 The foiled attempt by young Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day has baffled many Africans and sent them scrambling for an explanation. This is not the stereotypical poor and desperate young man usually associated with violence on the continent. For one, Abdulmutallab is the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker and former government minister. His father even tipped off the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to his son's growing radicalism. Second, neither Islam nor Christianity is indigenous to Africa, and the idea of dying on behalf of a foreign religion is absurd to most Africans. Third, the United States was never a colonial power in Africa and, therefore, it seems an odd target. In fact, it's a popular destination for many young Nigerians looking to emigrate. And yet, Africa only has to look within to find the causes for radicalization. About 60 percent of Africa's nearly 1 billion people are less than 30 years old. In the past few decades, these young people have become increasingly disaffected, lost, and restless, and who can blame them? Poorly educated and jobless, they have few role models with moral stature. The value system has collapsed. Hard work and entrepreneurship no longer assure success and wealth. Political connections matter. The richest men in Africa are often heads of state and ministers. Of the 209 African heads of state since 1960, fewer than 15 can be classified as good, clean leaders. The rest -- an assortment of military brutes, briefcase bandits, and crackpot democrats -- are decidedly uninspiring. How can Africa claim to be fighting terrorism when the chairman of the African Union itself is Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, an admitted sponsor of terrorism? At the United Nations' May 2002 Children's Summit in New York, youngsters from Africa stunned the audience by ripping into their leaders. "You get loans that will be paid in 20 to 30 years ... and we have nothing to pay them with because when you get the money, you embezzle it, you eat it," said 12-year-old Joseph Tamale from Uganda. Adam Maiga from Mali weighed in: "We must put an end to this demagoguery. You have parliaments, but they are used as democratic decoration." Disenchanted by their own societies, African youth have become increasingly susceptible to radical ideas and religious extremists -- not just the Islamist fanatics in northern Nigeria and Somalia, but also the Christian variety (the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda) and the traditionalist (the Mungiki sect in Kenya).
Some seek escape in rickety boats to Europe. Others turn to crime (drug trafficking, Internet scams), prostitution, and extremist groups that seek violent change. It is sclerotic leadership and catastrophic government failure -- not poverty -- that breed this hopelessness and despair in Africa's young people, luring them to extremism. In many African countries, government has ceased to exist or function. In its place is a vampire state -- a government hijacked by unrepentant bandits who use the machinery of the state to enrich themselves, crush their enemies, and perpetuate themselves in office. In Chad, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, governments that scarcely provide basic social services are even at war with their own people. And their people have responded with violence.
Just last week, a separatist group, Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda (FLEC), opened fire on a bus carrying the Togolese soccer team to the Africa Cup, killing the driver and two team officials. FLEC seeks independence from Angola, whose government is one of the worst of these dysfunctional bodies. What motivated these young men was likely not that different from what compelled Abdulmutallab to board that plane. More at Foreign Policy 
 THE Nigerian charged with trying to set off a bomb on a US-bound plane on Christmas Day was radicalised and recruited by al-Qa'ida while a student in London, the Yemeni Government says. The claim, disputed by British officials, came amid mounting concern and growing evidence that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had ties to known Islamic radicals while an undergraduate at University College London between 2005 and 2008. "The information provided to us is that Umar Farouk joined al-Qa'ida in London," said Rashad al-Alimi, the Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister for Defence and Security. Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, told MPs earlier this week that Mr Abdulmutallab was "radicalised after he left this country" but it emerged yesterday that he was noted on UCL files as someone who had contact with known radicals. Mr al-Alimi also said that in Yemen, the alleged bomber met the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the cleric who had e-mail contact with the Muslim US Army psychologist who has been charged with going on a shooting spree that left 13 people dead at Fort Hood in Texas. White House aides said that Mr Obama was furious over the security breach, and the President said that the incident had revealed "human and systemic" failures across the US intelligence and security community. In a private meeting with top intelligence officials on Tuesday, he called the bomb plot "a screw-up that could have been disastrous". Mr Abdulmutallab was allowed to board Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam, bound for Detroit, with plastic explosives sewn into his underwear. As the flight, carrying 290 passengers and crew, was circling Detroit in preparation for landing, he injected a priming agent into the explosive. Flames shot into the air but the device failed to explode. Remarkably, he was allowed on to the flight with a multiple-entry visa to the US, despite having been placed on a no-entry list for Britain. Mr Abdulmutallab also paid cash and had no checked baggage - further "red flags" that US officials now say should have prevented him from boarding the aircraft. General James Jones, Mr Obama's National Security Adviser, said before the security report was released that the President "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behaviour that were available, were not acted on". Mr Obama said on Tuesday that the attempted bombing "was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence we already had". Aides said that Mr Obama had been particularly shocked that such a failure could have occurred despite the reforms put into place after the September 11 attacks. General Jones said that Americans would feel a "certain shock" when they read the report and discovered the many clues that were not acted upon to stop Mr Abdulmutallab from boarding the flight. It also emerged that US border security officials learned of Mr Abdulmutallab's possible extremist links once the flight was already in the air and were preparing to question him after he had landed in Detroit. Mr Abdulmutallab had never been placed on the US no-fly list. Yet the warnings his father delivered to US State Department officials in Nigeria had landed him on a secondary database - a list that contains over half a million people but which does not prohibit them from flying. Border agents cross-referenced his name to the second list after the plane had taken off. On Wednesday Mr Abdulmutallab was formally charged by a federal grand jury on six counts, including attempted murder and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction aboard a US aircraft, crimes punishable by life imprisonment. The Australian
 The accused "underwear bomber" made a dramatic final call to his father that he found so alarming, the father approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA's station chief in the Nigerian capital, sources told ABC News. Current and former officials of the Nigerian government, including a source close to the suspect's family, say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, called his father from Yemen with the warning that it would be his last contact. It has previously been reported that the man's father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, went to Nigerian and American officials Nov. 19 to warn them that his son had been radicalized by Islamic militants in Yemen. Details have emerged about Abdulmutallab's final phone call that highlight President Obama's statement that there were "systemic failures" of the country's security system. ABC News' sources said that during Abdulmutallab's final call, he told his father the call would be his last contact with the family. He said that the people he was with in Yemen were about to destroy his SIM card, rendering his phone unusable. The next day the embassy sent out a thin report to U.S. embassies around the world warning Adbulmutallab may be associating with extremists in Yemen. The CIA official compiled two more robust reports following the meeting with the suspect's father. One was sent back to CIA's Langley, Va., the other remained in draft form in Nigeria and was not circulated until after the attempted attack on Christmas Day, according to a U.S. official. In what has been seen as a possible failure to stop the bomber from boarding a U.S.-bound plane, the alert prompted counterterrorism officials to put Abdulmutallab's name into a database of more than half a million others that the U.S. suspects of ties to terrorism, but they did not put him on the country's no-fly list. The information also was not shared with Yemeni intelligence officials, the Yemen government has said. The president was expected to receive preliminary reviews on the security failure today. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly indicated details of the review would not be released. He said, however, "Details of embassy Abuja's meeting with Abdulmutallab's father are of the review, and we are not in a position to comment on it at this time." Abdulmutallab told federal officials after his capture that he spent a month at the home of an al Qaeda official in Yemen while he was trained for jihad, officials have told ABC News. He left Yemen Dec. 7 and weeks later was aboard a Northwest Airlines flight that stopped in Amsterdam and then continued on to Detroit. More at ABC
 WASHINGTON: The US had multiple pieces of information about alleged airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, according to senior US officials, including intelligence reports and communications intercepts suggesting a Nigerian was being prepared for a terror strike by al-Qa'ida operatives in Yemen. The intercepts were collected piecemeal by the National Security Agency, which has been monitoring al-Qa'ida militants in that country, including former Guantanamo detainees believed to be leaders there. In addition, the father of Abdulmutallab met the CIA at the US embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 19, and told of his son's likely radicalisation, US officials said yesterday. That led to a broader gathering of agencies the next day in which the information was shared, a US official said. But US officials said it was not clear whether intelligence officials in Washington charged with co-ordinating such intelligence activities effectively distributed the information gathered in Nigeria. "A systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable," Mr Obama said, referring to "a mix of human and systemic failure". In his comments, Mr Obama cited information "that could have and should have been pieced together". Officials familiar with a review ordered by Mr Obama say the connections are not obvious, except in hindsight, and that there does not appear to be a single clear warning that should have set off alarms. But if the information had been brought together before Christmas, Abdulmutallab would most likely have been put on a no-fly list and kept off the plane he tried to destroy, the President said. The errors could prove a problem for Mr Obama, who spoke for the second day about the attack, after three days of silence. It is rare for a US president to publicly reprimand intelligence agencies. The lapses, and Mr Obama's critical comments, will focus fresh attention on the operation of the US's intelligence agencies, particularly the National Counter-terrorism Centre, or NCTC, a Washington-based body set up after September 11 to act as a clearing house for terrorism data. The US has spent billions of dollars building systems to detect impending attacks, which appear to have failed in this instance. It has already set off a round of finger pointing among multiple US agencies still stinging from 9/11 and Iraq-related intelligence failures. According to officials, the NCTC has complained that the CIA did not provide all the information they had, such as where Abdulmutallab attended college, while the agencies have said that the counter-terrorism center had what it needed to properly assess the threat. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NCTC, said in a written statement that despite improvements to information-sharing, "it is clear that gaps remain, and they must be fixed". The NSA did not respond immediately to requests for comment. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency first learned of Abdulmutallab last month, when his father came to the US embassy in Nigeria. He said the agency helped place him in the terrorist database and forwarded information to the NCTC. The Australian
 Funny how that keeps happening. "Al-Qaeda 'groomed Abdulmutallab in London'," by Sean O'Neill and Giles Whitell for Times Online, December 30
The Christmas Day airline bomb plot suspect organised a conference under the banner "War on Terror Week" as he immersed himself in radical politics while a student in London, The Times has learnt. This story does not address the possibility that Abdulmutallab could have encountered "extremism" indigenous to Nigeria, or that anyone but al-Qaeda could be the source of his interest in violent acts of jihad. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, a former president of the Islamic Society at University College London, advertised speakers including political figures, human rights lawyers and former Guantánamo detainees. One lecture, Jihad v Terrorism, was billed as "a lecture on the Islamic position with respect to jihad". It is worth noting amid Abdulmutallab's involvement in events like this that he had sought advice on when it is permissible to deceive non-Muslims. Security sources are concerned that the picture emerging of his undergraduate years suggests that he was recruited by al-Qaeda in London. Security sources said that Islamist radicalisation was rife on university campuses, especially in London, and that college authorities had "a patchy record in facing up to the problem". Previous anti-terrorist inquiries have uncovered evidence of extremists using political meetings and religious study circles to identify potential recruits. It emerged last night that Mr Abdulmutallab featured on the periphery of one counterterrorism intelligence operation in Britain. US intelligence authorities are also looking at conversations between him and at least one al-Qaeda member. The event he organised took place in January 2007 and included talks on Guantánamo Bay, the alleged torture of prisoners and the War on Terror. He is the fourth president of a London student Islamic society to face terrorist charges in three years.
One is facing a retrial on charges that he was involved in the 2006 liquid bomb plot to blow up airliners. Two others have been convicted of terrorist offences since 2007. Death coaching: Mr Abdulmutallab left UCL last year. The Times has learnt that his attempt to renew his student visa in May this year was based on an application to study "life coaching" at a non-existent college. That visa refusal may have saved Britain from an attack. His terrorist training took a new turn in August when he moved to Yemen, ostensibly to study Arabic, and was schooled by al-Qaeda there...
 "We now issue 370,000 student visas a year - almost the entire population of Bristol or Manchester - yet hardly any of the applicants ever see hide nor hair of an Immigration Officer." An update on this story. "Terror plot raises questions over student visas," by Martin Evans for the Telegraph, December 27: The latest airline bomb plot by a terrorist with British connections raises serious questions about the UK's controversial student visa system. Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, who comes from a wealthy family in Nigeria, was already showing signs of extremist views when he was granted a visa to study mechanical engineering at University College London in 2005. After completing his studies in 2008 he travelled to the Middle East before applying to return to the UK in May for another six month course. However, his request was refused by officials from the UK Borders Agency as he was attempting to enrol on a course being offered by an institution on the Government's list of bogus colleges. Despite the fact his entry was barred, questions still remain over the system which has seen more than one and a half million visas granted to overseas students during the last eight years. Earlier this year a report by the Home Affairs Select Committee criticised the Government for failing to deal adequately with the explosion in bogus colleges springing up across the UK. Keith Vaz, chairman of the committee said: "The government must restrict the term college to prevent any premises above a fish and chip shop from being able to claim it is a reputed educational institution." It is feared tens of thousands of foreign nationals have gained entry to Britain illegally under the scheme, with many avoiding detection and never leaving. In March tighter restrictions were introduced cutting the number of institutions allowed to recruit students from outside the UK. But critics believe the new points based register has done little to close the system's gaping loopholes. Around 3,000 educational institutions across the UK have been granted licenses under the points based system but there are only 62 officials employed to vet the colleges and their 13,500 employees. [...] MPs have welcomed efforts to improve the system, but in their report expressed concern that inspectors were giving notice to colleges before visits. Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch has also been deeply critical of the system which he said provided a "gaping hole" in our immigration system. He said: "We now issue 370,000 student visas a year - almost the entire population of Bristol or Manchester - yet hardly any of the applicants ever see hide nor hair of an Immigration Officer." There is also widespread concern that many legitimate universities and colleges are providing fertile recruiting grounds for radical Islamic preachers and banned groups. Radicalisation among students has been a problem since the 1990s, with many of those involved in terror plots being highly educated graduates. Three of the July 7 bombers attended university as did most of the gang which planned a fertiliser bomb attack on the Bluewater shopping centre and the Ministry of Sound nightclub. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, convicted of the kidnap and murder of the journalist Daniel Pearl, was a former student at London School of Economics, and Waseem Mughal, convicted of running a website for al-Qaeda in Iraq, was a former biochemistry student at Leicester University. Mughal was a member of the university Islamic society, and the fertiliser bomber Jawad Akbar attended Islamic society meetings at Brunel University, while Yassin Nassari, convicted of smuggling plans for a Qassam rocket into Britain, was president of the University of Westminster's Islamic society at its Harrow campus in Northwest London. [...] A recent study by the Centre for Social Cohesion found that a third of Muslim university students believed killing in the name of religion could be justified. The disturbing findings of the survey also found a large proportion were in favour of the introduction of Sharia law in the UK. Following publication of the report, its co-author Hannah Stuart said: "Students in higher education are the future leaders of their communities yet significant numbers of them appear to hold beliefs which contravene liberal, democratic values. "In addition there are signs of growing religious segregation on campus.
These results are deeply embarrassing for those who have said that there is no extremism in British universities."
 If a major homegrown terrorist attack happens on U.S. soil in the coming years, 2009 will be looked at as the year when the warning signs were missed. According to the Rand Corporation, the U.S. has experienced 30 homegrown terrorism plots since 9/11. One-third of these occurred in 2009; a frightening spike that warrants more attention than it is currently being given by public officials. The Obama Administration began its term by refusing to include terms like “radical Islam” as part of its lexicon. The Global War on Terrorism was alternatively called an “overseas contingency operation” or “a campaign against extremists who wish to do us harm.” The Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, described terrorism as a “man-caused disaster. When asked about not even mentioning the word “terrorism” in her first address to Congress, she said, “That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear towards a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.” The homegrown terrorist activity this year has startled the Obama Administration, which now is forced to privately conclude that the radicalization of American-Muslims is increasing. In today’s 30-second news culture, shocking incidents such as these quickly fade away as the topic of coverage as other news develops. A summary of some of the biggest incidents this year is needed for the American people to understand how much activity took place: * In May, authorities broke up a plot by four prison converts to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and fire Stinger missiles at aircraft flying around the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York. * On June 1, a Muslim convert shot up a military recruiting center in Arkansas, killing one soldier and wounding another. The attacker, Abdulhakim Muhammad, was previously jailed in Yemen for traveling on a fraudulent Somali passport. Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org reported that a “well-placed source” informed him that he had gone to Yemen to try to study under a radical cleric named Yahya Hajoori. * In July, seven Muslims were arrested in North Carolina for training with high-powered weapons in preparation to join a jihad overseas. The leader of the group, Daniel Patrick Boyd, had previously trained in guerilla camps in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and enlisted his two sons in his plans. * In September, FBI and local law enforcement raided two apartments owned by Afghans in New York after the occupants were visited by Najibullah Zazi, a suspected terrorist who had traveled to an Al-Qaeda training camp last year. Nine backpacks and cell phones were confiscated, and Zazi was found to have purchased chemicals similar to those used in the 2005 London subway bombings, causing concern that the suspects were planning an attack styled after that operation. * Also in September, FBI sting operations led to the arrest of two desiring to carry out acts of terror. A Jordanian named Michael Finton, an admirer of the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, was arrested for planning to set off car bombs outside of a courthouse in Illinois and a skyscraper in Texas. Hosam Maher Husein Smadi was arrested in Texas after trying to detonate a decoy car bomb underneath an office tower. * In October, the FBI tried to arrest a radical imam in Detroit connected to a range of criminal activity. When they arrived at a warehouse to get Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, he responded with gunfire, killing one of the FBI’s dogs before he was shot and killed. Six of his associates were arrested. In the same month, Tarek Mehanna was arrested in Boston for planning to attack a shopping mall and assassinate two public officials. * The next month, Nidal Malik Hassan carried out the horrific shooting at Fort Hood, killing 13 people. He is now known to have previously expressed his support for suicide bombers and to have communicated with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical imam in Yemen who has acted as a recruiter for Al-Qaeda and praised Hassan’s shooting. To this day, President Obama and senior officials have not publicly described the incident as terrorism. * Most recently, five Americans were arrested in Pakistan on their way to link up with the Al-Qaeda and Taliban. They were arrested at the home of a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist group, who is the uncle to one of the suspects. These are only some of the major incidents related to radical Islamic activity in the U.S. that occurred this year. A total of 14 Somali-Americans from Minnesota have been indicted for helping to recruit fellow members of their community to join the Al-Shabaab terrorist group fighting for control of Somalia. The case of Rifqa Bary received considerable attention, as did the honor killing in Arizona of a daughter by her father for being “too Westernized.” More at FPM
 The alderman college of Beringen (Belgium) will decide this week on the issue of loudspeakers for the Fatih mosque.The Fatih mosque asked the city to allow them to call the faithful to prayer. They want to hang loudspeakers outside the mosque so that the muezzin - which calls the faithful to prayer - will also be heard out in the streets. The Fatih mosque in Beringen is one of the few Belgian mosques with a minaret. Mosque chairman Yilmaz Centurk would only confirm yesterday that the request was made. Selahattin Koçak (SP.A), alderman in Beringen: "I hope that we can make a collegial decision with a full alderman college already this week. Until then I will make no comment, although I think that you can guess my point of view." Beringen's mayro Marcel Mondelaers (CD&V) was not available for comment yesterday, but according to party member Anne Cuypers, second alderman of Beringen, the CD&V hasn't yet taken a stand. "We're first asking the advice of all instances, such as the environmental service and the police regulations relating to sound pollution, and should also look at how often they want to do the call'. According to Cuypers the Muslim association is not part of the request to call to prayer five times a day. "A loudspeaker? that's just too far," says Open VLD councillor Jan Vanhamel. "I suspect that the Muslim community is looking for sensation and simply wants to see with this proposal how the politicians would respond." His colleague from Vlaams Belang, Bert Schoofs, says the request is a sign of radicalization. "If the Turkish community wants to promote the faith in this way, they'll get yet even more isolated. It's a provocation and if the city executive approves this, I'll provoke back by demanding the demolition of the minarets." Despite the fuss in Beringen, the Fatih mosque request is not a first. In Genk the muezzin has been calling in public for prayer for much longer. "They are naturally subject to the same laws about noise levels as church bells," says mayor Jef Gabriëls (CD&V). "The mosques call to prayer five times a day, but in the morning they do it very quietly. That is really only symbolic. In cooperation with the city the Muslims are thinking about an SMS call." At the CGKR (Center for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism) they hope that Beringen will approve the request. "The tolling of bells is the same expression of religion and the constitution says that there's freedom of religion," says chairman Jozef De Witte. "I hope that the city council will think twice, because a ban on a muezzin also means that we curtail our own freedoms. The Union of Mosques did not join on the request. "The call is part of the prayer, but is usually done in Flanders in side. It's certainly not on the agenda to sound it high on the minaret. That would wake people up and is certainly not a priority. I think that the news about Beringen is causing so much commotion due to the Swiss minaret ban. Because the Muslims are themselves aware of the annoyance that this could cause." Source: De Standaard (Dutch)
 By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross Recently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) helped to alert US authorities that Ramy Zamzam and four of his friends from Northern Virginia had gone missing by encouraging the families to bring their information to the FBI after the families told CAIR about the disappearances.(For my initial post on this case, click here.) This has caused some observers to argue that CAIR was responsible for the arrests in Pakistan. For example, Spencer Ackerman writes in the Washington Independent: "Still, a closer look at the new Pakistani arrests still show signs of the durability of American Muslim resistance to radicalization. The arrests wouldn't have happened, for instance, if a much-maligned American Muslim organization hadn't put the accused's worried families in touch with the government." The "much-maligned American Muslim organization" to which Ackerman is referring is CAIR. To substantiate his claim that CAIR was responsible for the arrests in Pakistan, he quotes the following: The men, who range in age from 19 to 25, went overseas without telling their families, who grew concerned after a family member called one of them on his cellphone and “the conversation ended abruptly,” said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The council got the family members in touch with the FBI last week, and the families played the 11-minute English video [that seemed like a martyrdom tape] for agents and Muslim leaders at a lawyer’s office. The causal chain Ackerman constructs is fairly clear: CAIR encouraged the families of the missing to contact the FBI, US authorities in turn alerted Pakistani officials about the situation, and the Pakistanis subsequently arrested the five men. But is this claim accurate? The biggest problem with this construction of events is the assumption it makes in crediting US authorities for the arrest in Pakistan. I spoke with a US intelligence source last night who told me that the arrests were related neither to information provided by the US nor to CAIR's actions.
He stated that Pakistani authorities conducted the raid of the house where the men were staying independent of any information provided by the US, as the Pakistanis were trying to arrest Qari Saeed, who is affiliated with Jaish-e-Mohammed. As open source reporting shows, information obtained from the raid on the Americans' house did in fact lead to Saeed's arrest. As I stated in a previous entry, I don't expect people to take the word of unnamed intelligence officials on faith, so let me provide a few reasons that I think he is correct. First, the arrest was made by local Pakistani police. If Pakistani authorities were conducting the raid at the behest of the US, they probably would have sent a more elite team. Second, initial reporting suggests that the Pakistanis did not know who they had when the arrest was made: this report from the Pakistani press, for example, claims only that a single American was arrested, naming the men as "2 Yemenis, 1 Egyptian, 1 Swedish and 1 US-born Pakistani."
A third and final reason that I credit my source's depiction of events is the American reaction. There was no FBI team in place when the arrests occurred, and instead one had to be sent over subsequently. If the U.S. knew the arrests were imminent, the team would have been in place beforehand. For the record, I watched the entire CAIR press conference this past Wednesday, and even CAIR officials didn't claim to have caused the arrest: it seems to be Ackerman's own extrapolation. But though CAIR did the right thing in persuading the families to bring their information to the FBI, it is premature -- to say the least -- to credit them with causing the arrests in Pakistan. Update, 12:01 p.m.: Spencer Ackerman graciously concedes that there is no evidence to suggest CAIR was responsible for the arrests, while maintaining the broader point of his earlier post, that "'the durability of American Muslim resistance to radicalization' endures, even despite the arrests."
 For almost a decade, American Muslims have seen a growing debate among Muslim communities about the radicalization of Muslims in America and how to combat it. American Islamists groups (CAIR, MPAC, MAS and ISNA, to name a few) hatched from the ideology of the global Muslim Brotherhood and their being given a disproportionate amount of media attention and resources in the U.S. presented their best face of blanket denials and smoothly avoided any acknowledgement of a problem. For eight years since 9/11 American Islamist groups have refused to acknowledge the fact that salafism, Islamism, and other ideologies directly contributed to that radicalization. This year, actually just last week, after an ever increasing string of homegrown Muslim terrorists, and after CAIR was banned from the FBI, the denial finally gave way to a long overdue admission of a problem. Yet, their admission had no analysis whatsoever of the real root cause of Muslim radicalization – political Islam and salafism. Since its inception in 2003, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) has been publicly waging a contest of ideas with many of those Islamist organizations that the ideology of Political Islam is at the root of the cancer that threatens American security and the faith of American Muslims. AIFD has long believed that Islamism is the root cause of Muslim radicalization in the U.S. and around the world. The arrests in Pakistan on December 9, 2009 of five young Muslim men from America transitioned that debate into a new phase. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has thrust itself into the front of this case. CAIR held a press conference on December 9th, audaciously announcing in their their press release on behalf of the entire Muslim community that, "The Muslim community has taken the lead in bringing this case to the attention of law enforcement authorities and will offer ongoing cooperation with the FBI as the investigation moves forward." At the press conference, Nihad Awad, Executive Director, CAIR-National stated that, "We also as a community realize and recognize that there is a problem. This problem we believe it is not wide spread, but we as a community, we acknowledge that there is a problem, and we are going to deal with it effectively. We are going to launch a major campaign of education to refute the misuse of versus in the Koran or the misuse of certain grievances in the Muslim world." In a press release for the same press conference, Haris Tarin, Community Development Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) recognized that, "Any radicalization that exists is a major problem that we must – and are – addressing head on. This case underscores not only the importance of strong relations between the Muslim American community and law enforcement, but also the grave need for educational programs to prevent extremism within our community." This news follows a number of troubling cases related to Muslim Americans, including the disappearance of five young Somali men from Minnesota who later turned up in Somalia to fight alongside Al-Shabab, the horrific shooting rampage at Ft. Hood, and the arrests of three men in Illinois, Colorado and Texas on unrelated terror plot charges." This is an important change in the rhetoric of CAIR and MPAC. The optimist in me would like to believe that AIFD's efforts and that of other vocal anti-Islamist Muslims and non-Muslims have forced these organizations to admit that there is an ideological problem in many of our communities. As with alcoholics and drug addicts, admitting that there is a problem is the first step down the path of recovery and reformation.
But the cynic and realist in me sees these announcements for what they are: recognition by these groups that their post 9/11 apologetic messaging is not resonating with the general public. To solve the problem, they adapted their messages to co-opt the rhetoric of curbing radicalization. Just last month, both of these groups were out front in their efforts to decouple faith from the obvious Islamist radicalization of Maj. Nidal Hasan, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre.
In October they both were also quick to defame the FBI in the shooting death of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah of Detroit, who openly called for an establishment of an Islamic State and opened fire on agents who were coming to arrest him under criminal charges. While the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Reuters trip over themselves to quote Mr. Awad and CAIR, who made themselves into the news of the case of the radicalization of these five men, none seem to be asking them the question that needs to be asked: What will be the structure and substance of your anti-radicalization education campaign and will you confront, renounce, and reform the ideology of Political Islam? CAIR and MPAC have typically renounced the use of terror and violence, but they have never taken a position against the ideology of Political Islam. They both have also been the primary antagonists to efforts by law enforcement to understand and mitigate the real stages of radicalization of Muslims in America. In 2007, under the umbrella of the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC), CAIR-NY and MPAC –NY authored "Counterterrorism policy, MACLC's critique of the NYPD's report on homegrown radicalism." The paper is a response to NYPD's report "Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat." In it, the organizations lay out their belief that, "The study of violent extremism, however, should decouple religion from terror to safeguard civil liberties on free speech and equal protection grounds as a matter of strong public policy." If the root cause of Muslim radicalization is Islamism (political Islam), what good is any effort at counterterrorism that decouples the religion from terror?
How can law enforcement effectively counter terrorism in our country without recognition that Political Islam and its narrative is the core ideology when, at its extreme, drives the general mindset of the extremists carrying out the attacks? When we were fighting communism in the Cold War, we generally understood that, violent or non-violent, those who advocated the communist ideology were part of the problem and not part of the solution whether they were strident Soviets or just idealistic non-violent Marxists.
The distinction mattered little and certainly our counterintelligence experts were not using the non-violent Marxists as experts on how to defeat the Soviets. More at M.Zudhi Jasser's site
 Nursery-age children should be monitored for signs of brainwashing by Islamist extremists, according to a leaked police memo obtained by The Times. In an e-mail to community groups, an officer in the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit wrote: “I do hope that you will tell me about persons, of whatever age, you think may have been radicalised or be vulnerable to radicalisation ... Evidence suggests that radicalisation can take place from the age of 4.” The police unit confirmed that counter-terrorist officers specially trained in identifying children and young people vulnerable to radicalisation had visited nursery schools. The policy was condemned last night. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that it ran the risk of “alienating even more people”. Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said that it was an “absurd waste of police time”. Sir Norman, the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, said: “There is absolutely no example, nationally, of the police engaging with nursery-age kids specifically on this issue. That is the age for learning about ‘Stranger Danger’ and ‘The Tufty Club’.” The Home Office has disclosed, meanwhile, that a seven-year-old has become the youngest child to feature in a scheme to tackle grooming by extremists. David Hanson, the Police Minister, disclosed in a parliamentary answer that the child was one of 228 people referred to the Channel Project, part of Prevent focused on individuals. More than 90 per cent of those identified by the project have been aged between 15 and 24 and most, but not all, are Muslim. Criticism of the anti-extremism strategy is growing. The programme, funded from the £3.5 billion per year security budget, is said to stigmatise communities and encourage Muslims to spy on one another. This week John Denham, the Communities Secretary, said that the programme had to be more transparent to dispel “the fear that by joining a Prevent activity, the organisers or the participants are opening themselves up to covert surveillance, intelligence-gathering and the collection of files on the Muslim communities”. The e-mail obtained by The Times was written by a sergeant in response to Muslim community concerns. He was trying to allay fears but seems to have inflamed them. He wrote: “I am a police officer and therefore it will always be part of my role to gather intelligence and I will report back any information or intelligence which may suggest someone is a terrorist, or is planning to be one or to support others. However, my role is to raise the level of awareness of the threat of terrorism and radicalisation and support and work with partners to try to prevent it.” Arun Kundnani, of the Institute of Race Relations, contacted the officer and said he was told that officers had visited nursery schools. Mr Kundnani added: “He did seem to think it was standard. He said it wasn’t just him or his unit that was doing it.
He said the indicators were they [children] might draw pictures of bombs and say things like ‘all Christians are bad’ or that they believe in an Islamic state. It seems that nursery teachers in the West Midlands area are being asked to look out for radicalisation.
He also said that targeting young children was important because they would be left aware of what was inappropriate to say at school. He felt that it was necessary to cover nurseries as well as primary and secondary schools. He said it was a precaution and that he wasn’t expecting to come back with a list.” More at Times Online
 It's too bad, isn't it, that all the self-righteous self-proclaimed Muslim moderates who spend so much time trying to show that what this site says about Islam is wrong don't spend any time at all trying to convince Muslims who somehow get the crazy idea that Islam teaches violence and supremacism that they're getting their peaceful religion all wrong, wrong wrong.
"Briton guilty of plotting 'deadly terror attack,'" from the BBC, December 9
A British Muslim has been convicted of conspiring to murder civilians in a "deadly terrorist attack". Adam Khatib, 22, a factory worker from Walthamstow, east London, was part of a terror cell run from Pakistan. The cell was led by Abdullah Ahmed Ali convicted of plotting to blow up transatlantic passenger airliners. Co-defendant Nabeel Hussain was found guilty of engaging in preparing terror acts and Shamin Uddin was convicted of possessing terror items, namely a CD.... Prosecutor Peter Wright QC said: "Khatib may not have been informed of the ultimate target, namely passenger aircraft... all that was required of him was an agreement to play his part in bringing about the murder of others." The court heard that Khatib had became fascinated by radical Islam as a teenager. Signing one of his school assignments "Adam Osama Bin Laden," Khatib became a cause for concern to teachers worried about his increasingly extreme views, including anti-Semitic outbursts in the classroom.... Though it is not known what the two did during their time in Pakistan, Mr Wright told Woolwich Crown Court: "They may have been home-grown but the direction of these young men came from Pakistan." Maybe. But it certainly came from the Qur'an and Sunnah. Of course, Mr. Wright would never wish to say anything about that: it could get him charges of "Islamophobia." With thanks to JihadWatch
 ...being waged by native-born jihadists. "U.S. sees homegrown Muslim extremism as rising threat: This may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11, anti-terrorism experts say," by Sebastian Rotella for the Los Angeles Times, December 7 Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism. Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters' trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia. Europe had been the front line, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said: * There were major arrests of Americans accused of plotting with Al Qaeda and its allies, including an Afghan American charged in a New York bomb plot described as the most serious threat in this country since the Sept. 11 attacks. * Authorities tracked other extremism suspects joining foreign networks, including Somali Americans going to the battlegrounds of their ancestral homeland and an Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo. * The FBI rounded up homegrown terrorism suspects in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., saying that it had broken up plots targeting a synagogue, government buildings and military facilities. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued her strongest public comments yet on the homegrown threat. "We've seen an increased number of arrests here in the U.S. of individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, or supporting terror groups abroad such as Al Qaeda," Napolitano said in a speech in New York. "Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront." Officials acknowledged that her tone had changed, though they said terrorism has been her focus since becoming Homeland Security chief. In some of the 2009 cases, extremist leanings are suspected but motives are not known. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- accused of killing 13 people in a Ft. Hood, Texas, shooting rampage last month -- has apparently suffered emotional problems. But in interviews, officials and experts have also raised his Muslim beliefs as an alleged motive. A previous attack on the U.S. military, a shooting in June by an American convert who killed a soldier and wounded another at an Arkansas recruiting center, was apparently a case of a lone wolf radicalized in Yemen, according to Homeland Security officials. "You are seeing the full spectrum of the threats you face in terrorism," former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. "Radicalization is clearly happening in the U.S.," said Mitchell Silber, director of analysis for the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department. "In years past, you couldn't say that about the U.S. You could say it about Europe."... Nonetheless, recent investigations have run across Americans suspected of being operatives of Al Qaeda and its allies who were trained overseas and, in several cases, allegedly conspired with top terrorism bosses. They include a convert from Long Island, N.Y, who was captured in Pakistan late last year; a Chicago businessman accused of scouting foreign targets for a Pakistani network; and at least 15 Somali American youths from Minneapolis who returned to fight in their ancestral homeland.... With thanks to JihadWatch
 From CAN: A moderate Muslim organization in the United Kingdom called the Quilliam Foundation has published a report warning about the infiltration of radical Islam into the country’s corrections system, BBC News reports. “Prominent pro al-Qaeda ideologues such as Abu Qatada have been able to smuggle messages out of prison to their supporters,” the report states. “Other convicted extremists have issued pro-jihadist statements from prison while others have appeared on Islamic TV stations from within prison.” The report also warns that radical Muslims have been allowed to lead prayer services in prisons and acted as liaisons between the prison authorities and Muslim inmates. Some are even allowed to act as religious teachers to other inmates.
An increase in Muslim prison gang activity and the presence of extremist texts in Islamic libraries for prisoners is also warned about. It also concludes that it takes 5-7 years after a prisoner is indoctrinated into extremism for him to partake in acts of violence. “This means that prisoners leaving prison today may ‘graduate’ into terrorism around 2015,” Quilliam’s press release states. The website of the Quilliam Foundation describes the organization as “the world’s first counter-extremism think tank.” It is led by former members of Hizb ut-Tharir, a radical Islamic group that seeks to resurrect the Caliphate and establish Sharia Law. The organization says it opposes such efforts to establish Islamic doctrine as a form of governance and is staunchly against terrorism and extremism. World Threats
 Federal counterterrorism officials investigating the recruitment of ethnic Somalis in the U.S. for jihad in Somalia say the case echoes the type of homegrown radicalization that threatens parts of Europe. The U.S. announced charges against eight men this week, and agents allege three of them helped persuade men to join an extremist group. The recruiting network enlisted about 20 young men, many of them born in the U.S. and having little knowledge of Somalia, to join the al-Shabaab insurgent group in Somalia. The network's apparent success is influencing the way government counterterrorism officials view the threat of radicalization in the U.S. Ralph Boelter, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Minneapolis office, said the notion of domestic radicalization "is a moving target. It's evolving. These young men traveled without consulting their families. Now it's happened; now we should all be on guard." Patrick Rowan, who was chief of the Justice Department's national-security division when the Somali probe began, said: "If there was ever a subconscious belief in the counterterrorism community that our society is different from Europe and therefore we don't have to worry about problems like they've had, the activities in Minneapolis demonstrate we can't think that way." The cases come amid a flurry of terror investigations in which radicalization may have played a role. In September, federal prosecutors charged an Afghan national in what authorities believe was the most advanced al Qaeda plot to bomb targets in the U.S. since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Authorities are also investigating whether radicalization was involved in the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas. The Somali cases are different because the motivation of the Somalis was to fight for their homeland. Still, investigators fear that once indoctrinated abroad, such youths could turn their attention to the U.S. More at WSJ
Hamas is Turning the Gaza Strip into a Repressive, Radical Islamist, Terrorist State Allied to Iran
By Barry Rubin - Tuesday, August 18, 2009 Hamas is Turning the Gaza Strip into a Repressive, Radical Islamist, Terrorist State Allied to Iran. Might this suggest the need for concerted Western action to eliminate this threat? Apparently not.Here’s a detailed report on how Hamas is gradually turning the Gaza Strip into an Islamist state by a wide variety of activities including: educating children in Islamist beliefs, control of the media, gender segregation, banning of alcohol, indoctrination of military forces, spending considerable parts of limiting money to building additional mosques (the number has doubled in eight years) which are fully controlled by Hamas, and creation of morals’ police.Traditional weddings have been broken up (because they played music) and two singers have been arrested because of their song lyrics. Chewing gum is banned, clothing stores are inspected and items removed if they don’t correspond with Hamas’s dress code. Paramilitary summer camps have been created to indoctrinate young people and prepare them to be terrorists. In schools and in children's television shows, kids are being taught systematic hatred of Jews, Christians, and the West, while being told that violence is the remedy to wipe out all these evil forces.Courts are being made into places purely for the enforcement of Islamic law as interpreted by Hamas. Fatah supporters are repressed or forced out of jobs. “Islamic” banks established and favored by Hamas to keep control of the economy in its hands. The media publicize radical religious views, for example, that a father cannot stop his son from engaging in armed Jihad—which contradicts the traditional idea that the father of the family is the authority figure, now Hamas doctrine overrides this. These actions are deepening the gap between the Gaza Strip and West Bank, making it unlikely that Fatah will ever win back control or that the two groups can work together. As a result, any successful Arab-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian peace process becomes impossible.Iran and its allies are more able to spread their influence and subversion to other places in the region, increasing their ability to expel Western influence from the whole area.Might this have some damaging effect on Western interests? Could this possibly be a more urgent world problem than Israeli construction of apartments on settlements or, as happened last week, the secretary of state's outspoken indignation when two Palestinian families in Jerusalem were evicted for non-payment of rent after a long court case? Should a U.S. and European goal be the overthrow of the Hamas regime instead of, as happened last January, saving it from Israel’s military offensive? Could human rights’ and other groups focus on Hamas’s totalitarian direction, crushing of any freedom, and dragooning Gaza’s inhabitants toward decades of war and bloodshed. Instead they are becoming conduits for Hamas’s false charges of war crimes against Israel, which all remain unproven. It would prove impossible to organize a large demonstration in any Western country about Hamas's destruction of women's rights and indoctrination of children to blow themselves up as terrorists, yet easy to do so in favor of Hamas or at least against Israel defending itself from Hamas's attacks.Isn’t it clear that Gaza will become another base for spreading radical Islamist subversion and terrorism to other Arabic-speaking societies, first and foremost the West Bank and Egypt? Is this all so hard to understand? But here one sees the value of the obsession with bashing Israel and turning it into a scapegoat. After all, it takes a very powerful and passionate set of excuses and distractions to hide what is so evident and dangerous for those all too oblivious to the threat. While Western countries have put sanctions on the Hamas regime, there is also increasing pressure, notably in Britain, to negotiate with Hamas. In the Western media and among “experts” there is talk about Hamas as becoming more moderate. Source: http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2009/08/hamas-is-turning-gaza-strip-into.html
H/T: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=580579800&ref=nf
By Adrian Michaels Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it. The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza. Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society.
The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was submitted to the US Air Force on how America's relationship with Europe might evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the attention they deserve. Jerome Vignon, the director for employment and social affairs at the European Commission, said that the focus of those running the EU had been on asylum seekers and the control of migration rather than the integration of those already in the bloc. "It has certainly been underestimated - there is a general rhetoric that social integration of migrants should be given as much importance as monitoring the inflow of migrants." But, he said, the rhetoric had rarely led to policy. The countries of the EU have long histories of welcoming migrants, but in recent years two significant trends have emerged. Migrants have come increasingly from outside developed economies, and they have come in accelerating numbers. The growing Muslim population is of particular interest. This is not because Muslims are the only immigrants coming into the EU in large numbers; there are plenty of entrants from all points of the compass. But Muslims represent a particular set of issues beyond the fact that atrocities have been committed in the West in the name of Islam. Read more here ... Source: Telegraph
H/T Jihad Watch
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The foiled attempt by young Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day has baffled many Africans and sent them scrambling for an explanation. 
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