by Jack Lee
While the rest of us were busy with our careers and our families, doing whatever it is that Americans do, there were some in our midst, many of them US citizens, who were plotting to kill us!
2009 was the worst year for Islamic terrorism since 9/11, however officials are reluctant to call it for what it is, a growing Islamic threat. And the worst part is a majority of these evil plotters hold US citizenship.
I won’t dignify them by calling them Americans because in my view they are not, they are traitors. Being an American ought to be a title reserved only for those who embrace our idealism and are willing to defend our democracy. Anyone who can’t abide by that ought not be able to claim the title of American. They should only be allowed to claim “US citizenship” and of course all the rights that accompany it. That legal status doesn’nt mean much anymore anyway, because those expensive rights are freely given to anyone, regardless of citizenship, even foreign born terrorists are assigned our citizenship rights.
In the most recent headlines we read about five young American Muslims detained over alleged terrorist links in Pakistan. These people did not fit your typical terrorist profile, they were from upper middle class families that were assimilated into American life. They were well educated and they had bright futures. Ironically, for this very reason Al Qaeda was suspicious of them and thought they might be CIA spies and their repeated offer for service was to their chagrin…declined. They are expected to be deported back to the USA to answer federal charges.
Just since May the FBI has interrupted five of six plots to kill Americans on our own soil. One succeeded (Ft. Hood).
* Four men–three U.S.-born, one Haitian-born, all Muslim converts were arrested after they planted bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx. They had planned to fire a surface-to-air missile at an Air National Guard aircraft on the same day.
* 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.
*A Chicago man who was arrested for allegedly planning terrorist attacks against a Danish newspaper. He has now been charged for his alleged role in the Mumbai terrorist attacks that happened a year earlier, in November 2008, and claimed the lives of nearly 170 people. At the time, his name was Daood Gilani, but he changed his name to David Headley, so he could “present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani.
* Fort Hood shooter US citizen Nidal Hasan opened fire on American soldiers earlier this month. This massacre came on the heels of a series of foiled terrorist plots involving Americans.
by Jack Lee
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.
“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,” Janet Napolitano said in her recent New York speech and she added this warming, “Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront.”
Liberals seem almost too quick to dennounce or mock any findings of radical Islam within the US. They more often dismiss it as merely rightwing Islamophobia. They point to the fact that we have over 5 million adult Muslims living in the US and only a very small fraction have resorted to any sort of criminal activities that could be somehow tied to their religion. This is a very clever and deceptive half truth as you will learn when you read further. We should not be congratulating ourselves over how many Muslims have assimilated, we should be focused on how many here represent a serious security risk!
Amir Arain, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Nashville, the city’s oldest mosque, said, “We have become the bogeyman of the world. Fringe fundamentalists they are talking about, that they think defines Islam, is only 1 to 2 percent, and we do agree that there is a problem. It’s a very small quantity or small group of the whole Muslim ummah, or nation, that has somehow hijacked our faith.”
However, a Pew Poll in 2007 found that a quarter of Muslim American men under age 30 found suicide bombings justifiable. On the other side of the fence the broad tolerance that existed in the days following 9/11 has largely evaporated by 2009. Nearly 40% of Americans think Islam is more likely to encourage violence.
In the most recent survey a Pew Poll found that 20% of Muslims-Americans hold supportive views of radical Islam. This represents about 500,000 people and it’s no small number, but even if it was 50,000 or 5,000 that is a number that could pose a serious risk to the security of American citizens.
Are our government leaders missing all the signals?
A stand is taken against political Islam and it begins in Switzerland: The National Post reported the following excerpts… “Last Sunday, 57.5% of Swiss voters approved a ban on the architechtural minarets found on Mosques. This is a complete reverse of what polls showed only two weeks before. The Swiss People’s Party argued the minaret was a symbol of Islamic political power and had nothing to do with the free exercise of religion, thus it should be banned.
Canadian Prof. Anna Buturovic (A Bosnian Muslim) said, this has triggered people’s latent prejudices — Switzerland, and Europe as a whole, consider “diversity an attack on national identity.” In her view, the campaign touched on European paranoia about being taken over by outsiders.
“The Swiss campaign has played on people’s fears,” added Professor John Bowen, a specialist on Muslim integration in Europe. “Just look at the posters that were used, with images of minarets, burkas and missiles. It was a phony association. The minarets have nothing to do with terrorism or political Islam or the maltreatment of women.” Prof. Bowen, Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and author of the book, “Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves”, a pro-Islamic view.