Why Did Nidal Hasan Read the Middle East Forum?

A startling fact just emerged in the course of some routine maintenance work on the mailing lists for www.DanielPipes.org: One "Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan" has been subscribed as nidalhasan@aol.com since March 2009 to all the Middle East Forum mailing lists, including my own. He opened some but not many of the mailings.

In addition to the name, there are several reasons to think this is the butcher of Ft. Hood: He received the mailings for over half a year before his identity became notorious; he has not opened any e-mails in a while, presumably since he has been jailed; and a search for nidalhasan@aol.com on the internet finds this address associated with the Texas jihadi (for example, by the Northeast Intelligence Network)..

Comments: (1) I have never assumed that all the Middle East Forum's or my readers share our outlook. To the contrary, the lively debates carried on in the more than 100,000 published reader comments show that readers have all outlooks. Still, I never imagined that a future terrorist would subscribe himself to our writings.

(2) Why, I can't help but wonder, would Hasan have wanted to see the Middle East Forum's work? Opposition research? Or might he have been stalking us?

(3) This subscription gives new urgency to the concerns I addressed at "Am I Helping the Terrorist Enemy?" and I hereby rededicate myself to assuring that the Middle East Forum does not inadvertently provide guidance to the country's foes.

(4) On a sad note, this news brings to the mind that I learned just two months earlier, again while doing routine chores, that my articles were still being sent to the late Daniel Pearl's Wall Street Journal e-mail address, which had been initially subscribed before his murder nearly eight years ago. (December 30, 2009)

Daniel Pipes

Introducing Supna Zaidi & Islamist Watch

PHILADELPHIA - The Middle East Forum announces the appointment of Supna Zaidi as assistant director of Islamist Watch, a project to resist the Islamist agenda to spread Shari'a through lawful means and to gain special rights for Muslims in the West.

Ms Zaidi is currently editor in chief of Muslim World Today and director of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, a progressive Muslim think tank that engages moderate Muslims against Islamism and defends the values of democracy and secularism in the West. Ms Zaidi studied religion and Middle East history at the University of California-San Diego and received her law degree from New York Law School. She has practiced immigration law in the New York area, litigating deportation and asylum cases, specializing in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

"Every American must recognize that a fundamental change is occurring in the West," observes Supna Zaidi. "Another 9/11 is less of a danger than the piling up of seemingly innocuous accommodations to Islamic law. Lawful Islamists advance their cause through lobbying politicians, intimidating the media, threatening international boycotts, making predatory use of the legal system, advancing novel legislation, influencing the contents of school textbooks, and in other ways exploiting the freedoms of an open society. American media generally ignore such encroachments, so Islamist Watch exists to take up the slack."

MEF director Daniel Pipes welcomed Ms Zaidi, noting: "She will be a strong advocate against the Islamist agenda to blur the lines between religious freedom with preferential treatment and legitimization of Islamism and Shari'a over all Americans through American law. As a Muslim immigrant, Supna realizes the challenges Muslims face when Islamists falsely tell them that they must choose between the U.S. Constitution or Shari'a. As assistant director of Islamist Watch, she will make it her daily duty to fight against Islamists while promoting moderate Islam."

Islamist Watch, established by the Forum in April 2006, focuses on the political, educational, cultural, and legal activities of Islamists in the United States and (to a lesser degree) in other historically non-Muslim countries, especially Western Europe, Canada, and Australia. It seeks to educate the government, media, religious institutions, the academy, and the business world about lawful Islamism. It is the only U.S. project to stand vigilant and vocal against attempts by Islamists to make non-Muslims second class citizens in their own countries, while encouraging support for anti-Islamist Muslims. Learn more at http://www.islamist-watch.org/about.php

Source: Middle East Forum

Supna Zaidi is welcomed by Muslims Against Sharia as a Co-Chair of STOP HONORCIDE! campaign.

The Rise of the Chechen Emirate?

Sheikh Dokka Khamatovich Umarov, shadow president of the
Chechen Republic, endorsed the dissolution of the
republic and its replacement by an Islamist "emirate."
He argued that Chechens, as Muslims, cannot live outside
Islam and must defend all Muslims. Many Chechen
government officials distanced themselves from Umarov
after his October 2007 declaration of an emirate.

By Dmitry Shlapentokh

Chechnya has been at war with Russia for generations. By 1999, when the second Chechen war broke out, two resistance groups had emerged: nationalists and jihadists. While long simmering below the surface, the schism between the two camps erupted publicly in 2006 on the Internet after Akhmed Khalidovich Zakaev, the moderate foreign minister of the shadow Chechen government, argued that the goal of the Chechen resistance should be an independent Chechen state modeled after Western democracies and integrated into the global community. Movladi Udugov, a jihadist and editor of Kavkaz Center, the best-known online resistance publication, vehemently disagreed and declared that for real Muslims, spiritual bonds should be more important than blood ties. He argued that he would rather embrace ethnic Russians who had converted to Islam than Chechens who had strayed from their religion. There was no point modeling society after Western states, he contended, because all non-Muslim states, or those that are Muslim only in name but not in essence, are corrupt. Instead, Chechens should fight for the establishment of a global caliphate.

Chechen Resistance

Tension in Chechnya existed during the Soviet period and grew through the Gorbachev years. Chechen resistance erupted openly in 1994. As the first Chechen war (1994-96) proceeded, the friction between nationalist resistance leaders and their Islamist counterparts grew. By the start of the second Chechen war in 1999, jihadists began pressing the Chechen government. A certain Khanif, a contributor to Chechenpress, argued that the jihadists began to press the Chechen government almost from the start of the second Chechen war. In 1999, Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen president who took power after the death of Dzjokhar Dudaev in 1996, introduced Islamic law. Three years later, Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (1965-2006), one of the best-known radical commanders, declared the Chechen state to be a "dead body." The jihadists apparently had become the leading force in the Chechen resistance and proclaimed that turning to jihad was the only way to victory. Read more ...

Source: The Middle East Quarterly

European Converts to Terrorism

Germaine Maurice Lindsay, also known as
Abdullah Shaheed Jamal, was one of four
terrorists who detonated bombs on the
London Underground and on a bus in
central London, July 7, 2005, killing
fifty-six (including themselves) and
injuring more than 700. Lindsay, who
changed his name after his conversion
to Islam, was born in Jamaica.

By Milena Uhlmann

Conversion to Islam among native Europeans is on the rise. Many converts live at peace within their native societies; some convert only for marriage, and reject neither contemporary culture nor Europe's Judeo-Christian values. A minority, however, embraces radical interpretations of Islam and can pose a security risk. The involvement of Muslim converts in recent terrorist attacks has raised concern in Europe about these "converts to terrorism." While intelligence agencies and security services track international communications and guard borders, such homegrown terrorists pose just as potent a threat to the security of Western democracies. European security services and politicians remain unprepared to handle this growing phenomenon.

A Growing Problem

In Europe, there is very little hard data on conversion to Islam due to the difficulty of gathering proper statistics. Because Muslim communities usually have an informal structure and no formal clergy, most do not keep records. In France, for instance, state agencies do not record citizens' religious affiliations; to do so, French officials say, would counter France's commitment to secularism. In German registration offices, Muslim residents are included in a pool of "diverse religious affiliations." German converts apparently account for only a small portion—between 12,000 and 100,000—of Germany's total Muslim population of 2.8-3.2 million, which itself comprises less than 4 percent of the total population of Germany. In 2006, the Federal Ministry of the Interior commissioned a study from the Zentralinstitut Islam-Archiv Deutschland (ZIIAD) to determine the number of converts, but amid suspicion over the ZIIAD's methodology, discounted as exaggerated its findings and ended its relationship with the institute. Read more ...

Source: Middle East Quarterly

Mohamed Sifaoui: "I Consider Islamism to Be Fascism"

Mohamed Sifaoui was born on July 4, 1967, and spent most of his childhood in Algeria. He holds a master's degree in political science and studied theology for two years at the University of Algiers and for two additional years at Zeitouna University's Institute of Theology in Tunis. In 1994, he began work for the Algerian daily Le Soir and survived a February 11, 1996 bomb attack at Le Soir's headquarters at the Maison de la Presse. In 1999, the French government granted him political asylum after he received death threats both from Algerian Islamists and the military. In Paris, Sifaoui works at the French weekly Marianne. Between October 2002 and January 2003, he infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell in France in order to research his book, Mes frères assassins: Comment j'ai infiltré une cellule d'Al-Qaïda. (My assassin brothers: How I infiltrated an Al-Qaeda cell). Read more ...

Source: Middle East Forum