06/9/15

America’s See-No-Islam Problem Exposed With Boston Jihadism

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

The Boston Globe published a column in the wake of the shooting of an Islamic State-linked jihadist from Rosindale, Massachusetts that is a quintessential example of why the West is losing to Islamic supremacists.

In “Are Boston terrorism cases a trend?” two Globe authors reach out to several “antiterrorism specialists” and ask why it is that Boston appears to be so “vulnerable to violent extremism.”

Some submit that Boston’s “emergence as an international hub may leave it exposed to strains of radicalized behavior.”

Others find the existence of Boston-based jihadists curious given these jihadists “cannot be traced to one network, and individuals and groups do not appear to be connected.”

One such expert who has written on the Islamic State, J.M. Berger, acknowledges that “There is some degree of social network here that seems to be involved in radical thought.”

Halfway through the Globe article, the reader is left utterly unaware of any link between Boston jihadists and…jihadism. In fact, readers will not find the word “jihadist” in the column.

What readers do see is the lexicon of our see-no-Islam national security establishment, including euphemisms such as “violent extremism,” “homegrown terrorist,” and “radical presence.”

Somewhat closer to the mark are comments of James Forest, director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, who says: “The ideology that motivates these kind of attacks, there are no geographical boundaries.”

What this “ideology” is, the reader is left to guess.

Usamma Rahim was wielding a knife when he was shot by Boston police. Rahim had planned to attack “boys in blue” according to his intercepted communications. (Source: WCVB-TV)

Next quoted in the piece is Farah Pandith, the first special representative to Muslim communities in then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Pandith asserts that Muslim millennials are “asking questions that parents aren’t answering. The loudest voices seducing these kids are extremists.”

Pandith notes that “extremism” is not so much a matter of geography as “what’s happening in virtual space around the world.”

As for the “seductive” “extremist” voices and the impact of social networks, of course the young and impressionable can be brainwashed, but what are they being brainwashed in, and who is doing the brainwashing? Should not these millennials and their parents be both rejecting as well as rooting out this ideology from their communities altogether?

Some experts seem to recognize an ideological component to what we have seen in Boston – an Islamic supremacist ideology that can proliferate wherever computers or cell phones are found, that thrives especially in tight-knit Muslim communities in free Western countries — yet they cannot bring themselves to define this ideology.

Coughlin Chart

Credit: Steven Coughlin

Juliette Kayyem, another Obama administration official who served as Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs in the Department of Homeland Security, is next given the floor.

Kayyem believes that Boston — which the columnists describe as a “global city that is diverse, tolerant, and welcomes immigrants and students” – is “a breeding ground for the disaffected to either radicalize or hide.”

Kayyem asserts that “We are going to see this kind of radicalization in any urban area globally.”

But do global cities become “breeding grounds[s] for the disaffected to either radicalize or hide” in a vacuum?

Throughout world history, international locales have been free of the scourge of “violent extremism,” a politically correct term used to avoid offending Muslims while simultaneously drawing moral equivalence with and thereby smearing “right-wing” Americans.

One would think that modern, cosmopolitan, liberal urban areas by their very nature would consist of modern, cosmopolitan, liberal people.

Only to the degree to which these global cities invite in people with retrograde views antithetical to these ideals does their diversity and tolerance make them “breeding grounds” for jihadism.

It is hard to fault the piece’s authors for quoting “mainstream” “antiterror experts.” Yet these “experts” all seem to subscribe to the very see-no-Islam philosophy that paralyzes our national security establishment more broadly, rendering us unable to defeat our enemy.

Parenthetically, the idea of an “antiterror” expert should itself draw our ire, given that terror is a tactic, not the name of an ideologically-driven enemy. After all, during the Second World War we didn’t call upon anti-Blitzkrieg experts to define our enemies. We understood and were able to articulate that we were at war with a foe, not a fighting method.

Meanwhile, today there is nary a mention of Islamic religious tenets like jihad, abrogation and taqqiya, nor a discussion of Islam’s ultimate goal to create a global Ummah under which all submit to Shariah law.

This is not an issue of semantics. If we fail to be precise in how we describe our enemy and its ideology, it will defeat us.

How did we get to a point over a decade after Sept. 11, 2001 when columnists writing about Boston jihadists dance on egg shells around the Islamic supremacist ideology that by the jihadists’ own admission animates them?

While Nazism and Communism were political ideologies, jihadists subscribe to a theo-political ideology based in Islam’s core texts and modeled on the behaviors of Muhammad.

This offends the sensibilities of Americans either ignorant of Islam or uncomfortable with the idea that religion could be used to justify the slow motion worldwide slaughter of Jews, Christians, Hindus, infidel Muslims, gays, women, apostates, cartoonists and others.

In the case of the recently killed would-be jihadist Usamma Rahim, a simple set of Google searches regarding Rahim and the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) might have provided the Globe columnists and the antiterror experts they quote an illuminating fact pattern worth investigating in response to their question, “Is Boston more vulnerable to violent extremism than other parts of the country?”

Below are some of those relevant data points:

  • Usamma Rahim had been a security guard at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury, Massachusetts, an affiliate of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB)
  • The ISB’s executive director pulled the ISBCC out of President Barack Obama’s own Countering Violent Extremism Summit, essentially deeming the program Islamaphobic
  • Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev prayed at the ISB’s Cambridge, Massachusetts mosque
  • Notwithstanding ISB denials, Tsarnaev had been the latest in a long line of jihadists linked to the organization:
  • The ISB was founded by Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah currently serving a 23 year prison sentence on terrorism charges
  • ISB’s Cambridge mosque is operated by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Muslim American Society
    According to Discover the Networks, among other revelations:
  • “FBI surveillance documents show that two days before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Suhaib Webb, Imam of ISB’s Boston mosque, joined al-Qaeda operative Anwar Awlaki in headlining a fundraiser on behalf of the Atlanta-based Muslim extremist Jamil al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown), who had recently murdered two police officers in Georgia.”
  • “Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at ISB’s Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans to carry out a chemical attack in New York City. Siddiqui subsequently tried to gun down some U.S. military officers and FBI agents, and is now serving an 86-year prison sentence for that offense.”
  • “Tarek Mehanna, who worshipped at ISB’s Cambridge mosque, received terrorist training in Yemen and plotted to use automatic weapons to inflict mass casualties in a suburban shopping mall just outside of Boston. In 2012 he was sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid Al Qaeda.”
  • “Yasir Qadhi, who lectured at ISB’s Boston mosque in 2009 and again in 2012, advocates replacing American democracy with Sharia Law; characterizes Christians as “filthy” polytheists whose “life and prosperity … holds no value in the state of Jihad”; and accuses Jews of plotting to destroy Muslim peoples and societies. Further, Qadhi is an acolyte of Ali al-Timimi, a Virginia-based Imam who is currently serving life in prison for inciting jihad against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”

The Boston Globe article is instructive because it represents the very line of thinking and questioning that is mandated in the halls of America’s national security institutions.

It is also instructive — in light of the facts about the ISB — that a see-no-Islam national security stance leads us to ignore the threats hiding in plain sight, to America’s great detriment.

Those who ignore the nature of the Islamic supremacist threat we face are doomed to submit to it.

02/18/15

10 Troubling Aspects of President Obama’s ‘Countering Violent Extremism’ Summit

By: Benjamin Weingarten
TheBlaze

The White House’s “Countering Violent Extremism” summit is barely underway, yet the message is already clear: the conference is politically correct — and far worse — a charade.

And that is a charitable interpretation.

Its sponsors are engaging in intentional obfuscation (e.g., saying “violent extremism” is the enemy), as well as peddling ineffective and ill-considered policy proposals (more community “empowerment”). The conference will effectively aid and abet America’s increasingly ascendant jihadist foes.

Violent extremism is not an enemy, it’s a euphemism. Terrorism is not an enemy, it’s a tactic.

Reviewing the Obama administration’s summit preview, here are its 10 most disturbing aspects:

1. Contrary to its big government ethos, the Obama administration asserts that national security should be driven by the people, not the state.
Image source: BuzzFeed

(Image source: BuzzFeed)

According to the White House preview [emphasis mine]:

Really at the core of our approach is that the government does not have all the answers in combatting violent extremism. It is, at its core, a bottom-up approach. It puts communities with civic leaders, with religious authorities, with community power brokers, teachers, health providers, et cetera, in the driver’s seat. They know their citizens best. They are the first line of defense to prevent or counter radicalizing forces that can ultimately lead to violence. And so our approach is to really embrace and empower what local communities can do. So we’ve been working with our federal partners and our local partners to put in place this approach over the past couple of years.

Further:

Again, this is not about government, especially the federal government. The federal government doesn’t have all the answers. This is about building a comprehensive network to fight back against violent extremism. And we are explicitly recognizing the role that civil society plays, the private sector plays, and that families, et cetera, can play in countering violent extremism.

Who knew the Obama administration had so much respect for and faith in civil society?

Yet of course, this faith turns out to be dangerously misplaced as…

2. The groups the president wants to empower are those who may pose the biggest threat.

As Patrick Poole noted in an extensive report for TheBlaze:

In December 2011, the White House issued the “Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States” – the local partners, of course, being Islamic organizations, including those cited by the Justice Department as working to aid foreign terrorist organizations. All national security and law enforcement agencies on the federal, state and local level would now have to consult these groups and rely on “local partners” as a matter of policy. And as made clear in Salam al-Marayati’s Los Angeles Times op-ed, Islamic groups complaining about counter-terrorism policies or training would disrupt government efforts to “counter violent extremism” gave them an implicit veto over counter-terrorism policies. [Los Angels Times link added for context]

Why should we care about this 2011 report?

A senior Obama administration official noted in previewing the summit that the report details the very efforts the administration will be hawking during the three-day event.

Local partners such as the Council on American-Islam Relations — an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest Hamas funding trial in history — has advised members of the Muslim community not to work with the FBI, and religious leaders to lawyer up as opposed to working together with law enforcement when it comes to potential jihadists. On the eve of the summit, CAIR is reportedly calling for the Department of Justice to “protect those who act in good faith to prevent violent extremism by engaging with [Muslims] considering it in order to dissuade them.”

A partner of perhaps higher standing is the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), a group linked to numerous jihadis and jihadi-sympathizers, that is reportedly the primary liaison between the Muslim community and law enforcement in countering violent extremism. The Boston  program will be one of the three held up as a success story during the summit, despite the ISB’s Islamic supremacist efforts.

Looking to the heart of Muslim communities, according to the Mapping Sharia project, imams in over 80 percent of 100 randomly surveyed representative mosques in America recommended the study of violence-positive texts. The correlations with these texts are disturbing, as illustrated below:

Sharia Adherence Mosque Survey: Correlations between Sharia Adherence and Violent Dogma in U.S. Mosques (Image Source: http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/sharia-adherence-mosque-survey/html)

(Image Source: Sharia Adherence Mosque Survey: Correlations between Sharia Adherence and Violent Dogma in U.S. Mosques)

In Pew’s extensive 2011 report on Muslims in America, 21 percent of those polled indicated there was a great deal or fair amount of “support for extremism among Muslim American;” 19 percent did not indicate that “suicide bombing/other violence against civilians is justified to defend Islam from its enemies;” only 70 percent indicated that they viewed Al Qaeda “very unfavorably.”

As leaked Department of Homeland Security documents reveal, the second highest concentration of people designated as “known or suspected terrorists” by our government reside in Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn’s population is 96,000, and it has the highest percentage of Arab-Americans of any city in the country.

In light of these figures, and the fact that jihadist groups worldwide claim they are at war with America, having committed over 25,000 attacks in the name of Allah since Sept. 11, 2011, one must ask, what exactly is the rationale behind leaving self-policing to Muslim communities when these are the very places from whence jihadists spring?

Such a policy of course is only baffling if you are of the belief that jihad is an Islamic tenet, and that Islamic supremacist ideology is what animates the vast majority of the world’s “violent extremists.”

But of course…

3. According to the administration there is no profile of a “violent extremist.”

Returning to the transcript:

[I]n the United States there has been violent extremists that come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and so the agenda for all three days is going to show a wide array of speakers and participants from all backgrounds who combat radicalization, violent extremism and terrorism in its many forms.

…In terms of the phrase “vulnerable community,” I think one is that we want to be clear that the evidence doesn’t show that there’s any particular community, there’s no profile that we can point to say this person is from this community, is going to be radicalized to violence.

4. The administration thinks a key focus should be on non-Muslim terrorist groups — like those in Colombia.

Per the preview:

Q:  I’m just wondering, in light of the current events that Andrea Mitchell and others mentioned during this call, almost all of those involves Muslim extremism. And I get that the phrase for this three-day event is “violent extremism.” Might some critics think that you’re avoiding the world “Muslim” as though extremists in the Islamic communities are the focus — or are they not the focus? That’s my question.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  …I think obviously we want to be taking into account the current concerns that different countries are facing. But as I think will be clear from the variety of presentations and case studies that are mentioned — to include some of the media that we have organized to help catalyze the discussion that features some of the longer-running terrorist threats that people sometimes forget about in the current context, such as the FARC in Colombia, which is now in negotiations, but has been a designated terrorist organization for some time, responsible for countless acts of violence.

I think we will see through the complexity of the discussion that violent extremism is a broader trend…I think we’ll see in the context of the meeting itself the diversity that reflects the reality of recent history.

5. The administration disavows a link between jihadism — a word it won’t use — and religion.
This image made from a video released Sunday Feb. 15, 2015 by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to the Islamic State group purportedly shows Egyptian Coptic Christians in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. Later in the video, the men are made to kneel and one militant addresses the camera in English before the men are simultaneously beheaded. The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the video. (Image source: AP)

This image made from a video released Sunday Feb. 15, 2015 by militants in Libya claiming loyalty to the Islamic State group purportedly shows Egyptian Coptic Christians in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach, each accompanied by a masked militant. Later in the video, the men are made to kneel and one militant addresses the camera in English before the men are simultaneously beheaded. The Associated Press could not immediately independently verify the video. (Image source: AP)

Per the administration preview:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Let’s be clear. We recognize that violent extremism spans many decades and has taken many forms. But we all agree that the individuals who perpetuated — who perpetrated the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere are calling themselves Muslims and their warped interpretation of Islam is what motivated them to commit these acts. They’re not making any secret of that, and neither are we.

But we are very, very clear that we do not believe that they are representing Islam. There is absolutely no justification for these attacks in any religion, and that’s the view of the vast majority of Muslims who have suffered huge casualties from the likes of folks like ISIL or al Qaeda. So you can call them what you want. We’re calling them terrorists.

6. The administration continues its “mea culpa” campaign, attributing radicalism to economic, social and political disparities — but not religion.

Per the White House preview [emphasis mine]:

The final panel will focus on secure and resilient communities, and it will, in particular, begin by looking at the role of civil society, particularly youth and women preventing violent extremism. It will look at community-police relations and community-security force relations as a critical element of prevention. And it will finally broaden that conversation to address social, economic and political marginalization, including the effects of integration of minority communities.

Based on all we have observed from this White House, do you think that the onus will fall on law enforcement to work on “improving relations” with “violent extremist” communities, or vice-versa? Reports on the Minneapolis countering violent extremism pilot program, one of the three that will be presenting at the summit, indicate that its Somali Muslim community mistrusts law enforcement because it fears being spied upon. Does this give you confidence in cooperation from a neighborhood that has produced over a dozen known jihadists in recent years?

The notion that “marginalization” and poor integration in minority communities is the root cause of jihadism, as echoed by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf is a canard. Not only are there very wealthy families from the bin Ladens to the Saudi royals who drive jihadism worldwide, but conversely practically every group that has ever succeeded in America came to this country poor and marginalized, yet did not resort to strapping bombs to themselves or chopping off heads.

None of this is even to mention the fact that Muslims, other ethnic and religious minorities and the most important minority, the individual, has at least historically had more freedom and opportunity in America than in any other country in the world. Perhaps the White House wishes this forum to be a vehicle for revisiting Ferguson.

7. The administration wants to rehabilitate and reintegrate violent extremists.

Clearly the recidivism rate for Guantanamo Bay detainees has not sunk in to the collective mind of the public, as the White House continues:

The third session focuses on weakening the legitimacy and the resonance of the brand of violent extremism. So that will include a panel on strategic communications, social media. It will include a discussion of how non-violent religious issues and education can be elevated as a matter of international and local-level concern. And it will look at best practices with regard to rehabilitating and reintegrating violent extremists.

Note that this is also in keeping with the Obama administration’s efforts through Eric Holder’s Justice Department to treat terrorism as a criminal matter.

8. The Obama White House has regularly partnered with and enabled ”violent extremists,” without whom a countering violent extremism summit would not be necessary in the first place.

One of the more unbelievable indications of the Obama administration’s willful lack of self-awareness is that it has regularly partnered with the “violent extremists,” aiders, abetters and sympathizers with whom theoretically this summit is about countering.

The administration is currently negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program — the largest state sponsor of terror in the world.

Several weeks ago the White House met with the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization whose 1991 strategic memorandum on North America called for a “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.”

In Libya and Syria we have armed jihadists to our own great detriment.

How can a president who so frequently makes common cause with, and whose interventions overseas have so consistently aided jihadists, have any credibility in countering violent extremism?

9. The summit’s very name tells us how fatally flawed the exercise is.

Little exemplifies better how ill-equipped America is to deal with the threats facing her than the fact that the Obama administration wants us to believe that we are fighting “violent extremism.”

Violent extremism is not an enemy, it’s a euphemism. Terrorism is not an enemy, it’s a tactic.

As many have said in recent weeks, if you cannot identify your enemy, you cannot defeat it. By not having the moral clarity, or even worse by exhibiting such cowardice in creating a mushy phrase like “violent extremism,” which not only obscures the enemy from the American people, but allows the Obama administration to associate all sorts of other peoples with jihadists is shameful.

Islamic supremacists are at war with us. It is quite evident we are not at war with them.

10. Finally, the key issues crucial to understanding the nature of, and means of best countering Islamic supremacism are not going to be addressed.

Were the summit actually to identify Islamic supremacism as the enemy, as the Center for Security Policy’s recent Defeat Jihad Summit illustrated, we might examine issues among many others including:

  • The Islamic doctrine that animates jihadists both Shitte and Sunni, and the goals, tactics and strategies set forth therein
  • The global funding of the jihadist support architecture
    • Activist groups
    • Educational institutions including America’s Middle East studies departments
    • Media organizations
    • Mosques
    • Other agents of influence
  • Jihadist infiltration of American political institutions
  • The undefended borders through which jihadists are surely entering
  • Legal immigration policies including visas for religious leaders, student visas and immigration from jihadist areas worldwide
  • Iran’s efforts to infiltrate South America
  • Radicalization in prisons

We should seriously consider the aforementioned 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum on its mission in North America:

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the word means. The Ikhwan [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. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

…A mission as significant and as huge as the settlement mission needs magnificent and exhausting efforts. With their capabilities, human, financial and scientific resources, the Ikhwan will not be able to carry out this mission alone or away from people and he who believes that is wrong, and God knows best. As for the role of the Ikhwan, it is the initiative, pioneering, leadership, raising the banner and pushing people in that direction. They are then to work to employ, direct and unify Muslims’ efforts and powers for this process. In order to do that, we must possess a mastery of the art of “coalitions”, the art of “absorption” and the principles of “cooperation.”