Spencer: The Newest American Export: Jihad

Striking a blow against the trade deficit. In Human Events today:

The five young northern Virginia Muslims arrested in Pakistan for trying to join jihadist groups offer an intriguing example of role reversal.

Instead of jihad terrorists training in the Middle East to come to the United States, a la Muhammad Atta and co., this group started out in the U.S. and went over there.

Nor are they the only examples of America's brisk new export trade in jihadists -- there are also the Somalis who have been streaming home from Minneapolis to join the jihad in their homeland.

Both Somalia and Pakistan have so many jihadis that they have no need to import more, but in both countries right now jihad is a growth industry.

Among the many lingering questions about this case is that of how these five young men fell in with jihad groups in the first place. The local Muslim community professed anguish and puzzlement about how it could have happened. Ashraf Nubani, an attorney for the mosque the five attended, said of their relatives and fellow worshippers: "There's shock and disbelief in these families and in this mosque." Mahdi Bray of the Falls Church-based Muslim American Society, sounded a plaintive note: "We want to know: What did we miss? We saw these kids every day. In hindsight, what could we have done?"

The five frequented an Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) mosque in Alexandria, Virginia, where the youth leader, Mustafa Maryam, insisted: "Our group never talked about politics."

Essan Talawi, an imam at the mosque, said that "the teachings of this mosque are the Koran, moderation, tolerance and peaceful interaction with our neighbors and other faiths."

They would have us believe that these young men turned to violent jihad at the same time and spontaneously. But there is every reason to think otherwise.

Talawi may have had in mind a very different idea of "moderation, tolerance and peaceful interaction" from the one that generally prevails in the U.S.

According to Steven Emerson's Investigative Project, at ICNA's Annual Conference in 2001, ICNA president Zulfiqar Ali Shah led the crowd in a chant of "our way, our way, is jihad, jihad."...

Read it all.

With thanks to JihadWatch

The Fort Hood massacre & “Toronto 18” connection

There is a direct connection between the Islamic terrorist attack at Fort Hood to the members of the so-called “Toronto 18,” an Islamic terrorist cell broken up by counter-terrorism authorities in 2006.
That nexus is Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (a/k/a Aulaqi), the former Imam of the Dar al Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia.

Al Awlaki privately counseled at least three of the 9/11 terrorists in the months prior to 9/11, and was found to be in contact with Nidal Malik HASAN, the Muslim terrorist who murdered 14 Americans (including one unborn child) at Fort Hood on November 7, 2009 in the weeks and months leading up to that attack.

The convoluted relationship of terror suspects also involves two Muslim Americans who embarked on a week-long trip to meet with Canadian terror suspects in a March 2005 “Islamic terror summit” in Toronto, Ontario. Both were sentenced last week to lengthy prison terms for their planning terrorist attacks, and the recruitment and training of others.

On 20 July 2006, Canada Free Press & the Northeast Intelligence Network were the first to report that two terror suspects from the U.S., Syed Haris AHMED and Ehsanul SADEQUEE met with other subjects of ongoing counter-terrorism investigation in Toronto, Ontario “to engage in activities in support of violent jihad.”

They met with several members of the group subsequently dubbed the “Toronto 18” as first reported in this CFP June 4, 2006 exclusive.

The “Toronto 18” were originally charged with plotting to engage in various terrorism acts including the importation of weapons, plotting various bombings and assassinations, and other acts of terrorism against public officials and facilities in Ontario.

Yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Syed Haris AHMED, convicted in June of conspiring to support terrorism in the US and abroad was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge William S. Duffey, Jr. to 13 years in prison followed by 30 years of probation.

SADEQUEE, who was convicted on August 12, 2009, was sentenced to 17 years in prison followed by 30 years of supervised release.

More…

CFP

Dar Al-Hijrah Official's Deception on Awlaki

When a former imam from his mosque praised Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan as a "hero," Dar al-Hijrah outreach director Imam Johari Abdul Malik took to the airwaves to criticize the remarks and cast them as surprising:

"Let's be clear when Anwar Al Awlaki was at Dar Al-Hijrah, he was articulating the same message that I articulate today in Dar Al-Hijrah, a very open, a very engaging, a very community wise and contemporary understanding of the faith within the framework of its traditionalism."

But a look at Awlaki's statements and connections during his time at the northern Virginia mosque shows that, at best, Malik's characterization was misinformed as to the facts.

While at Dar Al-Hijrah, a mosque with a history of leadership tied to terrorists, Awlaki made statements that endorsed terrorism and defended the 9/11 hijackers.

Awlaki participated as a scholar in a forum of the popular Islamist and Yusuf al-Qaradawi-linked website, Islamonline.net, the week after the 9/11 attacks. In it, he tacitly endorsed terror against Israeli civilians and denied that any Muslim extremists were a threat to Americans:

"There is no Muslim who advocates killing American civilians. We haven't heard that before. If you are talking about Palestinians fighting in Israel, these are freedom fighters fighting an illegal occupation. Muslims have never targeted American civilians."

That's an odd claim, since it had been more than three years since Osama bin Laden issued a fatwa saying that "to kill the Americans and their allies -- civilians and military -- is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it."

In the same Islamonline chat, Awlaki also expressed doubt that Muslims were behind the 9/11 attacks:

"The evidence coming out is perplexing. You have a right to be confused. It appears that these people were victims rather than hijackers. It seems that the FBI went into the roster of the airplanes and whoever has a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default." [Emphasis added]

Furthermore, in a Washington Post forum in November 2001, Awlaki defended the Taliban movement and accused America of rushing into war in Afghanistan. At the time, the Taliban had been openly supporting Al Qaeda. Al-Awlaki argued:

"The Taliban repeatedly said: show us the evidence and we will turn over whoever is guilty with the crime. The US should have given them the benefit of the doubt."

Johari Abdul Malik, who has taken the lead in defending Dar Al-Hijrah and Awlaki, has his own record of radical statements. At a 2001 conference hosted by the Islamic Association of Palestine, a component of a U.S.-based network of Hamas-supporters, Malik called for attacks against Israeli infrastructure to show Muslim displeasure with Israel's treatment of Palestinians:

"I am gonna teach you now. You can blow up bridges, but you cannot kill people who are innocent on their way to work. You can blow up power supplies… the water supply, you can do all forms of sabotage and let the world know that we are doing it like this because they have a respect for the lives of innocent people."

Malik has called for Islamic supremacy in America, as he did in a November 2004 Friday Khutba, or sermon:

More at IPT

Washington sniper to be executed

WASHINGTON sniper John Allen Muhammad, who killed 10 people in a 2002 shooting spree around the US capital, will be executed today after the nation's top court denied a stay of execution.

Muhammad's lawyers had appealed for the US Supreme Court to delay the execution while it examines a plea on whether his sentence was constitutional.

"The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to the chief justice and by him referred to the court is denied,'' Monday's Supreme Court ruling said.

Muhammad is now due to be put to death by lethal injection at 9:00 pm Tuesday in Virginia.

During the 2002 rampage that left 10 people dead and the Washington region paralyzed with fear, Muhammad, a skilled marksman, picked off victims in shopping malls, outside schools and at gas stations.

With the aid of a high-power sniper rifle and scope, he unleashed a reign of terror over three weeks, killing each of his victims with a single bullet fired from a distance.

He was tracked down after an exhaustive manhunt by federal and local police.

But his lawyers argued Muhammad had not been properly legally represented during his trial in March 2004, when his legal team did not contest his request to defend himself even though he was clearly suffering from mental problems.

The defence team had asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether the 2004 sentence was constitutional, and a hearing had been set for November 24.

In a dissenting statement attached to the ruling, Justice John Stevens, backed by two other justices, said Monday: "This case once again highlights the perversity of executing inmates before their appeals process has been fully concluded.

"By denying Muhammad's stay of application we have allowed Virginia to truncate our deliberative process on the matter - involving a death row inmate - that demands the most careful attention.

"This result is particularly unfortunate in light of the limited time Muhammad was given to make his case to the district court.''

Muhammad's lawyers last week asked the nation's highest court to halt his execution to give the justices more time to examine an appeal against his death sentence.

"Trial counsel knew that Muhammad had been diagnosed with severe mental illness, and personally observed Muhammad's struggle with severe symptoms of psychiatric disorders prior to the start of the trial,'' said one of two documents presented to the court last week.

"These paranoid and delusional beliefs were clearly evident in and had devastating effect on, Muhammad's behavior in this case,'' the lawyers' petition read.

Muhammad's teenaged accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the shootings, is serving a sentence of life in prison.

Source: The Australian

Islamic Saudi Academy Seeks Expansion in Virginia

A school that is explicitly proselytizing Islam according to the Wahhabi House of Saud seeks expansion in Fairfax County, Virginia. The hearing is tonight.

Frank Gaffney, Jr.

At this writing, the Board of Supervisors of Fairfax County, Virginia are poised to make a momentous decision. After a hearing tonight, the Supervisors could well accede to demands by the House of Saud to change the name of their jurisdiction to Faisal County, in recognition of the contributions the late Saudi king and the virulent strain of Islam promoted by his government in Northern Virginia and elsewhere.

Just kidding. No, for the moment at least, the Saudis are only seeking that the supervisors approve the use of a fraction of the county as a Wahhabi beachhead in America. They want a prime piece of undeveloped real estate to effect a sizeable expansion of the kingdom's school here known as the Islamic Saudi Academy (ISA) so as to enable it to enroll 1,200 students.

Never mind that this school has become notorious in recent years for the association of a number of its faculty and students with terrorism. As David Stokes has documented in an excellent article posted over the weekend at Townhall.com, the perpetrators have run the gamut from those implicated in plots to assassinate a sitting president of the United States, to casing the structural supports for a major bridge to trying to smuggle a butcher's knife aboard an airplane. Read more ...

Source: FSM

Islamic Saudi Academy
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award

Former President of American Muslim Brotherhood group enters race for Virginia Congressional seat

The Muslim Brotherhood "must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." -- "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," by Mohamed Akram, May 19, 1991.

What does that have to do with Esam Omeish? Everything. He was President of the Muslim American Society. And what is the Muslim American Society? The Muslim Brotherhood.

"In recent years, the U.S. Brotherhood operated under the name Muslim American Society, according to documents and interviews. One of the nation's major Islamic groups, it was incorporated in Illinois in 1993 after a contentious debate among Brotherhood members." -- Chicago Tribune, 2004. Read more ...

Source: NV Daily
H/T: Jihad WatchEsam Omeish
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award

State lets Islamic school operateOfficials say Saudi institute will revise violent textbooks

By Gary Emerling

State Department officials said Thursday they have no plans to close a Saudi-financed Islamic school in Northern Virginia that has failed to eliminate violent and intolerant language in textbooks.

"They told us they would revise the textbooks by the 2008 school year," State Department spokesman Rob McInturff said. "We don't plan to take additional action apart from the discussions that have been going on with the Saudi government."

Results released Wednesday from a federal investigation into the Islamic Saudi Academy - with campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax - found textbooks at the 900-student private school had passages that blame the Jews for "discord" and say it is sometimes permissible to kill non-Muslims.

The investigation by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom focused on 17 textbooks used during the last school year and obtained from independent sources.

The panel, formed by Congress, last year recommended the State Department close the school, though members had not yet reviewed the textbooks. The commission said the Foreign Missions Act gives the Secretary of State authority to "require a foreign mission to divest itself of or forgo the use of property and to order it to close." Read more ...

Source: The Washington TimesState Department
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award


Updates:
• Fairfax County Public Hearings on Islamic Saudi Academy - Video
• USCIRF Confirms Material Inciting Violence, Intolerance Remains in Textbooks Used at Saudi Government's Islamic Saudi Academy
• What Virginia's Islamic Academy Doesn't Want You to Know

Questions about Saudi academy in Virginia

By Jim Brown

Critics of a private Saudi academy renting a local government building in northern Virginia warn the school promotes a virulent form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism.

Fairfax County, Virginia, supervisors voted last week to continue leasing property to the Islamic Saudi Academy, despite concerns over the K-12 school's past use of classroom material that promoted hatred against Jews and Christians. In October, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a report harshly criticizing the Saudi educational system, and called on the State Department to shut down the Islamic Saudi Academy.

Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, says Saudi schools teach students that in order to safeguard Islam, they must "violently repress and even physically eliminate" non-Muslims. Read more ...

Source: One News Now

Imam From Va. Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al-Qaeda

By Susan Schmidt

Even before the 2001 terrorist attacks, American-born imam Anwar al-Aulaqi drew the attention of federal authorities because of his possible connections to al-Qaeda. Their interest grew after 9/11, when it turned out that three of the hijackers had spent time at his mosques in California and Falls Church, but he was allowed to leave the country in 2002.

New information later surfaced about his contacts with extremists while in the United States. Now, U.S. officials are saying for the first time that they believe that Aulaqi worked with al-Qaeda networks in the Persian Gulf after leaving Northern Virginia. In mid-2006, Aulaqi was detained in Yemen at the request of the United States. To the dismay of U.S. authorities, Aulaqi was released in December.

"There is good reason to believe Anwar Aulaqi has been involved in very serious terrorist activities since leaving the United States, including plotting attacks against America and our allies," said a U.S. counterterrorism official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Read more ...

Source: The Washington Post
H/T: Jihad Watch