services while also carrying out investigations on his own in areas beyond their reach.

Worried by what he had witnessed, Emerson notified a contact in the FBI, only to be told that the agency knew nothing about the conference and also lacked a mandate to investigate it because no criminal activity had occurred or was imminent.[2] This experience indelibly impressed him, leaving a sense of government weakness and suggesting the need for a private agency to explore the threat of radical Islam within the United States.

On graduation from Brown University, Emerson (b. 1954) went to work as an analyst on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served as an international investigator and helped shape the aid package to Israel and Egypt following the Camp David accords in 1978. He honed his skills while working for the committee until 1982, during which time he developed an abiding interest in Middle Eastern affairs.

In 1986, he joined U.S. News & World Report where he worked as a national security correspondent. During this time, he authored two books: Secret Warriors: Inside the Covert Military Operations of the Reagan Era[3] and The Fall of Pan Am 103: Inside the Lockerbie Investigation.[4] In Secret Warriors, Emerson argued that technical breakdowns, bureaucratic disarray, presidential interference, and professional jealousy contributed to the inertia of America’s elite forces.[5] This perception may have played a large role in convincing him that government alone is inadequate to the challenges of modern terrorism. In The Fall of Pan Am 103, he promoted the theory—then held by the U.S. government—that Iran was responsible for the bombing of the flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

Since that early experience in Oklahoma, Emerson has emerged as a powerful independent force who works with U.S. security services but carries out investigations on his own in areas beyond their reach. He does not take any funds from the government. In 1995, he established his own think tank, the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), which has since conducted investigations into many Islamist and terrorist groups and individuals. The IPT has stirred up more hornets’ nests than many government agencies. Its acute focus has allowed it to hone in on targets that broader agencies missed. Emerson’s initiative has paid off handsomely.

New Nongovernmental Agencies Emerge

The Islamist campaign to implement Shari’a law presents a grave challenge to the United States and all Western countries. And while a security apparatus has arisen to defend against these threats, several nongovernmental bodies have emerged as critical adjuncts in the effort to identify those who work within the law to change the Western way of life.

Compared to Western Europe, the United States has an unusual approach to domestic political extremism. Since 1976, the FBI has officially conducted surveillance of extremist and potentially violent groups under the attorney general’s guidelines, established after revelations of misconduct and abuses arising from the COINTELPRO initiative, a secret program through which the FBI disrupted both far-left and far-right groups.[6] However, the extremely well-coordinated attacks of 9/11 exposed gaping holes in the area of human intelligence and impelled the government to reexamine and recalibrate this policy.[7]

In response, the FBI relaxed its guidelines for investigations of religious extremists, and the federal government now allows information to be shared between intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Moreover, to augment their investigatory functions, the authorities increasingly rely on recently created, private monitoring groups, including JihadWatch.com and the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).[8] Their efforts are complemented by think tanks such as the Middle East Forum and publications such as the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

Operating in a decentralized fashion, private entities can be more flexible and effective than government agencies in providing time-sensitive and actionable intelligence resources. For example, MEMRI releases high-quality, up-to-date information and translations about radical organizations, frequently before such intelligence is processed by government.[9]

Emerson’s IPT has established itself as the most effective nongovernmental organization (NGO) monitoring Islamic radicalism. It is the only private entity in the United States that conducts undercover research into the activities of Islamist groups. To preserve its independence, IPT accepts no funds from the U.S. government or donors outside the United States.

Emerson’s IPT focuses primarily on U.S.-based Islamist groups, some working in legal ways to undermine American society, others with links to terrorist organizations overseas. Along the way, he has created an unparalleled undercover investigative apparatus. According to Rep. Sue Myrick (Republican of North Carolina), cofounder of the bipartisan Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, “The Investigative Project is the only one out there who is really doing substantial research into what is going on in the world and here in America. They are actually researching … they are verifying how these [jihadist] movements are taking place. … I don’t know of anyone else who is doing the same thing.”[10]

Emerson has returned the compliment: “Congressmen like Frank Wolf, Pete Hoekstra, and Sue Myrick have shown a backbone that is unparalleled in Congress in courageously tackling the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR [Council on American Islamic Relations], and other Islamist groups, and radical Islamic groups. So it shows there are brave Congressmen as well.”[11] Like Emerson, Myrick focuses less on outright terrorism than the infiltration of American institutions by Islamists.[12] Alliances like this lend strength to Emerson’s own efforts. The task of exposing and combating Islamist organizations and individuals takes place in a highly political context and requires high-level lobbying and juristic skills.

Exposing Islamists in America

Emerson undertook effective investigations on his own before he started the IPT. Most notable was his 1994 documentary Jihad in America, which raised awareness of the threat of radical Islam in the United States. The film focused on a Palestinian, Abdullah Azzam, who founded the Arab Fighters Service Bureau in Afghanistan to recruit and train thousands of mostly Arab jihadists. Osama bin Laden, a protégé of Azzam’s, cofounded the bureau and later transformed it into Al-Qaeda. The bureau’s North American office, the Al-Khifa Refugee Center in the Al-Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn, soon became the hub of a network that included outposts in Atlanta, Chicago, Connecticut, and New Jersey.[13] Interestingly, while in Pakistan and Afghanistan for several months in 1993, shooting the documentary, Emerson befriended Azzam’s son Hodeyfa.

After Azzam’s assassination in Pakistan in 1989,[14] the blind Egyptian sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, emerged as the spiritual leader of the international jihadist wing of the bureau. In 1990, Abdel Rahman, who had been expelled from Egypt, was allowed to emigrate from Afghanistan to the United States despite having been named on the State Department’s terrorist watch list; he settled in the New York city area. Soon, a circle of Islamists congregated at his Al-Salaam Mosque in Jersey City. In 1990, one of his followers, Egyptian-born El Sayyid Nosair, assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Israeli politician and founder of the Jewish Defense League.[15] A few years later, other Abdel Rahman followers linked up with Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which killed six persons and wounded 1,042 others.[16] Emerson’s work in uncovering and exposing this network complemented the efforts of official agencies operating under greater constraints.

The Charity Networks

Since August 1994, Emerson has testified before or informally briefed the United States Congress hundreds of times.[17] His efforts appear to have had an influence on lawmakers. The videotape of his first documentary, Jihad in America, was distributed to all 535 members of Congress and, according to Rep. Chris Smith (Republican of New Jersey), it played a significant role in persuading them to pass the USA Patriot Act in the fall of 2001.[18] In 2002, he published a book entitled American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us,[19] in which he traced the development of radical Islam in the United States. He also testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission) in July 2003.[20]

In later testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on November 8, 2005, he charged that Saudi Arabia had funded a vast network of charities and religious organizations that had ties to terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda and Hamas.[21] This testimony prompted Treasury and National Security Council investigations into the labyrinth of radical Islamic charities operating in the United States. According to federal officials, these investigations led to an effort within the agencies to shut down some of the charities but nothing was done; the Clinton administration lacked the political will to close down the charities. Only after the 9-11 attacks did that will emerge and efforts to shut down the charitable fronts succeed.[22]

Emerson has focused primarily on the fundraising activities of mainstream Muslim groups and their links to the more radical organizations for which they serve as fronts. As he has observed, one of the most important activities carried out by Islamist groups in the United States has been the establishment of nonprofit, tax-deductible organizations to establish zones of legitimacy within which fundraising, recruitment, and even terrorist planning can occur.[23] Using a technique first developed in the Middle East, these groups often provide American Muslims with much-needed social services such as education, nutrition, and health care so as to win over and manipulate them.[24] This activity is usually justified by reference to the religious duty of paying zakat (the Islamic alms tax).[25] This practice creates substantial good will and much social capital for those Islamist groups who choose to employ it as a cover for collecting monies destined for jihadist groups.

According to one CIA study, one-fifth of all Islamic NGOs worldwide have been unwittingly infiltrated by Islamist terrorist groups.[26] As Emerson has pointed out, some of the religious and charitable organizations have mixed legitimate activities with illegitimate, thus betraying the true aims of the donations.[27] Investigators who seek to reveal this duplicity run a serious risk of being condemned as bigots who find wrongdoing in a meritorious religious activity that has close parallels to Jewish and Christian charities.

Hamas and Hezbollah Networks

Overall, the IPT, with its access to information and intelligence to which the government is not privy, has been instrumental in shutting down more than a dozen Islamic charitable terrorist and nonviolent front-groups since 2001.[28]

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, offers one notable example of an organization involved in both terrorism and social services. According to Emerson, Hamas developed the most sophisticated infrastructure of all the Islamist groups operating in the United States.[29] During the early 1990s, the group worked out of an office in Springfield, Virginia, opened by Musa Abu Marzouk. In 1981, Abu Marzouk helped create the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), which served as the primary voice for Hamas in the United States. IAP participants were later among the founding members of CAIR.[30] IAP’s primary activity consisted of annual conferences, which hosted various Islamist luminaries who often gave incendiary speeches.[31]

In 1980, Abu Marzouk became founding president of the United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), which some sources indicate acted as the Hamas political command in the United States.[32] He went on to found additional groups in the United States, all of them closely associated with Hamas. For example, UASR and IAP were joined by the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which Abu Marzouk himself designated as the primary source of donations for charitable work in the Palestinian territories.[33] In 2001, Abu Marzouk voluntarily shut down his office after its director, Ahmed Yousef, was forced to flee the United States where he had resided illegally for twenty years. Yousef now serves as a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza.[34] Abu Marzouk also returned to Gaza where he is now the deputy chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, but in 2004 he was indicted in his absence for coordinating and financing the work of Hamas.[35]

The FBI suspects that Hamas may also have established for-profit corporations in the United States. On September 5, 2001, it executed a search warrant against the InfoCom Corporation, an Internet service provider based in Richardson, Texas, suspected of ties to Hamas.[36] The authorities indicted its officials and subsequently convicted them of channeling funds to the Palestinian group.[37] Law enforcement officials commented on background that Emerson’s organization, with vast archives on the activities of Hamas front groups in the United States, had an instrumental role in prosecuting and convicting the Holy Land Foundation, a trial that resulted in sweeping convictions for all defendants in 2008.[38]

And the beat goes on: In 2007, the IPT broadcast video tapes on its website showing Esam Omeish railing against Israel and advocating jihad. As a result, Omeish was forced to resign from his appointment by Virginian governor Tim Kaine to the state’s Commission on Immigration.[39] In 2009, the IPT exposed the links between Viva Palestina USA and Hamas. Its report on the group laid bare its membership, activities, and motives and was provided to federal authorities for further investigation.[40]

Sami al-Arian and Palestinian Islamic Jihad

Emerson was the first investigator to link a former professor at the University of South Florida, Sami al-Arian, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an organization designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.[41] He exposed Arian’s ties to the Islamic Jihad in his 1994 documentary Jihad in America and continued to write and testify about Arian’s links to the group throughout the rest of the decade. Arian has helped create several Islamist associations. One of these, the Islamic Concern Project (later called the Islamic Committee for Palestine), allegedly raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and brought Islamist leaders to the United States.[42] In Jihad in America, Emerson called the Islamic Committee for Palestine the “primary support group in the United States for Islamic Jihad.”

Emerson revealed that Arian was running an organization that was in effect the American branch of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.[43] In February 2003, federal law enforcement agents arrested Arian for alleged fundraising and material support activities on behalf of terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.[44] In December 2005, Arian was acquitted of many serious charges against him, but the jury deadlocked on nine counts. He pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to provide services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and agreed to be deported after serving the balance of a 57-month sentence.

According to Bill West, the supervisory special agent of the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s Miami Special Investigations Section (and now a consultant to the IPT), Emerson’s “outstanding and continued original investigative journalism” of Arian and his PIJ connections “was the catalyst that resulted in the launching of the federal criminal investigation against Al-Arian and his cohorts.”[45]

CAIR, MPAC, and AMC

Emerson’s detailed investigations into CAIR have generated consequences for this Islamist group in Congress. For example, in December 2006, following an appeal by “CAIR Watch” founder Joe Kaufman, Sen. Barbara Boxer (Democrat of California) rescinded an award to CAIR official Basim Elkarra, stating that she was uncomfortable with many of CAIR’s positions.[46] Not long after, Emerson disclosed Rep. Bill Pascrell’s (Democrat of New Jersey) role in sponsoring a CAIR forum to be held in a Capitol facility. The Republican Party House Conference objected to this use by CAIR, whose members the Republican Party had labeled as “terror apologists.”[47] It was also Emerson who discerned that CAIR had effectively been founded by Hamas.[48]

He has long sought to expose CAIR’s leading officials who have previously expressed extremist views and been linked to militant activities. One of these is Ghassan Elashi, founder of the Texas branch of CAIR, who has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for numerous offences, including money-laundering for Hamas.[49] In 2007, CAIR was designated an un-indicted co-conspirator in the trial of the officials operating the Holy Land Foundation, who were accused and later convicted of laundering money for Hamas.[50] In the trial, FBI agent Lara Burns testified that CAIR serves as a front for Hamas. In January 2009, Emerson revealed that the FBI was severing its contacts with CAIR due to its ties with Hamas.[51]

Emerson has released documents and tapes showing that leaders of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC) have defended Hezbollah, excused Hamas terror attacks, compared the United States to Al-Qaeda, urged Muslims not to cooperate if FBI agents approach them, and issued demonstrably anti-Semitic and anti-American statements.[52] In return, MPAC tried to demonize Emerson. At a conference held in late 2004, it displayed a poster called “The Faces that Are Always Talking about Terrorism,” which included pictures of Osama bin Laden, Daniel Pipes, Pat Robertson, Donald Rumsfeld, and Steven Emerson.[53] The implication was that Emerson, et al., were as nefarious as bin Laden.

In December 2004, MPAC again focused on Emerson in a report entitled Counterproductive Counterterrorism: How Anti-Islamic Rhetoric Is Impeding America’s Homeland Security. It pointed out that several key public officials, including former national security advisor, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, had praised the efforts of MPAC in working with government officials to combat terrorism in America.[54] Emerson countered, saying MPAC has deceived public officials into believing the group is “moderate” while at the same time defending Hezbollah and Hamas and rationalizing radical Islam.

The American Muslim Council (AMC) may have been Emerson’s most dramatic exposé so far. He took issue with an invitation that President Bill Clinton extended in 1996 to Abdurahman Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim-American leader and the executive director of the AMC. The meeting between the president and Alamoudi was to take place in the White House. Clinton administration officials, including Clinton himself, Vice President Al Gore and National Security Advisor Anthony Lake, met with Alamoudi along with twenty-three Muslim and Arab leaders.[55] According to Emerson, AMC had significant ties to Hamas and was a defender of Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk.[56] Because of the notoriety Alamoudi received from the exposure by Emerson, the Clintons and President Bush returned Alamoudi’s campaign contributions.[57] This is an excellent example of how someone coming from outside the compliant structures of government can make an impact in political circles.

But the matter went even further. Emerson recorded a speech in which Alamoudi voiced support for both Hezbollah and Hamas.[58] Emerson also obtained a recording of Alamoudi calling for bombings in the United States, a tape that was introduced at Alamoudi’s detention hearing and credited with the decision to keep him in jail rather than let him out on bail.[59] In October 2003, Alamoudi was then indicted on charges that he had illegally accepted $340,000 from the Libyan government for his efforts to persuade the U.S. government to lift sanctions against the Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi regime.[60] Then, in 2004, Alamoudi was arrested and convicted of conspiring with two Al-Qaeda members to assassinate King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.[61] In October, 2004, he pled guilty and was sentenced to twenty-three years in prison. Treasury documents list him as a longtime courier for Al-Qaeda and Hamas.[62]

The Investigative Project on Terrorism

Emerson founded the Investigative Project on Terrorism in 1995 and currently serves as its executive director; this think tank and archive maintains the world’s largest collection of nongovernmental data on radical Islamic groups, including more than four million documents, thousands of hours of clandestine video and audio recordings made at radical Islamic conferences, training sessions, fundraising activities, and assorted gatherings; and tens of thousands of original terrorist manuals and periodicals.[63] The IPT has also compiled a database of thousands of known or suspected terrorists as well as dossiers on radical groups.[64]

The IPT website offers a comprehensive counter-Islamist source of information, with government documents, proprietary information, and breaking stories.[65] The IPT also employs analysts to collect and interpret data and sends associates to listen to speeches by Islamist leaders. To inform interested parties of its work, it mails out daily updates. Emerson also contributes to the Counterterrorism Blog website, which posts articles and information relating to radical Islam, terrorism, and nonviolent Islamist threats.

The IPT receives information from a variety of sources, including many not available to government agencies. The archive holds the trial exhibits from the first World Trade Center bombing case, which include numerous records on Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere. Emerson and his staff meticulously copied the documents, which were all publicly available and obtained from the court and prosecutors. After reviewing the records, Emerson concluded that these various Islamist groups were coordinating their activities in a worldwide network.[66]

The IPT, acting as a nongovernmental agency, assists, without fee, numerous government offices and agencies, in part because constitutional limitations tie the hands of federal and state security services. Due to a strong civil liberties tradition rooted in the First Amendment, the U.S. government lacks the authority to disband extremist groups or proscribe extremist speech. While the IPT does not possess any governmental powers or authority, it has the ability, like the media, to shine a light on the activities of Islamist groups, gatherings, and officials. Emerson often quotes Justice Louis Brandeis’s dictum that “sunshine is the law’s best disinfectant.”

The constraints imposed on government agencies investigating terrorist threats created space for Emerson’s Investigative Project. Since the mid-1970s, federal authorities have been hampered in their efforts to monitor political extremism, largely due to the legacy of the secret FBI project designated COINTELPRO.[67] Negative publicity surrounding that program led the Justice Department to change FBI law enforcement and investigative methods to de-politicize the FBI. The Levi guidelines, adopted in April 1976, require evidence of a criminal predicate or a reasonable suspicion before commencing investigation of a dissident group.[68] These changes had dramatic consequences, not least that the number of domestic intelligence cases dropped from 1,454 in 1975 to only 95 in 1977.[69] Nothing in the guidelines, however, precludes the FBI from opening an investigation based on information received from a private group. NGOs such as the IPT and individuals such as Shannen Rossmiller[70] have done much to fill the void. For its part, the IPT monitors not only radical Islamic groups in America advocating violent jihad but also those employing nonviolent or “stealth” jihad.

Conclusion

Emerson believes that the Islamist movement in the West continues to strengthen, in large part due to what he refers to as the “cultural jihad,” which provides a congenial environment in which Islamists can flourish. He cites survey data indicating that many Muslim communities in the West sympathize with aspects of the Islamist worldview. These cultural jihadists in turn give moral support to the terrorists.[71] In Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, the French scholar Olivier Roy argues that Muslims in the West often experience a trauma of “deterritorialization” because they feel estranged from their native lands. To overcome anomie and alienation, young Muslims find solace in a new, purified Islam and attach themselves to a “virtual ummah [Islamic nation]” built by them on the Internet.[72] This pool of mostly young, alienated, Muslim men provides a reservoir from which Islamists can recruit in the West.

In Emerson’s opinion, the November 2, 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri[73] was a watershed event that inspired Europeans to reevaluate the viability of the multicultural model, seeing that it results not in peaceful coexistence but rather in separatism and cultural jihadism, threatening the social fabric of Western Europe. He warns that moderates have little influence in Muslim communities in the West.[74] Although the Muslim underclass in the United States is smaller than in Europe, Emerson finds substantial alienation in the Muslim-American community. He sees groups such as CAIR, MPAC, the Islamic Society of North America, and the Muslim American Society as agents that exacerbate this tendency. What is more, he notes, Islamist schools in the United States are often funded by Wahhabi sources promoting an extremist variant of Islam.[75]

Emerson has not gone unnoticed by Al-Qaeda. In September 2006, a leading public representative of the organization—American-born Adam Gadahn, who has adopted the Muslim name of Azzam al-Amriki—mentioned Emerson and several other Americans in a public videotape.[76] The video begins with an introduction by bin Laden’s lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who refers to Gadahn as a “brother” and “a perceptive person who wants to lead his people out of darkness into the light.”[77] Then Gadahn invites Emerson and the others to Islam:

If the Zionist crusader missionaries of hate and counter-Islam consultants like Daniel Pipes, Robert Spencer, Michael Scheuer, Steven Emerson, and yes, even the crusader-in-chief, George W. Bush were to abandon their unbelief and repent and enter into the light of Islam and turn their swords against the enemies of God, it would be accepted of them and they would be our brothers of Islam.[78]

Emerson and his colleagues remain unimpressed and continue their work.

George Michael is associate professor of political science and administration of justice at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. He is the author most recently of Willis Carto and the American Far Right (University Press of Florida, 2008), and Theology of Hate: A History of the World Church of the Creator (University Press of Florida, 2009).

[1] Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (New York: The Free Press, 2002), p. 6.
[2] Ibid., pp. 5-25.
[3] New York: Putnam Adult, 1988.
[4] With Brian Duffy, New York: Penguin Group, 1990.
[5] See also Steven Emerson, “Stymied Warriors,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 13, 1988; Beau Grosscup, The Newest Explosions of Terrorism: Latest Sites of Terrorism in the 1990s and Beyond (Far Hills, N.J.: New Horizon Press, 1998), p. 405.
[6] James Kirkpatrick Davis, Spying on America: The FBI’s Domestic Counterintelligence Program (Westport: Praeger, 1992), pp. 25-159.
[7] Los Angeles Times, Dec. 1, 2001.
[8] See “Why Jihad Watch?” JihadWatch, accessed Oct. 1, 2009; “About Us,” Middle East Media Research Institute, accessed Oct. 1, 2009; “About the Project,” Terrorism Awareness Project, accessed Oct. 1, 2009.
[9] John Robb, Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2007), pp. 89-91.
[10] “About the Investigative Project,” The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed Oct. 1, 2009.
[11] Jamie Glazov, “The-Islamist Lobby in the House: An Interview with Steven Emerson,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Aug. 4, 2009.
[12] Sue Myrick, “The War at Home: When Will We Open Our Eyes?” editorial, Feb, 5, 2008, accessed Nov. 29, 2009.
[13] Peter L. Bergen, Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: The Free Press, 2001), p. 133.
[14] “Who Killed Abdullah Azzam?” Time, Nov. 24, 1989.
[15] United States of America, Appellee, v. Omar Ahmad Ali Abdel Rahman, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, New York, Aug. 16, 1999.
[16] Simon Reeve, The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism (Boston: Northeaster Press, 1999), p. 15.
[17] “Testimony,” The Investigative Project, accessed Oct. 1, 2009.
[18] John Mintz, “The Man Who Gives Terrorism a Name,” The Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2001.
[19] New York: Free Press, 2003.
[20] The 9/11 Commission Report (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004), p. 441.
[21] Steven Emerson, “Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe in the War on Terror,” testimony before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2005.
[22] E-mail correspondence with Steven Emerson, Nov. 19, 2009.
[23] Emerson, American Jihad, p. 37; Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), p. 5.
[24] Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, p. 6.
[25] See Raymond Ibrahim, “The Dark Side of Zakat: Muslim ‘Charity’ in Context,” Pajamas Media, Aug. 15, 2009.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Steven Emerson, “How to Really Fight Terrorism,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 24, 1998.
[28] WTHR- NBC (Indianapolis), Nov. 10, 2003.
[29] Emerson, American Jihad, p. 80.
[30] Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha, “CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment,” Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2006, pp. 3-20.
[31] Emerson, American Jihad, pp. 93-8; Harvey Kushner with Bart Davis, Holy War on the Home Front: The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United States (New York: Sentinel, 2004), pp. 22-4.
[32] Emerson, American Jihad, pp. 84-5; Kushner, Holy War on the Home Front, pp. 109-12.
[33] “HLF Officials Convicted on All Counts,” IPT News, The Investigative Project, Nov. 24, 2008.
[34] FrontPageMagazine.com, Feb. 9, 2008; The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 2, 2009.
[35] United States of America v. Mohammed Abu Marzook, et. al., United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, no. 03 CR 978.
[36] Emerson, American Jihad, pp. 103-4; The Dallas Morning News, July 15, 2007.
[37] Associated Press, Apr. 13, 2005.
[38] The New York Times, Nov. 24, 2008.
[39] Associated Press, Sept. 27, 2007.
[40] “Viva Palestina: An IPT Investigative Report,” Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed Nov. 17, 2009.
[41] “Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C., Apr. 8, 2008.
[42] Emerson, American Jihad, pp. 111-6; Kushner, Holy War on the Home Front, p. 52.
[43] “Target Terrorism,” CBS 48 Hours, Jan. 30, 2002.
[44] “ADL Commends Law Enforcement for Arrests of Suspected Terrorist Supporters,” Anti-Defamation League, Feb. 20, 2003.
[45] E-mail correspondence with Bill West, chief, Special Investigations Section, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Miami (Fla.) District Office, Nov. 19, 2009.
[46] Newsweek, Dec. 29, 2006.
[47] Steven Emerson, “One Muslim Advocacy Group’s Not-So-Secret Terrorist Ties,” The New Republic Online, Mar. 28, 2007.
[48] Emerson, American Jihad, pp. 197-203.
[49] Steven Emerson, “Kicking a CAIR Extremist off the Human Relations Commission,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Nov. 6, 2006.
[50] United States of America v. Holy Land Foundation, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, Appendix A, CR no. 3:04-CR-240-G.
[51] IPT News, Jan. 29, 2009; FoxNews.com, Jan. 20, 2009.
[52] Steven Emerson, “Threatened by the Jihad,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Mar. 14, 2007; Daniel Pipes, “MPAC, CAIR, and Praising Osama bin Laden,” FrontPageMagazine.com, June 1, 2007.
[53] Daniel Pipes, “MPAC on Steven Emerson and Me,” Daniel Pipes Blog, July 12, 2004.
[54] Counterproductive Counterterrorism: How Anti-Islamic Rhetoric Is Impeding America’s Homeland Security (Washington, D.C.: Muslim Public Affairs Council, 2004), p. 4.
[55] “Profile: American Muslim Council (AMC),” Center for Grassroots Oversight, accessed July 7, 2009; Steven Emerson, “Friends of Hamas in the White House,” The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 13, 1996.
[56] Emerson, “Friends of Hamas in the White House.”
[57] The New York Times, Oct. 26, 2000.
[58] “Target Terrorism,” CBS 48 Hours, Jan. 30, 2002.
[59] “Declaration in Support of Detention,” United States of America v. Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, no. 03-1009M, Sept. 30, 2003.
[60] David Frum and Richard Perle, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 83.
[61] The Washington Post, Oct. 16, 2004.
[62] United States of America v. Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi.
[63] Steven Emerson, Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006), p. 15.
[64] Steven Emerson, “DOJ Oversight: Preserving Our Freedoms while Defending against Terrorism,” testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Dec. 4, 2001; idem, American Jihad, p. 14.
[65] The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed July 7, 2009.
[66] Emerson, American Jihad, pp. 20-1.
[67] Davis, Spying on America, pp. 25-159.
[68] “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Compliance with the Attorney General’s Investigative Guidelines,” (Redacted), Special Report, Office of the Inspector General, Washington, D.C., Sept. 2005.
[69] Davis, Spying on America, p. 176.
[70] See Shannen Rossmiller, “My Cyber Counter-jihad,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2007, pp. 43-8.
[71] Steven Emerson, “Jihadism: Where Is It At in 2006?” Sydney Papers, The Sydney (Aus.) Institute, Autumn 2006, pp. 63-71.
[72] Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 272-5.
[73] BBC News, Nov. 2, 2004; USA Today, Nov. 2, 2004; The New York Times, Nov. 10, 2004.
[74] “Radical Islamism in Europe,” interview with Irshad Manji, Steven Emerson, and Gilles Kepel, Aspen Institute, Washington, D.C., Dec. 2004.
[75] “A Special Interview with Steve Emerson,” The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security International, June 2006; Roy, Globalized Islam, pp. 234-43; on U.K. schools and radicalism, see “Music, Chess, and Other Sins,” Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2009, pp. 78-82.
[76] Associated Press, May 27, 2004; Fox News, Oct. 29, 2004; Annette Stark, “Peace, Love, Death Metal,” Los Angeles City Beat, Sept. 9, 2004.
[77] Raffi Khatchadourian, “Azzam the American,” The New Yorker, Jan. 22, 2007.
[78] Beila Rabinowitz, “What Al Qaeda’s Call for Pipes, Spencer, Emerson, and Scheuer to Convert to Islam Means,” PipeLineNews.org, Sept. 19, 2006.

Related Topics: Counter-terrorism |  George Michael |  Winter 2010 MEQ receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing list To receive the full, printed version of the Middle East Quarterly, please see details about an affordable subscription. This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

Israelis Baffled by News of Defenseless US Soldiers

Israelis Baffled by News of Defenseless US Soldiers

Many Israelis want to know: why didn’t the soldiers attacked by a U.S. Army major-turned-terrorist return fire?

When a Muslim goes, well, Muslim in Israel he is typically shot to death by someone, like a reserve soldier, within seconds of screaming “Allah Akbar.”

In contrast with the Israeli experience, it took 10 minutes before a civilian police officer at  Fort Hood was able to shoot and stop Muslim fanatic Nidal Malik Hasan.

How could that happen?  How could so many people trained in the strategies and tactics of modern warfare be so defenseless?

The answer – and this may astonish many Americans – is that the victims were unarmed. U.S. soldiers are not allowed to carry guns for personal protection, even on a 340-acre base quartering more than 50,000 troops.

So it goes in brain-dead, liberal America .

Fort Hood is a “gun free” zone, thanks to regulations adopted in one of the very first acts signed into law by anti-gun President Bill Clinton in March, 1993. Click here for the file.

Contrary to President Obama’s crocodile tears, his administration is bent on further disarming the U.S. military, and all Americans. Obama and his people will not rest until every American is a sitting duck…

postscript: Israeli teachers, from kindergarten on up, are also armed; so, a Virginia Tech-type slaughter is highly unlikely at an Israeli university.

Israelis, who have had to combat terrorism all their lives, are not afraid of guns.  They are an armed people, ready, willing, and able to defend themselves and their country.

Unlike Liberally indoctrinated Americans, paralyzed by fear and political correctness, Israelis understand that people, not guns, kill people.

IPT: The Threat of Homegrown Terrorism

The Threat of Homegrown Terrorism

by Interview with Steven Emerson
C-SPAN
November 29, 2009

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1540/the-threat-of-homegrown-terrorism

Multimedia for this item

Washington Journal continues.

ROBB HARLESTON [HOST]: Steve Emerson is the Executive Director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S. We’re going to talk about that a little bit more. We’ve got you in to talk about the threat of homegrown terrorism, so for the sake of this particular conversation, define homegrown terrorism for us.

STEVEN EMERSON: Well, interestingly enough, homegrown terrorism used to define right wing, neo-Nazi, KKK-type terrorism – indigenous terrorism. Now it is used as a euphemism for jihadist-type terrorism that grows up in the United States indigenously without external factors such as being directed by Al Qaeda or such as being imported from Al Qaeda, but rather American citizens who carry out attacks of terrorism here in the United States.

HARLESTON: And an example of that would be the case of the Somalis being written about in a lot of places as – and we’ve got the article here from the Wall Street Journal, the headline “Somali Case Highlights Specter of Radicalization” – tell us what they’re writing about.

EMERSON: They’re writing about a whole cluster of Somali-American kids whose parents had immigrated to the United States as refugees and who – the kids were born here. But unfortunately, because of radicalization, either through the mosque or through the internet or through videos or through CDs, they became radicalized to the point of joining the Al-Shabaab movement, which was an Al Qaeda subset in Somalia. And they were recruited to either carry out attacks in Somalia – one actually carried out a suicide bombing – or to carry out attacks in the United States. And they were all American-born.

HARLESTON: And how much of this threat – how big is this threat becoming? How is this growing here in the United States?

EMERSON: Well the Somali-American threat is growing. I can tell you there are at least six other American cities where they have young Somali-Americans who they believe belong to Al-Shabaab, and are deemed to be a national security threat. There is active recruitment in Kansas City, in Columbus, Ohio, in San Diego in California, and several other cities for Al-Shabaab. And that’s not the only group involved in terms of homegrown terrorism, but certainly one of the major groups.

HARLESTON: We’re talking with Steven Emerson about the threat of homegrown terrorism. If you want to get involved in the conversation, the number is (202) 737-0002 for Democrats. Republicans: (202) 737-0001. Independents: (202) 628-0205. So by this definition, would you categorize what happened at Fort Hood with Major Nidal Hasan as a case of homegrown terrorism?

EMERSON: Absolutely. I believe that was a case of homegrown jihadist terrorism. It wasn’t externally directed. It may have been influenced by a Yemeni cleric named Anwar al-Awlaki, who used to live in the United States, and with whom Major Hasan had had contact with. But he carried it out all by himself – he had procured the firearms, he let superiors know that infidels should have their throats slit, he became a full fledged jihadist here in the United States from seemingly not having a religious background.

HARLESTON: In this morning’s New York Post, their editorial “Fumbling Bureau of Incompetence,” they write, regarding the shooting at Fort Hood: “The gunman’s extremism was so obvious that the FBI had identified e-mails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaqi, a radical Muslim cleric with apparent ties to Osama bin Laden – yet decided against a full investigation. While Army intelligence also didn’t follow up, the FBI’s the one with the track record of missteps going back years.” How much responsibility do you feel falls on the FBI and American intelligence for the growth of this homegrown terrorism – particularly the case of the Somalis or the case of the shooting at Fort Hood?

A Study in Muslim Doctrine: Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood

Nidal Hasan and Fort Hood: A Study in Muslim Doctrine

by Raymond Ibrahim
Pajamas Media
November 18, 2009

http://www.meforum.org/2512/nidal-hasan-fort-hood-muslim-doctrine

One of the difficulties in discussing Islam’s more troubling doctrines is that they have an anachronistic, even otherworldly, feel to them; that is, unless actively and openly upheld by Muslims, non-Muslims, particularly of the Western variety, tend to see them as abstract theory, not standard practice for today. In fact, some Westerners have difficulties acknowledging even those problematic doctrines that are openly upheld by Muslims — such as jihad. How much more when the doctrines in question are subtle, or stealthy, in nature?

Enter Nidal Malik Hasan, the psychiatrist, U.S. Army major, and “observant Muslim who prayed daily,” who recently went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, killing thirteen Americans (including a pregnant woman). While the media wonders in exasperation why he did it, offering the same old tired and trite reasons — he was “picked on,” he was “mentally unbalanced” — the fact is his behavior comports well with certain Islamic doctrines. As such, it behooves Americans to take a moment and familiarize themselves with the esotericisms of Islam.

Note: Any number of ulema (Muslim scholars) have expounded the following doctrines. However, since jihadi icon and theoretician Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two, has also addressed many of these doctrines in his treatises, including by quoting several authoritative ulema, I will primarily rely on excerpts from The Al Qaeda Reader (AQR), for those readers who wish to source, and read in context, the following quotes in one volume.

Wala’ wa Bara’

Perhaps best translated as “loyalty and enmity,” this doctrine requires Muslims to maintain absolute loyalty to Islam and one another, while disavowing, even hating (e.g., Koran 60:4), all things un-Islamic — including persons (a.k.a. “infidels”). This theme has ample support in the Koran, hadith, and rulings of the ulema, that is, usul al-fiqh (roots of Muslim jurisprudence). In fact, Zawahiri has written a fifty-page treatise entitled “Loyalty and Enmity” (AQR, p. 63-115).

One of the many Koranic verses on which he relies warns Muslims against “taking the Jews and Christians as friends and allies … whoever among you takes them for friends and allies, he is surely one of them” (Koran 5:51), i.e., he becomes an infidel. The plain meaning of this verse alone — other verses, such as 3:28, 4:144, and 6:40 follow this theme — and its implications for today can hardly be clearer. According to one of the most authoritative Muslim exegetes, al-Tabari (838-923), Koran 5:51 means that the Muslim who “allies with them [non-Muslims] and enables them against the believers, that same one is a member of their faith and community” (AQR, p. 71).

Sheikh al-Islam, Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328), takes the concept of loyalty one step further when he tells Muslims that they are “obligated to befriend a believer — even if he is oppressive and violent towards you and must be hostile to the infidel, even if he is liberal and kind to you” (AQR, p. 84).

In ways, Hasan’s life was a testimony to loyalty and enmity. According to his colleague, Dr. Finnell, Hasan “was very vocal about the war, very upfront about being a Muslim first and an American second.” If his being “vocal about the war” is not enough to demonstrate unwavering loyalty to Islam, his insistence that he is first and foremost a Muslim is. Other evidence indicates that the primary factor that threw him “over the edge” was that he was being deployed to a Muslim country (Afghanistan) — his “worst nightmare.”

According to a fellow Muslim convenience store owner who often spoke with Hasan, the thought that he might injure or kill Muslims “weighed heavily on him.” Hasan also counseled a fellow Muslim not to join the U.S. Army, since “Muslims shouldn’t kill Muslims,” again, showing where his loyalty lies. Tabari’s exegesis comes to mind: the Muslim who “allies with them [non-Muslims] and enables them against the believers, that same one is a member of their faith and community,” i.e., he too becomes an infidel (AQR, p. 71).

Another source who spoke with Hasan notes that “in the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”

At any rate, surely none of this should come as a surprise. In April 2005, another Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. According to the AP, “he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq.”

Taqiyya

This doctrine, which revolves around deceiving the infidel, is pivotal to upholding loyalty and enmity wherever and whenever Muslim minorities live among non-Muslim majorities. In fact, the Koran’s primary justification for deception is in the context of loyalty: “Let believers [Muslims] not take for friends and allies infidels [non-Muslims] instead of believers. Whoever does this shall have no relationship left with God — unless you but guard yourselves against them, taking precautions” (Koran 3:28). In other words, when necessary, Muslims are permitted to feign friendship and loyalty to non-Muslims, or, in the words of Abu Darda, a pious companion of Muhammad, “We grin to the faces of some peoples, while our hearts curse them” (AQR, p. 73). Taqiyya’s importance for upholding loyalty and enmity is evidenced by the fact that, just three pages into his treatise, Zawahiri has an entire section called “The Difference Between Befriending and Dissembling.” There he shows that, while sincere friendship with non-Muslims is forbidden, insincere friendship — whenever beneficial to Muslims — is not.

Again, Zawahiri quotes that standard reference, Tabari, who explains Koran 3:28 as follows: “Only when you are in their [non-Muslims’] power, fearing for yourselves, are you to demonstrate friendship for them with your tongues, while harboring hostility toward them. But do not join them in the particulars of their infidelities, and do not aid them through any action against a Muslim” (AQR, p. 74).

And therein lies the limit of taqiyya: when the deceit, the charade begins to endanger the lives of fellow Muslims — whom, as we have seen, deserve first loyalty — it is forbidden. As Zawahiri concludes, the Muslim may pretend, so long as he does “not undertake any initiative to support them [non-Muslims], commit sin, or enable [them] through any deed or killing or fighting against Muslims” (AQR, p. 75).

Again, we are reminded that the “moment of truth” for Hasan, who seems to have led something of a double life — American major and psychiatrist by day, financial supporter of jihadi groups and associate of terrorists by night — is the fact that he was being deployed to Afghanistan, i.e., he would have been aiding non-Muslim Americans against fellow Muslims (remember, he was “a Muslim first and an American second”). He tried to prevent this, getting a lawyer, to no avail. Thus, since he had taken deceit to its doctrinal limit and was now being placed in a position where he would have to actually demonstrate his loyalty to Americans against Muslims, it appears he decided to take it to the next level (see doctrine below).

Incidentally, we also find that “he [Hasan] was going to be kind of the caretaker for [American] Muslim soldiers. Sometimes Muslim soldiers have a rift between what they’re doing and their faith,” according to Major Khalid Shabazz, an Army Muslim chaplain. “That person who is a leader needs to quell some of those fears and help them through that process.”

This all sounds well and good, but what, precisely, does it mean? If, as we have seen, Islam clearly forbids Muslims from aiding infidels against fellow Muslims, and if being in the U.S. Army requires American Muslims to fight non-American Muslims now and again, how was Hasan — or any other observant Muslim — going to “quell some of those fears and help through that process”? How, if not by merely instructing them in the centuries-old arts of taqiyya?

Jihad

Amongst learned infidels, jihad is the most recognized and notorious of all Muslim doctrines. Literally meaning to “struggle” or “strive,” jihad can take on any form, though its most native and praiseworthy expression revolves around fighting, and killing, the infidel enemy — even if it costs the Muslim fighter (the mujahid) his life: “Let those who would exchange the life of this world for the Hereafter fight in the path of Allah; whoever fights in the path of Allah — whether he dies or triumphs — we shall richly reward him” (Koran 4:74). And “Allah has purchased from the faithful their lives and possessions, and in return has promised them the Garden. They will fight in the path of Allah, killing and being killed” (Koran 9:111).

The hadith also has its fair share of anecdotes advocating the “one-man jihad.” Zawahiri’s treatise, “Jihad, Martyrdom, and the Killing of Innocents,” (AQR p. 137-171), spends much time justifying the desperate solo jihad — otherwise known as the “martyrdom operation” — including by offering the following hadith: “A Muslim asked Muhammad, O Messenger of Allah! If I plunge myself into the ranks of the idolaters and fight till I am killed — what then, to heaven? He [Muhammad] said yes. So the man plunged himself into the ranks of the idolaters, fighting till he was slain” (AQR, p. 153).

The learned ulema agree. According to al-Qurtubi (d. 1273), “There is no wrong for a man to singlehandedly attack a mighty army — if he seeks martyrdom — provided he has the fortitude.” Others indicate that one of the reasons making the one-man jihad permissible is that it serves to “terrify the foe” (AQR, p. 155).

And there it is: When all else failed, when Hasan’s forthcoming deployment into Muslim land forced him to expose where his true loyalty (wala’) lies, pretense (taqiyya) gave way to full-blown struggle (jihad). Hasan, who sacrificed many years to become a psychiatrist and a U.S. Army major, in the clear words of the Koran “exchange[d] the life of this world for the Hereafter.” Evidence also indicates that he believed “martyrdom operations” were not only valid but laudable acts of courage, writing “YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” (capitals in original). Zawahiri puts it more articulately: “The deciding factor is … the intention.” Is the mujahid killing himself “to service Islam [laudable martyrdom], or is it out of depression and despair [forbidden suicide]?” (AQR, p. 157).

(Unfortunately and, no doubt, much to Hasan’s chagrin, infidel medics ensured his failure to achieve martyrdom.)

The greatest proof that, at least in his own mind, Hasan was waging a jihad is the fact that he utilized that immemorial jihadi war cry — Allahu Akbar! — which has served to terrify the infidel denizens of the world for centuries. Here’s an example from Muslim history (circa the early 8th century): “The [non-Muslim] inhabitants of eastern Anatolia were filled with terror the likes of which they had never experienced before. All they saw were Muslims in their midst screaming ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Allah planted terror in their hearts. … The [non-Muslim] men were crucified over the course of 24 km” (from Tarikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk).

Indeed, while the takbir (the formal term for “Allahu Akbar”) can be used in various contexts, it is by far primarily used in a jihadi context, past and present. Nearly 1,400 years ago, Muhammad and the early Muslims cried “Allahu Akbar” immediately before attacking their infidel neighbors; eight years before the Fort Hood massacre, Mohamed Atta cried “Allahu Akbar” immediately before crashing a hijacked plane into one of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Even Bukhari, the most authoritative hadith compiler, has an entire chapter titled “The Recitation of Takbir [i.e., Allahu Akbar] in War.”

Yet confusion abides. An AP report writes: “As if going off to war, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan cleaned out his apartment, gave leftover frozen broccoli to one neighbor, and called another to thank him for his friendship — common courtesies and routines of the departing soldier. Instead, authorities say, he went on the killing spree that left thirteen people at Fort Hood, Texas, dead.” Contrary to the tone of this excerpt, Hasan’s actions were far from contradictory. After all, he was “going off to war.”

Wala’ wa bara,‘ taqiyya, and jihad all help explain Hasan’s actions. Even so, other lesser-known aspects of Islam lend their support to the view that he was acting from an Islamist framework.

Sakina

Several people who encountered Hasan before, and even during, the time he went a-jihading note that he evinced an almost unnatural amount of calmness — certainly for one getting ready to go on a killing spree. No doubt, many will point to this as a sign that he was suffering from some sort of schizophrenic episode.

Yet the fact remains: according to jihadi lore, a feeling of tranquility and calmness is supposed to descend on the mujahid, especially during the most stressful moments of combat (see Koran 9:26 for confirmation). This is known as sakina (calmness, tranquility). Osama bin Laden himself often describes his experience of sakina during the Afghan-Soviet war: “Once I was only thirty meters away from the Russians and they were trying to capture me. I was under bombardment, but I was so peaceful in my heart that I fell asleep. Before a battle, Allah sends us sequina [sakina] — tranquility.” Of course, whether Hasan experienced “true” sakina, or whether he was merely affecting to himself, is irrelevant. Rather, the point here is that, once again, that which appears inexplicable or indicative of “mental instability” can be explained through an Islamic paradigm.

Da’wa

According to Sharia law, Muslims are not permitted to voluntarily reside in non-Muslim nations, such as America, except under certain circumstances. One of these is if the Muslim is actively engaged in da’wa, that is, proselytizing; another is if he fights in the path of Allah, jihad. Both serve the same purpose: empowering Islam by numbers and territory, respectively. Merely living in infidel territory out of choice, however, because it offers a “better life,” is forbidden. (To get an idea of how serious a matter it is for Muslims to reside in non-Muslims nations, see some online fatwas.)

Accordingly, we find that the observant Hasan, prior to his jihadi spree, was engaged in da’wa for years. In fact, he aggressively pursued it to the point that he was reprimanded by the authorities. Nor did he cease trying to proselytize — that is, trying to validate his living with infidels — until the day before he went on his rampage, when he gave his neighbor a copy of the Koran. Of course, many Westerners will project their notions of proselytism onto Hasan and see only a God-fearing man “altruistically” concerned for the souls of others. Unfortunately, even the business card he included with his Koran gifts is indicative of violence, as it stealthily introduces him as a “soldier of Allah.” Moreover, the “altruistic” interpretation fails to take into account the sort of legalism observant Muslims such as Hasan often adhere to: if he literally believed he was “exchanging this life for the Hereafter,” he most likely also believed that he had to justify his voluntary dwelling with infidels, hence the da’wa.

* * *

Soon following the Fort Hood massacre, FBI agent Brad Garrett explained Hasan’s behavior as follows: “It’s one of those things that he obviously went to kill a lot of people [jihad] and commit suicide [martyrdom]. Maybe in his own mind that he’s saving future lives [Muslim loyalty].” Read with the bracketed concepts I supplied, Hasan’s actions become logical and consistent — again, from an doctrinal point of view, that is, from a point of view the West, especially its leaders, are loath to explore and alacritous to ignore.

For example, “U.S. Rep. Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat who is one of two Muslims serving in Congress, cautioned against focusing on the alleged shooter’s religion [and thus its doctrines] and instead said the discussion should be about mental health issues.”

Read:

U.S. Congressional Representative Andre Carson, Indiana Democrat – (one of the two Muslims in the U.S. Congress) – may have explained a lot more then he intended to when he said the discussion about Nidal Milak Hasan “should be about mental health issues” – Most of us already know that this is the only option.

Killing spree of 14 deaths and 30 wounded.

So, real Muslims are either crazy or they are just acting out their religious obligations.

Flagrant obfuscations aside, the facts remain: loyalty to Muslims and enmity for infidels (wala’ wa bara’), a secretive double life (taqiyya), violence in the name of Allah (jihad) — all these can easily explain Hasan’s violent rampage in Fort Hood.

The ultimate lesson? So long as Muslim doctrines are downplayed in the West, so long will warning signs, even concrete intelligence, be ignored, so long will such seemingly inexplicable incidents occur, so long will the media continue grasping for straws and Americans be “completely blindsided,” so long will “Muslim grievance” be the default answer, so long will appeasement and concessions (domestically and internationally) be the only solution, so long will jihadis and Islamists grow emboldened and contemptuous, expecting more. Ad infinitum.

Conversely, if the Fort Hood massacre causes Americans to begin taking Islam’s doctrines more seriously, the thirteen slain, while dying tragically, will not have died in vain.

Originally published at: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/nidal-hasan-and-fort-hood-a-study-in-muslim-doctrine-part-1/ and http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/nidal-hasan-and-fort-hood-a-study-in-muslim-doctrine-part-2/

Raymond Ibrahim is the associate director of the Middle East Forum and the author of The Al Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda

Related Topics: Muslims in the United States, Radical Islam, Terrorism |  Raymond Ibrahim receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free mef mailing list This text may be reposted or forwarded so long as it is presented as an integral whole with complete information provided about its author, date, place of publication, and original URL.

Detecting Military Radicalism in the Wake of Fort Hood

IPT News
November 19, 2009

http://www.investigativeproject.org/1528/detecting-military-radicalism-in-the-wake-of-fort

The first congressional hearing in the aftermath of the Fort Hood massacre took place Thursday morning, with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing from security experts, including a retired general and a former top White House advisor.

Lieberman wanted to hear from FBI officials about missed signals that Nidal Malik Hasan exhibited radical viewpoints and created concern among his colleagues. But the administration didn’t allow any current government witnesses, in deference to the ongoing criminal investigation.

According to the Washington Post, Lieberman said conversations with Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Robert Gates left him optimistic that the committee would gain access to some of the information it is seeking soon.

Thursday, the committee heard testimony on how to better identify potential radicals in the armed forces and how to empower people to report their concerns up the chain of command, even when the concerns involved an officer like Hasan. Among the witnesses were retired Gen. John Keane, a former Army vice chief of staff; Frances Fragos Townsend, President George W. Bush’s homeland security adviser, and terrorism expert Brian Michael Jenkins of the RAND Corp.

The New York Times reported that the Pentagon was initiating a review of the Hasan case that would have a similar focus. The Investigative Project on Terrorism covered the hearing and prepared a video summary below.

Transcript

SEN. LIEBERMAN: (Sounds gavel.) The hearing will come to order. This morning, our committee begins an investigation as serious and consequential as any it has ever undertaken. An American soldier, Nidal Hasan, has been charged with killing 12 of his fellow soldiers and one civilian on an American military base in Texas in what I believe, based on available evidence, was a terrorist attack.

The purpose of this committee’s investigation is to determine whether that attack could have been prevented, whether the federal agencies and employees involved missed signals or failed to connect dots in a way that enabled Nidal Hasan to carry out his deadly attack.

If we find such errors or negligence, we will make recommendations to guarantee as best we can that they never occur again. That’s our purpose here.
—

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Our staffs will be meeting with representatives of the Department of Justice and Defense very soon to try to work out ground rules for both investigations without interfering with each other.

But I can say that I’m encouraged and appreciative that Senator Collins and I and our staff — our top staff — have received one classified briefing on the Hasan case and will soon receive another and have been given access to some very relevant classified documents relating to this matter. So we’re off to a good cooperative start.

—-

GEN. KEANE: I suspect strongly that after we conduct these investigations, we will find that our policies will need revision again to account for the specific behavior and attitudes as expressed by radical Islamists or Jihadist extremists. It should not be an active of moral courage for a soldier to identify a fellow soldier who is displaying extremist behavior. It should be an obligation. And as such, the commanders needs specific guidelines as to what Jihadist extremists behavior is and re-emphasize how to use the many tools and options they have at their disposal to curb the behavior, to rehabilitate soldiers if possible, or to take legal or separation action.

Because Jihadist extremists are potentially linked to terrorist organizations that directly threaten the security of the United States, it is essential that our government agencies are sharing information about such individuals.

—

GEN. KEANE: Radical Islam and Jihadist extremism is the most transformational issue I have dealt with in my military service and continues to be so today. In my judgment, it is the most significant threat to the security of the American people that I have faced in my lifetime. We are a society that espouses tolerance and values diversity and our military reflects those values. But at the same time, we must know what a threat looks like and we must know what to do about it.

—

MS. TOWNSEND: To the extent that there would have been concern of infringing on Major Hasan’s either right to free speech or his freedom to practice his religion, there were other factors to which you could point beyond that, having nothing to do with his religion or his speech, that could have caused concern.

The repeated — while it’s not public, the content of those communications, certainly those communications, and now what we’re hearing from his other colleagues up at Walter Reed, any combination of those factors, as long as it was not based solely on his exercise of his constitutional freedom, could have formed the basis of further inquiry and investigation by the FBI.

SEN. COLLINS: So if we’re being told that one reason this was not aggressively pursued was concerns that it would violate the FISA restrictions or the attorney general’s guidelines, you would disagree with that decision, based on what you know?

MS. TOWNSEND: Based on what I know now, yes, I would disagree with that. And frankly, this is, Senator, why I mentioned my concern about political correctness. I think we have to ensure that our investigators feel sufficiently backed up, if you will, to follow the facts wherever they lead them. And if the facts lead them to an investigation of a senior member of the uniformed military, who happens to be a Muslim doctor, then that’s where they lead them. But they have to feel confident that they can pursue the facts wherever they take them, against whoever the target may be.
—-

MR. JENKINS: Now, at a glance, Major Hasan’s rampage at Fort Hood looks a lot like what used to be called “going postal,” a deepening sense of person grievance culminating in a homicidal rampage directed against co-workers, in this case, fellow soldiers. For Hasan, “going jihad” reflects the channeling of obvious personality problems into a deadly fanaticism.

We must wait, really, for a full inquiry to thoroughly understand Hasan’s motives, his preparations, his objectives. But on the basis of what has been reported in the news media, we clearly have a troubled man who engaged himself with extremist ideologies via the Internet that resonated with and reinforced his own anger leading him, at some point, to a decision to kill.

—

GEN. KEANE: [So what we are dealing with here now, in my view, dealing with jihadist extremist, potentially, certainly the preliminary evidence would suggest that,] [SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right…] — that those kind of guidelines, in terms of defining that and how to deal with that, as a specific case, and that behavior and that attitude and that rhetoric, are not in the hands of our commanders.

SEN. LIEBERMAN: Yeah. Okay, that’s a real — if our investigation finds that that’s true, and I suspect it is, that’s a real omission and an area for correction, particularly in light of the record that other witnesses have testified to of the way in which jihadists, or people who are actually being self-radicalized or radicalized over the Internet, are being exhorted to attack the American military on bases, not just abroad but here at home.

My time is up. Thank you, General.

Senator Collins.

Related Topics: Homegrown Terror

Tom Sowell: Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion

Deepest Bow Is Reserved For World Opinion

By THOMAS SOWELL IBD: 17 Nov. 2009

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

Terrorists are not even entitled to the protection of the Geneva Conventions, much less the Constitution of the United States. Terrorists have never observed, nor even claimed to have observed, the Geneva Conventions, nor are they among those covered by it.

But over and above the utter inconsistency of what is being done is the utter recklessness it represents.

The last time an attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a matter of domestic criminal justice was after a bomb was exploded there in 1993. Under the rules of American criminal law, the prosecution had to turn over all sorts of information to the defense — information that told the al-Qaida international terrorist network what we knew about them and how we knew it.

This was nothing more and nothing less than giving away military secrets to an enemy in wartime — something for which people have been executed, as they should have been.

Secrecy in warfare is a matter of life and death. Lives were risked and lost during World War II to prevent Nazi Germany from discovering that Britain had broken its supposedly unbreakable Enigma code and could read their military plans that were being radioed in that code.

“Loose lips sink ships” was the World War II motto in the United States. But loose lips are mandated under the rules of criminal prosecutions.

Gitmo North

IBD: 19 Nov. 2009

War On Terror: Sen. Dick Durbin calls a plan to transfer 100 Guantanamo detainees to northwest Illinois “a dream come true.” It would paint a bull’s-eye on America’s heartland in time for the 2012 Iowa caucuses.

It seems the question of where to put the Guantanamo detainees is being settled as we speak, with liberal Democrats in the very blue state of Illinois welcoming them with open arms and outstretched hands for the federal dollars that will come with them.

Federal officials last Friday inspected the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a town of 500 on the Iowa border, with the thought of transferring as many as 100 Gitmo inmates there. The prison, built to house 1,600 prisoners, now holds around 200, and has fallen victim to state budget problems.

At press conferences held in Chicago, Moline and Rockford, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who took over from the disgraced Rod Blagojevich, and Illinois’ senior U.S. senator, Dick Durbin, stumped for the plan, calling it “a dream come true.” We call it a nightmare on Main Street.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: Justice Denied

Justice Denied

IBD: 16 Nov. 2009

In this March 1, 2003 file picture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan. Attorney General Eric Holder.

War On Terror: Eric Holder’s move to try the 9/11 masterminds in Manhattan makes it official: This administration has reverted to pre-9/11 “crime” fighting.

Amid all the talk during the attorney general’s surreal press conference of the “crime” committed eight years ago, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon wasn’t even mentioned.

Lest anyone forget, the military headquarters of the United States was attacked that day along with the Twin Towers.

An entire wedge of the Ring was gutted when the Saudi hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into it. Nearly 200 military personnel were killed, along with the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet.

The jet was a weapon used to attack the very center of our military. That was not a “crime,” as some say. It was an act of war.

And 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with the four other al-Qaida terrorist co-conspirators Holder wants to try, are no mere criminals. They are enemy combatants — and should be treated as such.

Yet this administration has adopted the same crime-centered mentality as the last Democratic administration. The one that treated al-Qaida’s first World Trade Center bombing as a “crime.” And al-Qaida’s attack on the U.S. embassies in Africa as a “crime.” And even al-Qaida’s attack on the USS Cole as a “crime.”

All were prosecuted in U.S. courts. A lot of good that did.

While President Bill Clinton was busy preparing indictments against the terrorists, al-Qaida was already plotting its next move. It hit the Pentagon just nine months after Clinton and his crime-fighters left office.

Maddeningly, this administration is repeating the Clinton administration’s mistake.

KSM and the other terrorists, er, “defendants” aren’t even U.S. citizens. They don’t deserve all the rights afforded citizens in our civilian court system. They shouldn’t be allowed to use our courts as a platform to promulgate their ideology of hate. Which they will, sure as Osama bin Laden is smiling right now.

This will only serve to inspire more homegrown terrorists — and stab at the hearts of the relatives of 9/11 victims.

Holder clucked that the “trials will be open to the public and the world.” And they will turn into circuses, playing right into the hands of the enemy.

These trials will drag on for years, perhaps even decades, as defense lawyers file endless motions and appeals. Meanwhile, valuable intelligence about interrogation techniques and other methods we’ve used against al-Qaida will be revealed to the enemy during trial discovery.

This move to a civilian court makes no sense at all, except viewed through a political prism. Maybe the White House wants to make its Jan. 22 deadline to close Gitmo. Or maybe it’s keen to publicly differentiate itself from the previous administration, which was considerably tougher on terrorists.

Either way, it’s an unwise move. It will only remind people how much America has shrunk in the last nine months.

CRITICAL: Suicide By PC

Suicide By PC

IBD: 10 Nov 2009

For Gen. Casey, loss of diversity would be an “even greater tragedy.” AP (????????)

 

War On Terror: The No. 1 lesson of the Fort Hood massacre is that political correctness kills. But instead of learning this lesson, the Pentagon is repeating the mistake, putting more soldiers at risk.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey warns that making the connection between Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s terrorist act and his Islamic faith could “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”

Yet ignoring that connection, despite one red flag after another, is what allowed Hasan allegedly to carry out his own violent backlash against non-Muslim soldiers.

Just a few months ago, Hasan was promoted to major. He passed a security clearance despite evidence he openly engaged in anti-American rants, and even discussed cutting the throats of infidels during a PowerPoint presentation. Now there are reports that U.S. intelligence intercepted contacts between Hasan and al-Qaida.

But shhh! This isn’t about Islam. Close your eyes. Look the other way. Do not make the connection.

“It would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here,” Casey said on Sunday’s morning shows. Really? Tell that to the victims of the Muslim terrorist who shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before pumping fellow soldiers full of bullets at close range. Tell it to their grieving families.

Diversity is a good thing only if Muslims embrace the military’s mission. Of course many do, but a growing number object to fighting Muslims abroad. By our count, at least a dozen Muslims in uniform have been charged or convicted of terror or spying since 9/11, including Hasan. That’s a sectarian pattern, not a random act by a lone gunman, as the media have portrayed it.

The prize for digging up the most imaginative excuse for Hasan’s actions goes to ABC News. The network speculated he may have suffered from “second-hand trauma” — “like second-hand smoke” — from counseling soldiers with post traumatic stress disorder.

You see, Hasan had never actually been deployed, never seen combat, as first assumed. So the initial spin that he suffered PTSD no longer worked. Unless he suffered combat stress by proxy. So now it’s “second-hand trauma.” Anything but jihad.

But let’s be fair. At least ABC reported that Hasan was Muslim. Over at Fox News, host Shephard Smith refused to even mention Hasan’s name. And he’s still waiting on a motive. “As journalists,” the anchor said Monday, “we can’t report what the motive was, because at this point, we don’t know what his motive was.”

Seems Fox has caught the PC virus.

Meanwhile, our commander in chief refuses to call the attack terrorism. And he seemed to take news of the military massacre glibly. Briefed on the shooting before an appearance at a Democrat event, he walked up to the podium grinning. Then, in a bizarre non-sequitur, he gave a “shout out” to a Democrat supporter, infuriating soldiers across the country, and rightfully so.

Surely the Homeland Security secretary would tell it like it is. No such luck. Janet Napolitano issued a warning to Americans from the UAE against any anti-Muslim backlash. She said she’d work with Muslim groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to deflect any bigotry. To hear her, Islam was the real victim of the Islam-inspired terrorism.

Democrats aren’t the only ones in denial. “It’s certainly not about his religion,” intoned GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Passing out Qurans the morning of the shooting. Nope, no religion here! Proselytizing fellow soldiers to Islam. Not religion.

Close your eyes. Look the other way.

This PC insanity is literally killing us now. We are committing politically correct suicide. If the military is now too PC to protect its own troops from Islamic fanatics on its own soil, how can we be sure it can protect the rest of us?