THINK-ISRAEL


TO MAKE A WESTERNIZED TERRORIST: COMBINE RESURGENT ISLAM AND AMERICAN SOFTHEADEDNESS

by Bernice Lipkin

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:


Part 1: THE SALAFIST: THE EXTREMIST ISLAMIST RADICALIZED MUSLIM JIHADIST

A Salafist is a Muslim dedicated to restoring Muslim control over everyone else in accordance with Islamic practices and preachings, as determined by Mohammad. There are doctrinaire differences in that the Shi'ite Muslims, whose lead country is Iran, await the return of an Imam and the majority Sun'ni Muslims, with Saudi Arabia as lead country, work for the restoration of the Caliphate. Even among the members of a group of allies, there are rivalries, squabbles that can turn nasty and shifts in degree of cooperation. Whatever the dynamics of the volatile configurations, the goal remains the same: in the coming social structure, Sharia law will be universal. Muslims will be top dog and everyone else — Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, animist, atheist — will have these choices: convert to Islam, be a subservient dhimmi or be dead.

Mohammad was the Ideal Muslim. Whatever Mohammad said and did has merit and should be emulated by every Muslim — from outright lying to gain a political-religious advantage to beheading the apostate to taking a child bride. It is heresy to suggest the religion should be modified and some of its more primitive components soft-pedaled. Democracy, human rights, humanitarianism are meaningless albeit useful terms; the goal is Islamic supremacy. The West believes Islamic religious fundamentalists and radicals are an aberration. They are not. They are the pious Muslims; they are the serious believers in doing what Islam commands. What we call "extremists" are Salafists — and they are respected even by impious Muslims.

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The Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is Salafist. Wahhabist Saudi Arabia is Salafist. Al-Qaeda, started by members of the MB, is Salafist. Hamas, produced by MB, is Salafist. All Al-Qaeda affiliates, associates, franchises, subsidiaries, derivatives, spin-offs, offshoots and imitators are Salafist. Most of the seasoned rebels who killed Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and those now fighting Bashar al-Assad in Syria are al-Qaeda Salafist. The Muslim mullahs preaching in most of the mosques in the West are Salafist. The Muslim theologians and scholars teaching Muslim practices on TV are Salafist. Major Muslim donors to American elite universities are Salafist. In America, the executives and directors of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the American Muslim Council (AMC), the Muslim Student Association (MSA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), the Muslim World League (MWL), the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) are Salafists.[1]

Muslim terrorist splinter groups all over the world are Salafist. Every single recent Lone Wolf or small-group Muslim terrorist has been a Salafist. The perpetrators of the Marathon bombing are no exception.

Major promoters of Sharia Law and Muslim piety don't just do terror. This is a slightly modified version of how I described the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood last May:[2]

"Over the last eighty years, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has devoted its time, resources, energy and money — all of which it has in prodigious amounts — to a single cause. It has outlined general plans, structured and restructured the steps in the plans and refined them. It has developed clever social engineering methods, often using the target country's ideology against itself.

All in all, the MB — using a host of implementers, well-wishers and useful idiots — has carefully implemented a complex set of small and large interacting activities across the globe, all in the service of making Islam dominant and inflicting sharia law on all the countries on the planet. A formidable task. But by now, they often know what is likely to work. They know when to efface themselves and when to be bold. They know how to win at the game of power politics."


Part 2: AMERICA'S FACILITATION OF JIHAD

This section deals with how the American government's implemented policies and the preachings of influential opinion setters have contributed to the infiltration of our institutions by jihadists. We first look at the general picture. We then explore more intensively two particular pools of contributors to frank terrorism: ideologue educators who encourage a hate-America attitude and politicians/administrators who stifle intensive monitoring of potential terrorists. It goes without saying that as the Administration leads, the media follow.

Infiltrating American Institutions And Infra-Structure

In the last decade, the quiet jihadist invasion of American institutions has progressed smoothly. Their activities have been aided and abetted by America's intentional and unintentional support of Islamic fundamentalists, in particular, the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). There was a a minor glitch last September in Benghazi,[4] but then President Obama realized he didn't have to sneak guns to the Syrian rebels in Fast and Furious fashion, out of fear that the public might discover that a large number of them ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. Instead, we could give the weaponry from Gaddafi's storehouses directly and openly to our friends, the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, and let them distribute the weaponry to the anti-Regime rebels. Al-Qaeda fighters of course continue to be a prominent component of the rebellion. In ancillary activities, we stepped up broadcasting how much more dastardly the Syrian regime was than the noble rebels. And the Administration reassured us that the MB was moderate; it was secular; it was a friend of the West.

Radical Muslims have discovered that a small number of people can start multiple organizations, each of which can protest loudly and act in a pseudo-independent fashion. They can also amplify their message by joining inter-faith and human rights groups, where they can cloak themselves in the respect given to the host organization.[5] Using ideology, money and flattery, they are able to rely on the unstinting help of those Western politicians and media people who reassure us that Islam is a religion of peace and loving-kindness. And the apologists for Islam never let them down.

In America, jihadists are working to bypass our Constitution and readjust our institutions more to their liking. Thanks to the political ideology and/or passivity of some Americans, in some areas their job has been as hard as slicing through butter with a hot knife. Stealth jihad is not tracked by the main news media, so relatively few are aware of how extensive Muslim infiltration has been. Or how rapidly it is growing.[6]

Ideological shifts are affecting our courts, where American judges have acted as if Sharia law has standing in American courts. In practice it means stacking the deck in favor of the husband in family disputes among Muslims.[7] When civil courts rule on the basis of Sharia law, they apparently assume such rulings won't eventually affect non-Muslims. But they do, in, for example, restricting food choices because pork is banned or because only halal meat is made available. In the public sphere, we have long had laws on the books to prevent funding of terrorism, such as the channeling by terrorist-front groups of tax-exempt donations to Hamas. But these laws don't work automatically. Someone has to invoke them and act on them, and government agencies don't necessarily act in a timely fashion.

The courts have also been used to hamper the dissemination of information on stealth jihad. Lawfare is a term coined to describe "the manipulation of Western laws and judicial systems to achieve strategic military and political ends. [It] often manifests as frivolous lawsuits designed to silence, punish, and deter those who publicly speak and report on militant Islam, terrorism, and their sources of financing."[8] Lawfare is unnecessary in Muslim countries where, in a dispute between Muslim and non-Muslim, the word of the Muslim is automatically accepted. But it was an effective way for rich Arabs to wage war against the West in the West. American authors were sued for libel in foreign countries for publishing accurate information about Islam; America was then expected to enforce the ruling against the author. Since 2010, we have had a law called Rachel's law, to protect defendants. It began when Rachel Ehrenfeld, who had published a book here in America, was sued in England by Khalid bin Mahfouz, an Arab with a great deal of spending money, who took advantage of Britain's libel laws, which are less stringent and place the burden of proof on the defendant, not the plantiff.[9] Unfortunately, a frivolous lawsuit — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, a SLAPP suit — can still be filed in this country and still take up-front time, energy and money. SLAPP suits cause radio and TV stations and newspapers to self-censor; they condition publishers to avoid trouble by rejecting material critical of Islam. [10]

Our banking system has been infiltrated. Sharia banking — in which a percentage of the profit is given over to Islamic sources to donate to charities of their choice — is popular enough that courses are offered in it.[11] Sharia banking has become the nose of the camel into the tent of the American way of life, in that, along with its attractive banking features that appeal to Western bankers, it brings in Sharia laws and practices and attitudes that by themselves are unacceptable in American society.[12] Citizen Warrior has published an excellent article called "If the Majority of Muslims Are Peaceloving People, Do We Really Have Anything to Worry About?"[13] His well-written and detailed answer is: "yes." We might add that even if only 10% of the 1,618,000,000 Muslims around the world[14] are willing to do violence against their own and host countries, that is 161,800,000 people — which is more than half of the total population of the United States.[15]

Even our knotty problem of illegal immigration has a connection to stealth jihad. Our politicos usually present the number of illegal immigrants currently in the USA as being in stasis — the count remains at 11-12 million, which implies that no new illegals have entered the country through badly-monitored borders and/or they have added no dependents to the count. We are also supposed to believe that we are dealing only with Christian Mexicans. The many prayer mats and Korans found at the border are ignored,[16] as is the fact that thousands of Latin Americans have converted to Islam, both in their native countries and after they come to the States. The Union of Islamic World students claims more than 50,000 people from South America have converted to Islam in the last 10-15 years[17]

The political bases of countries in South and Central America are also under assault. Carl of Jerusalem wrote about Hezbollah's infiltration of Venezuela and its partnership with a Mexican drug lord, Joaquin Guzman of the Sinaloa Cartel.[18] He asked:

"What if some of those Mexicans stealing across the border into the United States are adherents of 'radical Islam' who are forming Hezbullah cells in the United States? What if? You can bet that it's happening. And now, President Obama is granting them amnesty so that they can stay in the US. What could go wrong?"

Videos always show new converts to Islam talking about peace and the brotherhood of man. So why are so many of the acts of terror committed by newbie converts? The implications of the high degree of conversion to Islam among the prison population has been ignored.[19] This is particularly dangerous in that a group of new converts can form an informal terror cell that is continued when they are freed — and because of its 'family' structure, it is almost impossible to penetrate. Would we not be better off if agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security spent its time prohibiting the entry of Salafist Muslim clerics in our prisons rather than murmuring that our dedicated military personnel are potential terrorists?[20]

If there's a silver lining in the Marathon bombing, it is that the policies of our political leaders' are coming under scrutiny. During the Obama administration, the serious but unaddressed concern has been that by using high-level government contacts, Islamists can bypass vetting procedure and readily obtain access to state secrets.[21] That is why it is particularly nervous-making that the Muslim Brother has infiltrated the Obama Administration itself, with the cooperation of the Administration.

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The Center for Security Policy (CSP) has produced a 10-part set of videos on the Muslim Brotherhood penetration of American government agencies on all levels, including the White House, the FBI, the Justice Department, the State Department, the Pentagon, NASA and the Department of Homeland Security. The executive summary on video by Frank Gaffney, President of CSP, is here.[22]


Marxist Teachings in Our Educational Institutions

Unhappily, our educational institutions — so important to inculcating the next generation's perceptions and attitudes — are also contaminated. They have too often become a source of Islamic promotion. In our public schools, as Bruce Thornton has written, the United States is portrayed as "a global villain guilty of crimes against humanity. A mentality is fostered that is receptive to domestic and foreign policies predicated on American guilt and the need to make reparations for historical crimes, whether by foreign aid, global retreat, or the surrender of sovereignty to international organizations."[23]

I do hope it's understood I'm not suggesting a totalitarian and forced praise of everything Americans do. But does America's generosity and fair-mindedness need to be ignored? It is ironic that globalist political ideologues are all for diversity but can't acknowledge that it is the diversity of individuals, small communities and regionalism that shaped our composite character as a republic unified by a set of rules and principles set down in our Constitution. It is sad that hard-left ideologues can only appreciate racial, economic and class diversity, not people and idea diversity. They praise diversity but promote uniformity and equality of education and material benefits, which somehow always end up in the control of the central government. Perhaps if they really respected diversity, they would believe the Muslim Jihadist, who bluntly says he wants a uniform law, Sharia, for everyone, with no margin of diversity and that he is willing to kill divers people to accomplish his goal.

When I first heard that the Boston had been bombed, I was enormously surprised. All the signs (to me) said it was Muslim terrorism. But why would a Muslim terrorist bomb Boston? It's a good friend. In sixty years, Boston has shifted from the home of the Brahmins and intellectuals who inhabited the top level of a class-structured society, where you could easily tell someone's socio-economic status just by knowing where he lived, to intellectual defenders of multi-whatever-ism and anti-Americanism. It was now using its traditional ability to construct a well-turned phrase on behalf of diversity, heterogeneity, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. (Only the last is a leftover from the previous dominant Bostonian culture.) The new Boston prides itself on its progressivism, which is so in tune with the Far Left, it even includes unabashed adherence to the Palestinian fantasied history and reflexive condemnation of the Jewish State. Intellectuals and churchmen accepted the notion that the motley bunch of Arabs that came into Palestine mostly after 1900 were native, while the Jews who reclaimed their homeland with the approval of the international community were invaders. They'd been brought up on this under the previous culture, when many of their cousins taught at the American University of Beirut. In turn, they taught it to their students and parishioners.

So why in the world would anyone in the Islamic terrorist community want to bomb Boston? Bostonians loves terrorists freedom fighters. Many schools take pride in denigrating America. They hate conservatives. Of course I knew progressivism was retrogressive and it was regurgitating the Power-to-the-People, Hate-AmeriKa (no typo) Marxist slogans of the 1960s. But it was definitely in vogue.

So why do something so wrong-headed as bombing Boston? Perhaps Boston's current ideology has had an impact.

As some have noted when reviewing the biographies of the Tsarnaev brothers, it doesn't engender patriotism and love of America in a political refugee if he is told in his American schools by his American teachers that America is responsible for much of the world's problems and for disrupting his own life. John J Ray put it this way:[24]

Ever wondered why the 9/11 bombers and many other Muslim terrorists were Western-educated? It's because the combination of the anti-Americanism they get from Western educators (including Leftist American educators) and the violence preached by Islam make an explosive mix." [...] Dzhokhor is a normal American kid. Raised on anti-American messages from the media, from their high school, at their university, and from Hollywood, normal American kids are bombarded with a national self-loathing designed to destroy America's exceptional culture and values.

[..]

Now we get to the interesting part. A graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) has had years of anti-American claptrap crammed down his throat. Instead of, "Why would a normal American kid do this?" a better question is, "Why don't all CRLS graduates become anti-American terrorists?"

PC-Prog media widely quoted a retired CRLS history teacher, Larry Aaronson's shocked reminiscences about Dzhokhor. Aaronson told The Boston Globe, "This is a progressive town, the People's Republic, and how could this be in our midst?" Larry Aaronson, a longtime Rindge and Latin teacher who knew Dzhokhor and who lives three doors down from the brothers on Norfolk Street. "I'm at a loss. I'm at a total and complete loss." Aaronson is an acolyte of the raving PC-Prog, traditional-America-hating deceased "revisionist historian," Howard Zinn.

(Let me just add to John Ray's remarks that Dzhokhor's older brother, Tamerlan, also went to the prestigious Rindge and Latin School.)

Anti-Americanism promotes an educational environment beneficial to any group antithetic to the West. But our educational institutions go further. They specifically paint an attractive image of Islam. Saudi money has bought an academic sheen to their hate attacks on Jews and their whitewash of the nature of Islam. The January-February 2012 issue of Think-Israel discussed the infiltration into our elite educational institutions, including essays on a conference hosted at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard that was "the academic equivalent of a 'Kill the Jews' rally, featuring shoddy academics, notorious for fabricating data and advancing dishonest arguments to delegitimize Israel. Professors from the Kennedy School lent a veneer of intellectualism to ordinary trashy anti-Semitism."[25]

The Kennedy School has also influenced texts and workbooks used by local schools in the greater Boston area and as far away as Anchorage, Alaska.[26] Incidents where public school children were taken to local mosques and encouraged to pray in Muslim fashion have been reported.[27] The practice of introducing school children to Islam by having them participate in Islamic practices isn't confined to the Boston area. Gadi Adelman has written of similar practices in Texas — this time high school girls were encouraged to don burqas.[28] In our public educational system, textbooks do not say anything derogatory about Islam, no matter how factual, no matter how mild. (An excellent overview by Alyssa Lappen may be found here.) K12 textbooks in California, Texas and Florida have extolled Islam, influenced by a Muslim group that also develops lesson plans to instruct school children.[29]

Stifling The Identification Of Likely Future Terrorists

The damage the Obama Administration has done by endorsing the Muslim Brotherhood and their front organizations isn't the only way it has hurt our ability to identify potential terrorists. Intent on being responsive to Muslim complaints, it has also hampered our ability to put together information on terrorists. In 2009, the term jihadist was purged from government agencies documents. Jihad was redefined as the Muslim version of finding one's inner self or perhaps as a strenuous tightening of our spiritual abs. Terrorists were now to be called extremists. Terror and Islam were no longer allowed in the same sentence in the official vocabulary of government agencies. Discussions that didn't bland down criticism of Islam were cloroxed out.

The FBI Lexicon[30] was purged of terms judged offensive to Muslims. Terror and Islam are no longer linkable in the official vocabulary of government agencies. The lexicon of the FBI Training Manual on Counter Terrorism was purged of terms such as sharia and Muslim Brotherhood, and even Hamas and al-Qaeda.[31] Counter terrorism experts such as Steve Emerson and Stephen Coughlin, with years of experience and deep understanding, were banned from speaking at US Government counter terrorism conferences. Lower-level officials soon grasped that it wasn't career-promoting to pursue information that would stir Islamic wrath. Accurate assessment deteriorated. Acting on fuzzy information fizzled out. Intimidated by the Muslim campaign of condemning any criticism of Islam as islamophobic and by the knowledge that Muslims were held in high regard by the Obama Administration, administrators were afraid to take effective action, even when someone made his agreement with violent Islamic ideology very clear. When Major Nidal Malik Hasan of Fort harangued others with his Salafist ideology and insisted "that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire,"[32] they simply ignored it. Even though Hasan's shooting spree at Fort Hood in November 2009 was preceded by his shout 'allahu akhbar', it was called 'workplace violence'; no mention was made of militant Islam. Michael Mukasey points out that this willful ignoring of the real issue filtered down from above: "If tone is set at the top, recall that the Army chief of staff at the time said the most tragic result of Fort Hood would be if it interfered with the Army's diversity program."[33]

Robert Spencer wrote on October 24, 2011 in FrontPage Magazine [34]:

"Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole declared Wednesday at a conference in Washington that he had 'recently directed all components of the Department of Justice to re-evaluate their training efforts in a range of areas, from community outreach to national security.' This 'reevaluation' will remove all references to Islam in connection with any examination of Islamic jihad terror activity. The Obama Administration has now placed off-limits any investigation of the beliefs, motives and goals of jihad terrorists." [Emphasis added.]

[...]

"[Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)] complained that training materials reflected 'bigoted and inflammatory views on Muslims, including claims that 'devout' Muslims are more prone toward violence, that Islam aims to 'transform a country's culture into 7th century Arabian ways,' that Islamic charitable giving is a 'funding mechanism for combat' and that the prophet Muhammad was a 'violent cult leader.'

"[Al-Marayati] and hard-Left journalist Spencer Ackerman in Wired take for granted that such assertions are false, without bothering to explain how or why. Apparently they believe that their falsity is so self-evident as to require no demonstration; unfortunately, however, there is considerable evidence that they are true, and that in banning such materials, the Obama Administration has essentially banned the truth."

A major reason given for such an action, which obviously reduces the chance of uncovering an embryonic terrorist plot by a relatively-unknown group, is fear of targeting the Muslim community, which might increase hate crimes against it. In 2008, there were 1606 hate crimes in the USA, "65.7 percent of them were committed against Jews. Against Muslims? 7.7 percent," making hate crimes against Jews some 8 to 9 times the number of hate crimes against Muslims that year. The number of anti-Muslim incidents has remains relatively low: 107 in 2009, 160 in 2010, 157 in 2011, even though some were insignificant — a trampled flower bed at a mosque was listed as an incident. Depending on the year, the number of hate crimes against Jews is 5 to 10 times the number of hate crimes against Muslims — and the Muslims are likely responsible for a large percentage of them.[35] Moreover, the Muslims spend huge sums of money to demonize Israel on campuses and in churches. It is an interesting fact that no matter how they balloon the figures on anti-Muslim hate crimes, not a single Muslim has been killed in a hate crime since 1996, the earliest report available[36].

The data bases we rely on, the information painfully collected by our intelligence agencies at great expense, can no longer be taken at face value. When it comes to the Muslim community — currently, our most significant source of terrorist activity — information suggesting terrorist ties isn't accessible in ordinary searches of government data bases.

As we now know, this had consequences in that it delayed our recognition of the threat Tamerlan Tsarnaev posed. Russia asked the FBI to look into the older brother's activities. There were some red flags. According to the FBI website for press releases:[37]

"Once the FBI learned the identities of the two brothers today, the FBI reviewed its records and determined that in early 2011, a foreign government asked the FBI for information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. The request [updated information indicates there were multiple requests and warnings by Russia --bsl] stated that it was based on information that he was a follower of radical Islam and a strong believer, and that he had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country's region to join unspecified underground groups.

"In response to this 2011 request, the FBI checked U.S. government databases and other information to look for such things as derogatory telephone communications, possible use of online sites associated with the promotion of radical activity, associations with other persons of interest, travel history and plans, and education history. The FBI also interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev and family members. The FBI did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the foreign government in the summer of 2011. The FBI requested but did not receive more specific or additional information from the foreign government."

Frank Gaffney had this to say about the FBI statement:[38]

"The Bureau says it 'did not find any terrorism activity, domestic or foreign, and those results were provided to the [Russian] government in the summer of 2011.' Unfortunately, this statement seems to say more about the politically imposed limitations on the Bureau's ability to understand and identify the roots in jihad of such terrorism than provide an accurate assessment of the elder Tsarnaev's behavior."

Even if the Bureau were to take it upon itself to ignore Administration political pressure and do its job properly, how are operators supposed to work without a vocabulary that is both precise and nuanced? To realize how Orwellian things have become, consider this problem: how can a counter-terrorist expert organize small clues and vague hints about a possible Muslim ... terrorist, when he is forbidden to bring the two terms together in a single context? How does he construct a biography when he is forbidden to use his knowledge of the features of Islamic terrorism when the subject is a Muslim? How does he extract information from a data base when he can't search on terrorism and jihad? As we have seen, the Administration has taken pains to see that possibly incendiary but accurate and precise terms that would identify a potential terrorist are not readily accessible in their data bases.

I can't confirm this myself, but someone knowledgeable about computer retrieval of information from restricted government databases has reassured me that all that happened was they revised the data to meet the new requirements (at great cost) but they also created new inquiry scripts so that the underlying relationship could still be retrieved by operators in the know. Of course, the agencies couldn't advertise this fact. This meant that the many people with access to the databases but without knowledge of how painfully to retrieve information linking Islam and Terrorism didn't obtain this information when they searched the database.

To date, U.S. National Security documents still omit references to Islamic extremism and jihad. Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times[39] writes of some general consequences now blatantly obvious.

... some analysts are asking whether the 2009 edict and others that followed have dampened law enforcement's appetite to thoroughly investigate terrorism suspects for fear of offending higher-ups or the American Muslim lobby. It is not just the case of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a radicalized jihadist whom the FBI questioned in 2011 and cleared of terrorism links. At least five Muslims have attempted mass destruction in the U.S. since 2009, undetected beforehand by law enforcement and the intelligence community:

  • Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad opened fire at a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Ark., in June 2009, killing one soldier.
  • Najibullah Zazi, who said he was a member of al Qaeda, tried to detonate bombs in New York City's subway in September 2009.
  • Army Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan opened fire at a soldier processing center at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13.
  • Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to explode a bomb hidden in his underwear onboard a flight to Detroit in December 2009.
  • Faisal Shahzad attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.

Making it very hard for the analyst to put together the jigsaw puzzle by hiding some pieces and destroying others isn't the worst of it. The way higher-ups in the military ignored Major Hasan's behavior suggests that even if the information is sufficient, for political reasons, no action will be taken. As it is, the government has thwarted its own agencies on all levels from making the best use of the resources they have. Matthew Vadum makes the point this way: "It's not that much of an exaggeration to say that the FBI could not have done anything about Tsarnaev unless he strapped on a suicide vest in front of them, called them 'infidels,' and detailed his abominable plans."[40]

In one area, we have had successes. The intelligence community has been successful in ferreting out long-range, well-organized, multi-national plots before they happen. Intelligence groups listen to chatter over emails and social networks. When some action is ready to pop, chat frequency goes up. As irony would have it, the success we had in stopping well-structured operations contributed to the development of the Lone Wolf gambit. But the Administration have been reluctant to look at where they are most likely to be found. As Representative Peter King (R-NY:) said:[41]

"... we know that Al Qaeda is shifting its tactics. It's not going to be attackers from overseas. We've been able to prevent that. They are getting people in our country who are under the radar screen, who have clean records. We saw it with the Times Square bomber, the subway bomber in New York, and now we've seen it, it appears, in Massachusetts. 99 percent of the Muslims are outstanding Americans. The fact is that's where the threat is coming from. When the FBI was after the Westies, they went to the Irish community. When they were after the mafia, they went to the Italian community. If you know a certain threat is coming from a certain community, that's where you have to look."


Part 3: DIRECT ISLAMIC MOLDING OF THE WESTERNIZED SALAFIST


The Influence of the Mosque

We know that many mosques are petrie dishes chock full of nutrients for developing and grooming terrorists. But we do, and should, keep our hands off religious practices. The wholesale closing or monitoring of mosques would conflict with a fundamental feature of our democracy. But maybe we need to act when we have solid evidence the preacher isn't preaching Live a Life for Allah but Kill Americans for Islam. And we need to take seriously that too often, the mosque is the first node in recruiting foot soldiers for jihad. And, understand, it doesn't matter whether the building where Muslims gather and are inspired to dedicate themselves for the greater glory of Islam is called a mosque or a community center, a cultural center or a society.

A report from Arutz-Sheva[42] noted

"The mosque attended by the two suspects in the Boston marathon bombings 'has a curriculum that radicalizes people,' according to the interfaith group Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT). The mosque has reportedly been associated with other suspected terrorists and is affiliated with the controversial Muslim American Society, APT says. APT reports that the Cambridge mosque's sister mosque in Boston, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has hosted speakers who have defended terrorism. A former mosque trustee was seen on video calling on Allah to kill Zionists and Jews, the group says.

"APT head Charles Jacobs says both mosques teach an anti-Western brand of Islam that includes mistrust of law enforcement and opposition to the American style of government. APT's director of research, Ilya Feoktistov, said funding for the Boston mosque came primarily from Saudi sources."

Oren Dorell[43] presents a well-rounded description of the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the mosque the Tsarnaev family attended, and some of its infamous attendees, including American-educated Aafia Siddiqui, who holds a B.S. degree from MIT and a Ph.D. from Brandeis. She was arrested for planning a chemical attack on New York City.

aafia-siddiqui-mit-graduation.jpg
Aafia Siddiqui is shown after her graduation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.(Photo: AP)

From USA Today: "[The Board of trustees member Anwar Kazmi] said: 'This kind of violence, terrorism, it's just completely contrary to the spirit of Islam." The April 24, 2013 issue of ACT! for America addressed the "Wasn't me" response of the Mosque:

First, they claim that because the FBI and Homeland Security partner with them they can't possibly be extreme. This is a classic Muslim Brotherhood tactic — co-opt law enforcement leadership to provide cover and credibility.

Second, they claim they are the targets of modern-day "McCarthyism" and use propaganda techniques to smear their critics—another Muslim Brotherhood tactic.

Piggy-backing on an alleged partnership with American security agencies and then counter-attacking is indeed the normal way an Islamist reacts when attacked. It is important we learn their strategies.

Salah Choudhury has provided us with a classic instance of how mosques serve as starter groups for Islamism.[44] The Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) is a Muslim missionary and revival movement since the 1920s, when it was started in India and spread to South Asia. It appears to be non-political and is active around the globe, with some 70-80 million active followers. Its announced mission is to preach to those whose desire to practice authentic Islam has weakened. It is very good at taking over mosques and preaching its Salafist ideology. Terrorism may not the organization's intended activity but TJ shares with Salafist terrorists a devotion to promoting the lifestyle of the founder of Islam. Knowingly or not, it has helped smuggle funds from the Saudis to Chechen terrorists[45] and provided cover for jihad recruiters. It has earned a reputation as a "gateway to terrorism", where the ultimate "objective is a 'planned conquest of the world' in the spirit of jihad." It is funded by the Saudis and, whether by consent of the TJ leadership or not, "TJ serves as a de facto conduit for Islamist extremists and for groups such as al Qaeda."

A reliable strategy is for a facilitator/recruiter to identify listeners who appear to desire more than the TJ benign message, and "put them into small prayer circles or study groups where they can be more easily exposed to jihadist ideology. [Of course, it also has been shown that a person with friends or relatives who ascribe to radical ideology can more easily be radicalized]." Star recruits from those who join at a local mosque are eventually invited for military training. Several TJ spin-offs have developed into active terrorist groups while individual members have gone on to commit Lone Wolf acts of terror. In the USA the American Taliban John Lindh, the Lackawanna Six, and the Oregon cell that conspired to bomb a synagogue were all involved with Tablighi missionaries. As Choudhury makes clear, "Tablighi Jamaat has more to do with political sedition than with religion."

Given the problems they have had with Muslim insurgency, it is not surprising that the Russians pay attention when someone attends a mosque known as a place frequented by suspected terrorists. Russia initially warned the US govt in 2011 about Tamerlan BEFORE he went to Russia. Presumably, they were monitoring Tamerlan's contact people in Dagestan. Likely, Tsarnaev would be under some degree of surveillance while he was there.[46]

Tamerlan traveled to Russia in January 2012 and returned in July. He stayed with his father in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. He was learning to read the Koran at a nearby conservative Wahhabi mosque. Presumably, he met with the same people he'd been talking to by phone before he went off to Dagestan. What we don't know is whether they vetted him or were on the foot soldier level. Russian investigators are looking into possible links between Tamerlan and some local terrorists, Mahmoud Mansur Nidal and William Plotnikov, both of whom were killed in a firefight with Russian forces. Tamerlan went back to Boston two days later.[47]


Chechnya

Chechnya is one of Russia's Islamic republics, which has for some four centuries been fighting for independence from Russia, with bloody brutality on both sides. The Russians have alternated between wooing the Muslims and harshly restricting them.[48] The sore point for the Chechens is that infidels — Russians — are occupying what they considered Muslim land.

dagestan.chechnya.russia.png

Fox News[49] provides a brief summary of recent Chechen history,

"The conflict in Chechnya began in 1994 as a separatist war, but quickly morphed into an Islamic insurgency dedicated to carving out an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus. Russian troops withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after the first Chechen war, leaving it de facto independent and largely lawless, but then rolled back three years later following apartment building explosions in Moscow and other cities blamed on the rebels."

[...] "the Islamic insurgency has spread to neighboring provinces, with Dagestan, sandwiched between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea, becoming the epicenter of violence with militants launching daily attacks against police and other authorities."

Much has been made of a putative distinction between Chechens who are fighting for independence and Resurgent Islamists. It is said that while the Islamists seek a global Muslim empire, the nationalists care only about making the Chechen nation independent of Russia, preferably as an independent state. But think about it for a moment. An independent Chechyna would be not only Muslim, which it is anyway, but free to practice and spread fundamentalist ideology, using its inbred violence and viciousness — as it has done in recent years. Semantically, there is a difference in objectives, but in practice it seems to becoming a distinction without a difference. FoxNews[50] has pointed out:

"By now, it has been well-established that Chechnya is home to both separatists who want independence from Russia and Islamic radicals who see their cause as more global. . Looking back, arrest reports and security studies show Chechen terrorists have been involved in a string of plots over the last several years in European and other countries, dropping clue after clue that they had aspirations beyond attacking Russia.

"Of particular interest is a group formed in 2007 called the Caucasus Emirate (CE), led by Doku Umarov. Two sources tell Fox News that investigators are exploring potential links between Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the suspect who died in a shootout early Friday in Boston, and the group — though the organization has publicly distanced itself from the plot.

"...The CE is now part of a global jihadi revolutionary movement or alliance," said a 2011 report on the organization by the Center for Strategic and International Studies."

If there were an Olympic competition for the place producing the most inhuman monsters, Chechnya would give the Palestinian Arabs strong competition. Ben H. England recounts some of the cold-blooded terror attacks by Chechens, including, in 2004, their taking hostage some 1200 people who happened to be in a school in Beslan.[51] The mentality that allowed the Chechens in the hostage takeover to terrorize, starve, dehydrate and kill over 300 people, including many young children, was not an aberration but a valued feature of the society. I wouldn't be surprised if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a dreamy-faced, poetic type, needed to overcome his inner nature to prove himself a member in good standing in a society built on primitive barbarism.

The question has been raised: how much did the anti-Government violent ideology in Chechnya influence the brothers, so they could take pride in murdering a group of ordinary people. There's probably no simple answer. It is true that they have been living in the States for over a decade, but it also true that the members of the family traveled freely back and forth and maintained phone contact across continents. Moreover, other elements need to factored in. Tamerlan's mother has said she and her son became religious within the last 2-5 years in the USA. The younger brother, Dzhokhar, has said the family was influenced by "the sermons of Anwar al Awlaki, [who] preached that women are responsible for rape, and Dutch politician Geert Wilders should be decapitated." Shoshana Bryen[52] has suggested that:

"Saudi money and Saudi Wahabi ideology were gasoline on the fire. If they moved the Chechen uprising into Sunni expansionist jihad, they could also have sponsored the Tsarnaev brothers in the U.S. Tamerlan, an aspiring boxer, appears to have had no job; Dzhokhar was a student. Their parents had returned to Russia and they were estranged from their uncle. How did they pay rent and tuition? Or pay for the white Mercedes Tamerlan was reported to drive? Tamerlan told his uncle, 'God will provide.'"

We are so far from being certain of motivation, some question the relevence of the fact that the perpetrators were Sunni Muslims from the Caucasus Mountains. The conspiracy theories that unite the hard-left and nut-right, both of whom accuse American intelligence agencies of instigating the Boston bombing, are easy to shrug off. But there are other possibilities that are much less likely but that may need to be pursued. While the majority of Salifists belong to one or another Sunni group — as did the Tsarnaev family — Reza Kahlili has suggested Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have been a follower of Iran's Ayatollah.[53]. If this is the case, the bombing may have been done to help bring on Armageddon, which is required for the return of the Mahdi. Kahlili speculates that

"...the Chechen brothers were likely recruited and trained by other assets connected with Hezbollah operators with centers in South Asia to carry out their terror attack and then abandoned so there would be no link to Iran.

"The regime's Quds Forces, along with Hezbollah, have long been recruiting and training terrorists with a focus in Herzegovina, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and other parts of the world, extending into Latin America. A new focus in the recruiting is on Sunni Muslims and non-Arabs to avoid any trace back to Iran and Hezbollah and to either present an apparent link to al-Qaida or individuals acting on their own, the source said."

It may be that the story of the Brothers Tsarnaev is more complicated than is yet known. It may be that other determinants, not yet discovered, were in play. However the brothers became capable of cold-blooded slaughter, as Daniel Greenfield has written[54]

"Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev did not become radicalized. They became religious. They embraced a transnational ideology which applied not only to them, their mosque or their community, but to the entire world."

And that might be as close as the Western mind can get to understanding the workings of a 21st century mind that deliberately fashions itself on the words and deeds of a 7th century barbarian.


Family Dynamics

This is a rough time line of the family's history. It will almost certainly need revision when the facts become better known.[55] For our purposes, however, it isn't the minutiae of the portrait of the family that are of interest. What we are seeking are the brush strokes that are reproduced in a fairly new genre: the Westernized terrorist.

  • Tamerlan was born in 1986 in Kalmykia. The family then moved to Tokmok, a town in northern Kyrgyzstan, where their three other children were born. They then moved to Chechnya for a few months, before settling in Dagestan, where they lived for 1-3 years. Mother, father and 8-year old Dzhokhar came to America in 2002. Tamerlan, 15, and his 2 sisters came a year later. They were considered political refugees, although Dagestan was relatively peaceful at the time. They were eligible for welfare benefits, which they received for a (unknown) period of time. The parents and Dzhokhar are citizens, and Tamerlan is a permanent resident.

  • They lived in a lower-class neighborhood in Cambridge — at public expense. As is not unusual for immigrants, refugees or not, their social status took a nose dive. The father, once a lawyer, fixed cars. But they seemed to be acclimating to America. They dressed Western-style; the mother wore jeans and low cut tops and worked in a spa. Later, the mother started giving facials from her house. The boys seemed to have normal ambitions. They attended a prestigious high school. Tamerlan showed promise as a boxer. Dzhokhar received a $2500 scholarship for college.

  • Tamerlan and his mom became very religious. By 2009 Tamerlan grew a beard and started to pray, dropped out of college and gave up drinking and boxing. He doesn't seem to have had a regular job. The mother claimed[56] that starting in mid-2011, they bootstrapped each other, reinforcing each other to strive for stricter religious practices. "'He was starting lead a kind of American life that I didn't like. ...So then I said to him, I don't like night-time adventures, your smoking and drinking. You should read up on what that means in Islam — it is 'haraam'; forbidden... And from that moment he gave up [the bad habits] and we started to go deeper together, and pray together.' Mrs. Tsarnaev said her son's new path had in turn strengthened her own faith. 'Tamerlan said to me, 'You know mama, you are pushing me toward the truth, but I would like you to wear a hijab. A woman in Islam should be concealed.' After that, she began to wear the wrapped headscarf." In another version, she said someone named Misha turned them onto a strict Islam around 5 years ago, but Misha has been found and denies what she says.[57]

  • The Russian security service warns the FBI and CIA that Tamerlan has become radicalized and was planning a trip to Dagestan to meet up with militant groups. In consequence, in 2010 he and Mom are put on a Government watch lists; they are dropped from the list in 2011 because the FBI can't find ties to extremists in their crippled databases.

  • On June 21, 2010 Tamerlan marries Katherine Russell. Their daughter is now 2.5 to 3 years old. Katherine converts to Islam and gets a job as a home health aide, working 70-80 hours a week outside the house. Tamerlan stays home, reading and taking care of their child. They receive welfare from September 2011 until November, 2012, when Katherine's earnings apparently disqualify them. (Does that mean she didn't work until 2012, or what?)

  • Zubeidat, the mother, and Anzor, the father, are divorced in 2011. Anzor has a heart condition and high blood pressure. Anzor returns to Dagestan, which, in recent years has become a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism. After the Boston bombing, when the Russians and Americans interviewed them on April 25, 2013, the parents were together — at least during the interviews.

  • Tamerlan travels to Dagestan to visit his father in January 2012 and returns to Cambridge mid-July 2012. In Dagestan he studied the Koran, went to a Wahhabi mosque a couple of miles away and visited relatives. He liked the life well enough that he tried to convince his family to allow him to stay in Dagestan for good. Another story floating around is that his primary reason for going to Dagestan was to renew his Russian passport and he was there so long because renewal is a long process. Both stories are contradicted by other information:[58] His aunt says he didn't come to visit his father. He came to Dagestan before his father — in fact, his father came to persuade his reluctant son to return to the USA to obtain his American citizenship. Moreover, he didn't apply for a passport until he had been in Dagestan for almost 6 months and then left without the all-important Russian passport being renewed.[59]

  • Zubeidat Tsarnaev is arrested in June 2012 for shoplifting. Her arraignment is scheduled for October 2012. She leaves the country in August 2012, and goes to Makhachkala, Dagestan, where her (ex) husband is living. They were questioned intensively a week after the bombing in the FSB bldg by the Russian FSB and the American FBI.

  • On April 15, 2013, the Tsarnaev brothers set off two pipe and pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing 3, causing 13 people to become amputees and hundreds to sustain severe injuries.


 

The family history is important if only because it underscores some of the features that often are clues that we are dealing with salafists determined to bring about a triumphant Islam. In this case, these descriptors are spot on.



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