Recently in converts to Islam Category

Yet another convert to Islam misunderstands her new, peaceful religion, and still no mosque or Islamic school in the U.K. has any program to teach against this understanding of Islam they supposedly reject. "Terror link of 7/7 widow and 'bomb factory,'" by Ted Jeory for the Express, May 19 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

Suspicions have grown that Muslim convert Samantha Lewthwaite, now known as the White Widow due to her fugitive status in East Africa, was actually one of the masterminds behind the killings in 2005. Immediately after the explosions which murdered 52 people on the London transport system, she said she "abhorred" the actions of her dead husband Jermaine Lindsay, whose bomb detonated near King's Cross on the Piccadilly Line.

However, the middle-class Muslim convert from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, has since risen to a senior status in the Al Shabaab movement in Kenya and Somalia, a terror group affiliated to Al Qaeda.

Believed to be behind its funding and propaganda, the 29-year-old has assumed cult status among her jihadi followers for her characteristic street-slang rants at non-Muslim "kuffar".

An arrest warrant was issued for her last May after she failed to appear in court in Kenya to face bomb-making charges.

Her alleged co-conspirators are two other Britons, her second husband Habib Saleh Ghani, from Hounslow, west London and Jermaine Grant, from east London, who remains in custody in Kenya after his arrest in December 2011.

At the time of Grant's arrest, he reportedly told police that Lewthwaite was "the boss".

They are all accused of possessing chemicals and "conspiring to improvise an explosive device with the intent to cause harm to innocent civilians"....

Umar Lee, a convert to Islam from St. Louis, was once enough of an Islamic supremacist to write to a rival: "i could cut your neck with the sword of islam and watch you squeal like a bitch like daniel pearl." In an email exchange with me, he endorsed the death penalty for apostasy.

But now he has left Islam and returned to Christianity. Watch the video; in it he makes many, many important points about how converts to Islam are lied to, and how Islam establishes an empire of fear.

Note especially this, starting at 4:04:

"We can talk about the grievance industry, CAIR, etc., trying to hype up the threat of Islamophobia. Islamophobia is very minor. You want to talk about religious bias? You convert to Christianity in Saudi Arabia, you're murdered. You convert from Islam in so many Muslim countries, it's the death penalty. Why are Muslim societies so afraid of missionaries? Why are Muslim societies so afraid of freedom of speech? Why are Muslim societies so afraid of the Gospel? Why are Muslim societies so afraid of the message of Jesus Christ? If you believe Islam is the truth, why don't you believe Islam can compete in the marketplace of ideas? Obviously you don't, or you wouldn't kill people that convert to Christianity and put missionaries in jail."

Clearly they don't believe Islam can compete in the marketplace of ideas. Just yesterday I offered to debate UC-Berkeley's professor of "Islamophobia," Hatem Bazian. He responded: "Racist are not to be debated they are to be shunned." (Yes, this university professor wrote "racist are." He didn't explain what race jihad terror is. They never do. This "racism" business is just a cover for what Umar Lee says: their knowledge of and fear of the fact that they know their ideas can't compete, or hold up to scrutiny.

Umar: be well, and be safe.

Yet more American Muslims get the crazy idea that Islam calls for violence -- and still no Muslim group has any program to teach against this view of Islam that they supposedly reject. "Two New Jersey Men With Al Qaeda Links Sentenced to Prison," from Reuters, April 15 (thanks to Lookmann):

NEWARK, New Jersey (Reuters) - Two New Jersey men were sentenced in federal court on Monday to spend at least two decades in prison for conspiring to join the al Qaeda-linked militant group al Shabaab and wage a holy war against non-Muslims.

Mohamed Alessa, 23, and Carlos Almonte, 27, were arrested in June 2010 at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport as they were trying to board flights to Egypt, authorities said.

The two men had traveled to Jordan in 2007 to inquire about joining the organization, saved thousands of dollars, practiced tactical maneuvers with paintball guns and acquired knives and night vision equipment, federal prosecutors said.

They bought airline tickets to Egypt, with the intent of traveling on to join the group in Somalia, prosecutors said.

The U.S. State Department considers al Shabaab a foreign terrorist organization.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation got a tip about the two men in 2006, and their conversations were secretly recorded the New York Police Department, prosecutors said.

They pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder persons outside the United States on behalf of al Shabaab. Almonte is from Elmwood Park, New Jersey, and Alessa is from North Bergen, New Jersey.

U.S. District Judge Dickinson Debevoise in Newark sentenced Alessa to 22 years in federal prison and Almonte to 20 years in an all-day hearing in Newark.

At the sentencing, a woman sobbed and shouted, "It is not fair. No justice in this country."

As court officials threatened to remove her, she shouted: "It's not your son!"...

"The boys emerged from adolescence immersed in twin obsessions with Islam and hip-hop music" -- as with John Walker Lindh, the Marin County Mujahid, as well. This story presents them as a "cultural contrast," but actually both Islam and hip-hop offer channels for and justifications of alienation and aggression.

"How three Canadians graduated from a rebellious high school friendship to the world of Islamist terrorism," by Adrian Humphreys, Stewart Bell, Maiya Keidan, and Tom Blackwell for the National Post, April 6 (thanks to Kenneth):

The distressed family of Ali Medlej explained the unexpected death of their son by saying he was killed in a car accident. The truth, as they — and the world — now knows, is more ghastly and perplexing: The young London man died perpetrating January’s terrorist attack on an Algerian gas plant.

The violent end of Ali Medlej, along with Xristos Katsiroubas, his chum from school whom he helped convert to Islam, came not in a car, but in the North African desert in an attack that left 37 hostages dead, most of them incinerated in an explosion that likely also purposely killed the Canadian attackers.

That was their startling end.

Now everyone, even those close to the young men, wonder where their dark odyssey began.

While the geography is somewhat clear — from London to Edmonton to Morocco, Mauritania, Mali and, ultimately, to the ill-fated gas plant in In Amenas, Algeria — it is the psychological journey, from suburban rascals to jihadi commandos, that leaves friends befuddled.

The men, along with Aaron Yoon, who was convicted in Mauritania last year of membership in a terrorist group, were all part of a larger group of friends, mostly Muslim, at London South Collegiate Institute, a high school in the southwestern Ontario city.

The boys emerged from adolescence immersed in twin obsessions with Islam and hip-hop music.

And if those influences offer a cultural contrast, the lives of the three men portray a similar duality, said family, many friends and former schoolmates, some of whom were close to one or more of the men since kindergarten.

Ali, with most of those in his clique, for instance, devoutly attended prayers but also, while in Grade 12, got into trouble for taking a fake gun to a neighbouring school to settle a dispute with a student there, friends said. And although dying in a bloody al-Qaeda attack, in Grade 9, he once mocked the Taliban.

He devoutly attended Muslim prayers but was also threatening violence? How could it be? What a puzzling duality! Who ever heard of devout, praying Muslims threatening violence? Could Ali have been influenced by Qur'an passages such as "slay the pagans wherever you find them" (Qur'an 9:5) or "When you meet the unbelievers, strike at their necks (47:4)? Of course not! It would be "Islamophobic" even to think such a thing.

Xristos, in turn, was a late convert to Islam after being raised in a Greek-Canadian Orthodox Christian home and, with the zeal of a new convert, announced he was to be called Mustafa.

“Xris [prounounced Chris] was a much more serious Muslim than Ali,” said Justin VanderTuin, 24, who was on the high school football team with Ali. “Ali certainly was not. He was a kid who drank and smoked, but I never saw Xris with any of those things.”

And Aaron, a Korean-Canadian Catholic who also converted in his teens, under influence from Ali, shunned schoolwork and reading but ended up studying the Koran and Arabic at an Islamic centre in North Africa.

“I was surprised when I read about Aaron studying Islamic texts — Aaron, study?” said a former classmate at Cartier Public School. “He could never even remember when Confederation was.”...

But former classmates remember Ali.

He was known as dynamic, loud, often funny but also remembered for slamming his fist into a locker in frustration and for being physically intimidating.

One classmate recalls Ali acting out a scene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Grade 10 English and turning it into a mock fight to the amusement of the students, although the teacher was unimpressed.

When the class wrote their literacy test, Ali couldn’t be bothered to read the instructions and just wrote an unrelated essay on gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur.

Several students described Ali as a bully — one calling him a “wannabe thug.”

“He was definitely a bully in the sense that if he thought you were weak, he didn’t respect you,” said Mr. VanderTuin.

But Devon Abrahams, 24, remembers Ali interceding when a classmate was being picked on in 2006.

“Ali stopped him,” Mr. Abrahams said. “Ali was a good guy, stood up for a friend of mine, got high marks in school but hid it from his peers.”

Several classmates said Ali was smart but liked to hide it.

“He could be kind of an ass sometimes,” said Osrenko Jovic, a Western University business graduate now running his own company. “It depends who he was with. It depends which crowd it was.

“I just don’t know what the hell happened, to be honest,” he said. “When we all left high school, that’s when he started to change.”

Xristos Katsiroubas’ religious roots are clear from his given name, which is the Greek word for Christ. He converted to Islam about 2004 and shunned his name, introducing himself as Mustafa.

“I think his mom was concerned about the people he was hanging out with, namely my group of friends, but they weren’t radicals, just troublemakers I guess,” said a man who was best friends with him since elementary school. Like some people interviewed, he did not want his name published and associated with terrorism.

“I think he started going to the mosque because he was close with Ali. I think after a little while he felt at home there.

“It was a thing for a lot of my friends to go to the mosque together. I think Xris just went along one time and eventually decided he liked it.”

The group, however, showed little ambition about the future. That, more than the group’s growing interest in Islam, became a wedge between himself and his friends.

“I wanted to move on to bigger and better things and they weren’t interested in doing much with their life,” he said.

The conversion of Aaron Yoon, now 24, came as a surprise to his family, but seemed to bring him a measure of calm, his brother said. He planned to attend a London Catholic high school, although he eventually linked up with Ali and Xristos at South Collegiate.

He was an indifferent student with a propensity for silliness, said a former elementary school classmate.

His conversion, however, seemed to ignite his academic curiosity.

The three, despite the diverse backgrounds, were part of a clique dominated by Muslim students of Middle Eastern descent, part of a subtle racial division at the school, a classmate said.

“They had their own little group. I was more at the side of the school with all the skaters and jocks. All the ‘inter-racial people’ were at the front of the school — that’s where they hung out.”

Mr. Jovic said of Aaron: “He was always smiling, always a nice guy. Apparently he started changing as well after high school.”

The end of high school did not move the boys into higher education.

Instead, they embraced their religion more publicly: Ali started wearing traditional Islamic garb after high school and Xristos started growing a beard.

In 2007, they moved to Edmonton in search of work, but ended up in trouble there, the CBC reported.

Their landlady ended up evicting them from a rented condominium for causing damage, including breaking windows and punching holes in doors. Even worse, court records indicate they and another friend from London were convicted of stealing groceries in March, 2007. (London police currently have an arrest warrant for that friend, Benjamin Thomas, 24, for failing to comply with conditions for a shoplifting conviction in the Ontario city.)

“Ali was insistent that we rent them a place because they were in a bind. I kind of felt like helping them,” CBC quoted their landlady as saying.

Afterward, they travelled to Morocco and made their way to Mauritania. At least one of them, Aaron, pursued studies there and investigators suspect the others may have found their way to an Islamic school or centre that facilitated their entry into a jihadist group.

Aaron went in 2010 to study the Koran and Arabic, his brother said. He was reunited with Ali and Xristos in Morocco, he said.

Aaron lost contact with his two friends in 2011 when he was arrested in Mauritania for involvement in a terrorist group.

However they were attracted to North Africa and however they financed the trip, it was a journey from which Ali and Xristos would not return.

Jean-Luc Marret, a senior fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique, a Paris-based public policy think tank, said some Islamic schools in the area serve as recruiting grounds for armed Islamist factions, but the process is informal.

“What you call a madrassa can be a very mainstream organization, but with one individual inside doing radical proselytism,” he said. “You need to have the chance to meet someone, then convince him about your motivation without being monitored by the police.”...

Why don't the people in the madrassa who oppose this sort of thing (and they're the vast majority, we're always told) put a stop to it?

Yet still no Islamic organization in the U.S. offers any strategy to prevent "radicalization" of converts. Now, why is that? "2 of 4 Calif. Terror Suspects Were New Islamic Converts," by Gillian Flaccus for the Associated Press, November 21:

(UPLAND, Calif.) — Three of the young men swept up in a federal terrorism probe grew up in the Southern California suburbs where they played pick-up basketball, ran for homecoming court and sparred in video games with neighborhood kids — a far cry from the wannabe terrorists described by the FBI.

Two of the men converted to Islam less than two years ago and the third, an American-born Vietnamese Muslim, drifted into the orbit of the alleged terror cell as recently as September after a game of paintball. He also is an unemployed high school dropout and new father.

The rapid evolution from suburban teen to aspiring jihadist alleged in court documents blindsided family members, but experts who study homegrown terrorism said the case highlights the susceptibility of new converts to radicalization, particularly among the young.

Conversion to Islam requires just a single statement of faith, but the newly faithful must then choose among a universe of competing interpretations of Islam, many overtly political and easily available on the Internet.

“To convert to Islam you just have to make one statement of faith: ‘There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his messenger.’ But these people did that and then they feel they are Muslim,” said Muhamad Ali, an assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, and an expert in Islamic studies.

They don't just "feel" they are Muslim. If they say the shahada in front of a Muslim male witness, then they are Muslim, by every definition of Islam.

“They might pray five times a day, they might fast, but they don’t see Islam in a comprehensive way. Education and understanding are critical and one of the challenges in the United States is to make sure that these converts are in the right hands.”

What are the "right hands"? What is a "comprehensive way"? In any case, in reality, no mosque or Islamic school in the U.S. offers any program to keep converts away from the al-Qaeda understanding of Islam.

According to court documents, the four men arrested late last week in what the FBI called a homegrown terror cell weren’t in the right hands.

Two of the men, Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales, 21, and Ralph Deleon, 23, converted after meeting 34-year-old Sohiel Omar Kabir in an Ontario, Calif., hookah bar. The naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan introduced them to the radical Islamist doctrine of the U.S.-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed last year in an American airstrike in Yemen, according to court files unsealed this week.

Kabir later returned to Afghanistan but continued to talk with the Southern California men on Skype. He was taken into custody last weekend.

The fourth defendant, 21-year-old Arifeen David Gojali, joined the group in September after they played paintball together to sharpen their skills, according to court documents.

The father of a baby girl had moved out of his parents’ home two months ago and drifted away as he fell under the sway of Deleon, who was a charismatic and popular worshipper at the mosque the two attended, Gojali’s younger sister told The Associated Press....

All four men are facing charges of providing material support to terrorists, which can carry a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

Authorities won’t say how the investigation began, but at least two members of the group shared their beliefs on Facebook and held Skype phone calls with Kabir — all of which was recorded by an FBI informant or captured by agents monitoring their activity.

Covert FBI agents had conversations with Santana online, where he expressed his support of jihad and desire to join al-Qaida, authorities said....

“The imams should reach out. They have to make the mosques interesting and attractive to young generations and try to understand their psychology, try to address their concerns and have a dialogue,” said Ali, the UC Riverside professor.

“They cannot just say ‘Islam is a religion of peace’ and do nothing. To me, this is a really a challenge for imams, to really address the issue,” he said. “They cannot deny it’s happening, even though it’s a very small minority.”

Indeed. But they will not be doing anything by making mosques "interesting and attractive to young generations." They would have to undertake a radical reinterpretation of the passages of the Qur'an and Hadith that enjoin violence against unbelievers, and a rejection of the mainstream Islamic understanding of those passages. And that is not going to happen.

In one, he recalls “glorious battles that took place in the early days of Islam between truth and falsehood.” Yet Islam is the one element of the jihadis' motives and goals that our government and law enforcement officials have determined to ignore. "Briton stars in Somali terror videos," by Duncan Gardham in the Telegraph, November 20 (thanks to David):

Terrorists in Somalia have produced a series of full-length documentaries featuring a masked narrator with a British accent as part of a publicity drive designed to attract Western recruits.

The videos feature suicide bombers, the corpses of African peace keepers and describe military operations by the militant group al-Shabaab, which is closely linked to al-Qaeda.

The footage is the latest addition to a well-oiled media machine which has attracted nearly 16,000 followers to its English-language Twitter account since it was set up last December.

It is unclear whether the reporter is the same man behind the Twitter account and a press office that has churned out online press releases giving updates on battles and “martyred” fighters in recent months.

MI5 is concerned that the conflict has drawn in dozens of young Britons and last September Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, warned that it was “only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab.”

Earlier this year three men from East London were jailed for channeling thousands of pounds to three associates who are still with militants in the East African conflict zone.

Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, is also thought to be with al-Shabaab in Somalia.

In the first 32-minute video released by al-Shabaab’s media arm, al-Kataib, last November, called “The Burundian Bloodbath” the reporter, dressed in army fatigues, visits the scene of a battle in which he claims 101 soldiers died.

Carrying a microphone, he compares the battle at Dayniile with the “glorious battles that took place in the early days of Islam between truth and falsehood” and interviews al-Shabaab fighters who took part....

This kind of thing is common, and yet witless mainstream media reporters still swallow uncritically what smoothly deceitful Islamic supremacist spokesmen tell them about jihad.

More on this story. "California terrorist suspects talked of 'violent jihad,' FBI says," from the Los Angeles Times, November 20:

California men charged with plotting to join Al Qaeda and the Taliban discussed "committing violent jihad," according to the criminal complaint in the terrorist case released Monday.

In all, four men with Southern California ties were charged in the international terrorist plot that authorities say stretched from the Inland Empire to Afghanistan.

Sohiel Omar Kabir, 34, a former Pomona resident, allegedly left the United States last year and traveled to Afghanistan in July to set up terrorist training with Al Qaeda and Taliban members, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday in federal court.

Kabir is accused of converting Ontario resident Ralph Deleon, 23, and Upland resident Alejandro Santana, 21, to "radical and violent Islamic doctrine," according to the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside. The men allegedly sought to target Americans.

Santana and Kabir allegedly posted terrorist audio and video files on the Facebook pages and communicated via Skype when Kabir was overseas, federal authorities said in the complaint.

Kabir, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, served in the Air Force from 2000 to 2001, according to court records filed with the complaint. The records did not specify why Kabir spent only a year in the service....

"At various times," the complaint alleged, "Santana and Deleon discussed their preferred roles in committing violent jihad," according to the complaint. Santana allegedly said he wanted to be a sniper, and Deleon said he wanted to be on the "front lines."

The men allegedly went to shooting ranges, where they practiced firing semiautomatic weapons, according to the complaint.

In September, Santana and DeLeon recruited Riverside resident Arifeen David Gojali, 23, to travel overseas with them and join Kabir for terrorist training, according to federal authorities. Gojali is a U.S. citizen....

Raheem and Gojali: still more misunderstanders of Islam

"Evidence in this case demonstrates that the defendants used the word “jihad” to refer to armed combat." These guys must be greasy Islamophobes. Don't they know that jihad is just about paying your taxes and getting the kids to school? Ahmed Rehab, call your office!

"FBI: Four Local Men Arrested in Terrorist Plot to Kill Americans," from KTLA News, November 19 (thanks to J.M.):

RIVERSIDE -- Four Southern California men have been charged with plotting to join Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan in order to kill Americans.

According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, the defendants conspired to provide material support to terrorists in preparation for or in carrying out: conspiracy to kill, kidnap, maim, or injure persons and damage property in a foreign country, killing and attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States, killing nationals of the United States, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States; and bombing places of public use and government facilities.

The defendants, listed below, are also known by alias identities listed in the criminal complaint.

Sohiel Omar Kabir, 34, a former resident of Pomona and naturalized United States citizen, born in Afghanistan.

• Ralph Deleon, 23, of Ontario, a lawful permanent resident alien, born in the Philippines.

• Miguel Alejandro Santana Vidriales (further described herein and in the criminal complaint as “Santana”), 21, of Upland, a lawful permanent resident, born in Mexico and whose application for citizenship is pending in the United States.

• Arifeen David Gojali, 21, of Riverside, a United States citizen.

The complaint, which was unsealed today during the defendants’ initial appearance in U.S. District Court, alleges that in 2010, Kabir introduced Deleon and Santana to radical and violent Islamic doctrine and various extremist material, including essays and lectures by now-deceased Al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula leader, Anwar Al-Awlaqi.

Kabir traveled overseas in December 2011 and later to Afghanistan in July 2012, where he continued to communicate with Santana and DeLeon to arrange for their travel to join him in Afghanistan, according to the complaint.

The complaint alleges that Kabir told Santana and Deleon that he had made contacts with individuals who have connections to terrorist organizations.

Kabir further said that he would wait for their arrival before departing to a training location in Afghanistan and that, when they arrived, they would meet “the students” and “the professors.”

According to the complaint, the term “students” referred to the Taliban and the term “professors” referred to Al-Qa’ida.

The complaint alleges that Santana and Deleon told a confidential source working for the FBI, identified in the complaint as the “CS,” that they planned to travel to Afghanistan to engage in “violent jihad.”

In addition, the defendants described potential targets for violent attacks, including overseas American military personnel and bases, according to the complaint.

Evidence in this case demonstrates that the defendants used the word “jihad” to refer to armed combat, according to the complaint....

For example, Santana stated that he had experience with firearms and that he wanted to become a sniper. Deleon stated he wanted to be on the front lines with a second choice of explosives. Both men also indicated they were willing to kill an enemy.

In September 2012, Deleon and Santana recruited defendant Gojali to join them and to travel overseas to commit violent jihad, as alleged in the complaint.

The complaint further alleges that defendants Santana, Deleon and Gojali made plans to join Kabir in Afghanistan to attend terrorist training, and that they arranged travel logistics, including flight arrangements and required documentation.

The complaint details the defendants’ activity in raising funds for their travel to Afghanistan and their discussion of various cover stories and code words they could use to conceal their true intentions when traveling abroad.

The complaint further alleges that Santana, Deleon, and Gojali conducted preliminary training in southern California at firearms and paintball facilities to prepare for terrorist training overseas.

Defendants Santana, Deleon and Gojali were apprehended on Friday without incident by members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force and had their initial appearance before a federal magistrate this afternoon in U.S. District Court in Riverside, California....

Aminat Kurbanova's conversion to Islam was fatal for her and seven others. The official dogma in the West is that those who do violence in the name of Islam misunderstand its peaceful teachings. Yet no Muslim organization anywhere in the West has any program to teach against the understanding of Islam that led Aminat Kurbanova to commit mass murder. What's more, she probably chose to murder Sheikh Said Atsayev and those with him because he preached against violent Islam -- which fact is not an encouragement for Muslim reformers.

"Russian Islamic convert kissed her daughter goodbye and blew herself up at cleric's home," by Mark Duell for the Daily Mail, November 19:

Brought up as an Orthodox Christian by her mother, Aminat Kurbanova looked a picture of happiness at her wedding nine years ago - marrying the man with whom she had fallen in love at drama school.

But she converted to Islam in 2007 and three months ago walked into the house of a Muslim cleric in Dagestan, Russia, wearing a 3lb bomb, and blew herself up - killing eight people including her.

Once a stage actress, the 29-year-old mother had transformed into a Muslim suicide bomber. The blast shocked Russia but her mother Vera Saprighina insists she was ‘a kind person, not a monster’.

Of course.

Kurbanova was brought up in Makhachkala, Dagestan, and gained top marks at the city’s arts and drama college - where she met her future husband Marat Kurbanov, reported the Sunday Times.

The couple married in 2003 and she gave birth to a daughter, Malika, two years later. In 2006 the couple were introduced to Islam by Marat’s brother Rustam - and Kurbanov converted a year later.

‘She said she had finally found the right religion for her,’ her mother Vera Saprighina told the Sunday Times. ‘Before long, both left the theatre because dancing and acting are considered un-Islamic.’

But Rustam was killed in a police house raid on suspected militants in 2008. It shocked the couple. Marat left home, never to come back, and is thought to have joined militants to avenge the death.

However 12 months later, Marat also died when police opened fire on a car that did not stop at a checkpoint - and Kurbanova ‘often said she wished she had died with him’, Ms Saprighina stated....

Kurbanova started to earn money as an Islamic dress seamstress and became more religious. She began to be watched by security services, who allegedly searched her flat and questioned her after the death of her husband....

Kurbanova walked into the home of Sheikh Said Atsayev, 74, after kissing her daughter goodbye and blew herself up with a steel-bolt bomb, killing seven others - including the cleric himself and a 12-year-old boy who was there with his father....

At least 12 religious leaders have been killed over the last two years in Dagestan - allegedly by militants angry that they are too friendly with the authorities. Atsayev could have been targeted because he spoke against violent Islam....

Muslim converts in Somalia imbibing their new religion's traditions of peace and tolerance. "Somalia Militants Use ‘Ex-Christians’ To Bomb Kenya Churches," by Joseph DeCaro for BosNewsLife, November 4 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

NAIROBI, KENYA (BosNewsLife)– Somalia's militant Islamist group al-Shabab uses converts from religious Christianity to Islam to carry out attacks against churches in neighboring Kenya as part of what they call a "holy war", or Jihad, officials said in comments monitored by BosNewsLife Sunday, November 4.

Al-Shabab, which still remains influential in southern Somalia despite suffering setbacks, launches border attacks into Kenya with "poor youths from Christian backgrounds," confirmed Reverend Wellington Mutiso, head of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya.

"It is the recent converts who (are) being used to bomb churches," he said. "It is not members of the Somali, Boran, or Swahili communities, which have many Muslims, but the other tribes which have been known to follow Christianity" as a religion, Mutiso added in published remarks.

Analysts aren't surprised about the trend. Godffery Ngumi, senior lecturer at the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Kenya's Kenyatta University, said recent converts can be "easily manipulated" because they "know very little about their new religion."

And if they knew a great deal about it, what is there within it that would stop them from doing this?

The use of converts from traditional Christian peoples makes it extremely difficult to identify and stop would-be attackers who can seamlessly blend into any Christian congregation....

Although pro-jihad propagandists routinely smear counter-jihadists as somehow akin to Nazis, the real convergence is between Nazis and jihadists, going all the way back to Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who lived in Berlin and made Arabic pro-Nazi broadcasts during World War II. Today neo-Nazis favor the global jihad, and many Nazis convert to Islam.

"German Neo-Nazi turned jihadist who went to fight in Afghanistan admits he made a 'big mistake' after wife misses supermarkets and her mobile phone," by Sam Webb in the Daily Mail, November 3 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

A former neo-Nazi who joined the Taliban and attacked an American base near the Afghan-Pakistan border has told a German court that he made a 'terrible mistake'.

The German man, who was only named as Thomas U, spoke of his regret over signing up for the German Taliban Mujahidin (DTM) and travelling with his wife to the war-torn Afgfhan-Pakistan border to become a terrorist, according to The Times.

His catalogue of complaints over his poorly thought-out decision included his fellow combatants' drug habits, a lack of hygiene, contracting hepititis A and his friends being horribly killed by Pakistani forces helicopters.

His wife also missed creature comforts such as shopping at the supermarket and her mobile phone.

The couple escaped to Istanbul, Turkey, in 2010 after his wife became pregnant and were immediately arrested. She gave birth in a Turkish prison.

Thomas U, 27, is accused of being a member of the DTM from December 2009 until July 10 and taking part in an attack on an American base.

He paid 5000 euros to travel to the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2009 and was trained in the use of firearms and explosives.

He even appeared in a Taliban propaganda video and boasted that the attack had 'disrupted the Christmas spirit' of the American base.

But in April 2010 DTM's German co-founder Eric Breininger and a Dutch national only named as Danny R were killed in an attack by Pakistani forces and the failed terrorist became disillusioned with violence and came to regret his choices....

In a court statement he said: 'It was a terrible experience. I was shocked at the lack of hygiene, people were spitting and vomiting.

'My wife was very unhappy because traditionally women are treated badly.'

After the couple escaped, he spoke of his relief at escaping the hellish conditions he had endured.

'Finally I could hold hands with my wife in public,' he said.

Pamela Geller says it best: "But it's islamophobia -- that's the real problem. Just look past the hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, it's easy, the enemedia does it all the time -- nothing to see here, folks, move along to your Hamas-CAIR sensitivity training session."

"'I'm ready to become a suicide bomber': Chilling confession of 7/7 attacker's widow," by Nick Owens in the Mirror, September 8 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The fugitive widow of 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay is preparing to end her own life in a suicide attack.

Samantha Lewthwaite ­revealed her horrific plan in a chilling poem she posted online which tells how she is tired of life on the run and is “breathing ­Jihad”.

She writes: “I’d rather be ­receiving my martyrdom, think I’ll get ready... and buy a vest.”

The threat comes as police step up their search for Lewthwaite, 28, known as the White Widow, who has been missing for nearly a year.

The Sunday ­Mirror can ­reveal that ­detectives in South Africa, who are leading the hunt, are investigating new intelligence that she is hiding out with five ­terrorists in Central Kenya.

A source said: “The reports are being treated very seriously. They ­indicate Lewthwaite is part of an active cell, and there is a risk they are now preparing to mount new attacks.”

She posted her poem, called Maybe Paradise Tomorrow, using a Twitter account.

In the verses she pays tribute to Aboud Rogo Mohammed, the former leader of Al-Qaeda-linked terror faction Al-Shabaab, killed last week in a Kenya drive-by shooting.

One verse indicates a vow to join him in ­“Jannah” (Islamic paradise).

She writes: “So maybe ­tomorrow it will be ­Jannah, I look around at how beautiful Jihad is, It’s alive in Kenya, It’s alive in me, And I’m breathing Jihad, It’s my time.”

A reference to black clouds echoes a note found when police raided her Kenyan hideout last year.

And she repeatedly ­mentions Shahada, the Muslim creed which says : “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God”.

Also found was a smashed laptop containing the outline of a book, plus notes, and a poem dedicated to Osama bin Laden.

Three months ago we revealed how Lewthwaite, whose husband Jermaine Lindsay blew up a ­Piccadilly Line train during the 7/7 atrocity, was using a Twitter account to add posts to a terrifying blog.

The university dropout is a wanted woman because of claims that she took part in a grenade attack in Kenya which killed three football fans watching a Euro 2012 game in a bar....

Still more Muslims misunderstand the Qur'an's assurance that there is "no compulsion in religion." "Almost 300 Christian children abducted and forcibly converted to Islam in Bangladesh," by Nozrul Islam for Asia Times, September 6 (thanks to David):

Dhaka (AsiaNews) - In Bangladesh, Christian children from Tripuri tribes have been taken away from their villages and forcibly converted to Islam. Local Catholic sources, who asked their names be withheld, told AsiaNews that almost 300 children have been taken to madrassas (Islamic schools).

The story is the same. So-called intermediaries, who are also ethnic Tripuri, visit poverty-stricken communities where they convince families to send their children to a mission hostel, charging between 6,000 and 15,000 taka (US$ 500 to 1,200) for school and board. After pocketing the money, the intermediaries sell the children to Islamic schools elsewhere in the country.

The latest case involved 11 children, ten boys and a girl, from Thanchi, Ruma and Lama in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Their story has a happy ending though. After six months of threats and violence, the children were able to escape thanks Hotline Human Rights Trust, a Dhaka-based civil rights organisation that defends minorities run by a Catholic woman, Rosaline Costa.

Tripuri are one of the many tribal groups found in Bangladesh. Most are Christian, both Catholic and Protestants, especially in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, in south-eastern Bangladesh.

Radical Muslims are engaged in a campaign against Christian missionaries whom they accuse of proselytising and forcibly converting others in order to create a Christian majority in the area so that it can be annexed to India.

In the latest case, the first eight boys were taken in January and February and brought to the Darul Huda Islami School in Mia Para village (Gazipur). The girl was placed in a madrassa (whose name she could not tell) in Muhammadpur, Dhaka. The other two boys were brought to another Darul Huda Islami in Maddha Badda (Gulshan, Dhaka).

Their days included Arabic lessons (8-12 AM), Qur'an reading (Nurani Shikkha, 2-5 PM) and five daily prayers.

In their respective madrassas, the children found other tribal Christians, many even younger themselves. They also saw acts of physical violence when children missed prayers or refused to take part in a lesson. In fact, after she was rescued, the girl showed scars to the hand, where she was struck with a cane.

In June, the desire to escape was kindled when imams announced that the boys would be circumcised, and that if they were ready to give their lives for Islam, they would be compensated with beheshta or heaven since no other religion could lead them there.

Scared, the first eight boys asked a Hindu family that lived near the school for help. They told their stories, asking them to contact their parents. When the latter found out what had happened to their children, they contacted the Hotline Trust to save them. Four boys escaped on 4 July; the other four on 13 July.

When the other two (somewhat older) boys found out about their escape, they too fled and contacted the Hotline Trust on their own.

The girl's rescue was a bit more complicated. She was saved only after another girl escaped and told people in her village what had happened. The girl's parents then contacted the madrassa huju or teacher asking him to let her go. The latter said the father had to come and get her.

At the school, the teacher tried to provoke the father, denigrating the Bible and accusing Christians of adultery and immorality. The father put up with the insults and eventually took his daughter home on 13 July.

No Compulsion In Religion Update from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. And that is just what Western Islamic apologists would say about this if any Western reporter had the guts and honesty to ask them about it (which they do not have): they'd say that the Qur'an says that there is no compulsion in religion (2:256) and that therefore this has nothing to do with Islam. And yet forced conversions keep happening in Muslim countries -- why do so many Muslims misunderstand 2:256?

In reality, what is forcible conversion to non-Muslims is free conversion to Muslims. Remember Centanni and Wiig, the journalists who were kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam -- even though their conversions were obviously coerced, their captors made them say that they were converting freely, and the captors probably believed that themselves. This is, after all, the same mindset that considers that people who convert so as to escape the deprivations of dhimmitude are converting freely as well.

"2,000 minorities girls converted to Islam forcibly: report," by Aliza Mirza for the Daily Times, September 5 (thanks to David):

LAHORE: As many as 2,000 women and girls from various minority sects were forcibly converted to Islam through rape, torture and kidnappings, while 161 people were charged with blasphemy in 2011, according to a report by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC).

SPARC released the report on Tuesday at a press conference at a hotel.

The report read that minorities make up three to four percent of the country’s population but remain sidelined in state policies. In 2011, extremists killed governor Salmaan Taseer and federal minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti, as both were advocating minority rights by calling for amendments in the country’s controversial blasphemy law.

After the 2011 floods, 130,000 Hindus were forced to leave their homes and 86,500 ended up on streets of various cities in Sindh. Whereas 27 Hindu children were kidnapped for ransom from different parts of northern Sindh. The primary school enrolment rate of scheduled caste Hindu girls is only 10.2 percent. Ahmadi students have been especially targeted by the hate campaigns. In Hafizabad, 10 Ahmadi students, including seven girls and a teacher, were expelled from school on account of their religious affiliation....

And how her conversion to Islam improved her life! "'Black Widow' Bomber Was Actress, Dancer," by Nikolaus von Twickel in the Moscow Times, August 31 (thanks to Wimpy):

The female suicide bomber that killed prominent Dagestani cleric Said Atsayev earlier this week had been a theater actress and member of a breakdance troupe before joining the republic's Islamist movement, national media reported Thursday.

Aminat Kurbanova, born with the ethnic Russian surname Saprykina, graduated from Dagestan State University's drama school in Makhachkala and went on to work in the city's Russian-language Gorky Theater, Kommersant reported, citing an unspecified law enforcement source.

Together with her first husband, fellow actor Marat Kurbanov, she also was a member of a local breakdance ensemble that called itself "Snatch," the report said.

A number of videos of Snatch performances are available on YouTube, but none show female participants.

A video published by the Lifenews.ru tabloid website showed a woman resembling Kurbanova performing a classical dance with a man at an unidentified location.

Reports said Kurbanova converted to Islam after marriage and became a member of Dagestan's radical Islamist insurgency after her husband was killed in an anti-terrorism operation in 2009.

Kurbanova subsequently married twice, and her last husband, Magomed Ilyasov, died when handling a self-made bomb, the state-run RIADagestan.ru news site reported.

Ilyasov is suspected of organizing a double suicide attack that killed two policemen and injured almost 30 in the Dagestani town of Gubden in February 2011. The two bombers were later identified as Vitaly Razdobudko and his wife Maria Khoroshyova, thought to be the first ethnic Slavs to carry out suicide attacks.

Investigators had put Kurbanova on a list of potentially dangerous persons last year, and she was erroneously thought to be a participant in a twin suicide car bomb that killed at least 13 people and wounded over 100 in Makhachkala this May, the Kommersant report said.

On Tuesday, Kurbanova detonated a bomb fixed to her body while posing as a pilgrim wishing to meet Atsayev in his native village of Chirkei. Atsayev was a leading representative of the region's traditional wing of Islam.

The growing number of converted Muslims identified as terrorists prompted calls for special surveillance Thursday. Izvestia quoted an unspecified law enforcement source as saying intelligence services could monitor all of the country's female converts....

Naaah. That would be "Islamophobic."

Non-Muslims know well that only greasy Islamophobes believe that Islam is anything but a Religion of Peace. Yet somehow a steady stream of converts to the religion keep misunderstanding it as enjoining them to wage war against infidels. Yet nary a single Islamic organization in the U.S., Canada or Europe has a program to prevent converts and other young Muslims from misunderstanding Islam in this way.

"The Canadian who converted to jihad: Boxer turned militant killed in Dagestan," by Stewart Bell in the National Post, August 20 (thanks to all who sent this in):

In the video he shot inside his hut in the mountains of Dagestan last winter, William Plotnikov narrated as he panned from the black flag of jihad to three bearded rebels and their assault rifles.

Then he turned the camera on himself.

“I ask Allah that the next season he’ll give us the opportunity to kill as many kafirs [non-believers] as we can, just to shred them to pieces,” William said. “Allah is almighty.”

Watching the clip on the computer in his apartment north of Toronto last week, Vitaly Plotnikov looked both heartbroken and perplexed. It was hard for him to accept that this was his son.

“It’s just like a different person to me,” he said.

Russian security forces announced last month that they had killed William, a 23-year-old Canadian, during a gun battle in Dagestan. Since then, the Canadian government has been trying to verify the Russians’ account.

But in an interview with the National Post, Mr. Plotnikov confirmed William’s death and spoke for the first time about his son’s rapid transformation from Toronto teenager and champion boxer to Muslim convert and jihadist fighter.

What seemed to amaze Mr. Plotnikov most was how fast it all happened. His son only became interested in Islam in 2009, he said. Within a year, he had left Canada and by July he was dead. He had gone from convert to martyr in less than three years.

He is not the first radicalized Canadian to die under such circumstances, but he is believed to be the first Canadian convert to die fighting in the name of jihad— all the others having been born into their faith. His father said William became so radicalized he did not even consider the other Muslims he met to be true Muslims. He claimed that Canada and the U.S. were a source of evil for Muslims.

“How can the mind of a person be changed in such a short period of time?” Mr. Plotnikov asked inside the York Region apartment where he keeps William’s boxing medals in a copper trophy on a shelf....

How indeed? Intelligence and law enforcement officials are forbidden to investigate the true answer to that question, so they stumble along in the dark, muttering about how poverty causes terrorism. The consequences of this -- a catastrophic jihad attack that they were prevented from heading off by politically correct willful blindness about Islam -- have already come to pass at Fort Hood, and will again.

How is it that this convert to Islam came to believe that murdering Infidels by the hundreds would please Allah? Why didn't anyone in the Muslim community explain to her that this idea represented a drastic Misunderstanding of Islam? Why does no one ask these questions, despite the fact that these Misunderstanders of Islam keep proliferating? Why does no non-Muslim authority ever call Muslim communities to account for doing nothing about this "radicalization"? Why does no non-Muslim authority ever determine that non-Muslims are going to have to fight this "radicalization" themselves and enforce their own laws before it's too late? "Fugitive Samantha Lewthwaite - the 'white widow' of 7/7 - writes chilling online blog," from the Sunday Mirror, July 1 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

The widow of one of the 7/7 bombers is writing a chilling web diary while on the run from police after being named as the prime suspect for a deadly terror attack in Kenya.

In the haunting blog, Samantha Lewthaite, whose husband Jermaine Lindsay blew up a Piccadilly Line train during the London attacks in 2005, says “fear can make you do many things” and warns she faces “many more challenges” in the months ahead.

Her blog Fears and Tears: the Confessions of a Female Muhajid is the first time Lewthaite, 28, has made any attempt to communicate with the outside world since she fled to Africa.

Its emergence comes amid a worldwide search for Lewthwaite – dubbed the “White Widow” – as she is hunted over claims she took part in a grenade attack in Kenya which killed three football fans watching the Italy versus England Euro 2012 game in a bar last Sunday.

Just three days before the blast she posted a lengthy message on her blog admitting she had “no regrets” about converting to Islam and waging Jihad.

She wrote: “My decision to revert to Islam is the most precious gift that my maker has bestowed upon me.

Samantha Lewthwaite with a friend Party snap: Samantha with a friend before she became an Islamic extremist

“From a previous life of sin and worshiping of worldly things I have lived for many years now as Muslim content with serving Allah with the knowledge that I have a place in Jannah [Paradise].”

Her rambling message goes on: “Like many revertees I have been tested and challenged but each time Allah has guided me towards the right path and ensured my faith in my religion remains constant.

“During the month of April and May I faced a great challenges (sic). Some friends have told me I have over-reacted because I’m a woman and weak.

“Yes, I am woman but I am woman who believes in Jihad and supremacy of Islam.

“With all this pressure I broke down in tears... Jihad is an obligation that we must accept – so today I’m over my fear and my tears are dry.”

The extraordinary diary has appeared on the website of the Muslim Youth Center – the Kenyan arm of Islamic militant group Al-Shabaab. On the morning of the attack in Kenya a message was posted on the site saying: “BOOM!!! Mujahideen making music.”

Hints about an attack were also posted on the MYC’s Twitter account, saying: “Tick tock there goes the count-down for the kuffar...”

It appeared alongside an image of a woman Hamas fighter brandishing an assault rifle.

Lewthwaite, originally from Aylesbury, Bucks, has been on the run since last year when police foiled a plot to blow up Western hotels in Mombasa.

She was charged in December with plotting to kill hundreds of British tourists after police found weapons and a bomb-making factory in her safe house, which also acted as a makeshift bank for the group.

Lewthwaite was released and is thought to have taken refuge in Somalia before her return to Kenya. In March the MYC announced that they were helping to shield her. Then, last week, officials in Africa said the mother of three was spotted near the nightclub targeted in the bomb attack.

A grenade was thrown into the Jericho Beer Garden, which was packed with tourists watching England play Italy. A young boy was among the three dead.

University dropout Lewthwaite is being hunted by the CIA, Kenyan police and Scotland Yard, which has a team in Nairobi to assist with the search....

How did he become "radicalised"? What steps are Muslims and non-Muslims taking to prevent more converts to Islam from misunderstanding their faith that we all must believe is peaceful on pain of charges of "Islamophobia"? Why, nothing, nothing at all, but that doesn't bother anyone. It's Saturday night! Have a drink! More on this story. "Al-Qaeda plotting to bomb US plane," from AFP, July 1 (thanks to Kenneth):

LONDON: Al-Qaeda is plotting a terrorist attack on a US airliner, Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported, citing intelligence sources.

The broadsheet said Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had recruited a Norwegian Muslim convert and given him terrorist training in Yemen, and that the group were believed to have selected a US passenger jet as a target.

“The Norwegian recruit goes under the Islamic name of Muslim Abu Abdurrahman,” the newspaper said.

“He is understood to be in his thirties and a ’clean skin’, with no previous criminal record. He converted in 2008 and quickly became radicalised.

“He later travelled to Yemen, where he has spent several months, to complete his training.”

The CIA foiled a similar AQAP plot to blow up a US-bound airliner in May, reportedly using a double agent who infiltrated the group and volunteered for the suicide attack.

AQAP has been linked to the 2009 Christmas plot in which a bomb hidden in a Nigerian attacker’s underwear failed to detonate on a plane bound for Detroit.

It is also suspected of having a hand in a 2010 attempt to blow up cargo planes heading to the United States with explosives concealed in printer cartridges. -- AFP

Here again, we see the human cost of misunderstanding what we all know, on pain of "Islamophobia" charges, is a Religion of Peace. Yet Islamic leaders in Italy are no more inclined than they are anywhere to try to protect young Muslims from misunderstanding Islam in this way. How curious!

"Italian convert to Islam arrested on terror charges," from JTA, April 24:

ROME (JTA) – An Italian convert to Islam arrested for suspected links to terrorism was connected to a suspect who planned to bomb Milan's main synagogue.

Andrea Campione, 28, who worked in a picture frame factory, was arrested in the Adriatic seacoast town of Pesaro on Monday during an anti-terrorism crackdown in several cities. Authorities said Campione was associated with Mohamed Jarmoune, a Moroccan man arrested last month on suspicion of plotting an attack on Milan’s main synagogue.

Reports said Campione had a Moroccan girlfriend and was apprehended as he was about to leave Italy for Morocco.

Investigators, who said Campione disseminated jihadist material, seized his computer and other digital material. They said that Campione had sent Jarmoune and others links to Internet sites containing information on how to carry out terror attacks.

Samantha Lewthwaite's denunciation in 2005 of her husband, who was one of the 7/7 bombers, as "brainwashed" can be found here. Now, she is described "no small fish" in the global jihad.

"War is deceit," Muhammad said (Sahih Bukhari 4.52.267). An update on this story. "The 7/7 widow and a boom in British jihad," by Michael Burleigh and Sarah Rainey for the Telegraph, March 3:

We cannot say we weren’t warned. On September 16 2010, Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, addressed an audience of security professionals in London. A “significant number of UK residents”, he said, were training with the Somali Islamists, al-Shabaab. “It’s only a matter of time before we see terrorism on our streets inspired by those who are today fighting alongside al-Shabaab.”

Before that threat is fully realised, the people of East Africa are having to deal with vacationing British Islamists. MI5 say that around 60 British jihadis are fighting or training in Somalia, their costs defrayed by sympathisers in Britain.

Until they have the resources to target the infidels back home, these extremists are causing mayhem in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya. Jermaine Grant, lately of Newham, east London, has gone on trial in Mombasa, after police found ammunition and bomb-making chemicals – ammonium nitrate, acetone and lead nitrate – in his flat in a seedy suburb of the city. It is highly likely, as Kenyan police suspect, that his targets were Western tourists. Except there aren’t many tourists since al-Shabaab kidnapped and killed the 66-year-old French tetraplegic Marie Dedieu in the exotic resort of Lamu in October last year, then killed a British man and abducted his wife. Five months on, Judith Tebbutt from Aylesbury is still missing.

This week we learnt that Kenyan police hunting al-Shabaab terrorists are desperately seeking Samantha Lewthwaite, a 28-year-old from Buckinghamshire. Ms Lewthwaite, who converted to Islam when she was 15, is the widow of the 7/7 King’s Cross bomber, Jermaine Lindsay. According to Kenyan police sources, Lewthwaite and her friend Habib Ghani, of Hounslow, are connected to Jermaine Grant. Ghani, who calls himself “Osama”, is said to be carrying more than 500 bomb fuses and bundles of US dollars.

Following the London atrocities in July 2005, Lewthwaite claimed to find her late husband’s actions “abhorrent”. It seems strange, then, that she is allegedly using (three) false passports and associating with a terrorist suspect, in a region that is currently regarded as the most dangerous front in the fight against international terrorism. Reports claim she is “no small fish” in terrorist circles, describing her role as a “financier”. [...]

However, the British authorities’ focus on the so-called Somali “fount” conveniently deflects attention from the domestic manifestations of this problem. Those pockets of the country where extremism ferments have been almost entirely caused by the lax immigration measures of successive British governments. No one has officially said that Britain has the most dysfunctional immigration laws in the Western world, but that is a very widely held view among those who live here. If we have a problem with radicalised Somalis then it surely resides here as much as in Somalia.

Although Britain has only passing historical involvement with Somalia, we seem to have a remarkably large number of Somalis living in this country. Estimates of their number in Britain range from 350,000 to an extraordinary 1 million. These figures are educated guesses, since the last census in 1991 counted only 43,532 Somalis. This cannot be true, as anyone who has walked along Ealing’s “Mogadishu Mile” or around Poplar, Tower Hamlets, Woolwich and parts of west London can tell you.

Some rationalise the Somalis’ failure to respond to census requests by pointing to their inherent suspicion of all authority. According to such Somali community leaders as the lawyer Omer Ahmed, refusal to be counted leads to Somalis missing out on “social provision” – though not apparently public housing, for Somalis lead the way, with 80 per cent living in council tenancies, the highest occupancy rate for any alien group. Some 65 per cent of Somali males are estimated to be unemployed and presumably on benefits....

Political correctness is enabling another disaster waiting to happen.