The jihadist group just uncovered in Detroit as its imam was killed in a shootout with the FBI had numerous similarities to the jihadist Jamaat ul-Fuqra group, which has compounds around the U.S. In "Jihadi Training Compounds, U.S.A." in FrontPage, November 3, Ryan Mauro explains:
The group is very similar to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a group led by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, a radical cleric based in Pakistan. The group has a branch in North America called "Muslims of the Americas" with dozens of sites and several closed-off communities in rural areas used as paramilitary training sites, some as large as 70 acres. Like Ummah, the group is almost entirely African-American, has many prison converts, many of its members engage in criminal activity, and is actively trying to create miniature Islamic states inside the U.S.Jamaat ul-Fuqra seems to share everything in common with Ummah, although no reports have come out to show that Muslims of America-affiliated mosques and communities are explicitly calling for war against the U.S. government. However, few, if any reports came out before the Detroit shootout about the Ummah's preaching of jihad, either. The close parallels warrant an investigation by the FBI into whether Ummah has ties to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, given their common objective, type of recruits, and desire for their followers to receive guerilla warfare training. "Muslims of America" compounds would seem to be the natural destination of Ummah members seeking such instruction and camaraderie.
There is no evidence out of a link yet, but at this early stage in the investigation into Ummah it should be noticed that Jamaat ul-Fuqra has an isolated community in Combermere in Ontario, Canada, the same province where Abdullah's oldest son was arrested. And according to a federally-funded 2004 report by the National White Collar Crime Center, Jamaat ul-Fuqra had a training compound in Coldwater, M.I., about two hours from Detroit at the time of the report's publication. The report also described Jamaat ul-Fuqra as having had "activity" in Detroit including murders and bombings, and having had operations elsewhere in the state.
The Ummah has also had friends in the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the prominent Muslim advocacy group that claims to be moderate but was formed originally as part of Muslim Brotherhood's networks. The organization was also listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity found to have acted as a covert fundraiser for Hamas.
The American-Muslim Taskforce, an umbrella organization counts CAIR among its members, is demanding an investigation into the killing of Abdullah. One thousand people attended his funeral. The head of CAIR's branch in Michigan, Dawud Walid, has also gone to bat for Abdullah, saying he was "charitable."
Anybody have a copy of that 2004 report? Would love to read that thing.
Wow, the racial aspect of the events described is difficult to ignore or to trivialize given the great enmity and malice ascribed to the involved Muslims, mostly African-American, or so it reads in FPM's story. (Ummah is described as a "black Muslim group" at
http://detnews.com/article/20091029/METRO01/910290448/Detroit-mosque-leader-killed-in-FBI-raid . BTW, the gun battle was in a warehouse in Dearborn, although the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque was in Detroit.)
The story also hits close to home, too, for I was born in the City of Detroit and lived there continuously during tense and tumultuous times, from 1969 until 1988 at which point I moved out of the city for college, not to return but for summers and a few months in 1991-1992.
The earlier years, esp. late 70s and early 80s were a period, among other things, of prominent white flight and of busing schemes to send students of the government schools to distant schools rather than keeping them as close to their homes as possible. Property values were flat or falling, homes were difficult to sell, good neighborhoods going from ok to bad to awful, and Coleman A. Young, Mayor, was busy poisoning relations between the city and the 'burbs, not to mention race relations in the city.
My own nieghborhood on the far east side was mostly white when I was very young, but as elsewhere, whites accelerated their departure and blacks arrived to replace them. Memory of the race riots was fresh in the memories of the adults, and the relations b/t blacks and whites often tense, but not always so. In fact, I had numerous black friends until about the time those friends got to high school age at which point guys that I used to play with in the neighborhood and in whose homes I was welcome suddenly were no longer so friendly.
Apparently it was not cool for black kids to be seen with or to hang out with a white one, esp. if his parents are sending him to a private, mostly white school while the number of black kids in the government schools exceeds their percentage among all kids in the city.
It does not surprise me at all that the gun battle described occured. There's plenty of animosity among the African-Americans and plenty of guns and knives, too. One evening, on Balfour, where I lived briefly 1987-1988 and during the summers for the next few years, there was a gun battle that raged up and down the street. That's not so odd for a big American city, but it sure seemed so given that the neighborhood was one where city employees (accountants, cops, etc.) were concentrated. Of course, gunplay occurs daily in many, or all, big American cities.
What makes this gun battle between Muslims and law enforcement so much more serious is the ideological conviction of the Muslims, the tendency of such people to become well organized on account of the authoritarianism and organization inherent to Islam itself, AND the tendency among them to think for the very long term and to plan accordingly. Of course, despotic objectives are in no way limited to African-American Muslim among all Muslims, even if it is true that only a minority (Koran 9: 121-122) of all Muslims are likely to be provocative, aggressive, combative, and violent.
Now, given the ready availability of guns and ammo throughout the USA, the presriptions in Islam for aggression, and the known tendency for homicidal malice among Muslims, it would be SHOCKING if there were not hundreds of such Islamic groups and thousands of individual Muslims, certainly not all of them African-American ones, hoarding weapons and ammo in expectation to turn them out on an oblivious, unprepared populace that is benighted with political correctness and multiculturalism.
Of course, it is rational and plausible to expect there to be an active trade in arms among American Muslims, as among any type of people who harbor malevolent, criminal intent. So also rational and plausible to expect exportation of arms from American Muslims to Muslims in places where weapons are difficult for civilians to obtain or illegal for them to possess or own.
Now, can anyone think of a place where there are lots of Muslims and restrictions upon civilian ownership of firearms? Any place at all?