New report details al-Qaida membership in the US

WASHINGTON – More than half of all al-Qaida operatives and their affiliates in the United States who have committed terrorist offenses are US citizens and a third were born in America, according to a new report profiling the groups’ American adherents.

The 720-page, telephone book-sized volume produced by the Henry Jackson Society and presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Tuesday, carefully examines the 171 cases of al- Qaida members or those inspired by the organization who have been convicted in US courts or participated in suicide attacks against the US homeland between 1997 and 2011.

The study found that 95 percent of the terrorist offenses were committed by men, 57% of whom were under the age of 30. New York was seen as a hub for their activity, with more – 14% – residing there than elsewhere and with large number of those living elsewhere trafficking through.

Nearly a quarter of the operatives were converts to Islam, with over half of those born in the US having converted.

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War on Everything but Islamic Terror

by Daniel Greenfield

…What we can expect is a war on everything but the war we’re in. To the sort of people who declare war on salt and make up fake global crises to force everyone to pay more to fly, Islamic terrorism is just what happens when the sainted 3rd World gets tired of our overeating and overdriving, and the oil companies and agribusiness that cater to our needs, and begins fighting back. The understanding that the terrorists are not just out to protest the destruction of the rainforest or fracking, but intend to establish a totalitarian theocracy based on over a thousand years of bloody history never even enters the minds of the sort of people who declare wars on salt and Styrofoam cups.

There is no denying the fact that much of the country is only too willing to turn away from the bleak prospect of a seemingly unwinnable war against a huge number of ruthless enemies and instead begin lecturing their neighbors on how to raise their children and cook their meals. There is a measure of pettiness in all of us and now that pettiness has been elevated to a national security agenda.

Do your neighbors’ kids look too fat? The government is doing something it. Does the weather feel too warm or too cold? Washington D.C. is on the case. Are you sick of selfish people who don’t bring a usable bag along when they shop for groceries after a long day of working for a living? Let Uncle Sam or Uncle Barack handle that pesky problem.

Faced with an external threat, people often turn on each other fighting the small petty wars against each other that they can win, rather than going out to slay the dragon. And we are up to our necks in these small and petty wars, that are small only in concept not in scope. The bigger the threat, the smaller the wars become until we are fighting everyday household items, rather than the terrorists trying to break into our house and kill us.

In New York City, an awkward skeletal tower stands near where the World Trade Center towers once touched the sky. And on some lampposts you can still see the faded imprint of missing person flyers. But there is good news. Mayor Bloomberg reports that the war on salt has been won.

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Inside Gao where Arab jihadis took bloody sharia retribution on Mali’s black Africans

This is Islam.

By Lindsey Hilsum

The jihadis carried out amputations in the sandy square where the residents of Gao used to watch basketball. The men who ruled Gao for nine months, until French and Malian troops drove them out last weekend, replaced the words “Place de l’Indépendence” in the green, red and yellow of the national flag with simple white on black: Place de la Sharia.

A thief would lose his right hand. Those accused of burglary would lose both right hand and left foot. On 21 December last year, people were assembled, as they had been several times before, and told to watch.

“No one was allowed to speak,” said Issa Alzouma. “Then they cut off my hand with a knife.”

Alzouma had been accused of stealing a motorbike, which he denies. At 39, he made a living digging gravel for construction companies. It was enough to support his wife and three children. Now he roams Gao in tattered clothes, the stump of his right arm wrapped in a grubby bandage, a flimsy black plastic bag dangling from his remaining wrist. Inside he keeps a few antibiotics and replacement bandages given by a Red Cross doctor who treated him at Gao hospital a week after his amputation.

“The doctor had to cut in and remove flesh because it was infected,” he said. “Under the bandage you can see my bones. It hurts and I feel as if my bones are coming out.”

Alzouma has no idea how he and his family will survive. “My wife just cries and cries,” he said. His friend Algalas Yatara, who was also accused of stealing a motorbike, carries a sheaf of papers in Arabic in his remaining hand. He thinks it is the judgment but is not quite sure, as neither man can read Arabic.

At least 12 men had hands or feet cut off after MUJAO (Movement for Jihad and Unity), and its allies in AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb), took control of Gao last April. The exact number is not known because some were amputated in the military base where no non-jihadi was allowed. The mayor’s office, a few yards from the punishment ground, was turned into a sharia court. Outside, the sand has turned black where the enforcers of hesbah, or justice, ground down cigarettes and whipped those found smoking. Inside, the floor is littered with documents, including a ring-binder with details of the women flogged for not wearing the veil. Family members were made to put a thumbprint to show they acknowledged the punishment and would supervise the accused in future.

Suspects were confined to a small room where they were tied up and beaten, before being brought before Islamic judges, known as marabous, who sat every Monday and Thursday.

Ali Altini and Mohammed Aklini were due to be executed for homosexuality the Friday before last. French air strikes saved their lives, as the jihadis who would have carried out the sentence were killed or fled. The two men, who deny they are gay, were arrested on 12 December, bound, beaten, then interrogated. ” They asked me where the brothels are,” said Altini. “I answered that I didn’t know. Then they asked me to show them where people made pornographic movies. I answered again that I didn’t know.”….

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Bill Whittle’s Afterburner: What Difference Does It Make?

Hillary Clinton asked “what difference does it make?” in response to questions about the murder of a US Ambassador in Benghazi. Bill Whittle lets you know what difference it makes for our country. From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State John Kerry hear what Bill Whittle thinks.

“So, the president of the United States, who swore an oath to defend the Constitution, from which the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights protect my right to freedom of expression, tells the world the future does not belong to those of us who wish to speak our minds, like that friendless, deluded film-maker. On the contrary, if the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam, we can then infer from the president the future does in fact belong to those who don’t. People who don’t slander the prophet are knows as Muslims. So, the future must not belong who wish to speak their minds freely. It must belong to the Muslims. Thank you, Mr. President of the United States of America. Meh, what difference does it make?”

 

DOS Recruits Muslim Foreign Service Officers at Jihadist Conference

The Obama administration is covertly recruiting Muslims to work at the State Department as Foreign Service officers representing the United States in one of 265 American embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions worldwide.

It appears to be part of the administration’s Muslim outreach effort, which includes a variety of controversial moves. Among them Homeland Security meetings with extremist Islamic organizations, sending an America-bashing mosque leader (Feisal Abdul Rauf) who blames U.S. foreign policy for the 9/11 attacks on a Middle Eastern outreach mission and revamping the way federal agents are trained to combat terrorism by eliminating all materials that shed a negative light on Muslims.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even signed a special order to allow the reentry of two radical Islamic academics whose terrorist ties long banned them from the U.S.

Now comes news of a secretive State Department campaign, discovered in the course of a Judicial Watch investigation, to add Muslims to its roster. Presumably, the new recruits will be deployed around the globe to help the agency fulfill its mission of promoting the country’s international relations. The campaign seems to be headed by Mark Ward, the Deputy Special Coordinator in the State Department’s Office of Middle East Transition.

Ward held a 90-minute seminar at a recent convention sponsored by two groups—Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA)—with known ties to radical Islam. Both nonprofits are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is known as the parent organization of Hamas and al Qaeda. In fact, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that MAS was founded as the U.S. chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood which strives to indoctrinate the world with Islamic Sharia law.

Yet there was a U.S. State Department official, side by side at a radical Islamic powwow in Chicago with a number of speakers who advocate violent jihad. Among them was Kifah Mustapha, a fundraiser at terrorist organization (Holy Land Foundation) convicted of funneling millions to Hamas and Jamal Badawi, a MAS founder who praised the jihad of Gaza terrorists during a speech titled “Understanding Jihad and Martyrdom.”

The conference that Ward conducted focused on career opportunities for Muslim youth. Here is how the event was billed: “Besides being a citizenship duty, there are benefits that Muslims can add to the American Muslim community and the global Muslim world by joining the US Foreign Services. This session will shed light on the different career opportunities for Muslim youth in the US Foreign Services Department. It will also clear any concerns that many people have feared about   pursuing in this career.”

Joining Ward at the podium in the recruitment seminar were Ayman Hammous and Oussama Jammal.  Hammous is the Executive Director of the New York chapter of MAS and Jammal is the president of the Mosque Foundation, a conservative mosque in Bridgeview, Illinois that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic charities accused of financing terrorism.

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