Robert Mueller has been appointed as a special prosecutor to investigate alleged Russian influence operations involving the 2016 US elections.
I don’t have a strong opinion on that investigation, but I do believe that all the fawning over Robert Mueller that I have seen the past 24 hours is…well…unwarranted.
That’s because I was thoroughly unimpressed by his tenure as FBI director. When selected by George W. Bush to head the FBI on 4 September 2001–one week before 9/11–the word on Mueller was that he was someone who was selected because he would not rock the boat or make too many sweeping changes.
If ever there was a wake up call to make sweeping changes, it came on 11 September 2001 and America was saddled with a guy leading the FBI who was chosen because he was a “safe” pick.
On Mueller’s watch the FBI bumbled some key counterjihad initiatives.
First of all, the FBI purged counterterrorism training materials that referred to terms like “Jihad” or “Islam” on Mueller’s watch. These decisions were arrived at because Mueller had a “stuck on stupid” habit of conducting outreach with Muslim Brotherhood operatives, some of whom winded up in jail.
Secondly, speaking of Russians, the Russians warned the FBI about the Tsarnaev brothers who then bombed the Boston Marathon and then went on a two-man jihad in the Boston area. The FBI did essentially zilch about them despite the warnings and even conducted outreach with the Boston area mosque co-founded by a man convicted on terrorism charges and described by the Justice Department as the primary Al Qaeda financier in America.
These are hardly indications of a competent guy.
Congressman Louis Gohmert was particularly tenacious in his periodic grilling of Mueller as FBI director. These videos are well worth a look to give you the details–as well as the general idea–of what I’m talking about…
Gohmert Challenges FBI Director About the Purging of Training Material
FBI Director Unaware Boston Mosque Founded By al Qaeda Funder
GOP’er Louie Gohmert And FBI’s Robert Mueller Explode Over Investigation Into Boston Bombers
Way back in February of 1998, Osama Bin Laden declared a Jihad against Jews and Crusaders in a written document entitled the “World Islamic Front Statement.”
In that document he specifically stated:
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it
Despite this, with just a few notable exceptions over the years, few Muslims answered Bin Laden’s call to kill Americans.
Bin Laden was of course killed by U.S. Special Operations forces in May 2011.
Since then, we have seen many more attacks here in the U.S.
Why? If Osama Bin Laden was not able to inspire Muslims to attack and kill Americans, why are we seeing so many such attacks in recent years? Such as:
• The 15 April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
• The Orlando night club massacre on 12 June 2016.
• The San Bernardino massacre on 2 December 2015
• The Chattanooga massacre on 16 July 2015
• The failed Garland, Texas attack on 3 May 2015.
• The Queens, New York hatchet attack on police officers standing on a street corner on 23 October 2014.
• The Philadelphia attack on a police officer sitting in his squad car on 7 January 2016
• The Moore, Oklahoma beheading of a grandmother at the hands of a Muslim co-worker on 26 September 2014
• The 28 November 2016 terrorist vehicle attack on Ohio State University campus.
• The September 17-19 2016 bombings in New York and New Jersey.
• The Fresno, California shooting on 18 April 2017.
These are just a few of the incidents in recent years, here in the United States, that have, unfortunately, been categorized as “lone wolf” terrorist attacks by our recalcitrant news media.
In fact, the term “lone wolf” does not exist in Islamic doctrine. What DOES exist in Islamic doctrine is the fact that Jihad is an individual as well as a collective obligation.
What we are seeing are in fact individual acts of Jihad–acts of war, not criminal acts. We continue to deny this at our peril. There is a doctrinal basis for the enemy that is waging war against us. This form of warfare does not require formal ties between fighters or units (organizations) waging the war.
The concept of Jihad being an individual obligation is longstanding and has its basis in mainstream Islamic law (Shariah). We can see this from a widely-read and used text of Shariah sold annually at the convention of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim organization in the United States, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing prosecution in U.S. history: the U.S. v the Holy Land Foundation. In that trial, ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group. Interestingly, ISNA’s Canadian wing was shut down in 2013 for funneling money to a Jihadist terrorist group in Kashmir.
The name of the Shariah text is A Summary of Islamic Jurisprudence by Dr. Salih Al-Fawzan and published by Al-Maiman Publishing House in Saudi Arabia. Al-Fawzan is a member of the Board of Senior Ulema in Saudi Arabia and also a member of the Permanent Committee for Fatwa and Research in the kingdom.
Volume One of this work has a chapter devoted to Jihad. On page 473, the basis in Shariah for individual Jihad is explained in detail and reveals for us why we are seeing this escalation of attacks:
For a Muslim, there are certain cases in which jihad is an individual duty:
1) When a Muslim is present at the battlefield, it is obligatory for him to fight and he is prohibited to leave the battlefield and flee.
2) When enemies attack a Muslim country…
3) When a Muslim is needed to help his fellow Muslims fight their enemies.
4) When a Muslim is called by the ruler (or the one in authority) to fight in the Cause of Allah, for the Prophet (PBUH) said:
Whenever you are called for fighting in the cause of Allah, you should go immediately.
As you can see, these four circumstances are quite broad and all could be interpreted as existing right now. But numbers 2, 3 and 4 are particularly relevant right now and serve as the doctrinal basis for why Muslims have suddenly begun rising up in violent Jihad in the West:
• The Islamic State has called on Muslims to wage Jihad because the Islamic State is under attack. This applies to 2 and 3 above.
• Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed caliph of the Islamic State has issued calls on Muslims in the West to rise up in Jihad. This applies to 4 above and is the key difference between the days of Bin Laden and today.
Bin Laden may have been admired by many Muslims, but he never declared himself as a Caliph and his calls for Jihad were mostly ignored. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s calls are being answered because he has declared himself as the Caliph and many Muslims recognize him as such. That is why were are seeing acts of individual Jihad that we mostly did not see before.
And that is why the U.S. and the West cannot tolerate the existence of the Islamic State over the long-term. It has become the flame attracting moths. It will only gain more legitimacy and strength if it is allowed to persist. In short, it must be destroyed.
HERE ARE TWO IMPORTANT PASSAGES THAT APPLY TO WHAT WE ARE SEEING TODAY. The news media and our elected officials seem to take comfort when an attacker was “merely inspired” by the Islamic State (ISIS) and were not directed by the Islamic State. The opposite should actually be the case, as reflected by the two remaining passages below from two important Jihadi ideologues:
Individual jihad has recurred throughout Islamic history. In the time of the Crusades…groups of mujahideen responded to the crisis. Many isolated expeditions and groups carried out the obligation of jihad.
Individual jihad using the method of urban or rural guerilla warfare is the foundation for sapping the enemy and bringing him to a state of collapse and withdrawal. It will pave the way for the desired strategic goal.
What mandates these methods as a strategic opinion is the imbalance of forces between the resistance and the large invading alliance of unbelievers, apostates and hypocrites.
We fight them for the sake of incidents to cause political pressure and psychological collapse, so that they leave our lands. Carrying out a small operation every month against the enemy will have more of an impact on him than a big operation every year or two.
Toward a New Strategy in Resisting the Occupier
Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah
Al Qaeda Chief of External Operations
Killed by US air strike in Pakistan in 2008
Successful jihad will only happen within an ummah [Islamic nation or community] in which the fighting creed is firmly established and clarified. This must happen in order to attain the “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” that will spontaneously give rise to instruments of resistance.
Violent jihad is as an individual duty obligatory upon every Muslim. All the ulema have said this…”
The Call to Global Islamic Resistance
Abu Musab al-Suri
Al Qaeda propagandist
Captured in Pakistan 2005
These two passages reflect what we are seeing today, not just in the USA, but even more so in Europe, as evidenced by the March 2017 London parliament shooting and the 20 April 2017 police shooting on the Champs Elysees.
Over a decade ago Al-Hakaymah called for frequent, small-scale attacks rather than big 9/11 type attacks. What we are seeing today was clearly part of the Jihadists’ plans.
Again, well over a decade ago, Al-Suri foresaw an environment in which individual Jihadis would rise up spontaneously in resistance without specific direction and planning from a higher, central authority. Again, that is clearly what we are seeing today.
This “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” spontaneously giving rise to instruments of resistance is NOT something to take comfort in at all. It is problematic for law enforcement and the intelligence community and dangerous for Americans.
A terrorist cell connected directly in some way to Al Qaeda leadership can be detected, infiltrated and taken down as it communicates with and receives orders from commanders overseas. But individual Jihadis or Jihadi couples who have the intention of carrying out attacks are much more difficult to detect and are very nearly impossible to infiltrate.
The “Revolutionary Jihadist Climate” spontaneously giving rise to instruments of resistance is a relatively new, dangerous phase in the global Jihadist movement.
In case you haven’t noticed, the global Jihadist insurgency has entered a new, more dangerous phase in the past two years.
The number of Jihadis and the number of attacks that they have carried out–as well as the number of casualties they have inflicted and the number of countries they operate in–has grown drastically.
The excellent, private IntelCenter organization estimates that the Islamic State has killed 18,000 people in 28 countries since they declared their Caliphate on 29 June 2014.
This includes individual acts of Jihad carried out in this country in places like Orlando, Chattanooga, Boston, Garland, San Bernardino, Queens and Philadelphia.
There is no reason to believe that this trend won’t continue. The effort to take down the caliphate is half-hearted at best because it simply isn’t something our president is interested in. He feels as if he killed Bin Laden and that should have been enough. Never mind that the world has become awash in Jihad since then.
Because of the complete lack of leadership on this vital issue, our federal bureaucratized counterterrorism apparatus is not even allowed to study Islamic threat doctrine–the very doctrine that the Islamic State cites repeatedly.
Time and time again we find that the warning signs of the Jihadi attackers were missed. We were warned about the Tsarnaev brothers (the Boston bombers) repeatedly by the Russians and the FBI knew that their mosque was founded by a convicted Al Qaeda member. Yet they were still able to carry out their attack.
There were warning signs about the San Bernardino Jihadis as well. The female, Tafsheen Malik, used a fake address to obtain a visa to enter the U.S. She also gained entry into the U.S. under the horribly flawed federal “Visa Express” program that allows applicants to bypass the interview in the screening process.
Moreover, DHS whistleblower Phillip Haney has testified before Congress and written in his new book, “See Something, Say Nothing,” that he had been ordered to cease investigations into Tablighi Jamaat, the notorious Islamist organization that had ties to the San Bernardino mosque.
Then there is the case of Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, who was twice interviewed by the FBI because he was in the contact list for an American Islamikaze bomber in Syria and because he made “incendiary” remarks to co-workers about Jihad. Oh, and his Dad posted pro-Taliban videos too. He was given the all-clear, only to end up massacring 49 innocent Americans.
What all this points to is the vital need for state and local law enforcement to take the lead against Jihad inside this country. I promise you, the NYPD does not wait for the FBI to vet suspected terrorists. Other state and local agencies around the country need to take the same approach, albeit with resources that can’t match the NYPD, which is probably the most effective counterterrorism law enforcement organization anywhere in the world.
The fact is, the Feds are unaccountable. They can’t follow up all the leads they have now and very often have a lack of knowledge as to what or who they are dealing with. I have a hunch that the FBI agents who interviewed Omar Mateen probably thought he was creepy at best, but they had nothing to charge him with and they had to go about their business. Complicating matters even more is the fact that both the FBI and DHS are forbidden from tying Islam to terrorism. That restriction right there makes them ineffective at conducting counterintelligence operations.
State and local cops are not unaccountable. They have deep roots in their communities. If an Omar Mateen is in someone’s precinct and they know he is a known associate of an Islamikaze bomber and made threatening statements about terrorism, they will keep an eye on him way past the initial interview. There won’t be much more important in that precinct once an Omar Mateen comes to the local cops’ attention.
Furthermore, state and local police are not under any restriction to refrain from studying the enemy threat doctrine. If the local sheriff or police chief is bold enough, he will mandate that his intelligence and investigative people get educated about the threat in an objective, unbiased manner–allowing the subject matter to take them where it leads them, rather than starting from the position that there is no connection between Islam and terrorism.
State and local police are now at the tip of the spear in this war. 15 years ago America sent soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines overseas to protect us all from Jihad. Today, local law enforcement is being tasked with protecting soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines from Jihad inside our own country. This is a profound shift in this war that has been lost on the overwhelming majority of the American people.
In Garland, Texas, it was a 62-year old motorcycle cop who gunned down the two Jihadi attackers who were wielding AK47s.
In Chattanooga, Tennessee, it was the local police who gunned down Mohammad Abdulazeez.
In Boston, it was Boston PD who ran down the Tsarnaev brothers.
In Queens, New York, it was rookie patrolmen who were targeted by and gunned down Zale Thompson.
The San Bernardino shooters were killed by members of the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department.
In Philadelphia, it was a police officer sitting in his patrol car that was targeted by Edward Archer in the name of ISIS.
And, of course, we know that it was the Orlando Police Department who responded to Omar Mateen’s massacre.
By the time DHS and FBI show up, they have to ask permission to cross the crime scene tape. In Marine Corps parlance, by the time the Feds get involved, it’s “right of bang.”
State and local police need to prepare to operate against Jihadis “left of bang,” and that means taking their own initiative and not depending solely on our bureaucratized, federal counterterrorism apparatus for training or intelligence about potential bad guys in their jurisdictions.
Americans seem to be oblivious or desensitized to the growing evidence that Jihad is hitting the streets here in America. About a week ago or so we posted a rundown of recent Jihadi activity on the continent of Africa, illustrating the fact that it has become the central front in the global Jihadist insurgency:
What may not be apparent is the escalating level of Jihadi activity here in the USA. Even attacks such as those that occurred in 2014 in Moore, Oklahoma (beheading of a grandmother by a former Muslim co-worker) and Queens, New York (hatchet attack on NYPD officers) were far from front page news.
Such incidents are almost always reflexively followed by the meant-to-be-comforting caveat…”no known connection to a terrorist organization.” This is actually more alarming than it is comforting as it is an indication that a revolutionary atmosphere has developed in the US Muslim community that has prompted individual Muslims to act on the calls to Jihad that we have seen from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other Jihadi leaders.
We’ve decided to post recent articles about Jihadi arrests, plots and cases that have appeared in the news to illustrate that, well, the enemy is indeed here in our midst and active. Keep in mind that these are only the enemy that our law enforcement community has publicly identified, pursued and apprehended…
In just the last week, Jihadis from Texas, Philadelphia and New York have been apprehended…note also mention of a Jihadi from Minnesota…
U.S. prosecutors in New York City and Philadelphia charged four people with terrorism-related crimes, including two Queens women who allegedly discussed making bombs with an undercover federal agent.
Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, were accused of conspiring to prepare an explosive device to detonate in the U.S.
A Texas man, Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, was charged separately with seeking to train alongside Muslim militants who allegedly plotted to attack New York City subways.
Friday, U.S. prosecutors announced charges against a Philadelphia woman, Keonna Thomas, accused of attempting to join Islamic State. The government said she posted items expressing support for the group on Twitter, and communicated online with a Somalia-based jihadi fighter from Minnesota, a radical Islamic cleric and an ISIS fighter in Syria.
Velentzas allegedly praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and declared that she and Siddiqui were “citizens of the Islamic State.” Siddiqui had repeated contact with members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including propagandist Samir Khan, former editor of Inspire, al-Qaeda’s English-language online magazine, the U.S. alleged in court papers.
Khan, who was killed in Yemen in 2011, published articles including “I am proud to be a traitor to America” and “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” according to prosecutors.
In discussions with the undercover officer last year, the women allegedly said they were learning “science” in order to build a bomb. They later said they were reading technical books and learning about making homemade grenades, pipe bombs and pressure-cooker bombs, the U.S. alleged.
Siddiqui wrote jihadist poetry with lines about dropping bombs and referred to “nations wiped clean of filthy shrines,” according to the government. She obtained multiple propane tanks and had instructions for using them as explosives, prosecutors alleged.
Farekh [the Texas man], who studied at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, is accused of leaving the school for Pakistan in 2007, joining others seeking to train for attacks against U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan. He was eventually deported from Pakistan.
An alleged co-conspirator, Ferid Imam, aided a plot to attack the New York City subways, according to the government. That plot was foiled in 2009.
In the Philadelphia case, Thomas, who allegedly went by the name “YoungLioness,” was asked by an ISIS fighter if she wanted to be involved in a martyrdom operation. Thomas, 30, responded by stating, “that would be amazing….a girl can only wish,” according to the government. She was arrested after purchasing tickets to fly overseas, prosecutors said.
The cases are U.S. v. Velentzas, 15-mj-00303, and USA v. AL Farekh,1:15-mj-00021, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).
There have been separate reports that Velentzas and Siddiqui sought to attack a police funeral to maximize casualties among U.S. law enforcement and that one of the two put on a veneer of patriotism with an American flag displayed in front of her home.
Noelle Velentzas…Note her affiliation with the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), one of the largest Islamic organizations in America
Velentzas and Siddiqui were apparently tied to Tairoid Pugh, the US Air Force veteran who was arrested in March for joining the Islamic State:
A one-time Air Force mechanic whose radical beliefs had him on the FBI’s radar since the late 1990s has been charged in federal court in Brooklyn with trying to join the Islamic State terror group..
Tairod Pugh, 47, of Neptune, New Jersey, allegedly did Internet searches for border crossings into Syria and downloaded execution videos by the jihadist group, before traveling from Egypt to Turkey in January to fight for the group…
After being turned away, the government said, he wiped most of his electronic devices of evidence but kept a picture of a machine gun on his phone. Deported from Egypt to the United States, he was charged in a sealed complaint in January, and indicted this week.
“Pugh, an American citizen, was willing to travel overseas and fight jihad alongside terrorists seeking to do us harm,” Diego Rodriguez, head of the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement.
In February, three Brooklyn men were accused of plotting to aid the terror group, including two who planned to join, authorities said.
Court papers said Pugh served in the Air Force as an avionics instrument system specialist from 1986 to 1990, and worked for American Airlines and a military contractor in Iraq. Overseas for the past 12 to 18 months, he allegedly lost his last job as a mechanic in Kuwait in December.
The government said Pugh converted to Islam in 1998. In 2001, a co-worker allegedly tipped the FBI that Pugh sympathized with Osama bin Laden and held anti-American views. In 2002, an associate said Pugh hoped to fight jihad in Chechnya.
But the government said he objected to deportation from Egypt because the “U.S. doesn’t like black Muslims.” A search of his laptop revealed 180 jihadist videos and an email intended for his Egyptian wife, according to the criminal complaint.
“I am a Mujahid,” said the email. “. . . There is only two possible outcomes for me. Victory or Martyr.”
Tairod Pugh: Air Force veteran, former American Airlines employee and long-time Jihadi
Note in the article above the mention of the three Brooklyn men indicted on terror charges in February.
Here is an article about the Philadelphia woman who faces terrorism charges…
Authorities charged a Philadelphia woman on Friday with attempting to join Islamic State…
Keonna Thomas, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen who went by “YoungLioness” online, was arrested before she could travel to Syria and join the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, according to a criminal complaint.
Last month she bought a plane ticket to Barcelona, court records show, and was due to fly on March 29. Federal agents executed a search warrant at her home on March 27 and seized evidence, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia said.
Ms. Thomas, who is charged with knowingly attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, was ordered held until a detention hearing next week.
Ms. Thomas’s postings on social media drew the attention of law enforcement, according to an affidavit from a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent.
But her case differs from other recent prosecutions of Islamic State sympathizers because it doesn’t appear to rely on an undercover FBI operative working with the target. Instead, the FBI intercepted communications between Ms. Thomas and an overseas Islamic fighter, among others. In them, she allegedly expressed her desire to travel to join the group in Syria.
In the past 18 months, dozens of Americans—from Colorado to Minnesota to New York—have faced criminal charges related to ISIS.
Ms. Thomas’s alleged support of Islamic State dates to 2013, according to court filings. The FBI affidavit claims that in August 2013 she reposted a picture on Twitter showing a camouflage-clad boy wearing firearm magazine pouches, with this caption: “Ask yourselves, while this young man is holding magazines for the Islamic state, what are you doing for it? #ISIS.”
In December 2013, court filings show, she exchanged messages with a man described by the FBI as a Somali-based violent jihadi fighter from Minnesota. Ms. Thomas allegedly told him she planned to “leave the land of kufr [nonbelievers]” and would travel once she got enough money.
In January 2014 she tweeted, “Only thing I’m jealous of is when I see the smiles of shuhadaa [martyrs],” according to court records, which allege that she posted messages throughout the year that appeared to support ISIS.
In late January of this year, the FBI alleges, she sent a message to a radical Islamic cleric in Jamaica in which she wrote, “i don’t want to say much here….as of now im still here in the states but will be leaving soon.”
Five days later she applied for a passport and in mid-February told the cleric she had deactivated her Twitter account, saying, according to court records, “don’t want to draw attention of the kuffar [nonbelievers] and it mess my plans and they take my pass port and I get stuck here.”
On Feb. 17, the FBI affidavit says, the known overseas fighter wrote to her: “U probably want to do Istishadee [martyrdom operations] with me.” She allegedly replied: “that would be amazing….a girl can only wish.”
“I can make that wish come true,” the militant allegedly responded.
She researched indirect travel routes to Turkey, a common transit point to Syria, according to the complaint. Among them was flying to Spain to avoid suspicion, then traveling by bus to Turkey.
Keonna Thomas appearing in court after arrest on terrorism charges. Why she is allowed to appear in court covered that way is anyone’s guess.
Here is an article on Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh, the Texas native indicted on terror charges…
A U.S. citizen accused of conspiring to support al Qaeda appeared in a federal court in New York on Thursday. Muhanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, 29, was charged with conspiracy, reports said, citing the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Farekh reportedly plotted with others to provide material support to the terrorists. He also helped them gain personnel to kill U.S. citizens and members of the U.S. military in other countries, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a charging document. Farekh was deported from Pakistan and arrested due to a pending warrant.
Texas born Al Qaeda terrorist Muhanad Mahmoud al Farekh
Another Jihadi case surfaced in Illinois over a week ago when two cousins–one a soldier with the Illinois Army National Guard–were arrested on terrorism charges:
An Army National Guard member and his cousin have been arrested in Illinois for allegedly conspiring to provide material support to the terrorist organization ISIS, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
The alleged plot included a plan to attack a U.S. military installation in Illinois.
In the past 18 months, the Justice Department’s National Security Division has prosecuted or is prosecuting 32 cases of people attempting to travel abroad to join or providing support to terrorist groups. Of those cases, 18 allegedly involve support to ISIS.
Spc. Hasan Edmonds, 22, was arrested Wednesday night at Chicago Midway International Airport while attempting to travel to Egypt to eventually join ISIS…
His cousin, Jonas “Yunus” Edmonds, 29, was arrested at his home in Aurora in connection with an alleged plot to carry out an armed attack on an unspecified U.S. military facility in northern Illinois where Hasan Edmonds had been training.
After an undercover FBI informant posing as an ISIS fighter outside the United States sent Hasan Edmonds a Facebook “friend” request in late 2014, he began to receive private messages from him indicating that he and his cousin were willing to travel to overseas and fight for ISIS, according to the court documents.
“InshAllah we will complete our task or be grants [sic] shahada [Arabic for martyr] I look forward to the training,” Hasan Edmonds is alleged to have told the informant in January. “I am already in the American kafir army and now I wish only to serve in the army of Allah alongside my true brothers.”
They continued to communicate over the following weeks, with Hasan Edmonds expressing concerns about Jonas Edmonds’ criminal record and whether he would be allowed to travel overseas.
“They try hard to keep people like him trapped in America,” he told the undercover FBI employee.
“I know several Muslims have been caught attempting the Turkey route so tell me why not many Americans take the Egypt route. I am open to either way,” Hasan Edmonds told the informant, according to court documents.
On February 2, Hasan Edmonds contacted the undercover informant again and said his cousin was willing to carry out an attack on U.S. soil.
“Honestly we would love to do something like the brother in Paris did,” Hasan Edmonds stated, referring to the French terror attacks in January in which 16 people were killed.
Prosecutors said Jonas Edmonds contacted the informant to arrange travel accommodations.
“Number one on my list is Mosul,” he stated, referring to Iraq’s second-largest city. “If I find myself stuck here [in the United States], I intend to take advantage of being so close to the kuffar.”
Jonas Edmonds this week accepted that he would be unable to travel and told the FBI informant of his intention to buy AK-47s and grenades to carry out an attack on the military facility. He would use his cousin’s uniform and “anticipated a body count of 100 to 150.” He was given a list of officer rankings by his cousin and advised to “kill the head,” according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Jonas Edmonds planned to carry out the attack after Hasan Edmonds left the country.
Hasan Edmonds planned to use his military training to fight for the terrorist organization, prosecutors said in a statement. Hasan Edmonds booked airline travel to depart Wednesday from Chicago and arrive in Cairo on Thursday.
The cousins presented an undercover informant with plans to attacks the military facility, prosecutors said.
More than 20,000 fighters, from more than 90 countries, have traveled to the ISIS battlefield, according to the testimony of Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, before the House Homeland Security Committee.
The rate of foreign fighters traveling to Syria “exceeds the rate of travelers who went to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen or Somalia at any point in the last 20 years,” Rasmussen said.
Of those fighters, an estimated 3,400 are believed to have come from Western countries, including more than 150 from the United States, officials said.
Jonas Edmonds–evidently no stranger to the penal system.
Hasan Edmonds
Finally, in Boston, Americans for Peace and Tolerance have uncovered evidence of Jihadist indoctrination at the Islamic Society of Boston, which was the mosque attended by the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon. It was also founded by Abduraham Alamoudi, who was later revealed to be an Al Qaeda terrorist and was convicted on terrorism charges…
Islamic Society of Boston: co-founded by Al Qaeda terrorist, mosque of Boston marathon bombers.
The Boston Marathon bombers’ mosque, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB), employs an intensive radicalizing program aimed at Boston’s historically moderate Muslim community, especially at its youth. It’s called “Tarbiya,” which is Arabic for “growth and refinement.” It is not something that is practiced as part of classical mainstream Islam.
APT has obtained several curriculum documents created by ISB-affiliated groups, which describe exactly what is taught and when, with assignments detailed down to book and page number.
The overwhelming majority of Muslims do not commit acts of violent Jihad, but that does not mean that there isn’t a doctrinal basis for it in Islamic scripture.
I am not talking about just a few violent verses in the Quran. The Islamic trilogy is replete with it: the Quran, the Hadith and the Sirah. (The Hadith are traditions and stories of the life of Muhammed and the Sirah is the biography of Muhammed). Moreover, in the Quran, the principle of abrogation bestows the most violent verses with the greatest strength as compared to earlier, peaceful verses.
These are facts, and if you read what the Jihadis themselves talk to each other about, EVERYTHING they do is based on contemporary interpretation of Islamic scripture.
We’re not talking about a fringe element here, folks. We’re talking about entire regimes (the Ayatollahs in Iran and Taliban Afghanistan are examples) and scores of violent Jihadist organizations around the world such as, Al Qaeda, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Lashkar e Taiba, Abu Sayyef, Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Jemaah Islamiyah, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Muslim Brotherhood…and many more.
To assign these beliefs to EVERY SINGLE Muslim of the 1.2 billion Muslims on the planet is wrong. But to deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for all of this violent Jihad is just as wrong and it is preventing the West from coming to grips with the global war with which we are faced, whether we want to believe it or not. There is a reason why we see Islamic terrorist organizations as well as individual Jihadis waging violent Jihad in places as geographically diverse as Boston, Los Angeles, Fort Hood, Little Rock, New York, Washington, Buenos Aires, London, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Madrid, Moscow, Beslan, Marrakech, Algiers, Benghazi, Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Yaounde, Nairobi, Mogadishu, Timbuktu, Kaduna, Dar el Salam, Sana’a, Istanbul, Fallujah, Ramadi, Karachi, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mumbai, Amritsar, Dhaka, Hat Yai, Yala, Bali, and Mindanao.
In warfare, your enemy’s reality becomes your reality. To defeat him, you better understand him. You better understand his motivations and his goals. In short, you need to know what makes him tick. We understood what made the Nazis tick, we had Mein Kampf as a doctrinal guide. We understood what made the communists tick, we had The Communist Manifesto and other works as a doctrinal guide. But we REFUSE to even TRY to understand what makes the Jihadis tick because we fear that the reality will be too frightening. We are in willful denial: “The violence simply cannot have anything to do with Islam because there are too many peaceful Muslims in the world.”
That is missing the point entirely. The fact that the majority of Muslims do not know Islamic doctrine and thus do not adhere to it is not particularly remarkable or surprising. How many Catholics are truly highly familiar with the doctrinal aspects of their faith?
The fact remains that there are violent Jihadists around the world who commit acts of war and they both justify it on Islamic scripture and carry out these acts to promote Islam. The doctrinal basis is found in Islamic law, known as Shariah. The Jihadists’ goal is to impose Islamic law and Islamic law is the code which they follow. (If you are skeptical of this, go pick up a copy of the excellent work by Raymond Ibrahim, The Al Qaeda Reader, and read what the enemy writes and says.) To deny the doctrinal basis in Islam for violent Jihad is becoming more and more suicidal as a civilization with each new incident that we in turn deny.
The latest example is of course in Boston. Two Jihadis, perhaps members of a Jihadist organization, or perhaps so-called “lone wolf” actors, committed atrocious acts of violent Jihad, killing several innocents and wounding many more. Despite evidence on social media and YouTube, as well as accounts of the Jihadis’ devout Islamic beliefs, the simpletons in the news media and even in our own government are pondering aloud what their motivation could possibly have been. Hours and hours of TV coverage in the so-called “mainstream” media go by with nary a mention of the word “Islam.” The elephant in the room is being ignored.
Some “experts” are quoted as taking comfort in the belief that the two Tsarnaev brothers may not have had any operational connection with any known terrorist organization, such as Al Qaeda. This is 180 degrees out from reality and these “experts” completely miss the point.
The fact that the Tsarnaev brothers may have “only” been inspired to commit Jihad on their own is not cause for celebration or relaxation. It is cause for alarm and it would seem to be part of a disturbing pattern that has been emerging over the years:
• Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, aka Carlos Bledsoe, apparently acting on his own after receiving terrorist training in Yemen, shot two US Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office, killing one, Private William Long and wounding another.
• Major Nidal Malik Hasan, apparently acting on his own, after years of conversing with Al Qaeda Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, shot and killed 13 fellow US Army soldiers and wounded 39 more.
These types of attacks are indicative of a revolutionary critical mass in which centralized direction and control is no longer necessary. Jihadis around the world are now waging violent Jihad in Al Qaeda-like fashion after reading web postings and listening to sermons. This presents a whole new series of challenges for security services and makes the use of military force much less effective. Infiltrating organizations such as Al Qaeda and Hezbollah has been extremely difficult. But how does one infiltrate lone wolf actors like the Tsarnaev brothers? Who does the US military go after in the wake of the Boston attacks?
This new reality makes identifying and understanding the Islamic doctrinal basis of our Jihadist enemies all the more important, yet with each passing attack, we seem to be getting further and further away from doing so.
As we pray for the victims of the attack in Boston yesterday, let us continue to pray for those who were maimed and injured and have a long road to recovery ahead; some may never fully recover.
Please also remember, this was not a “TRAGEDY.” It is incredibly insensitive and irresponsible to call terrorist attacks “tragedies.” A tornado is a tragedy. An earthquake is a tragedy.
This was an “ATROCITY.”
And yet as we arise the day after this latest attack, we have evidently learned so little from the past.
Once again, our politicians are treating this event as a Toastmasters meeting, all lining up to put their 2¢ in. And what are so many–too many–of them saying? That we will bring who ever did this to “JUSTICE.”
“JUSTICE?”
This was an act of WAR and we are STILL talking about “justice?” Will we EVER learn?
This is not a law enforcement problem. The images we have seen from Boston make it all too clear that law enforcement is not equipped to deal with this. First responders are indeed heroes, but let’s face it: the First Responders mostly come in to clean up the horrible mess AFTER an attack.
We may not have figured out how to deal with this type of warfare–some of us haven’t at least–but at some point one would hope that we could at least reach some consensus that it is indeed war and not crime. Yet everywhere I look this morning, I see references to “crime” and “justice.”
Just 3 weeks ago, the US State Department and Department of Homeland Security, in their infinite wisdom, granted Saudi nationals “trusted traveler” status. This streamlines the entry process for travelers from Saudi Arabia. This development comes after the State Department relaxed visa requirements for Saudis. Keep in mind that Great Britain is not part of the “trusted traveler” status program. Nor is Australia. But Saudi Arabia is.
In case you don’t recall, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. Saudi Arabia supplied more foreign fighters fighting US troops in Iraq than any other nation. Saudi Arabians fund Jihad more than any nation, with the exception of Iran. And Wahhabi Islam, the official state religion of Saudi Arabia, gave birth to Al Qaeda in the first place.
Within the last month the State Department announced its intention to expand the number of young people from Muslim nations coming to the US on student visas. The rationale for this move is based on the theory that such people will like us if we let them study here.
I guess they never heard of Sayyid Qutb. Or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Or Mohammed Atta. Or Mousa Abu Marzook. Or Wadih El Hage. Google those names–all came to the US for academic reasons and all became committed Jihadist leaders.
And to top it all off, the crack Transportation Security Administration announced not long ago that they would now allow small knives on airliners. What could go wrong?
Our so-called “leaders” and our bureaucratized counterterror apparatus evidently learned NOTHING from 9/11.
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Terror Trends Bulletin 