Uniformed Terrorists

The tragedy at Fort Hood has left the community speechless.

But direct attacks on our military by outside forces or subversion by members of the military themselves is more common then what you would think.

In fact many terrorists are ex-military; al Qaeda openly encourages the conversion of specially skilled Westerners, especially those with military or scientific training.

Here are some examples of the how intimately linked terrorism and the military are...

Seifullah Chapman, (left) former marine and convert to Islam, later went on to join the North Virginia Paintball Network. This cell, broken up in 2003, trained to launch attack against America.

Hervey Luwazo, aka Jamal, was a French soldier who converted while serving in the military. He later traveled to Afghanistan to train in the camps and fight against the Americans where he was found frozen to death in the mountains in 2001.

Daniel Patrick Boyd, was raised in a military family but converted to Islam at 17 when his parents divorced and his mother remarried a Muslim American lawyer. Boyd later went on to lead a North Carolina cell that plotted to launch attack overseas. Boyd and his two sons were arrested by the FBI in 2009.

The Commando Dixon Network, whose members were intimately linked with those of the Madrid train bombings, planned to launch chemical attacks against the U.S. Navy in Spain. The plot was disrupted in 2004.

Egyptian-American James Elshafay tried to join the U.S. Army but was rejected because he was found to be “emotionally disturbed” and “delusional.” Elshafay, who was later diagnosed as a schizophrenic, went on the plan the foiled 2004 New York, Herald Square Subway plot with Shahawar Siraj.

David Matthew Hicks, aka Muhammed Dawood, was rejected by the Australian army, before he became the “Australian Taliban,” captured in Afghanistan in early 2002. Hicks dropped his Islamic faith while imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, becoming an “informant” for the U.S. troops. Hicks later plead to a lesser offense and was transferred to Australia in 2007 where he was released. He remains free (in Australia) to this day.

In 2007, Kuwaiti born high school teacher Tahmeed Ahmad, who was on the federal terrorist watch list, was arrested when he attempted to use butcher knives and vodka bottles (which he planned to ignite) in an attack against the Florida Homestead Air Reserve Base; witnesses said he shouted ‘death to America’ during the attack.

German convert to Islam Fritz Gelowicz, aka “Abdullah” plotted with his convert-turned-terrorist cohort Daniel Schneider to attack U.S. bases in Germany. Gelowicz went as far as attempting to provoke U.S. soldiers stationed at the German bases to fight with him by slashing the tires of their military vehicles while they were parked on German streets. The failed terrorists, known as the Sauerland Cell, were picked up by authorities in 2007 during Operation Alberich.

Ryan G. Anderson aka Amir Abdul Rashid, was an all American Lutheran from Washington State who loved guns and God. He attended Washington State University where he studied Middle Eastern History. He converted to Islam in 1999 and after graduating in 2002, he joined the National Guard and was about to be deployed to Iraq when he was arrested by the FBI for espionage. Anderson had attempted to pass on information about the military to Islamists he met online).

The Birmingham beheading plot, inspired by radical British cleric (and Jamaican born Muslim convert) Abu Izzadeen, was hatched (and halted) in 2007. A group of six Muslims schemed to behead a Muslim soldier by luring him with drugs and drink while on leave from the base in hopes of lowering morale and preventing British Muslims from enlisting.

Beltway Sniper John Allen Williams, aka John Allen Muhammed converted to the NOI in the 1980s but later turned to more traditional Islamic practices. He joined the army where he was court-martialed but later honorably discharged.

Lionel Dumont was an “aimless” Frenchman who converted to Islam in 1991. He served in the French army then went to fight alongside the Muslims in Bosnia. He was indicted in a plot to bomb the G7 in 1996 (with a radical Muslim group called the “Roubaix Gang” that stole cars to fund their operations). He lived as a fugitive, traveling with numerous fraudulent passports, while raising and laundering money for terrorist across Europe and Asia before his arrest.

Mark Fidel Kools was a Los Angeles born African American who accepted Islam (and changed his name to Hasan Karim Akbar) after his mother’s conversion. He went on to earn degrees in aeronautical and mechanical engineering and later joined the U.S. Army. In 2003, as a Sergeant stationed in Kuwait, he killed (“fragged”) two soldiers and wounded fourteen others in a gun/grenade attack on his own camp (in his diary he wrote that he had “changed sides”).

Bryant Neal Vinas, aka Bashir el Ameriki, was born and raised Catholic in New York to Latin American immigrants but his parents divorce left him devastated and he dropped out of college to join the military where he was discharged after just three weeks. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2008 and admitted to the FBI that he had passed along information about and had planned to launch a suicide attack against the Long Island Railroad Road.

Willie Virgile Brigitte, aka Mohamed Ibrahim Abderrahmane, was born a Christian in Guadalupe (French territory) and later joined the French Navy, but soon returned to civilian life after being cited for two desertions. In the late 1990s he fully embraced Islam. Studying in Yemen and training in Pakistan he traveled between Paris and Australia, but was arrested by authorities and returned to France after he was accused of planning terrorist attacks. Prior to his arrest he helped obtain forged passports for the assassins of Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud.

The Fort Dix Six were a groups of twenty-something year old guys (three of them well known rabble rousing brothers) who planned to use a pizza delivery as a disguise to get into and attack New Jersey’s Fort Dix in hopes of killing as many soldiers as possible.

Retail Terrorism

The recent arrest of Massachusetts terrorists suspect Tarek Mehanna, 27, has reignited fears over the possibility of attacks in our nation's malls... what some would call, the very life force of our capitalist system.

The FBI warned of shopping center plots in Los Angeles and Chicago as recently as 2007, but little had materialized since.

Mehanna, who wanted to start shooting up a crowded mall, is not the only Western terrorist to think about gunning down or blowing up the Sunday shopping crowd.

Here are some other "retail terrorists" (as I like to call them) who had the same thought...


American born Derrick Shareef, now a U.S. inmate in his mid-twenties, became a more traditional Muslim after a stint with the Nation of Islam. But in 2006, Shareef was arrested in Illinois for plotting to use hand grenades to kill Christmas shoppers at a local mall.


Sulejman Talovic, 18 at the time of his death, was a Bosnian refugee who had escaped the horrors of war when he was relocated to the United States by the United Nations in the 1990s with his family.

A loner who had numerous run-ins with the cops, he was shot and killed by responding law enforcement in February 2007 after he opened fire in crowded Salt Lake City shopping mall.


British school teacher Saeed Ghafoor, now a 35 year old inmate in the U.K., was charged with terrorism related offenses when it was discovered he was planning an attack on Europe's second largest shopping center using a limousine as an improvised explosive device from his jail cell where he was being held on charges of assault against family member.


Although no definitive plans were made, members of the Chechen network - a European terror network broken up in 2004 - had discussed releasing the deadly toxin Ricin into a crowded shopping mall.

At the heart of the network was the first family of French Muslim terrorism, the Benchellalis who recruited young European Muslims and smuggled them to and from training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan (one of the sons, Mourad [pictured] even wound up in Guantanamo Bay as a detainee!)

Muslims in America

In the new Pew report, Mapping the Global Muslim Population, the Pew Center claims that there are 2.45 million Muslims in America. In my year long (plus) research into radical Islam in the prison system, I examined the question of how many Muslims there are in the U.S.


There is no official figure for the Muslim American population. Estimates from various sources calculate the population to be as few as two million or as many as seven million individuals, or roughly 2% of the total U.S. population. The very highest estimates place the number of American Muslims at eight or nine million. Despite the lack of authoritative data, the most commonly cited figure for the Muslim American population is somewhere between six or seven million.

But even if the Muslim American population does not exceed four million, this number still represents a six-fold increase since just 1970.

Muslims in the U.S. represent everything but a monolithic block, and are as diverse in perspective as any other racial, religious, or ethnic group in America.

Although more then half of U.S. Muslims are immigrants, no single national group comprises more then 12% of the total Muslim population, within which more then seventy different countries are represented. As a group, American Muslims represent a geographical and cultural microcosm of the world at large.

No single racial group dominates the Muslim community either; in fact Muslims represent an almost equal proportion of White, Black, Asian, and mixed race individuals, with Black Muslims usually cited as representing a slightly larger majority.

The Hispanic Muslim population in America is also beginning to swell and, over the past seven years, the population of Hispanic converts has grown into a significantly noticeable minority. Hispanics make up 12.5% of the U.S. population but it is estimated that Hispanic Muslims represent 10% of all native-born Muslims but only 1% to 6% of all Muslim Americans.

Estimates have placed the entire community of Hispanic Muslims anywhere between 40,000 and 200,000 individuals, most whom are women. The growing number of Hispanic Muslims have not gone unnoticed by Muslim American organizations (some created by Hispanic converts exclusively for Hispanic converts) and the national Muslim leadership who have undertaken efforts to “attract” curious Hispanics to Islam after 9/11.

Hispanic Magazine claims there are almost 400,000 Hispanic Muslims in the U.S. based on estimates made by “Muslim organizations,” although these organizations are not named.

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The following was an excerpt from my 2009 piece entitled, Prislam: The Recruitment and Radicalization of Terrorist Operatives in the Prison System and the Threat to the American Homeland.

Terrorist Sentencing and the Problem With Early Release

Nothing ever good came from releasing hardened terrorists from prison early.

And, no... I'm not talking about people like the Uighers either.

I'm talking about the guys who have been convicted of terrorist related offenses, served time and then get out.

Now I know there is, of course, no stopping the evolution of justice. If one commits a crime for which they are found guilty and they serve out the duration of their sentence in prison without incident, then they, by all fair and just democratic standards, must be released.

But what if they remain a threat to society?

It was reported Monday in the British press

"Up to 30 “high-risk” terrorists — including some of the most dangerous men in Britain — are due to be released from jail in the next year. More are being freed in the wake of a ruling by Britain’s most senior judges that long sentences for terrorist crimes could “inflame” rather than deter extremism."

It is surprising that the Brits are letting these guys go, especially after the uproar last March, when the newspaper headlines read:

"Radical Muslim terrorist released from prison early to ease overcrowding"

A story which led to new headlines, including:

"Early release of terrorists prompts Straw to rethink prisons policy"

In prison, out of prison.... either way radicalism is a problem. But outside of prison, the potential to act on that radicalism is magnified.

Let me give you some examples.

Safe Bourada, a French-Algerian terrorist, was convicted in 1998 for a terrorist attack in Paris in 1995. His sentence? Ten years. Which means he was set to be released in 2008. Now I'm not saying five extra years in the pen would have reformed his warped mind, but after he was released in 2003 he went on to create a new terror cell (converting two of his operatives to Islam) for which he was rearrested in 2005. Sad Safe is pictured, left, at his second terrorism trial in France.

But if he had not been released early, would things have been different?

British national Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the man convicted of participating in the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl, was first thrown into an Indian prison in 1994 for his role in the kidnapping of a group of British tourists in India. But he was later traded to the Taliban for the release of another set of hostages in 1999.

He went on to train in the Taliban's terrorist camps before pilfering Pearl.

Allekema Lamari member of the Madrid train bomb network which launched an attack which killed 191 people, spent five years in prison for belonging to a terrorist organization. In prison, his extremists views were nurtured and strengthened.

Mitch Silbur of the New York Police Department Intelligence Unit writes about Lamari:

"Allekema Lamari, who had been arrested in 1997 for belonging to an Algerian extremist group, had already been radicalized. However, according to open source, his five year stint in prison nurtured his extremist views and actually intensified his radical mindset. During his incarceration, Lamari joined an Algerian Islamist prison group."

So basically, the authorities knew he was bad news when they let him go, but they had to let him go anyway.

Raphael Gendron (right), a French convert to Islam, was imprisoned for inciting hatred against non-Muslims in 2006. After his release, this high level al Qaeda recruiter was busted with buddy Bassam Ayachi (left) for human smuggling. While in prison, the two were discovered planning an attack on the Charles de Gaulle airport from their cell!

Safe to say, that doesn't bode well for their case.

Members of the Martyrs for Morocco, the group that launched a plot against the Spanish National court, created the organization in prison and recruited inmates, some who went on to be released in hopes of making the plot operational.

The point is, many of those who are actively engaged in the fight against terrorism on a professional level will tell you, the best way to get terrorists is to catch them in the act of a minor crime since conspiracy to commit terrorism is a much more difficult crime to prove in court.

But that also means that sometimes, the system is unable to hand down a significantly deterring sentence as punishment for these terrorists. We need to make sure that if these operatives and their associates present a threat to national security, they are punished and continue to be so accordingly.

GILAD SHALIT is ALIVE (told you so!)

Gilad Shalit is alive and well!

New video released by HAMAS, shows a skinny but healthy twenty-three year old Shalit, smiling, walking and reading.

The video, with subtitles, is below.



But we CANNOT stop now - he still needs safe passage home.

Contact your local government official or Embassy and voice your concern about this extremely important issue.


For more posts on Gilad visit Gilad Shalit In Pictures and then check out the spectacularly successful campaign I created and launched to #Tweet4Shalit this past August.

Radicalization and Recruitment...

Former Muslim prison chaplain Frederick Al-Deen, captured the essence of radicalization when he said,


“Radicalization is something every human being that is older than fifteen knows. That they are a member of soccer teams, football teams, basketball teams, unions, fraternities, sororities. Everybody’s taught to get fired up. And that’s what radicalization is.”

Yet, in practice, “radicalization makes little noise.”

Radicalization has been described as a funnel – in which many enter but only a select few exit – a ladder or step of stairs – in which each rung or step represents a different level of commitment – and even a house or a pyramid – where the majority live on the bottom floor and a small, core group lives exclusively at the top...

“Radicalization implies a transformation of the individual’s worldview over time from a range that society tends to consider to be normal into a range that society tends to consider extreme.”

Radicalization occurs on many different levels and for a plethora of reasons, but it is important to remember that “radicalization” is only a means to an end. Radicalism does not create violence; rather it serves as a facilitator for violet action. In the same way, for an individual undergoing radicalization, the “survival of the group [becomes] no longer a means to an end, but an end itself…”

It is the group and its dynamics that keeps a cell together and what can tear it apart. As group identity forms, the individual’s identity is subsumed by the greater whole through shared ideological commitment, peer pressure and the creation of “fictive kin,” until the actions and goals of the group are inseparable from that of the individual, much like in a cult atmosphere.

The personal social network of friends, family and neighbors, that define the group identity also become the definitive structure by which all decisions are made and executed. The constant threat of the enemy - the perception of “us versus them” - and the need to act are requisite to sustaining the group and managing both internal and external tensions.

The perception of “us versus them” also serves to foster stronger ties with the imagined Ummah or Muslim community, whose politicized Twenty-First Century construct has transcended any conferred religious legitimacy or meaning, and has greatly weakened the sense of national identity over a global identity.

The group is most important because loyalty and fidelity will always be directed at the individual and not at the idea, regardless of the strength of an ideology. This leads to “groupthink” and “illusions of invulnerability, excessive optimism, risk taking, and a presumption of morality” that creates a “one-dimensional ‘evil enemy’” for whom everyone in the group is wholeheartedly “intolerant” of…

Charismatic leadership takes on a pivotal role in the creation and operation of terror cell. Ideology only goes as far as motivation for the collective action of the cell; it provides a set of ideas and parameters or frames, for interpreting the collective goal. By framing the collective goals, a charismatic leader can provide the malleable recruit with the cognitive tools and language to help him or her in creating a social construct that resonates with the radical Islamist cause and mobilizes them to action.

“Radicals are not born, they are made.”

And those attracted to the radical Islamist ideology today tend to be young Muslim men, in their twenties and thirties, some are converts, other “reverts” or “born-again” Muslims, who are experiencing a crisis of identity and who perceive themselves to victims of the West, disenfranchised by their country of birth and alienated from the native culture of their parents.

These young men find groups of social networks to connect with; groups of likeminded people, who rally around a spiritual leader or simply a charismatic Muslim providing answers to their existential questions through the dialogue of their renewed faith.

Just as there is “no terrorist profile,” these young men being radicalized are as divided a group of men in any population. Some are middle class and educated, others are lower class dropouts; some have been successful in business, others deal drugs while aimlessly moving through menial jobs.

Today’s terrorist “challenge many of the stereotypes that were held about who becomes a terrorist and why… [they represent] a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism.”

Any individual can be led down the pathway towards radicalism as they encounter personal traumas such as racism, negative media stereotyping, blocked societal mobility, when the encounter the need to find a way to interpret their personal discontent or during the course of some type of religious misinterpretation in their lifetime’s early successes or failures. This “tipping point” or “catalyst” event creates a cognitive opening that can lead a seemingly normal young man into a hardened stealth Jihadist.

Still, no single factor can be considered “causal” in the radicalization process, a terrorist cell is a multi-faceted human construction that equally draws and requires, the “misfit,” “the money-maker” and the Mujadheen. Through radical ideology, extremists are creating a ‘Rejectionist Generation,’ whose grievances, whether real or perceived, are articulated by the global Islamist narrative.

Religion serves as a “tool of mobilization,” that allows for “a way of framing or representing a struggle in terms that a potential constituency will understand.” And, “because the religious worldview is totalizing one, issues of identity and ideology are often merged.”

The most important radicalizing influence today for Muslims worldwide is Iraq and Afghanistan; in April 2009 Ayman al-Zawihiri criticized the American President in a taped message stating that his decision to send more troops to the Middle East with add “more fuel to the fire.”

But these two conflicts are just the most recent in a long line of Jihadists causes that have rallied Muslims and non-Muslims alike across the world since the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980s that include, but is not limited to, Bosnia, Kashmir, Chechnya, Palestine, and Lebanon.

As a testament to this fact, many Western governments reported an increase in recruitment efforts following the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and their allied forces.

As Middle East scholar and author Fawaz Gerges stated in 2007, Iraq “has really poured fuel on a raging fire… I think we’re going to witness a new generation, which is more dangerous than al Qaeda, bloodier then al Qaeda, that uses terrorism as a rule rather then an exception.”

More then four hundred Americans, a number that continues to grow to this day, received training in Afghan or Pakistani Jihadist camps since 1989. And the young, battle tested Western Muslims returning from the conflict in Iraq (and more recently Somalia) represent a blowback as potentially dangerous as the Afghan Arabs were in inspiring European Muslims (and to a lesser extent those in the U.S.) to take up arms against the West in the years leading up to 9/11.

Experts estimate between one and two thousand Americans joined the Jihadist cause in the 1990s, many who were African American, and a small minority who were Latino

As journalist David Kaplan wrote:

"The jihad movement in America remains alive and well. And while it is easy enough to dismiss the varied Jihadists as adventurers or extremists, most seem motivated by unselfish aims; they care deeply about the suffering of their brethren overseas. Why else would someone… leave their home, travel 7,000 miles, and get killed fighting a foreign army?"

And despite the fact that crossing borders has become increasing difficult, the zeal of Western Jihadists to train abroad has not subsided and improvised facilities – including national parks, paintball and gun ranges – have provided (along with the growing role of interactive Internet sites), a modicum of support in and around the U.S. and Europe.

(The most recent examples of an attempt to train operatives within in the United States, includes the North Virginia and North Carolina cells, in addition to the the Oregon al Qaeda operative.)

The following was an excerpt from my 2009 piece entitled, Prislam: The Recruitment and Radicalization of Terrorist Operatives in the Prison System and the Threat to the American Homeland

GITMO - Torture Chamber or Government Funded Terrorist Retreat?

Whoever said Guantanamo Bay was bad for detainees, never saw the recently released picture of the 9/11 mastermind, aka the Evil Genius, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who has now spent six years in American custody...



Eat that Osama bin Laden... I bet eight years on the lam in Afghanistan and Pakistan hasn't been half as nice on your beard.

Startling Statisics

As discussed in yesterday's post, the Canadian government is growing increasingly weary over the growing role of Islamic radicalization in the penal system.

During the course of my year long (plus) research into Islam in the penal system, I collected some startling statistics about our brethren democracies across the pond....




In the UNITED KINGDOM, less then 3% of the general population is Muslim but more then 20% of the prison population practices Islam (and in some BRITISH prisons, it is estimated as high as 25%). This is more the quadruple the Muslim prison population in 1993. Authorities claim there was a noticeable increase of practicing Muslims in prison following the July 2005 bombings in London.


In FRANCE, less then 10% of the general population is Muslim but anywhere between 60% and 80% of the prison population practices Islam.


In SPAIN, less then 1% of the general population is Muslim but approximately 1% of the prison population practices Islam.


In AUSTRALIA, approximately 2% of the general population is Muslim but approximately 7% of the prison population practices Islam.


In BELGIUM, approximately 2% of the general population is Muslim but more then 15% of the prison population practices Islam.


In DENMARK, less then 5% of the general population is Muslim but 70% of the prison population practices Islam.


In GERMANY, less then 2% of the general population is Muslim but 34% of the prison population practices Islam.


In ITALY, less then 1% of the general population is Muslim but 29% of the prison population practices Islam.


In SWITZERLAND, less then 30% of the general population is Muslim but more then 60% of the prison population practices Islam.


In SCOTLAND, less then 1% of the general population is Muslim but 1.3% of the prison population practices Islam.


In the NETHERLANDS, less then 1% of the general population is Muslim but more then 20% of the prison population, in both juvenile and in adult prisons, practices Islam.

Those are some startling statistics, huh?

"Blame Canada...?"

Our northern neighbors hardly seem threatening wit all that maple syrup and those handsome mounted police, eh? But like I recently tweeted on Twitter (re: terrorism in Belgium and Sweden), terrorism can, will and is happening just about everywhere you look these days.

Even in Canada.

The massive American border to the north is shared with a country that plays open host to more then fifty different terrorist groups, boast some of the world’s most simplistic (and most commonly abused) asylum laws utilized by 250,000 individuals each year, and that currently has 40,000 active arrest warrants for immigrants who have not appeared in court for their designated asylum trial.

(By the way, all that is required to be allowed to enter Canada on the condition of asylum is a declaration affirming your necessity; then they give you a court date, a pat on the back, and send you on your way.)

Muslims in Canada represent less then 2% of the general population and less then 1% of the prison population but a leaked Canadian government report from 2007 revealed that the spread of radical Islam and the recruitment and indoctrination of prisoners is occurring at a rate much quickly then the government would like.

The report also revealed that approximately 60% of all prisoners charged with terrorism related offenses are incarcerated with the general population.

This is a problem, and I’ll tell you why.

There are two strategies for dealing with terrorists or extremists in prison: concentrate and isolate or separate and disperse. Isolating and concentrating imprisoned terrorists is problematic because there is strength in numbers and they could find a way to exploit the situation; separating and dispersing imprisoned terrorists who accumulate too much power provides them the opportunity to continue to spread their extremist message. The dispersal strategy also has its limit in terms of space.

A senior British prison official told the press, “If prisoners are concentrated they get more organized. If something went wrong, it could go disastrously wrong.” And the Director-General of the British Prison Service also warned against “ a strategy of concentrating convicted terrorists.”

But even with the isolation strategy, there is the potential for prison guards to be corrupted or even radicalized. This is called “Para-radicalization,” in which, because prison is an this exploitative environment… "even prison employees can be unwitting players who can be cajoled, bribed or coerced into transmitting message and materials without being aware of their real purpose."

(Quote from Dr. Gregory Saathoff; to read all of his Congressional Testimony, click here.)

In its seminal piece of radicalization (called, "Dangerous Convictions") the Anti-Defamation League made a statement I find to be of the utmost importance:

“Convicts are not nearly so insulated fro the rest of society as many American would like to believe, nor are Americans somehow unaffected by what foes on inside the prisons walls… Putting criminals in jail does not make us immune to their effects."

Prison in Canada may seem like a far off place, but it is important to remember the real threat does not stem from those still incarcerated, but rather what the radical few will do upon release.

Just last week a British scholar reminded the press, "it just takes one or two."

So as the kids from South Park might say…

(Just kidding)