The recent case of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, who murdered one soldier and injured another at a Little Rock military recruiting center last year, reflects several trends in the growing danger of extremism on American soil.

The New York Times reports that Mr. Muhammed—née Carlos Bledsoe–was born a Baptist. Shortly after beginning college, he converted to Sunni Islam and dropped out of school. He became increasingly devout, and was active in Nashville’s Somali community where he began wearing Arab-style clothing, gave up alcohol, and changed his name.

He eventually went to Yemen to study Arabic. He overstayed his visa, was deported, and ended up in a U.S. prison.

Mr. Muhammad told his father that while in prison he met Islamic radicals who told him that the American government had forsaken him. “We are your real brothers,” they said…

Read more…

Have a look at CAIR on The O’Reilly Factor, days after the Christmas terror plot. Ibrahim Hooper is truly a media mastermind. He clearly avoids all questions asked and stays on his messaging. He makes profiling sound ridiculous and describes Muslims being forced to stand in a separate line. Anyone who understands profiling (see this article), must understand it isn’t about putting people in different lines.

Hooper says in the interview, “It’s very easy to give away ‘other poeple’.” This means that he is trying to show Muslims as “other people”, essentially underdogs. However, the newest CAIR campaign shows Muslims to be normal Americans. Sorry Hooper, you can’t play for both teams! You may sound slick but we can all see through your polished messaging!

Learn more about CAIR by reading a new groundbreaking book- Muslim Mafia.

A man arrested in Memphis “stated he was a Muslim, and wanted to start jihad here in Memphis.”  He will be brought to court on January 7 for allegedly trying to blow up office buildings on Christmas day.  Two days earlier, the same man, Mohammed Ibrahim was arrested for possession of a ten inch butcher knife found in his sleeve.

Click here to view the whole report

When are we going to realize that theses attacks are all the same?  Whether they come from a wealthy Nigerian, a military psychiatrist or Mohammed in Memphis, they are all united by one goal: to take over the west and spread radical Islam.

To mark the closing of a new year Time Magazine published an article about how the year 2009 saw an “unprecedented surge” of terror activity on US soil. There have been 32 planned attack since the tragedy of 9/11. Some of the more well known cases included the shooting at the Fort Hood military base in November. The murder of a soldier by a Muslim convert in Little Rock, and in January, the arrest of a Long Island convert who pleaded guilty to helping Al Qaeda with a plot to blow up a train in Penn Station.
The spokespeople for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claim that these events do not point to a trend and the charge that Muslim Americans are being radicalized in US Mosques if false. What do you think about this? There is plenty of evidence that points to the fact that this is untrue and four of the cases outlined in the article are about Americans who converted to Islam and then carried out their plans.
One of the lessons learned in 2009 is that the internet has become a breeding ground for terrorist training activity. American Muslims are encouraged to stay in the US rather than travel to Pakistan or Afghanistan and commit isolated acts of terror.
Brian Jenkin’s a RAND corporation expert suggests that many of the young men carrying out these attacks were at a very impressionable age when the attacks on 9/11 were carried out. He says that “some would have been inspired by it and caught up in the jihadist narrative”. Thankfully, Americans are becoming more aware that this threat is here and more people are contacting their local officials when they see something suspicious.
I wonder what 2010 will bring?

What does it mean to win the war in Afghanistan, in order to make life safer for Americans at home?

On one side, there is a physical theater of war with real consequences at home.

President Barack Obama devoted a significant part of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to clarifying this, in the wake of controversy over receiving the prize while the U.S. was engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of the threats to the American people. For, make no mistake, evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations could not convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the subject in early December, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He noted that a loss will empower our enemies, just as they were empowered to attack the World Trade Center several years after driving the Soviets from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has indicated as much in statements like the following one from senior figure Adam Gadahn.

So America’s might, in addition to being exaggerated, is strictly physical, and, thus, ultimately beatable. And I’ll back that up with an example from recent history: the Soviet Union. Before its collapse, the Soviet Union was considered virtually unbeatable by Americans and the world… But the Afghan jihad, which was waged by a small group of lightly armed but faithful and steadfast Muslims wiped the USSR from the world map.

So, although Afghanistan may be half a world away, the war being fought there is about American survival.

Let’s say the U.S. defeats its enemies there decisively. Will that end the threat posed to Americans at home? Will we be safer? Thomas Friedman writes that it’s important, but not enough. There’s another war that needs to be fought. Read more…

Five men from Alexandria Virginia were arrested in Pakistan, last week, in one of the latest cases of homegrown terror on U.S. soil. According to an article in the Washington Post, “the men had contacted extremist organizations, including two with links to al-Qaeda, and proudly told their Pakistani interrogators, “We are here for jihad.””

The Post reports that the men had met in a youth group at a small mosque affiliated with ICNA. They had been in touch via e-mail with groups like the Taliban, in their desire to battle American soldiers in Afghanistan, although they were ultimately rebuffed because of concerns by the groups that they were part of a sting operation.

The New York Times reports that they were all relatively young—ranging from their late teens to mid 20s—and that, according to Pakistani police, they were all U.S. citizens.

Some thoughts on this: Read more…

It’s official: The U.S. is facing a rising threat from homegrown extremism. The LA Times, quoting Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, reports

“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… Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront.”

The story does not state whether or not Napolitano has assessed a source to the rising threat, or whether she believes it to be a general crisis which cannot be attributed to any particular groups or ideological motivations.

A number of highly publicized recent cases have been tied directly or circumstantially to Islamist extremism.

“People [are] focused on the idea that we’re different, we’re better at integrating Muslims than Europe is,” said Zeyno Baran, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, a think tank in Washington. “But there’s radicalization — especially among converts [and] newcomers, such as the Somali case shows. I think young U.S. Muslims today are as prone to radicalization as Muslims in Europe.”

If the rising threat is tied to Islamist extremism, only by engaging in a direct dialogue on the issue will solutions to this challenge be found.

By ignoring root causes, at most we can diminish the risk of attacks and do damage control afterwards; but we will not solve the problem.

You can read the entire L.A. Times article here

In Sunday’s New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes about the negative view of America promoted in much of the Muslim world. He calls this negative view The Narrative.

The Narrative is the cocktail of half-truths, propaganda and outright lies about America that have taken hold in the Arab-Muslim world since 9/11. Propagated by jihadist Web sites, mosque preachers, Arab intellectuals, satellite news stations and books — and tacitly endorsed by some Arab regimes — this narrative posits that America has declared war on Islam, as part of a grand “American-Crusader-Zionist conspiracy” to keep Muslims down.

Friedman acknowledges that America has made many mistakes in its engagement with the Arab/Muslim world—often in the course of war. But he also points out that America’s role in the Muslim world has been largely positive; something the Narrative conceals.

This kind of dangerous anti-American obfuscation is not only happening in the Middle East. It’s also happening in our backyard. Read more…

“This was an unpredictable and isolated episode, impossible to anticipate and guard against.” - Muqtedar Khan, University of Delaware.

Men like Professor Khan single out Major Malik Hasan as being a unique case; unpredictable and inexplicable.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times shows that if we look to the root causes of incidents like this, they may not be as impossible to foresee as Professor Khan believes. Sometimes, an influential cleric, mixing political and spiritual messages, can influence others to commit terrible crimes in the name of God. Such is the case with Anwar al Awlaki, an American born cleric now living in Yemen.

Anwar al Awlaki is an extremist whose sermons have helped radicalize terrorists from Atlanta to New Jersey to London, including cases in which the U.S. military was targeted. A well-spoken Yemeni American, Awlaki has emerged as the leading ideologue for a homegrown generation of young militants who conspire over the Internet. Read more…

We must learn from Fort Hood. This was not an isolated incident! We must realize that we are faced with a serious threat of homegrown Jihad.

This is just one clip from the film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America.  If you haven’t yet seen the film, you must.  It documents the plans of radicals to undermine America from within.  And this is not just us talking. 

The film features exclusive interviews with some of the most notable security figures in the U.S., experts in the field of radical Islam and former terrorists, as well as never before seen footage from Arab Television.

This film is perhaps the best tool out there for educating Americans about the very real threats of radical Islam lurking in our own backyard.

Buy the DVD here.  It is an absolute must-see.  Educate Yourself. Take Action.