Chaplain Expansion

So, the LAPD hired its first Muslim chaplain (that's him featured below, in an artsy Los Angeles Times photo).


New York is way ahead of this trend. The Big Apple began hiring Muslim chaplains after the Attica riots upstate in the 1970s.

Muslim inmates at the Attica State prison not only served as intermediaries between the prisoners and the outside world, but they also protected the Corrections Officers held hostage inside the prison's walls.

In return, New York state - recognizing the need for prisoner recourse - began hiring Muslim Chaplains.

This is despite the fact that Muslims in prison had won recognition through the courts by leading the prisoner's rights movement of the 1960s. The prisoner's rights movement in prison was to Muslims (and more specifically African American Muslims) what the Civil Rights movement was to Black community in America.

Update..... Latif is featured in The National. Read the story here.

Hizb ut Tahrir in the USA

7361 West 92nd street, Bridgeview, Illinois, 60455.

That is the address for the Hizb ut Tahrir America's Khilafah Conference USA 2009 entitled...

(drum roll please)

The fall of capitalism...

and the rise of Islam.

Seriously?

Check out the video invite below.



Update.... Here is a report from Right Side News about what actually went down inside the conference.

The 'Lone Wolf' Connect

The Campaign for America's Future makes an interesting point about the "Lone Wolf" terrorist, a subject near and dear to my heart.

Here is what they had to say:

"1. These are just "lone wolf" psychos who are acting alone. You can't hold anybody else responsible for what crazy people decide to do.

"True and false. But mostly false.

"It's true that every one of the nine right-wing terrorists who've made the news since Jan. 20 had a history of mental illness, domestic violence, and/or drug abuse. Several were military veterans who were having a really hard time adjusting to civilian life. None of these people could reasonably be considered sane; and, for whatever twisted reasons, they made a personal choice to do what they did.

"But it's not true that they were acting alone. People who are dealing with these kinds of demons are often drawn into movements that offer a strong narrative that helps them make sense of a world that never seems to add up right for them. They're usually drawn into organizations like Operation Rescue or the Minutemen that are nominally nonviolent, but which also indoctrinate them into a worldview that justifies and motivates people to commit terrorist acts. They come to believe that they must do this to save the world, to serve God and to be the heroes they desperately want to be.

"They're already walking sticks of dynamite. But it takes the heat of that apocalyptic, dualistic, eliminationist, pro-violence narrative to light their fuses and make them explode.

"Unfortunately, these groups also make it easy to take that final step over the line, because they often have close ties to other, more secretive groups that do advocate and plan terrorist violence as a solution. Operation Rescue teaches that killing abortion doctors is justifiable homicide, and then feeds its most extreme members into the Army of God.

"The Aryan Nations and several other white nationalist groups supplied the nine members of The Order, a racist terrorist group that killed two people (including left-wing talker Alan Berg) and stole over $4 million during a nine-month spree in 1984. Al-Qaida got many of its recruits from the nominally nonviolent (but still radical) Hizb al-Tahrir. Of course, when violence actually occurs, these groups always denounce it -- but they also usually have a very good idea of who was involved, because they've been hanging around with the perpetrators for quite a while themselves.

"One of the things the public is finally beginning to understand is that the "lone wolf" story has never been accurate, because these guys are never really alone in the world. Every one of them was well-marinated in large, long-established subcultures that put them up to terrorism and promised to make heroes out of them if they succeeded."

Radicalization in the USA? "You betcha..."

Many deny radicalization is happening within American communities.

But it is - both inside and outside of the prison system.

Here are five of my favorite examples just from the past year...


On January 16, 2008 former congressman Mark Deli Siljander (left) was charged with a 42-count indictment stemming from an investigation into more then $130,000 that Siljander allegedly raised, laundered and provided to a U.S. designated global terrorist.

On March 5, 2008 former U.S. navy sailor and African American convert to Islam, Paul R. Hall (right) was convicted of disclosing classified material as well as supplying support to terrorists.

On June 6, 2008 the U.S. appeals court upheld the conviction of Ahmed Abu Ali, 28, (left) an American citizen who “turned to al-Qaeda” in 2001 after he began religious studies in Saudi Arabia. Raised just outside the nation’s capital, Ali was charged with planning to assassinate former President George W. Bush.

On June 13, 2008 three men from Ohio were convicted of planning attacks, in the U.S., against American soldiers in Iraq. The men engaged in combat training (including with firearms and explosives) both in the U.S. and in Iraq and attempted to solicit funds and engage in recruitment efforts to further their operation, which also included threats against the President.


On February 26, 2009, African American convert Christopher Paul (right) – member of al-Qaeda who fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia - was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction on U.S. soil;


On February 23, 2009 FBI Director Robert Mueller told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that young American Somali men were being radicalized and recruited for in Minnesota. Mueller said, “A man from Minneapolis (Shirwa Ahmed, left) became what we believe to the first citizen to carry out a suicide bombing… It raises the question of whether these young men one day come home, and, if so, what they might undertake here.” He also pointed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen as locations where young American men traveled to in hopes of joining the Jihadist cause.

Over the course of the last year, Pennsylvania has had three (one, two, three) criminal incidents, one resulting in the death of a police officer, that led to the arrest of five African American converts to Islam (four of whom converted while in prison); three of them dressed in hijabs to disguise themselves while committing the armed robbery of a bank.

Just how many Muslims are there anyway?

I devoted a good deal of my research to examining the size of the American Muslim population.

Estimates place the number between two and eight million people.

Although, the CIA estimates that there are less then two million Muslims in the U.S. which I think is a number a lot of people would disagree with.

The highest estimate I've ever heard is nine million, but it is unsubstantiated.

Six million tends to be the most commonly cited statistic.

And it is my personal opinion that the number may be as high as seven million.

That is why I was excited when the President placed the number at seven million in his Cairo speech.

But just a few days ago, Obama told that Pakistanis that we have five million Muslims.

So the question is, where did all the Muslims go?

Did they disappear like in A Day Without a Mexican?



Or does Obama just not know?

(I think its the latter.)

Meet the Nation's Newest Jewess!

For all that is said about radical Islam in our nation's prisons - where the vast majority of adherents are African American, and Latino - here is a story about African Americans breaking a different boundary.

A Christian convert to Judaism, Alysa Stanton has become the first mainstream Black female Rabbi in the United States (she recently graduated and was ordained by Cincinnati, Ohio's Hebrew Union College)

Alysa, Mozel Tov!

And welcome to the Tribe.

We will keep track of Alysa's budding career and her impact on the Jewish and Black communities of America.

UPDATE... June 26, 2009
This, from today's Jerusalem Post.
'Judaism gets in touch with it feminine side," by Margaret Stoner.

Radical Rock Stars

Terrorism suspects have been known to be treated like 'radical rock stars' in prisons across the world where they become pseudo-celebrities and makeshift Imam's for the prison's Muslim community (although there are certainly examples of the opposite being true).

We've seen this with the 1993 World Trade Center terrorists (imprisoned here in America) and in Australia's Supermax; we've seen this with many of England's Class A terrorism suspects/prisoners, as well as with members of the Dutch Hofstad network and the Spanish National Court plot.

Put in the right place, at that the right time and close to the right kind of prisoner former Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani - pictured above in his younger document forging days - who is being tried here in my hometown New York, could be equally lauded.

In New York prisons, as much as 20% of the population is Muslim and the vast majority are African American (estimates place the number of African American Muslims in U.S. prisons as high as 95%).

Yet, across the entire American prison system Muslims are estimated to represent less then 10% of all inmates.

So this Tanzanian born al-Qaeda terror suspect might just be able to continue his "resistance behind the wire," if Lady Circumstance smiles down upon him from his cell.

This is what Barack Obama fails to understand in his haste to close Camp X-Ray. He places us all in much greater peril with the detainees on the American mainland then if he just let them stay in Cuba (or, in the case of the beleaguered Uighurs, Bermuda).

I will keep you updated on Ghailani as his trial as it unfolds.

Update... June 26, 2009
This, from a former NYPD official (God Bless the NYPD!) Richard Falkenrath.

Sheikh Terra

Sheikh Terra is the all the rage in Islamic radical hip hop.

Yes, even the terrorists want to drop a verse for Muhammed from time to time.

And Sheikh Terra combines the best of beats, lyrics and inflammatory images.

Dirty Kuffar (Kuffar means "unbeliever")


He even throws Malcolm X into the mix, in a continued effort to tie the struggle for Black liberation in America to the global Islamist narrative.




Update.... On October 7, 2009 I discovered Amazon is now an official vendor of Terra's tunes.

Case Study #001: Mijailo Mijailovic or the Assasination of Anna Lindh

Lone Wolf terrorist Mijailo Mijailovic, born in 1978, is a Swedish man of Bosnian descent who stalked then killed (stabbing her numerous times with a knife) Foreign Minister Anna Lindh the day before the second anniversary of 9/11 - September 10, 2003 - in a department store in the country's capital city.

Mijailovic was not an unknown to Swedish authorities. A high school dropout, he had been convicted of assault with a deadly weapon (using a knife against his father), illegal gun possession as well as making threatening phone calls. He had a history of metal illness - a court ruled him in need a psychological evaluation in 1997 - and later later claimed he heard voices (it was determined he was schitzophrenic and his life sentence was thrown out).

Didn't think it can happen Sweden?

Well, as the head of the FBI's Ohio office told the press after they took down the Toledo Cell:

"If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere."

Recent press reports have highlighted the threat.
Update... Sunday, June 28, 2009
Pakistan plot to blow up Swedish Embassy!
Interview with Swedish authority (translated) about radicalization.