Recently in Jihad in the U.S. Category

"Vance said members of the local Muslim community were instrumental in thwarting the threat to the president, but did not give specifics." That's good, but why no specifics? And what are the members of the local Muslim community in Birmingham doing to combat this tendency toward "self-radicalization"? What programs do they have in place to teach young Muslims that the jihadist understanding of Islam is incorrect? Why is asking that question "Islamophobic"?

"Uzbek man guilty of plotting to kill President Obama," by Verna Gates for Reuters, February 10 (thanks to Ima):

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - A man from Uzbekistan living illegally in the United States pleaded guilty on Friday to terrorism and weapons charges involving a plot to kill President Barack Obama.

According to court evidence, defendant Ulugbek Kodirov believed he was acting on behalf of an Islamist militant group in his homeland and was plotting to shoot Obama while the president campaigned for re-election this year.

Kodirov 22, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama, to three charges as part of an agreement that spares him from a potential life sentence.

He still faced up to 30 years in prison and $750,000 in fines for providing material support for terrorist activity, being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm and threatening to assassinate the president.

Four other charges against him were dropped, and mainly involved additional threats to kill Obama.

U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon set sentencing for May 17.

Kodirov came to the United States in 2009 to study medicine and his student visa was revoked in April 2010 after he failed to enroll in school, investigators said.

He "self-radicalized" through Internet research and sought like-minded individuals, U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said.

Kodirov met a mentor he called "Emir," whom he believed to be a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an Islamist militant group the United States has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Kodirov conversed with the man and decided to kill the president, according to court evidence.

He determined that the upcoming 2012 campaign would be an opportune time to either shoot the president with a sniper's rifle or shoot him up close, according to evidence read by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Whisonant.

"He did not care if he got shot and killed as long as he killed the president," Whisonant said.

Kodirov was arrested in July at an Alabama motel where he had obtained a fully automatic machine gun and four hand grenades from an undercover agent. "He was attempting to obtain weapons and explosives that he intended to use to kill the President of the United States," Vance said.

According to his plea agreement, Kodirov also showed jihadist Web sites and videos on his computer to another individual and told that person he wanted to assist others in jihad overseas. He also had lengthy conversations with another person about killing Obama, and that person introduced him to the undercover agent.

Vance said members of the local Muslim community were instrumental in thwarting the threat to the president, but did not give specifics. "We have warm relations with the Muslim community - they also want a safe place to live and raise their children," said Vance.

He had already pleaded guilty to visa fraud. "Dad of NYC subway bomb plotter gets prison time," by Colleen Long for the Associated Press, February 10:

NEW YORK (AP) - A federal judge has sentenced the father of an admitted terrorist to 4 1/2 years in prison for destroying evidence and lying to investigators.

Mohammed Wali Zazi (ZAH'-zee) was sentenced Friday in Brooklyn for charges including conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Authorities said the former cab driver from Colorado tried to cover up his son's 2009 plot to attack the New York City subways....

Younus Abdullah Mohammad's lawyer, James Hundley, said that his case presented free speech issues. It did, but not the ones Hundley had in mind. Younus Abdullah Mohammad has no Constitutional right to threaten people with death. But his doing so is the other side of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's ongoing campaign to compel Western governments to criminalize "religious hatred," by which they mean all accurate speech about how jihadists point to Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence. Either Western countries will render themselves mute (and hence defenseless) against the advancing jihad, or thugs like Younus Abdullah Mohammad will force them into silence by means of threats and murder.

"Second South Park threats suspect to plead guilty," by Josh Gerstein in Politico, February 8:

A second man alleged to have made illegal threats against "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone has agreed to plead guilty, according to a defense lawyer.

Jesse Morton, also known as Younus Abdullah Mohammad, was detained in Morocco last May in connection with alleged threats posted on the Revolution Muslim website after "South Park" depicted Mohammad as a man in a bear suit. Prosecutors allege that Morton helped write a "clarification statement" that amounted to a further threat against the "South Park" creators by praying for their deaths and suggesting that they were likely to face the violent demise of other critics of Islam....

A lawyer for Morton, James Hundley, said his client plans to appear in federal court in Alexandria, Va. on Thursday to plead guilty to three felonies: conspiracy, communicating threats, and internet stalking. Each carries a sentence of up to five years in prison....

Hundley said the case against Morton presented free speech issues, but his client ultimately decided to take the plea the government offered rather than risk trial on more serious charges that could carry an even longer sentence.

"Certainly, this case had that question: at what point are you exercising free speech and at what point are you verging into prohibited speech of a threatening or inciting nature?" Hundley told POLITICO Wednesday. "That was something we obviously looked at very closely."...

The New York Times, fresh from its alarmist campaign to intimidate New York City officials into dropping all attempts to tell the truth about the stealth jihad in America, is running a piece today about how the violent jihad is nothing to worry about, either -- featuring a new "study" by a dhimmi academic and numerous omissions of fact and leaps of logic. Clearly, for the Times, "Islamophobia" is a much greater threat than jihad -- after all, what's a few, or a few hundred, or a few thousand murdered Americans?

On the journalistic integrity of Scott Shane, see here.

"Radical Muslim Americans Pose Little Threat, Study Says," by Scott Shane in the New York Times, February 8 (thanks to Hussam Ayloush of Hamas-linked CAIR, who gleefully tweeted this link today):

WASHINGTON - A feared wave of homegrown terrorism by radicalized Muslim Americans has not materialized, with plots and arrests dropping sharply over the two years since an unusual peak in 2009, according to a new study by a North Carolina research group.

The study, to be released on Wednesday, found that 20 Muslim Americans were charged in violent plots or attacks in 2011, down from 26 in 2010 and a spike of 47 in 2009.

Only 20? Relax!

Charles Kurzman, the author of the report for the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, called terrorism by Muslim Americans "a minuscule threat to public safety." Of about 14,000 murders in the United States last year, not a single one resulted from Islamic extremism, said Mr. Kurzman, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina....

These figures are jimmied to start with: by "Islamic extremism," of course, the Times is referring only to terrorist acts, but take another example of Islamically justified violence: honor killing, and specifically the honor murder of Jessica Mokdad. If one follows mainstream media practice (and that of dhimmi pseudo-academics) and ignores all the evidence that honor killing is broadly sanctioned by many Muslim authorities, and then also ignores all the evidence that Jessica Mokdad was murdered for not being Muslim enough, then one can conclude that her murder was not related to "Islamic extremism."

And so voila, no murders due to "Islamic extremism" in 2011. Then there were all the foiled plots: if a few jihad plots had succeeded, such as this one or these three that were revealed in one week recently, there would have been murders -- possibly even hundreds or thousands of deaths. But Scott Shane and Charles Kurzman do not consider that a possibility worth entertaining.

Forty percent of those charged in 2011 were converts to Islam, Mr. Kurzman found, slightly higher than the 35 percent of those charged since the 2001 attacks. His new report is based on the continuation of research he conducted for a book he published last year, "The Missing Martyrs: Why There Are So Few Muslim Terrorists."...

It would be interesting to hear Kurzman explain why so many converts to Islam misunderstand their peaceful new religion -- and why all do so in the same way. But Kurzman would probably consider the question itself to be "Islamophobic."

The 2011 cases include just one actual series of attacks, which caused no injuries, involving rifle shots fired late at night at military buildings in Northern Virginia. A former Marine Corps reservist, Yonathan Melaku, pleaded guilty in the case last month in an agreement that calls for a 25-year prison sentence.

More on that one, including video, here.

Other plots unearthed by law enforcement last year and listed in Mr. Kurzman's report included a suspected Iranian plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States, a scheme to attack a Shiite mosque in Michigan and another to blow up synagogues, churches and the Empire State Building....

That scheme to blow up the Shi'ite mosque came from a white American convert to Sunni Islam. Since it wasn't initially reported that he was a Muslim, Hamas-linked CAIR initially trumpeted the plot as more evidence of "Islamophobia." Whoops!

And consider once again: if the plot to blow up the Empire State Building had succeeded, would even someone as willfully blind and compromised as Scott Shane of the New York Times dare to publish this twaddle?

More shameless Islamophobia. "Chicago cabbie pleads guilty in terror case," by Michael Tarm for the Associated Press, February 6 (thanks to Bill):

CHICAGO—A Pakistani-born Chicago taxi driver who prosecutors say could be heard on FBI wiretaps discussing a plan to bomb a stadium pleaded guilty Monday to attempting to send money to a Pakistani-based terrorist with alleged ties to al-Qaida.

Standing before a federal judge in an orange jumpsuit and his ankles shackled, Raja Lahrasib Khan, 58, said he was pleading guilty to one count of two counts of attempting to provide material support terrorism. As part of the plea deal, prosecutors dropped the other count.

The agreement recommends a sentence of between five and eight years, well short of the maximum 15 years for a conviction of a single count of providing material support. A sentencing date was set for May 30, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Outside court, defense attorney Thomas Durkin said finding jurors who could give his client a fair trial would have been difficult, suggesting that was one reason Khan accepted the deal with prosecutors.

"The word 'al-Qaida' scares the bejesus out of people and that's all (jurors) have to hear," he said. "But it was a difficult case ... and the (agreement) was fair under the circumstances."

Prosecutors did not speak to reporters after Monday's hearing.

Khan was arrested in 2010 and accused of taking steps to send cash to Pakistan-based terrorist leader Ilyas Kashmiri after Kashmiri indicated he needed money to buy explosives. Khan, prosecutors said, believed Kashmiri was getting his orders from Osama bin Laden.

Khan, who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1988, sent $950 in 2009 to an individual in Pakistan for delivery to Kashmiri; he also took $1,000 from an undercover agent and said it would be used to buy weapons and possibly other supplies, prosecutors alleged.

A 35-page complaint affidavit filed after Khan's arrest also accused him of discussing the possibility of planting bags of bombs around an unspecified stadium, saying in one wiretap, "Put one bag here, one there, one there ... you know, boom, boom, boom, boom."

Khan, though, was never charged with such an attempted attack as prosecutors focused instead on allegations the he sent money intended as aid for Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaida...

In a separate case, Lebanese immigrant Sami Samir Hassoun recently agreed to plead guilty to placing a backpack he thought held a bomb near the Chicago Cubs' Wrigley Field, in a deal experts have said may reflect the odds he, and other terror suspects, face at trial....

According to former Detroit Public Schools Superintendent Eddie Green, Kifah Jayyousi was “a great guy, one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.” While Green was superintendent, Jayyousi oversaw the Detroit school district’s capital improvement program.

Jayyousi was charged, according to the Detroit Free Press, with “conspiring to kidnap, maim and murder by providing money, recruits and equipment for Islamic struggles in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya from 1993 to 2001.”

Christopher Paul, a martial arts instructor at a mosque in Columbus, Ohio, is also a terrific guy. Ahmad Al-Akhras, vice chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations chapter in Columbus, said: “From the things I know, he is a loving husband and he has a wife and parents in town. They are a good family together.”

Yet Paul, a Muslim, was charged, according to Associated Press, with “providing material support to terrorists, conspiracy to provide support to terrorists and conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction.” He was accused of training with Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, training people for violent jihad attacks on targets in Europe and the United States, and more.

This kind of thing is nothing new. According to a Southern California friend of Raed Albanna, who killed 132 people in a suicide attack outside a medical clinic in Iraq in 2005, “He was into partying. We hit some pretty wild clubs in Hollywood.” Frank Lindh, the father of John Walker Lindh, a.k.a. Suleyman Al-Faris, the convert to Islam from Marin County who joined the Taliban and was captured in Afghanistan fighting against American troops, has said: “In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man embarked on a spiritual quest.”

Great guys all. Some partied and some embarked on a spiritual search, but they all ended up in the same place, committing acts dedicated to furthering the cause of jihad, or facing charges of having done so.

But they may be genuinely decent fellows. It was the Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler who told a group of SS leaders: “Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet -- apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness -- to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard…”

Were these SS mass murderers really decent fellows? To their friends and family, they probably were. After all, they weren’t interested in undifferentiated mayhem. They were adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that convinced them that the murders they were committing were for a good purpose. As far as they were concerned, their goals were rational. It was a necessity for them to remain “decent fellows,” for they were busy trying to build what they saw as a decent society. That their vision of a decent society included genocide and torture did not trouble them, for it was all for -- in their view -- a goal that remained good.

Today’s jihad terrorists are likewise the adherents of a totalitarian, genocidal ideology that teaches them that murders committed under certain circumstances are a good thing. And those murders, here again, are not committed for their own sake, but for the sake of a societal vision hardly less draconian and evil than that of Adolf Hitler, but one also that portrays itself as the exponent of all that is good -- as the Taliban showed us. But the continued reference to such people as “terrorists” pure and simple, and the refusal of the media and most law enforcement officials to examine their ideology at all, only reinforces the idea that these people are raving maniacs, interested solely in chaos for its own sake. The society they want to build, and the means besides guns and bombs that they are using to build it, so far remain below the radar screen of most analysts. These people are just “terrorists,” interested only in “terror.” And so we’re continually surprised when they turn out to be nice guys after all. Decent fellows. Like the SS.

"Father: Beheading plot suspect a dedicated teacher," from the Associated Press, February 4 (thanks to Kenneth):

Nevine Aly Elshiekh is a dog lover who teaches children with developmental disabilities. She is college-educated, well-respected by her neighbors and has no criminal record, not even a speeding ticket.

Family members and friends find it impossible to reconcile that woman with the zealot federal prosecutors say paid a hit man to behead three government informants from a recent terrorism trial.

Elshiekh, 46, was arrested two weeks ago when FBI agents raided the tidy West Raleigh ranch house she shares with her elderly parents. Her father, an Egyptian who moved his family to the U.S. more than 40 years ago, told The Associated Press the charges don't add up.

"We don't believe it," said Aly Elshiekh, 80, a retired professor at North Carolina State University. "She loves special-ed kids and has dedicated her life to helping kids with disabilities."

Also arrested was Shkumbin Sherifi, 21. Prosecutors said they paid $5,000 for the first hit to an FBI informant posing as a fictional hit man's assistant, who later showed the pair a faked photo showing the intended victim's severed head.

Sherifi is the younger brother of Hysen Sherifi, 27, who was sentenced last month to 45 years in prison for conspiring to attack the U.S. Marine base at Quantico and targets overseas.

Elshiekh, a family friend of one of the defendants, frequently made the two-hour trip to New Bern to attend the monthlong trial, which began shortly after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. She scribbled careful notes during the testimony that led to Hysen Sherifi and two others being convicted of terrorism-related offenses. Three others pleaded guilty.

The case hinged largely on surveillance tapes made by confidential informants paid by the FBI.

Elshiekh was born in the United States, while Shkumbin Sherifi is a naturalized citizen. Like many from Raleigh's growing Muslim community, they insisted during trial that the defendants were innocent. There was no evidence presented that any of the accused men had agreed to participate in a specific plot.

Prosecutors say Hysen Sherifi exchanged letters with Elshiekh during trial and called her from jail. He also mailed her bracelets he made behind bars, according to the FBI.

Court records show Elshiekh divorced in 2010. Hysen Sherifi is married to a woman who lives in his native Kosovo.

The Sherifi family fled their homeland in 1999 during a brutal war between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. Shkumbin Sherifi lives at home with his parents and has taken classes at a nearby community college, though records show he was not enrolled at the time of his arrest.

State court records show his only prior brush with the law was in 2006, when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for resisting a public officer.

He has said his brother was framed by federal agents.

"Muslims after the Sept. 11 attacks were targeted," Shkumbin Sherifi said in a video uploaded to YouTube the day of his arrest. "For Muslims, it's guilty until proven innocent."

Relatives have declined repeated interview requests. However, an older sister, Hylja Sherifi, testified at a Jan. 27 court hearing that Shkumbin is a primary caregiver to their father, who has end-stage lung cancer.

He also records rap songs in English and Albanian under the stage name Beme. His lyrics recount the sectarian violence in his homeland, which was eventually halted by an American-led bombing campaign against the Serbian military. Tens of thousands of Albanian Kosovars, including the Sherifis, ended up as refugees in the United States, Germany and other western nations.

"Bombs dropping 4 in the morning, tanks blowing, windows shaking, my momma's fainting," Shkumbin Sherifi raps to a heavy beat. "I was a kid. Hey, what could I do? ... Guerrilla warfare, yeah, we fight back. But NATO don't like that. We fight for each other. Y'all tried to murder my sisters and brothers. ... We're gonna to get revenge, before Judgment Day."...

For the past nine years, Elshiekh has worked at Sterling Montessori Academy, a state-supported charter school in Morrisville. School officials declined repeated requests for comment and said only that Elshiekh has been placed on leave.

The organization's tax returns, which are public records, list Elshiekh's title as director of exceptional children and indicate she is among the school's highest-paid employees.

She has also served as a teacher at a religious school that is part of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the city's largest mosque.

Imran Aukhil, a spokesman for the mosque, did not respond to requests for comment. Members of the congregation were among about 30 people who attended court hearings in Wilmington to show support.

Farris Barakat, a 21-year-old college student, said Elshiekh was his second-grade teacher at the mosque's school.

"Sister Nevine is an amazing person," Barakat said. "Nothing bad has ever come out of her."

On the quiet Raleigh street where Elshiekh lives with her parents, neighbors expressed disbelief she could be involved in anything nefarious.

Alan Harris, who lives across the road from the Elshiekhs, said he frequently saw Nevine walking her chocolate lab. Also a dog owner, Harris said they often spoke.

He said she wore western clothes and never discussed religion.

"She's a kind, caring person, always polite," Harris said. "From what I know of her, she is of good character. I hope she turns out to be an innocent party in all this."

In court Friday, Elshiekh wore a traditional scarf for Muslim women that covered her hair and neck. The shackles on her ankles clanked under a long, black dress....

This report shows again that the supposed distinction between "Jews" and "Zionists" is strictly for cosmetic purposes. Jews are Jews, and infidels are infidels. "Exclusive: Israel Warns US Jews: Iran Could Strike Here," by Richard Esposito for ABC News, February 3:

Israeli facilities in North America -- and around the world -- are on high alert, according to an internal security document obtained by ABC News that predicted the threat from Iran against Jewish targets will increase.

"We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase … on both our guarded sites and 'soft' sites," stated a letter circulated by the head of security for the Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States, Eliran Avitan. Guarded sites refers to government facilities like embassies and consulates, while 'soft sites' means Jewish synagogues, and schools, as well as community centers like the one hit by a terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people.

The head of Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, told an audience at a closed forum in Tel Aviv recently that Iran is trying to hit Israeli targets because of what it believes are Israeli attacks on it nuclear scientists. Yoram Cohen said that Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the same militant wing of the government linked to the recent alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., is working tirelessly to attack Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in order to deter Israel.

Local and regional law enforcement and intelligence officials in U.S. and Canadian cities, including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Toronto have been monitoring the situation closely for several weeks, and have stepped up patrols at Israeli government locations and Jewish cultural and religious institutions. They have issued awareness bulletins reminding officers to stay vigilant.

Federal officials in those cities told ABC News that they have also increased their efforts to watch for any threat stream pointing to an imminent attack on either Israeli facilities, Jewish cultural or religious institutions or other "soft targets."

"When there is posturing like this, we always pay extra attention to any threat streams," one federal official said.

"The thwarted assassination plot of a Saudi official in Washington, D.C., a couple of months ago was an important data point," added the official, "in that it showed at least parts of the Iranian establishment were aware of the intended event and were not concerned about inevitable collateral damage to U.S. citizens had they carried out an assassination plot on American soil."

"That was an eye opener, showing that they did not care about any collateral damage," the federal official said....

"When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks..." -- Qur'an 47:4

Of course, Islamic spokesmen in the West constantly assure us that it is inconceivable -- inconceivable! -- that Muslims in the U.S. will ever bring such practices here, however prevalent they may be in some areas of the Islamic world, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is a greasy Islamophobe.

Unfortunately, Nevine Aly Elshiekh doesn't seem to have gotten the memo.

"Woman charged in beheading plot held without bond," by Michael Biesecker for the Associated Press, February 3 (thanks to all who sent this in):

WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge in North Carolina ruled Friday that a Raleigh school administrator accused of paying a hit man to behead three witnesses in a terrorism case should be held without bond until her trial.

Nevine Aly Elshiekh made her first court appearance Friday after being arrested last month after FBI agents tracked her to a meeting with a government informant. Agents say the 46-year-old educator provided the names of those to be killed and a $750 down payment toward the first hit.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Jones Jr. ruled that there was enough evidence for her to stand trial and ordered her held without bail.

Prosecutors say the plot was masterminded by Hysen Sherifi, sentenced last month to 45 years for a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va.

Also arrested in the beheading plot is Shkumbin Sherifi, the 21-year-old brother of the terror defendant. He was ordered held without bail following a similar hearing last week....

No doubt it never entered their mind that he was anything but a "moderate."

An update on this story. "US, UN Helped Colo. Man Now Accused of Terrorism," from the Associated Press, January 31 (thanks to Kenneth):

A man from Uzbekistan that the United States and the United Nations helped relocate to Colorado now faces a terrorism charge.

Jamshid Muhtorov opposed his home country's dictator following a 2005 massacre, endured a brutal detention, and saw his sister arrested on a false murder charge. The 35-year-old fled his country by night dressed as a woman, and the U.S. and the U.N. helped bring him to Aurora in 2007.

Now, he's accused of providing material support and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union. The violent group opposes the Uzbek government and has been designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.

Authorities arrested Muhtorov in Chicago on Jan. 21, the Denver Post reported Tuesday ( http://bit.ly/yHsRIF ).

Federal authorities say the Islamic Jihad Union has claimed responsibility for attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan, including a March 2008 suicide attack on a U.S. base. The group is also blamed for carrying out simultaneous suicide bombings of the U.S. and Israeli embassies and a prosecutor's office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

"It is a crime, and has been a crime for many years, to provide material support for a designated terrorist organization, the IJU," said Dean Boyd, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington. "Our job is to enforce the law."

The FBI said Muhtorov communicated with a contact with the IJU by email using code words, asking to be invited to the "wedding." He also told the contact that he was "ready for any task, even with the risk of dying," the FBI said.

Authorities said there was no evidence that Muhtorov planned any attacks within the U.S....

American officials had described Muhtorov as a human rights worker whose activism began while he was trying to make a living in his home city, Jizzak. He ran up against corrupt officials expecting payments, which is common in Uzbekistan, and spoke out....

During this time, he worked closely with Human Rights Watch....

Muhtorov and his family resettled in Aurora, a Denver suburb, and obtained a job as a truck driver....

Muhtorov's colleagues at the UZ Auto Trans company, where he hauled cars for dealers to destinations across the country, knew that he opposed the Uzbek regime.

"I knew him as a good guy. Praying. He never talked bad about the U.S. Maybe he was angry with the regime back in Uzbekistan," said Ishmael Abdubafour, a former truck driver with the company. "He had the long beard and stuff, but that doesn't mean anything. We see a lot of people who have the beard. He was very gentle."

A decent fellow.

Will the Islamophobia never end? An update on this story. "Man must stand trial in plot to hire hit man," from Associated Press, January 27 (thanks to Kenneth):

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- A North Carolina man must stand trial in a plot to hire a hit man to behead three witnesses from his brother's terrorism case, a federal magistrate judge ruled on Friday....

Sherifi, 21, was arrested last weekend after FBI agents tracked him to a Jan. 8 meeting in the parking lot of a Wilmington Food Lion grocery store with a government informant posing as the representative of a hit man. He is accused of paying the informant $4,250 toward the first killing while his mother waited nearby in a Honda minivan.

On Jan. 22, prosecutors said Sherifi met with the informant again, this time receiving fake photos that showed the blood-covered witnesses lying in a shallow grave and what appeared to be the man's severed head.

Officials say the plot to execute the witnesses was masterminded by Sherifi's imprisoned brother, Hysen Sherifi, 27. The older Sherifi was sentenced to 45 years earlier this month for his role in what prosecutors described as a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad....

Those targeted for death, according to the government, were three confidential informants who testified against Hysen Sherifi and his co-defendants during a lengthy terrorism trial that began in shortly after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Hysen Sherifi and two other Raleigh men were found guilty of terrorism related offenses, while three other accused co-conspirators pleaded guilty.

During Friday's hearing, defense lawyer James Payne suggested that Shkumbin Sherifi may have believed that he was providing the money to pay for a lawyer for his brother's appeal and stressed that in hours of phone calls and meetings taped by the FBI he never directly ordered anyone to be killed.

Judge Jones said the government had probable cause to arrest Sherifi, questioning why anyone would hire a lawyer in a clandestine meeting held inside a car.

Good question!

"We have an individual who was in a Food Lion parking lot giving someone $4,000," the judge said.

The Sherifis are naturalized U.S. citizens who emigrated from Kosovo in 1999 following a bloody sectarian war. On Friday, one of their three sisters took the stand as a character witness and asked the judge to let her brother go home. Hylja Sherifi, 24, said her younger sibling was a primary caregiver to their ailing father, who has lung cancer.

Shkumbin Sherifi has also volunteered as a youth soccer coach and is an aspiring songwriter, she said. Several of his rap songs are available online on a website intended to promote his music.

"He has a lot of passion," Hylja Sherifi said, a college student. She added that her family loves the United States.

"I have hope in the American government and support America," she said. "I supported my boyfriend when he was fighting in Iraq for 13 months."

The soldier she spoke of sat with the family in the courtroom, along with about 25 other people who made the two-hour drive from Raleigh to show their support for the defendant. Many were members of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the city's largest mosque.

Farris Barakat, a 21-year-old college student who attended the hearing, said Elshiekh was his second-grade teacher at the mosque's school. At the time of her arrest, she was also teaching at a secular Montessori academy in suburban Morrisville. Elshiekh is charged with using interstate facilities for murder for hire.

Barakat stressed that he did not in any way support the type of violence of which the Sherifis are accused of plotting. Islam is a religion of peace, he said.

Well, that's obvious. But how did the Sherifis come to misunderstand it so?

However, he questioned whether an overzealous government was seeking to prosecute Muslims for terror offenses using questionable tactics, such as using paid informants with criminal records.

Of course. That must be it. Muslims are always victims. Never perpetrators. Ever. An "overzealous government," drunk with "Islamophobia," is devoting its time to framing innocent, peaceful Muslims. Why didn't I realize this before? After all, "Islamophobia" is so obviously rampant at all levels of government: federal, state and local.

Hylja Sherifi echoed those sentiments, suggesting the full story had not been told in the courtroom.

Asked on the witness stand if any of the evidence presented Friday changed her positive view of her younger brother, she replied: "Not at all."

Of course not. Why should it?

Will the Islamophobia never end? "Md. Man Caught in Sting Pleads Guilty in Bomb Plot," by Sarah Brumfield for the Associated Press, January 26 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A Maryland man pleaded guilty Thursday to trying to detonate what he thought was a car bomb outside a military recruiting center in suburban Baltimore, saying he was motivated by what he saw as an American war on Islam.

Antonio Martinez entered the plea to the charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. The plot to bomb the Armed Forces Recruiting Center in Catonsville in December 2010 was foiled by an FBI sting.

The 22-year-old had also faced a charge of trying to kill U.S. officers and employees, but prosecutors agreed to drop the second charge at sentencing. The deal calls for a 25-year prison term.

Martinez wore a burgundy jumpsuit and his hair in two braids in court, and he smiled and hugged his defense attorney. The U.S. citizen born who was born abroad preferred to be called Muhammad Hussain after his conversion to Islam and signed the plea using both names.

Public records are unclear about when Martinez, who was born to a Nicaraguan father and an African-American mother, moved to Maryland, but he attended Laurel High School in Prince George's County, a Washington suburb. The former part-time construction worker said in court Thursday that he finished 10th grade.

In the plea agreement, Martinez acknowledges that he wanted to pursue jihad to the United States "to send a message that all American soldiers would be killed so long as the country continued its 'war' against Islam."

An FBI informant first communicated with Martinez on Facebook after seeing public posts "espousing his extremist views" and recognizing him from a mosque he attended, according to court documents. The documents say Martinez later told the informant of his ideas for attacking military-linked sites and said all he thought about was jihad.

Authorities say Martinez' ideas ranged from a bombing and armed attack to burning the building down. He told an undercover FBI agent that he wanted to make jihadist activities his profession, dedicating his life to the cause, according to the plea.

Martinez decided on a car bomb after a discussion with the undercover agent because "using a bomb would allow him to commit further acts here and overseas," prosecutor Christine Manuelian said....

After his arrest, Martinez confessed that the attack was his idea, he wanted to be a martyr and he had expected an explosion that would level the front of the building, according to the plea.

After the hearing, FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard McFeely thanked members of the Muslim community for reaching out to law enforcement and identifying a threat....

What exactly did they do? Will Hamas-linked CAIR upbraid them, in light of the advice they've given out elsewhere, as in this poster?

Here is a sterling example of how the mainstream media lies to the American people and misleads them about the nature and breadth of jihad activity in this country as well as elsewhere. "Motive of shooter who targeted military sites is unclear," by Josh White for the Washington Post, January 26:

Yonathan Melaku was sneaking through Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery, his backpack filled with plastic bags of ammonium nitrate, a notebook containing jihadist messages, and a can of black spray paint. The 23-year-old former Marine was heading to the graves of the nation’s most recent heroes, aiming to desecrate the stones with Arabic statements and leave handfuls of explosive material nearby as a message.

Before police foiled the plan in June, the vandalism was to be Melaku’s sixth attack, months after he went on a mysterious shooting spree that targeted the Pentagon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and two other military buildings in Northern Virginia. A video found after Melaku’s arrest showed him wearing a black mask and shooting a 9mm handgun out of his Acura’s passenger window as he drove along Interstate 95, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”

It was all part of a solitary campaign of “fear and terror,” federal prosecutors said. But authorities and Melaku’s defense attorney said no one knows for sure what led Melaku — a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ethi­o­pia, local high school graduate and former Marine Corps Reservist — down that path or what message he was trying to send.

Melaku stood in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Thursday morning to plead guilty to three counts, including shooting at the Pentagon on Oct. 19, 2010, and attempting to injure veterans’ memorials on U.S. property. As part of a plea agreement, Melaku admitted to using his legally obtained 9mm handgun to shoot the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the Pentagon and two military recruiting offices in October and November 2010.

The agreement calls for Melaku to serve 25 years in prison. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee accepted the plea, and Melaku is scheduled for sentencing on April 27.

Although Melaku acknowledged shooting at the buildings — attacks that did not injure anyone but caused an estimated $111,000 in damage — it still remains unclear why he did it. In a video entered into evidence and released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Melaku says that he was targeting the museum as a military building, to “turn it off permanently.”

FBI officials and prosecutors said Melaku was on a personal terror mission. They said he researched jihadism on the Internet and had references to terrorism in a notebook and on his computer. It also seemed like he was gathering materials to make an improvised explosive device, though there was no indication how he would have used it.

Melaku wanted “to create fear and terror, which is what terrorists do,” said Dana Boente, first assistant U.S. Attorney in Alexandria.

Special Agent Jacqueline Maguire, of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said it was fortunate authorities caught Melaku before anyone was injured. She said it appears Melaku acted alone....

When asked what he wanted to plead to the three counts included in his agreement, Melaku leaned forward to a microphone and said: “Uh, guilty, sir.”

Gregory English, Melaku’s defense lawyer, said after the hearing that Melaku’s family is of the Coptic Christian faith and that they were stunned to learn of his involvement in the crimes and the references to Islamic jihad. English said the shootings were out of character for Melaku, and he wonders whether his client suffers from a psychological problem, which he has asked the court to evaluate.

Or maybe he just converted to Islam, as appears abundantly to be the case.

English said Melaku thought that by shooting at the buildings he did, late at night, no one would get hurt. English said the video was intended for YouTube.

“As bad as it is, this is someone who essentially broke windows,” English said. “It’s vandalism. He has no link to terrorism. . . . He had a message, but I don’t understand what that message was supposed to be.”

He "essentially broke windows," but what if someone had been on the wrong end of the bullets he shot out of his Acura while shouting "Allahu akbar"? "He has no link to terrorism" -- i.e. they didn't find an Al-Qaeda membership card in his wallet. Researching "jihadism" and shouting "Allahu akbar" while shooting a gun out of a car window doesn't count in English's politically correct world.

Hysen Sherifi's jihad continued even in prison. "Convicted terrorist accused of plotting to kill witnesses," from the Associated Press, January 24 (thanks to EZ Rider):

RALEIGH, N.C. – A North Carolina man sentenced to prison recently as part of a homegrown terrorist ring has been accused in a federal court document of plotting to kill witnesses who testified against him at trial.

An affidavit unsealed in federal court Monday accuses Hysen Sherifi of plotting against the witnesses from his jail cell. Authorities say an FBI informant posing as a hit man met with Sherifi's brother and a female friend and accepted $5,000 and a photo of an intended victim.

FBI agents have arrested the brother, Shkumbin Sherifi, and Nevine Aly Elshiekh, a school teacher. Now in federal custody at the New Hanover County Jail, each is charged with a felony count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.

Hysen Sherifi, 27, was sentenced to 45 years in prison earlier this month in what prosecutors described as a conspiracy to attack the Marine base at Quantico, Va., and targets abroad. Five others, including construction contractor Daniel Patrick Boyd, have been sentenced to federal prison terms for terrorism charges related to raising money, stockpiling weapons and training in preparation for jihadist attacks....

Shkumbin Sherifi and Elshiekh await a scheduled first appearance Friday in federal court in Wilmington. The two have applied for court appointed lawyers, who have not yet been assigned....

The informant soon befriended Sherifi, who requested help in hiring someone to kill three people who had testified against him at his trial, according to the affidavit. Sherifi specified that he wanted the witnesses beheaded and that he would be provided photos of the severed heads as confirmation of the deaths, according to the document.

FBI agents said in the document that they arranged for a second informant to pose as a hit man and monitored Sherifi during a series of jailhouse visits with Elshiekh.

Following a Dec. 21 visit at the jail, Elshiekh left a voicemail on the fake hit man's cell phone, identifying herself as "Hysen Sherifi's friend," according to the affidavit. It added that the FBI observed and recorded subsequent meetings between Elshiekh and the fake hit man, during which she provided names, addresses and photos of those targeted and $750 in cash toward the first murder.

Agents also observed Elshiekh meeting with Shkumbin Sherifi, who met with the FBI's fake hitman on Jan. 8, the court document said. According to the affidavit, the brother traveled from Raleigh to Wilmington to provide the hit man another $4,250 in cash.

The affidavit provides no information about the nature of the relationship between Hysen Sherifi and Elshiekh, but a woman with that same name was quoted in media reports from last year's terrorism trial in New Bern. The names of the witnesses allegedly targeted were redacted from the affidavit....

The Sherifi brothers and other family members emigrated from Kosovo following the wars that ravaged the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. A call to the Sherifi family home in Raleigh on Tuesday was not returned.

Hysen Sherifi and others arrested in the terrorism conspiracy were members of the Islamic Association of Raleigh, the largest Muslim congregation in the Triangle. Several members of the mosque also routinely made the 4-hour round trip for the trial in New Bern to support the accused, who they described as innocent men being railroaded by overzealous federal authorities.

Messages to the media contact listed for the mosque were not returned.

What a surprise.

He was on his way to join the jihad. "FBI arrests suburban Denver man in Chicago over allegation he supported terrorist organization," from the Associated Press, January 23:

DENVER — The FBI has arrested a refugee from Uzbekistan at Chicago’s O’Hare airport on terrorism charges after he was accused of planning to travel overseas to fight on behalf of a terrorist group.

Jamshid Muhtorov, 35, of Aurora, Colo., who also goes by several other names, was arrested Saturday by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces, the FBI said.

Muhtorov was indicted on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the FBI said. The group named is the Islamic Jihad Union.

Authorities said there was no evidence that Muhtorov was plotting attacks inside the United States.

Muhtorov made his initial appearance Monday in federal court in Chicago, according to the Department of Justice.

The department said the group has been blamed for suicide attacks in Uzbekistan, and claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The Justice Department said the Pakistan-based organization is an extremist group that seeks to replace the current regime with a government based on Islamic law.

Muhtorov was indicted by a federal grand jury in Colorado, charged with one count of providing and attempting to provide support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. If convicted, Muhtorov faces a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, and up to a $250,000 fine....

Out of hatred for the Jews, of course. The claim is dubious, but revealing in many ways. From the Ansar al-Mujahideen site (thanks to Dan):

Allah Almighty says: (And wage war on all of the idolaters as they are waging war on all of you) 36 Surah At-Taubah

Allah have granted a group of our brothers from the lions of Masadat Al-Mujahidin at 8:00 in the day before yesterday Thursday 25 Safar 1433 A.H. corresponding 19 January 2012 to set fire in the forests of Nevada in the Reno region.

And we by this great event and paradigm shift declare the following:

1. we declare our full responsibility of setting fire in the Nevada forests in America.

2. we declare widening the area of war and transferring it currently to inside America and soon to elsewhere.

3. we give the enemies of Islam and the allies of the Jews who occupy the land of Palestine three months beginning from the date of this statement to disown from the Jews who occupy the land of Palestine, and their actions against our Moslem brothers, and we demand the end of their alliances that oppress our rights as owners of the land, or we will be forced to extend our war until it spreads in all the lands that plot with our enemies.

4. we emphasize that targeting the so called Israel and its allies headed by America in every kind of targeting including fighting and all the types of peoples civilian and military is an individual obligation (Fradu Ayin) on every Moslem until the liberation of Palestine, and all their armies are expelled from the Moslem lands, and Allah's Word become the uppermost and religion is all for Allah.

5. we also point out that fighting the Jews and their allies is easy to those who want to repel their evil on the Moslems, and here you see with your own eyes what simple materials can do, that are cheap in your enemy, and how much damages it can inflict in them, so we incite the Moslem Ummah to participate in this blessed work and move their inherent energies for that.

This blessed Gazwa comes within a series of Gazawat that we declared and have previously begun and which will Insha’Allah destroy the edifices of the hateful Jewish occupation, until the Jews return from where they came since they have no place among us, and until the global alliances with the occupying Jews who occupy the land of the Moslems.

May Allah bless the soldiers of Al-Rahman and lions of Tawhid, may Allah aim their shooting and steadfast their feet, and accept from them their jihad and good deeds, because they made the friend happy and annoyed the foe.

And we say to the Jews and their agents this is a disgrace for you in this Dunya, and you have a big punishment in the hereafter, so have tidings with what you hate we have for you more, and do what you want, your cunning won’t benefit you and your scheme won’t benefit you, either we live under the governance of Allah or we seek shade under the Shadow of Allah.

والله أكبر الله أكبر .. ولله العزة ولرسوله وللمجاهدين.
وَاللّهُ غَالِبٌ عَلَى أَمْرِهِ وَلَكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ النَّاسِ لاَ يَعْلَمُونَ.

General command of Masadat Al-Mujahidin

Saturday 27 Safar 1433 A.h.

Corresponding 21 January 2012

Everyone except greasy Islamophobes knows that Islam is a beautiful Religion of Peace, yet somehow these three Muslims got the crazy idea that they should commit acts of violence against those they deemed "un-Islamic." One of them even said in court, "You're prosecuting Islam." Yet we all know that what they wanted to do has nothing to do with Islam, and only greasy Islamophobes would think otherwise. Nonetheless, no one in the Islamic advocacy establishment is lifting a finger to explain either to them or to other Muslims in the U.S. how they can avoid misunderstanding Islam in a similar way. "Three Terrorists From Johnston County Cell Get Prison Sentences Ranging From 15 to 45 Years," from WPTF, January 13 (thanks to Joseph):

Three men who conspired as part of a home-grown terror ring to plot attacks against targets they deemed un-Islamic are facing between 15 and 45 years in federal prison.

All three proclaimed their innocence Friday before being sentenced by U.S. District Judge Louise Flanagan. Dozens of members of Raleigh's Muslim community made the five-hour drive to coastal New Bern to witness the fate of men their supporters believe were unjustly convicted.

But Flanagan said the men were planning violence.

Hysen Sherifi will serve 45 years in prison for crimes including discussing an attack on the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps base.

Ziyad Yaghi got nearly 32 years for conspiracy to support terrorism and conspiracy to carry out attacks overseas.

Mohammad Hassan was convicted of supporting terrorism and got 15 years.

An American-born Muslim was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for participating in a North Carolina terrorism ring that federal agents said plotted attacks on the Quantico U.S. Marine Corps base and foreign targets.

Mohammad Omar Aly Hassan, 24, was convicted in October of providing material support to terrorists, but acquitted of a charge of conspiracy to carry out attacks overseas. Hassan used his Facebook account and Internet forums to post his own comments and videos by others encouraging Muslims to fight nonbelievers and Muslims who did not agree with their desire to establish mandatory religious law, prosecutors said..

Hassan also attempted to contact Anwar Al-Awlaki, a powerful American-born Muslim preacher and al-Qaida propagandist, and emailed a co-conspirator a copy of Al-Awlaki's tract "44 ways to support Jihad," Judge Louise Flanigan said. Al-Awlaki was killed in September in the mountains of Yemen by an American airstrike....

Hassan and two other men at sentencing hearings Friday were part of a group of eight men who federal investigators say raised money, stockpiled weapons and trained in preparation for jihadist attacks against American military targets and others they deemed enemies of Islam.

Defense attorneys for all three men argued for lesser sentences since they were convicted of discussions of terrorism rather than terrorist acts. Their convictions have stirred the Muslim community in the Raleigh area where they lived, and the courtroom Friday was packed by more than three dozen supporters.

Hassan protested his innocence of the crime.

"I did post some highly inflammatory things on the Internet, but I am no terrorist," he said. He rejected Flanigan's sentence, and his father Aly Hassan, accused the judge and prosecutors of targeting Muslims.

"You're prosecuting Islam. The judge should be sitting here with the government," Aly Hassan said, pointing to the prosecutors. Mohammed Hassan's lawyer said he would appeal the conviction.

Ziyad Yaghi was convicted of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism and conspiracy to carry out attacks overseas. Hysen Sherifi was convicted for both crimes, two counts of firearms possession, and conspiracy to kill federal officers or employees by discussing an attack on the Quantico, Va., Marine Corps base with ringleader Daniel Boyd, who had lived on the base as a child with his Marine officer father.

Hassan and Yaghi were accused of attempting to travel to Israel in 2007 to meet up with Boyd and his sons to look for avenues to join other militants and to scout targets for an attack. Defense lawyers and relatives said the young men traveled to tour holy sites, stay with relatives and, in Yaghi's case, find a wife....

How did a 66-year-old Shi'ite imam, who has dedicated his life to serving Allah and teaching Islam, come to misunderstand his religion so drastically as to get involved in a jihad terror plot? And why won't the media ask the question and explore its implications? And how many times have I asked those questions before, as unreality and fantasy-based policymaking gains an ever firmer hold in Washington?

"Man Sentenced to Life in NYC Airport Terror Plot," from AP, January 13 (thanks to Kenneth):

NEW YORK (AP) - A Muslim man has been sentenced to life in prison for joining a failed plot in 2007 to firebomb New York's John F. Kennedy Airport by blowing up jet fuel supplies with the help of a notorious al-Qaida explosives expert.

A federal judge in Brooklyn gave Kareem Ibrahim the life term Friday. A jury found him guilty last year of conspiracy.

Ibrahim's attorneys had argued in court papers that he only deserved 13 years.

They claimed prosecutors had exaggerated his role in a scheme that had been infiltrated by an FBI informant and had no chance of succeeding.

U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said in a statement that the 66-year-old Shiite imam from Trinidad "abandoned the true tenants [sic!] of his religion" by participating in the plot.

Yes, I am sure that Loretta Lynch knows so much more about the true "tenants" of Islam than does a 66-year-old Shi'ite imam.

In "Three Jihadis" in the American Thinker this morning, Pamela Geller discusses the implications of last week's three jihad plots in this country:

It is almost every day now. Jihadi attacks in America. This past week there were three attempted jihad attacks. And what does the media consider the problem? Racistislamophobicantimuslimbigots, of course.

On Saturday, a Muslim named Sami Osmakac was arrested in Florida on charges of plotting to go jihad on nightclubs and the Tampa, Florida, sheriff's headquarters. "We all have to die," Osmakac said, "so why not die the Islamic way?"

Osmakac is from Kosovo, making his jihad another thank-you for U.S. involvement in Bosnia. And the U.S. still supports an independent Kosovo state, a militant Islamic state, in the heart of Europe. That is our policy. America refuses to own up to the terrible mistake we made in Europe -- worse still, we continue to prosecute the Christian Serbs.

Media reports said that Osmakac, a devout Muslim, was "self-radicalized." You have to wonder if Western dhimmis stay up nights thinking up new terms for jihad. Pathetic. Soon after his arrest, video emerged that showed how pious and violent Sami Osmakac really was, as he attacked and bloodied Christian street preachers. The pious Osmakac, who was completely the aggressor, then cried victim to the police, saying that he had been "insulted," the same fictitious narrative that we are bombarded with daily by Islamic groups and Muslim Brotherhood organizations like the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

The police, in what has become standard practice in dealing with Islamic supremacists, treated the perpetrator and the victim with equal contempt, actually charging the bloodied Christian with battery. This was in the same town, Tampa, that classified what was obviously an honor killing of a Muslim woman, Fatima Abdallah, as a "suicide."

Even worse, after the terrorism arrest, Hassan Shibly, director of the Florida chapter of CAIR, cried "entrapment." This is, of course, typical of jihadis, but what is really outrageous is that the FBI briefed Shibly prior to Osmakac's arrest. Hamas-CAIR was briefed? Was Qaradawi briefed, too?...

So three jihads in one week, and an ongoing sharp increase in jihad activity in Obama's America. Yet this is never remarked upon. It is deliberately ignored. And it's astonishing. Is this what we can expect from our politicians and the media? We're under siege by the enemedia, and by craven politicians, and by the enforcers: CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, etc., that have these government agencies in their back pocket.

What's it's going to take? America, where are you on this?

Read it all.

The murderer of Rabbi Kahane was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, rather than being a "lone crazed gunman." No surprise there: it's all the same jihad. "No new trial for Egyptian in NY killing that brought to US terror spawned by Islamic extremism," from the Associated Press, January 12:

NEW YORK — An Egyptian man who introduced terrorism inspired by Islamic extremism to U.S. shores when he assassinated an anti-Arab rabbi in 1990 has lost his latest bid for a new trial.

El Sayyid Nosair’s claim that he discovered new evidence to overturn his 1995 conviction was rejected in an order made public Thursday. Nosair, 56, is serving a life sentence after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy for conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government through acts of terrorism.

U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell said Nosair did not file his claims in a timely manner, waiting more than a year after learning information from reading books that led him to believe the government had failed to properly inform his lawyers about information that might have helped him at trial.

The judge, though, did review the trial to some extent, concluding that “mountains of evidence” demonstrated Nosair’s role in a conspiracy that also resulted in the conviction of blind Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of some of the men convicted in the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing, is serving a life sentence.

At the time of the World Trade Center bombing, Nosair was in state prison after his conviction on weapons charges related to the assassination of Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane at a Manhattan hotel. Nosair, once thought to be a lone crazed gunman in the killing, was charged in federal court after FBI agents studied the evidence in the trade center bombing and realized some of the future trade center bombers may have even been in the room during the killing.

The judge said the evidence made it clear that Nosair plotted to wage war on the United States....

Ibarra-Hernandez: Yet another Misunderstander

He did not, however, succeed in gaining the space that is guaranteed in Paradise for those who "kill and are killed" for Allah (Qur'an 9:111).

The funny thing about this story is that he was trying to draw attention to Islam by shooting at policemen, but he failed. He won't draw any attention to Islam at all from the people who should be noting such incidents and devising strategies to prevent them. He succeeded in drawing attention to himself, but as he is prosecuted, the motive he stated for his actions will almost certainly be ignored and downplayed, and even if it isn't, its implications will not be explored.

"Man in custody after shootout with police in Alabama City," by Lisa Rogers for the Gadsden Times, January 9 (thanks to D. C. Watson):

A man thought to be an Islamic extremist is believed to have shot the windows out of at least two businesses in Alabama City early Sunday to lure police officers to the area and engage them in a shootout.

Luis Ibarra-Hernandez, 21, from Albertville, was charged today with attempted murder, according to a news release from the Gadsden Police Department.

“After the man was taken into custody, he reported that he knew he must do something extreme to draw attention to Islam and himself, so he planned to shoot police officers,” Gadsden Police Capt. Regina May said.

Gadsden police officers responded to alarm calls for glass breakage after doors were shot out about 1:30 a.m. Sunday at AutoZone and Rainbow Food Mart near the intersection of 27th Street and West Meighan Boulevard.

While investigating the broken doors and determining they were shot out, officers heard gunfire and spotted a man near the old CVS building.

The man knew he had been seen and ran toward the Cathedral of Praise Church parking lot, then started firing rounds at the officers.

The man continued to run through several blocks and at one point was in the Dwight Baptist Church parking lot. Shots were fired over about six blocks, and at least eight officers were shot at, before officers talked the man into dropping his weapon.

May said Officer Mitchell James, a trained crisis negotiator, was working off-duty security at another job at the time and heard the radio traffic. He went to the scene and using his patrol car as cover, moved in close enough to take over negotiations started by another officer.

During the fray, the man told officers he wanted to talk about religion and he apparently had displayed some signs at a nearby church.

He was taken into custody between 3 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. after officers pinned him down behind some trees near 30th Street and Western Avenue. No injuries were reported.

“Gadsden officers showed tremendous discipline by avoiding crossfires, and considering backdrops,” Gadsden Police Sgt. Tom Bradley said....

How did he come to misunderstand the Qur'an's beautiful message of peace and depiction of jihad as an interior spiritual struggle? Why does this happen so often to devout readers of the Qur'an? There are two questions we can be sure that investigators will not care or dare to look into.

More on this story. "Craig Baxam, ex-U.S. soldier, charged with trying to aid terror group al-Shabab," by Matt Zapotosky for the Washington Post, January 9 (thanks to all who sent this in):

...In an interview with FBI agents outlined in the complaint, Baxam admitted a willingness to commit violence, though mostly in defending al-Shabab’s Somali territories from potential invaders. He told the agents that he was specifically seeking al-Shabab — not al-Qaeda — and that he felt offensive jihad was questionable.

Of course. There can be no offensive jihad without a caliph, according to traditional Islamic theology. That's why modern-day jihadists cast their jihads as defensive, as defensive jihad is always permitted -- indeed, required, if a Muslim land is attacked.

Still, Baxam acknowledged that al-Shabab was sometimes responsible for suicide bombings, according to the complaint, and he said he was “looking for dying with a gun in my hand” and would be happy to die defending Islam. He also said al-Shabab’s practice of beating people seen on the street during what is supposed to be prayer time was “awesome.”

Why Baxam became fascinated with al-Shabab and radical Islam remains unclear. A 2005 graduate of Laurel High School who was born in Takoma Park, Baxam joined the U.S. Army in 2007 and completed advanced training in cryptology and intelligence, according to the criminal complaint. He served in Baghdad, then reenlisted for a year-long stint in South Korea.

Baxam left the Army in July — a month before his term was over and about a week after he had “secretly” converted to Islam, according to the complaint. Baxam told agents that he discovered Islam while he was browsing the Internet and had no previous religious affiliation. An online article he read about the Islamic day of judgment “spoke to” him, authorities wrote in the complaint, and he read more.

Baxam’s plan to reach al-Shabab, though, was something less than ironclad. He set out with only a Koran and some other religious texts, a prayer mat, towel and razors, according to the complaint. He carried about $700 in cash and planned to donate it to al-Shabab.

After making his way to Mombasa, then Malindi, Baxam told a taxi driver to take him “as far north as possible” in Kenya, according to the complaint. Dropped off in a city whose name he could not recall, he tried to take a bus to the northern city of Garissa, according to the complaint. He was arrested on that bus by Kenyan police, who suspected that he was trying to travel to Somalia, according to the complaint....

Baxam told FBI agents that after his military service he worked for a television services company in Maryland but spent much of his time reading and praying, according to the complaint. He soon decided that he needed to move somewhere governed by sharia law, according to the complaint, so he set off for Somalia....

Here again, logical, rational argument is not the strong suit of many Islamic supremacists. Craig Baxam, for one, preferred shooting. More on this story. "Former US soldier Craig Baxam 'helped al-Shabab,'" from the BBC, January 10 (thanks to David):

A former US Army soldier has been charged with trying to help Somalia's al-Shabab militant group.

Craig Baxam, 24, was arrested by Kenyan authorities in December as he tried to cross the border into Somalia.

An affidavit released by US prosecutors alleges that he planned to offer several hundred dollars to the militant group, which has links to al-Qaeda, and to serve as a fighter.

He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors say.

Mr Baxam, who lives in a Maryland suburb outside Washington DC, flew to Nairobi on 20 December and attempted to travel to the Kenyan-Somali border by bus and taxi.

He was arrested by US officials when he arrived back in the country on 6 January.

The US has designated al-Shabab a terrorist group, and the group has sought to recruit Americans to fight in Somalia.

Mr Baxam joined the army in 2007 and was trained in intelligence and cryptology.

He previously served in Iraq, returned home and then re-enlisted. He was deployed to South Korea for one year beginning in August 2010.

The affidavit alleges that he converted to Islam secretly after reading an Islamic website while serving in Korea.

Travelling to Somalia held appeal for Mr Baxam because he wanted to live in a country where he believed Sharia law held sway. He no longer believed he could live in the US, prosecutors say.

The only places that were acceptable, according to the affidavit, were Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, part of Somalia controlled by al-Shabab, and in the southern Philippines.

Mr Baxam is quoted as saying he wanted to die "with a gun in my hand", and that he would be happy to die defending Islam.

When told that during interviews with the FBI that al-Shabab encouraged beating people who were seen in the street during prayer time, Mr Baxam allegedly replied "that is awesome".

While the affidavit does not describe exactly how Mr Baxam was found, it does say he was wary of searching for al-Shabab on his computer because he was "aware of the capabilities of the US government".

He also believed his travel towards the Somali border captured the attention of Kenyan authorities, who arrested him before US embassy and FBI officials questioned the former Army officer....

Sami Osmakac showed his affinity for violent jihad last year. "Moment terror suspect, 25, arrested over 'bomb plot' in Florida was caught on camera brawling with Christian protesters," from the Daily Mail, January 10 (thanks to all who sent this in):

A Muslim accused of plotting to bomb locations in the U.S. has apparently been identified as the same man assaulting Christian protesters in a video posted online.

Sami Osmakac, 25, an immigrant from Kosovo, was said to have been planning an attack in Tampa, Florida using a car bomb, machine guns and other explosives.

Kosovo? Doesn't he know that all the Muslims there are moderate and peaceful, and love America?

In the first video clip, a man who appears to be Osmakac, confronted Christian protesters and assaulted one outside the Tampa Bay Times Forum - leaving the man bleeding from the mouth. He was later arrested by police.

In the second video with the title 'Convert to Islam NOW! To all Atheist Christian (Non-Muslims)' a man who looks and sounds like Osmakac threatened members of other religions.

The message from Abdul Samia, believed to be one of Osmakac's aliases, warns viewers to convert to Islam 'before it is too late'. The YouTube videos were posted in December 2010 and in April last year....

Baxam converted to Islam while in the Army and ended up trying to join a jihad terror group. Here again, the mainstream media would ignore this. Yet if even a half, or a third, or a tenth as many converts to Christianity ended up trying to join violent terror groups in accordance with what they believed to be the dictates of their faith, the New York Times and NBC News and Christiane Amanpour would be running banner-headline, prime time, breathless investigations of what it was about Christianity that caused converts to go mad. But for this? Nothing. "Former U.S. Army Soldier Charged With Trying to Provide Material Support to Terror Group Al-Shabaab," from Fox News, January 9 (thanks to Anne Crockett):

GREENBELT, Md. – A former U.S. Army soldier has been charged with attempting to provide material support to terror group al Shabaab, the Department of Justice announced Monday.

Craig Benedict Baxam was arrested Friday upon return to his home state of Maryland after he was captured in Africa during an alleged attempt to reach Somalia, where the terror group is based.

Baxam, 24, joined the Army in 2007 and served in Baghdad and Korea. During his enlistment, he completed eight months of advanced intelligence and cryptology training, the Justice Department said in a press release.

According to court papers, Baxam secretly converted to Islam days before leaving the Army, one month ahead of completing his deployment in Korea. He returned to Maryland in July 2011 and reportedly sought to move to Somalia to join al Shabaab.

Baxam allegedly flew to Kenya using money from his retirement savings account, and carried several hundred dollars in cash to give al Shabaab as an offering after crossing the border into Somalia, the Justice Department said.

"The complaint alleges that Craig Baxam intended to travel to Somalia and join the terrorist organization Al-Shabaab," U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. "Mr. Baxam was caught in Kenya before he reached Somalia, and there is no allegation that anyone assisted him."

He was arrested by Kenyan police for attempting to travel to Somalia to join the terror group as he was traveling on a bus near Mombasa. He was held at the Kenyan Anti-Terrorism Police Unit and questioned by the FBI, officials said....

Osmakac: Guardian of morality

Nightclubs: haram. Bombing nightclubs and murdering people: halal.

More on this story. "Officials: Islamic extremist planned to bomb Florida sites," from WKMG ClickOrlando.com, January 9:

TAMPA, Fla. - A 25-year-old man from the former Yugoslavia was charged with an alleged plot to attack crowded locations in the Tampa area, including nightclubs, with a car bomb, assault rifle and other explosives, federal authorities said Monday.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the arrest of Sami Osmakac, whose first appearance in federal court was scheduled for 2 p.m. Monday.

Authorities say Osmakac, from Pinellas County, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in the former Yugoslavia. He has been charged with one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.

FBI agents arrested Osmakac on Saturday after he allegedly bought explosive devices and firearms from an undercover agent. The firearms and explosives were rendered inoperable by law enforcement. The federal complaint says that shortly before his arrest, Osmakac made a video of himself explaining his motives for carrying out the planned violent attack.

Federal officials say a confidential source told them in Sept. 2011 that Osmakac wanted al-Qaida flags. Two months later, the federal complaint said, Osmakac and the confidential source "discussed and identified potential targets in Tampa" that Osmakac wanted to attack.

Osmakac allegedly asked the source for help getting the firearms and explosives for the attacks, and the source put him in touch with an undercover FBI employee.

On Dec. 21, Osmakac met with the undercover agent and allegedly told the agent that he wanted to buy an AK-47-style machine gun, Uzi submachine guns, high capacity magazines, grenades and explosive belt. During a later meeting, Osmakac gave the agent a $500 down payment for the items.

"According to the complaint, Osmakac also asked the undercover employee whether he/she could build bombs that could be placed in three different vehicles and detonated remotely, near where Osmakac would conduct a follow-up attack using the other weapons he requested," the press release said. "The undercover employee said he/she could possibly provide explosives for one vehicle. Osmakac also allegedly said that he wanted an explosive belt constructed to kill people."

On Jan. 1, Osmakac told the agent that he wanted to bomb night clubs, the Operations Center of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office and a business in Tampa.

Osmakac told the undercover FBI agent that he wanted to detonate a car bomb and use the explosive belt to "get in somewhere where there's a lot of people" and take hostages. During that meeting, the agent told Osmakac he could always change his mind about his plot.

"According to the complaint, Osmakac immediately shook his head in the negative and stated, 'We all have to die, so why not die the Islamic way?'" the press release stated....

Yet another Muslim misunderstands Islam, and thinks that dying "the Islamic way" has something to do with murdering infidels. Maybe he has been reading the work of greasy Islamophobes. "Suspected Islamic Extremist Arrested in Alleged Florida Bomb Plot," from Fox News, January 9:

URGENT: A 25-year-old man described as an Islamic extremist was arrested in an alleged plot to attack crowded areas in the Tampa, Fla., area with a car bomb, assault rifle and other explosives, authorities said Monday.

The U.S. Department of Justice said Sami Osmakac, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in the former Yugoslavia, was arrested Saturday night.

Osmakac, from Pinellas County, allegedly told an undercover agent that "We all have to die, so why not die the Islamic way?'" according to a criminal complaint.

FBI agents arrested Osmakac on Saturday after he allegedly bought explosive devices and firearms from an undercover agent. The firearms and explosives were rendered inoperable by law enforcement. The federal complaint says that shortly before his arrest, Osmakac made a video of himself explaining his motives for carrying out the planned violent attack.

He has been charged with one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. His first appearance in federal court is scheduled for Monday at 2 p.m. ET....

Federal officials said a confidential source told them that Osmakac wanted Al Qaeda flags. The federal complaint alleges Osmakac gave the agent a $500 down payment for an AK-47, multiple homemade explosive grenades and the explosive belt so he could attack various locations in Tampa

Osmakac had created a "martyrdom video" and tried on a bomb belt before being arrested Saturday, law enforcement officials said.

When this report was brought to our attention, we checked the date twice. This story has been going on for many years, and what is most noteworthy is how little seems to have changed each time it resurfaces. "35 terror training camps now operating inside U.S.," from World Net Daily, January 2:

WASHINGTON – A radical jihadist group responsible for nearly 50 attacks on American soil is operating 35 terrorist training camps across the nation, but the U.S. government refuses to include the organization on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorists.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra, known in the U.S. as “Muslims of America,” has purchased or leased hundreds of acres of property – from New York to California – in which the leader, Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, boasts of conducting “the most advanced training courses in Islamic military warfare.”

In a recruitment video captured from Gilani’s “Soldiers of Allah,” he states in English: “We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.”

Though Gilani and his organization is suspected of committing assassinations and firebombings inside the U.S., and is also suspected of the beheading murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, the terrorist camps spread through the country continue to expand in numbers and population.

A documentary called “Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Training Camps Around the U.S.” provides compelling evidence of how “Muslims of America” operates with impunity inside the U.S. In the video, producers visited some camps, attempted to visit others and interviewed neighbors and local police officials. It also include [sic] excerpts of the “Muslims of America” recruitment video.

The recruitment video shows American converts to Islam being instructed in the operation of AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns and C4 explosives. It provides instruction in how to kidnap Americans, kill them and how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s attacks on American soil range from bombings to murder to plots to blow up U.S. landmarks. A 2006 Department of Justice report states Jamaat ul-Fuqra “has more than 35 suspected communes and more than 3,000 members spread across the United States, all in support of one goal: the purification of Islam through violence.” In 2005, the Department of Homeland Security predicted the group would continue to carry out attacks in the U.S.

“Act like you are his friend. Then kill him,” says Gilani in the recruitment video, explaining how to handle American “infidels.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was attempting to interview Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s leader, Gilani, in 2002 when he was kidnapped and later beheaded. One year later, Iyman Faris, member of both Jamaat ul-Fuqra and al-Qaida, pleaded guilty in federal court to a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge.

Gilani was at one time in Pakistani custody for the abduction of Pearl. Intelligence sources also suggest a link between Jamaat ul Fuqra and Richard Reid, the infamous “shoe bomber” who attempted to ignite explosives aboard a Paris-to-Miami passenger flight Dec. 22, 2001....

In Human Events I discuss some new allegations that show yet again how willfully blind the Obama Administration's approach to jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism really is:

It is now official U.S. Government policy that Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism, and that therefore any examination of the stated motives and goals of Islamic jihad terrorists constitutes “Islamophobia” and must be shunned, as well as punished. But new revelations this week from a confessed jihad plotter indicate that this is exactly the opposite policy of what should have been adopted.

A young Muslim named Abdel Hameed Shehadeh recently tried to join the U.S. Army, not out of patriotism but as part of a plan to surprise American soldiers and murder them in the name of Islam and jihad. But he was caught, and began talking; if even some of the information he has given investigators is accurate, he has exposed a jihad network of impressive proportions that should end politically correct self-deception in law enforcement officials’ approach to the problem of jihad terrorism in the United States.

Shedaheh provided the FBI with enough information to fill a 22-page report that is so incriminating to him personally that his lawyers are now trying to suppress it. Those he named would also no doubt like to see his report suppressed. According to the New York Daily News, Shehadeh was “a fount of information.” Among the jihad plotters he named were “Brooklyn teachers of the Islamic orthodoxy Salafism” and Muslims who “delivered pro-jihadist speeches at mosques or ranted in online chat rooms.”

The Islamic advocacy establishment in the U.S. insists that all Muslims in this country happily accept Constitutional freedoms and pluralism, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a venomous “Islamophobe.” If Shehadeh’s claims are true, however, Salafism, a form of hardline Islam that calls for the imposition of Islamic law in its fullness, including stonings, beheadings, amputations, and warfare against unbelievers, is being preached not just in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran, but also right here in Brooklyn.

And while the politically correct media establishment demands that we accept that mosques in the U.S. are exactly equivalent to churches and synagogues, nothing more, nothing less, Shehadeh claims that pro-jihad sermons are being preached in mosques in the New York area. This isn’t really surprising, despite the fact that it goes against the iron dogma to which the government, the mainstream media and Islamic spokesmen in America all adhere. In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the “extremist ideology.”

There is more.

In FrontPage this morning I discussed the little-noted implications of Abdul Hameed Shehadeh's allegations:

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh wanted to join the U.S. Army so that he could turn and kill American soldiers. Instead, he has exposed a jihad network of impressive proportions that, if his assertions are true, should end the rush toward politically correct self-deception in the way law enforcement officials approach the problem of jihad terrorism in the United States.

The criminal complaint against him says that he “and several other individuals” were being charged “in connection with a plot to travel overseas and wage violent jihad against the United States and other coalition military forces.” Shehadeh had planned to wage this jihad from within the U.S. military: in 2008, he went to a recruiting station in Times Square and attempted to join the Army, so that he could, according to law enforcement officials, get training that he could use “to fight beside fellow Muslims against their enemies, including United States military forces.”

But things didn’t work out that way. Shehadeh got caught, and quickly began cooperating with authorities. He gave FBI agents a lengthy interview that fills a 22-page report that his lawyers are now trying to deep-six: although Shehadeh gave the interview in an attempt to get a better deal for himself, he quickly started worrying about “how much I incriminated myself,” and so now wants the report suppressed.

Those he named no doubt also want his report suppressed. According to the New York Daily News, Shehadeh was “a fount of information.” Among the jihad plotters he mentions in the report are “Brooklyn teachers of the Islamic orthodoxy Salafism” and Muslims who “delivered pro-jihadist speeches at mosques or ranted in online chat rooms.”

Salafism is a form of hardline Islam that calls for the imposition of Islamic law in its fullness, including stonings, beheadings, amputations, and warfare against unbelievers. Salafis just made a strong showing in Egypt’s elections. But in the U.S., the Islamic establishment insists that all Muslims happily accept constitutional freedoms and pluralism, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a venomous “Islamophobe.” If Shehadeh’s claims are true, however, Salafism is being preached in Brooklyn, and pro-jihad sermons are being preached in mosques in the New York area – and the Islamic establishment claims about the Muslim community in the U.S. are false.

There is more.

Including, he says, some who preached jihad violence at mosques. This should be investigated, and the mosques in question shut down if it proves to be true. "S.I. jihadi Abdel Hameed Shehadeh rats out a big roster of plotters," by John Marzulli for the New York Daily News, December 27:

A TERRORIST wanna-be from Staten Island ratted out dozens of people he called pro-jihadists in New York and Hawaii after he was arrested by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force, it was revealed Tuesday.

Abdel Hameed Shehadeh was a fount of information when lawmen interrogating him last year in Honolulu showed him more than 40 photos of possible evildoers, according to court papers filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Shehadeh’s lawyer is seeking to suppress the 22-page FBI report in which Shehadeh spills his guts.

The alleged rogues’ gallery he describes includes Brooklyn teachers of the Islamic orthodoxy Salafism, a livery cab driver, an Ethiopian Muslim in the U.S. Army and a College of Staten Island student who attended a fund-raiser at Brooklyn College for a terrorist.

Others he ID’d had delivered pro-jihadist speeches at mosques or ranted in online chat rooms, he said, and included a reputed member of the terror group Hamas who lives in Syracuse.

Most bizarre is the homeless husband-and-wife — she comes from a wealthy family and he drives a luxury BMW sedan — who watched a beheading video with Shehadeh, according to an FBI report.

Shehadeh recalled attending a lecture at the Brooklyn Islamic Center in 2008 with someone named “Omar” and a second man who peddled pro-jihad T-shirts. “Almost everything [Omar] and his friend . . . talked about was jihad,” the report states.

The names of the persons of interest are being withheld by the Daily News because Shehadeh’s claims could not be independently confirmed.

Shehadeh’s lawyer publicly filed the FBI report as part of a motion to suppress his client’s post-arrest snitching and statements about his own radicalization.

Shehadeh signed an affidavit claiming he was tricked into waiving his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

The Brooklyn-born Shehadeh, 22, is charged with lying to the feds about a failed attempt to travel to Pakistan and join the Taliban....

Would you buy a used car from these jihadis? They're doing this in Tennessee and Tulsa, too. "Lansing used car dealership investigated in terror scheme," by Niraj Warikoo for the Detroit Free Press, December 28 (thanks to Kenneth):

A Lansing car dealership is named among 30 around the country in a federal investigation into an alleged $480 million money laundering scheme tied to Mideast terrorist group Hezbollah, federal prosecutors said.

According to a federal lawsuit filed in New York City, Oussama Salhab, the owner of Cybamar Swiss, a Redford Township transport company, "is a Hezbollah operative" who was part of an effort to funnel part of the proceeds from car sales to the Lebanese group.

The 66-page complaint lists a Lansing company called A&J Auto Sales Inc. as one of the dealers in Michigan - along with eight in and around Detroit.

However, the used car dealers are not accused in the federal complaint of being aware that they were part of a money laundering scheme and may have been unwitting participants.

It's unclear who owns A&J Auto Sales Inc. A business search turned up no results in Lansing, and the U.S. attorney's office referred to the complaint in lieu of comment.

The suit seeks the forfeiture of the assets of Cybamar.

In addition, federal officials sought the forfeiture of used car dealerships in Detroit, Dearborn Heights, Lansing and Redford Township that sold vehicles whose proceeds may have ended up going to Hezbollah.

Salhab bought vehicles from at least two of the dealerships, and his Redford company shipped many of the used cars overseas....

The complaint, filed Dec. 15, is the latest U.S. effort to target Hezbollah, a group based in Lebanon that the U.S. State Department classifies as a terrorist group and says has Iranian support. U.S. authorities say the group was behind bomb attacks against the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and 1984.

"We are putting a stranglehold on a major source of that funding by disrupting a vast and far-flung network that spanned three continents," said Preet Bharara, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

The complaint says that banks and money exchanges in Lebanon tied to Hezbollah purchased cars from 30 car dealers - eight of them in metro Detroit - and sent them to west Africa. Cybamar in Redford was often used to ship the cars.

"Between 2008 and 2010, used cars valued collectively at over $1 billion were shipped from the United States to Benin (in Africa)," the complaint says. "Cybamar is ... frequently used by the car buyers."

Proceeds from car sales ended up in Lebanon, with some of the cash going to Hezbollah. Drug smuggling also was involved in some parts of the operation, the complaint said.

Salhab, who lives in Lebanon and the African country of Togo, tried to enter the U.S. in November 2009 through Metro Airport.

He was sent back after inspectors found images on his laptop of Hezbollah "Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah; audio of the Hezbollah national anthem; images of Hezbollah militants stomping on an Israeli flag," the lawsuit says.

This case is apparently connected to a larger investigation which found 30 auto businesses in the U.S. that laundered over $300 million in money to benefit Hizballah. Even in Tulsa. "Raid on Wilson auto dealership stuns landlord, neighbors," from The Tennessean, December 24:

A Wilson County car dealer accused of aiding Lebanon-based terrorist organization Hezbollah was born in that Middle Eastern country in 1969 and moved to Tennessee nine years ago, Davidson County court records show.

Khalil Aref Abdelkhalek’s landlord at Cedar Exports Auto Sales and neighboring businesspeople said they were shocked to hear that federal agents had raided the company — along with dozens of other dealerships across the country — as part of a civil money laundering and forfeiture lawsuit seeking nearly half a billion dollars from an alleged massive, international scheme to funnel money to Hezbollah.

Another "decent fellow":

“You could have knocked me over with a feather,” said Tony Moorby, owner of the Dealer Plaza complex where Cedar Exports and 13 other automotive dealers are located. “This chap has been great. He actually comes looking for us to pay his rent. He’s always been happy, courteous, smiling. He’s always been very gracious.

“But I’m sure the feds can’t do this kind of thing without all the consideration that’s due.”

Reached by telephone, Abdelkhalek, 42, referred comment to his lawyer, Nashville attorney Nader Baydoun, who did not return phone messages and emails seeking comment. In an interview with WSMV-TV, Abdelkhalek emphatically denied the government’s charges that he aided terrorists and suggested he may have unwittingly been caught up in the alleged scheme.

“As part of the scheme, funds were wired from Lebanon to the United States to buy used cars, which were then transported to West Africa,” states a news release announcing the civil charges brought last week by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. “Cash from the sale of the cars, along with proceeds of narcotics trafficking, were then funneled to Lebanon through (Hezbollah)-controlled money laundering channels.”...

This piece tries to portray the Rockwoods as innocent victims of an FBI setup. Paul Rockwood says that his plot was "all talk," and yet he also admits that "we decided to assassinate certain people." Even the most softball journalistic treatment from the dhimmi LA Times cannot paper over that and make Paul Rockwood a sympathetic character.

"In Alaska, becoming the militants next door," by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, December 22:

Reporting from Fairton, N.J.— A little more than a year ago, he was a weather forecaster at a remote outpost in King Salmon, Alaska, population 442. He and his wife — he with his close-trimmed red beard and shy smile, she with her rosebud cheeks and sweet English accent — lived in a two-story frame house strewn with toys. They were popular dinner companions and regulars at community theater productions.

Now Paul Rockwood Jr. is a convicted terrorist, serving eight years in a federal prison. His wife, Nadia, is exiled on probation in England after her own criminal conviction. Since their arrest in 2010 — accused by the FBI of drafting and delivering a list of targets for terrorist attacks — friends and neighbors have been left in confusion, wondering how the nice young couple could have turned into the terrorists next door.

The possible answer, provided in Rockwood's first interview since his arrest, opens a window on one man's uncertain spiritual journey and radicalization after the Sept. 11 attacks. It also offers a look at the government's increasingly deep dragnet for suspected domestic terrorists.

To federal authorities, Rockwood, 36, is a man who turned from hard-partying bartender and ex-Navy seaman to Muslim militant committed to killing fellow Americans.

To Rockwood, the plot involving targeted assassinations and bombs was a "pure fantasy" created by a government agent he thought was his friend, a common refrain in the nation's burgeoning number of "home-grown" terrorism plots prosecuted since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Rockwood concedes that he drew up a list of people. He thought they should be punished.

"But ... it was all talk," Rockwood said in a small interview room at the correctional facility he has called home since July 2010.

By his account, the events of Sept. 11 stunned and repelled Rockwood and his wife, both raised Catholic. They were living in Virginia, and Rockwood had recently gotten a job as a contractor with the National Weather Service, hoping to eventually land a full civil service position and a more stable future.

"A week later, I was flying back from New Mexico and I was telling my co-workers, 'I'm not getting on the plane if there's Arab or Muslim people on the plane,'" he said. "But as time went on, I started needing to know why somebody would kill themselves, flying a plane into a building."

Rockwood was taking medication for anxiety and Meniere's disease, an affliction of the inner ear that causes vertigo, headaches and nausea. He was also trying to cut back on his partying and had taken a comparative religion class to try to quiet his mind.

He started studying Islam online.

"I was struck by how similar the beliefs in Islam were to Christianity, and at the same time, I guess also the differences made sense to me; it was a straighter path," he said.

Rockwood said he also felt that he was beginning to understand what had driven the Sept. 11 hijackers. "These people felt that they had been under attack," he said. "They kind of saw it as a self-defense response. It was like you'd be impressed if an American soldier jumps on a grenade to save his buddies; it takes a lot of courage to give up your life like that."

In December, only three months after the attacks, Rockwood took the shehada, the Muslim affirmation of faith, and not long after began attending the radical Dar al-Arqam mosque in Falls Church, Va. That mosque had frequently served as a platform for Ali al-Timimi, a radical lecturer who would soon be convicted and sentenced to life in prison on charges of soliciting followers to join the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Here, Rockwood was exposed to the teachings of Anwar Awlaki, a Yemeni American engineer whose entreaties to U.S. Muslims to engage in holy war made him one of the most influential voices of violent, radical Islam in the West. Awlaki was killed in September in a U.S. missile strike in Yemen.

"I held beliefs that were similar to his beliefs," Rockwood said. Among them were outrage over the deaths of innocents, fury over war crimes committed by U.S. troops and a conviction that the Iraq war had been started to lock up new oil supplies for the United States.

Nadia resented the way her husband's newfound religion consumed him, and the couple separated for a time. Eventually, though, she converted to Islam. Not long after, the couple's first child was born, and Rockwood took the job in King Salmon, his civil service entree to the weather service.

Nadia integrated easily into the close-knit social life in King Salmon, but it was harder for Rockwood. "Some of the best people I ever met lived in King Salmon. But it was hard for me not to have other Muslims," he said.

Two years after arriving, and again in 2009, Rockwood traveled to Cairo, hoping to find a way that he and Nadia could move there and enroll their young son in an international madrasa. Nadia, though, didn't want to live in Egypt. So Rockwood did his best to settle into life in King Salmon, relishing the occasional chance to debate politics and the war in Iraq, especially with his then-boss, whom he described as a devout Christian and a fellow military veteran.

His boss, he feels sure, noticed that he was listening to Awlaki sermons and using his personal laptop to visit websites such as Revolution Muslim, which praised Nidal Malik Hasan's deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Ft. Hood, Texas, as a "preemptive attack." It was his boss, he believes, who called him to the FBI's attention, though the government has said its initial tip in the case came from outside Alaska.

By that time, Rockwood was back on prescription drugs to counter a flare-up of his Meniere's disease. He was lonely and thinking again about moving to Egypt.

"I don't know how to express it. I was depressed about everything. I was upset. I wanted to leave the country, but at the same time, I wanted to change the country. I was confused. I'm still confused. I guess to compare it, I'm kind of sympathetic about how the Japanese Americans must have felt in World War II," he said.

* * *

That was when one of the leaders at the mosque in Anchorage asked whether he wouldn't like to meet a potential convert. The gentleman was a state trooper, he was told, and wanted to learn more about the religion. Would Rockwood talk about his own experience?

They met and became, Rockwood thought, fast friends. "Every time I came to Anchorage we would go to the mosque, go out to dinner, he'd ask me for help in how to recite the Koran, how to fast. He actually became a Muslim. He took the shehada. He said the words," Rockwood said, a little incredulously.

"Our conversations for months and months had nothing to do with politics or jihad and the wars. But slowly over time, that was all he wanted to talk about," Rockwood said. "He'd bring up certain things or ask me certain questions to try to get me riled up. Things like atrocities that were committed during the war: Abu Ghraib, the villages, the rapes. Basically, we'd both share our outrage and ask, what should be done about this? Who should be doing something about this?"

The discussions — often carried out at an expensive hotel where the trooper paid to put up Rockwood in a room — began to grow deadly serious.

"We decided to assassinate certain people. We had these conversations. I'm not going to deny it," Rockwood said. "I told him that I'd kept news articles with the names of people that were involved in the atrocities and stuff. He said, 'Great, get me a list of names.' Part of it was a macho kind of thing…. Also, he was offering me money. He said he was going to give me $8,000" to get started on the plan.

Rockwood said the trooper bought cellphones and other electronic devices that purportedly were to be used as remote triggers for bombs.

But at the same time, Rockwood and his wife had been talking about moving to England. His Meniere's disease had become devastating, and the National Health Service there would provide free treatment. He gave notice at work, and the couple had a garage sale to get rid of most of their possessions.

"I knew I was never going to do anything. I knew I was going to go to England and not come back. But I needed the money. It's not a redeeming quality, but I was using him for my own purposes. I didn't realize at the time that he was using me, too."

It all came to a head on the eve of their intended departure when Rockwood talked on the phone with the trooper, who said from Anchorage that he needed the list of names. Nadia was going to Anchorage, so Rockwood gave her the list. When she arrived, she met the trooper at Wal-Mart and was filmed by the FBI handing over the envelope.

Rockwood shook his head. "If it was happening now, when I'm clear-headed, I definitely wouldn't have gone along with it," he said. "All it would have taken was a conversation to wake me up and snap me out of it."

The Rockwoods boarded their flight from King Salmon to Boston, where they planned to visit family before heading to England, but they were stopped by the FBI when the plane landed in Anchorage. They were questioned, ostensibly for an investigation of the activities of the state trooper.

Soon, though, it became apparent that the authorities were interested in Rockwood, not the trooper. Though not under arrest, the couple weren't allowed to leave the city. With Nadia pregnant and all their possessions down to a few suitcases, they stayed first in a nice hotel, then as their funds dwindled, a motel, and finally a homeless shelter.

"I had five cars following me around Anchorage," he said. "I took my son to Chuck E. Cheese, I took him to a children's museum, and they had people following me around with cameras. I can't even tell you how much pressure I was under."

Eventually, faced with the possibility of being charged with terrorism, the Rockwoods pleaded guilty to the only crimes they knew they had committed: making false statements to the FBI during a terrorism investigation. Rockwood said the key was a pledge that Nadia would not have to go to jail.

"I would have said I was the guy on the grassy knoll if it meant keeping her out of prison," Rockwood said. "But I want people to know why I pled guilty. I want people to know what the government is doing, what lengths they're going to, to get these terrorism cases."...

"The suggestion that this was planted in his mind is just false.... He researched the means to select targets, and his looking for people to kill and how to kill them was well before law enforcement got involved," Karen Loeffler, U.S. attorney in Alaska, said in an interview....

Yet another. This woman is Turkish, not Pakistani. That makes it likely that the only interest she would have in sending money to Pakistan to pay for attacks on U.S. forces was motivated by Islam's jihad doctrine. But that will once again be glossed over or ignored entirely by investigating authorities. "California woman faces terrorism-related charge," from the Associated Press, December 21 (thanks to Kenneth):

LOS ANGELES (AP) – A woman was indicted Wednesday on charges accusing her of sending money to Pakistan to help fund terrorist attacks against U.S. military personnel, authorities said.

Oytun Ayse Mihalik, 39, of La Palma, faces three counts of providing material support to terrorists and one count of making a false statement. If convicted of all counts, Mihalik could face up to 53 years in prison.

Mihalik funneled about $2,000 to a person in Pakistan over a three-week period beginning late last year, knowing the money would be used to prepare for and carry out attacks against the U.S. military and others overseas, federal prosecutors said....

Mihalik, who worked as a pharmacist, has been in federal custody since she was arrested in August after she attempted to board a flight to Turkey, her native country....

Mihalik lied to federal agents during an interview at Los Angeles International Airport following a six-month trip to Turkey by telling them she never used an alias to wire money overseas and she had only sent funds once, authorities said.

She told investigators the money was meant for a family friend who was having financial problems, according to an affidavit. Authorities wouldn't elaborate about how they know the money Mihalik wired overseas was going to be used for terrorist attacks.

However, court documents reveal Mihalik's arrest is "related to national security investigations in other areas of the United States." As of August, Mihalik had been cooperating with investigators, records show.

"The charges are based on the defendant's intent to cause harm to U.S. military personnel," said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. "We have not alleged any attacks that may have resulted from the funding because the legal issue is the defendant's intent as to what the money would be used for."...

Seven and nine years for plotting murder of those they considered enemies of...that great motivator which must not be named, on pain of charges of "Islamophobia" from the Obama federal government. "Brothers in federal terror trial sentenced," by Francine Sawyer for the Sun-Journal, December 20:

Two brothers who said their father had a devastating influence on them, persuading them to take on the jihad cause, were sentenced in U.S. District Court in New Bern Tuesday.

Dylan Boyd, 25, and his older brother, Zakariya Boyd, 22, an Eagle Scout, were sentenced to seven and nine years respectively in federal court.

Not only an Eagle Scout, but younger than his younger brother -- such is the power of a Muslim Eagle Scout!

Each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide support to terrorists, which carried a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison....

Both men testified against other defendants regarding a homegrown terrorist cell in a federal trial earlier this year.

The brothers were part of a group of eight men who raised money, stockpiled weapons and trained for jihad attacks against American military targets and others they considered enemies of Islam.

Defense attorneys said the Boyd brothers were influenced by their overbearing father, Daniel Boyd, and his evil radical Muslim views.

Zakariya Boyd’s lawyer said in court that Zakariya Boyd was forthcoming with his interviews with the government as they built their case. He knew his testimony at the trial in February in New Bern would ostracize him from his family and friends, according to the lawyer.

Government prosecutor John Bowler said that Zakariya Boyd was cooperative and forthcoming during interviews with the government in making the case against his co-defendants.

Along with the nine-year sentence, he was fined $3,000.

Zakariya told the court that he was sorry for the time and resources that the court had to use for the case. Crying, he apologized to his family.

“I am sorry for the sorry and tears I have brought you. I regret that I allowed outside influences to take me to this point in my life. I have remorse and shameful regrets,” he said.

He apologized to his family for falling prey to outside influences? It sounds as if his family itself was all the bad influence he needed.

Bowler said that Dylan Boyd had lesser involvement in the terrorist plot.

“He had reservations about the conspiracy,” Bowler said. “He did not endorse the violent jihad.”

Dylan’s lawyer, Joseph Zeszotarski Jr., said that Dylan was more afraid of his father than he was of God.

“The extent of his father’s control and instruction in Dylan’s life was extreme, ruthless and endless,” Zeszotarski said....

Along with his seven-year sentence, he was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.

The brothers’ mother, Sabrina Boyd, dressed in Muslim garb, a brother and Dylan Boyd’s wife were in court, along with several other friends....

Daniel Boyd has pleaded guilty to terrorist related charges and is expected to be sentenced in the spring. He also testified for the government.

He became involved in al-Qaeda as he grew more devout and committed to Islam. Law enforcement officials are now required not to notice that or pay it any attention, but actually it is the key to understanding his motivations and actions. "Federal jury in Boston convicts terror suspect Tarek Mehanna of supporting Al Qaeda," by Milton J. Valencia, John R. Ellement, and Martin Finucane for the Boston Globe, December 20 (thanks to all who sent this in):

Sudbury resident Tarek Mehanna was convicted today of conspiring to support Al Qaeda and other charges.

Tarek Mehanna, a young pharmacy college graduate from the leafy Boston suburb of Sudbury, was convicted today of conspiring to support Al Qaeda and other charges for traveling to Yemen in search of terror training in 2004 and then, when he failed to find it, taking to the Internet to try to spread the terror group’s message....

Mehanna, who had become increasingly radical in his views, traveled to Yemen in 2004 seeking terrorism training, so he could carry out jihad, or holy war, against US soldiers in Iraq.

After failing to find training there, he returned to the United States, determined to help Al Qaeda by translating and distributing propaganda promoting jihad on the Internet.

Defense lawyers argued that Mehanna did not provide support to Al Qaeda. They said he was simply expressing his own views in opposition to US foreign policy, particularly to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, activity that was protected by the First Amendment.

They also offered a different story for the Yemen trip. They called Mehanna a budding young scholar committed to his religion, saying he had traveled to that country in search of education -- to further his studies on Islamic law and in the Arabic language.

But a series of Mehanna’s former friends testified against him, saying he had promoted extreme ideology, endorsed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and once said he considered Osama bin Laden his “real father.” Together, the former friends recalled, they watched videos glorifying suicide bombings in Iraq.

These two things are only mutually exclusive to someone who believes that Islam is a Religion of Peace. In fact, he went to study Islamic law and became involved with al-Qaeda -- and almost certainly saw no contradiction.

Several FBI agents also told jurors that a search of Mehanna’s computer uncovered countless documents promoting Al Qaeda, including materials that Mehanna had translated into English, for non-Arabic speakers.

One of those documents was “39 Ways to Make and Participate in Jihad,” a call for Muslims to take action that was written by an Al Qaeda member.

Mehanna was convicted of charges of conspiracy to provide material support or resources to a foreign terror organization, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, providing and attempting to provide material support to terorists [sic], conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, conspiracy, and two counts of making false statements to federal investigators....

Even in Tulsa. "Terrorism investigation in Tulsa," from Fox23, December 16 (thanks to Kenneth):

A Tulsa auto business is among companies named in a federal complaint that accuses 30 U.S. car buyers of being in league with a money laundering operation that pumped more than $300 million into the financial system to benefit the militant group Hezbollah.

Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Rusty Payne said that Ace Auto Leasing Inc. was among companies whose businesses were used to help launder drug money that helped finance Hezbollah.

Payne said, "Those moneys were laundered into some exchange houses in Lebanon and have been for a long time."

He added, "This is the perfect intersection of the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism."

The companies would send cars to west Africa to be sold at a profit, with some money going back to the businesses to buy more cars to ship.

Payne said profits from drug trafficking were laundered into the operation as well, helping fund the militant group. Ace Auto Leasing has recieved more than $20 million from the Lebanon exchange houses.

Payne said, "You have used car dealerships across the country receiving transfers from shady exchange houses that are Hezbollah backed and are working with Hezbollah and the Lebonese Canadian bank."

He added, "When you see a used car lot with 10-50 cars on it, do you think $20 million sent to them is normal?"

Dr. John Swails, director for the Center for Israel and Middle East Studies said this has been boiling under the surface for some time.

He said, "The big surprise is that we've caught so many or they have bungled their attempts."

Dr. Swails added, "I think Hezbollah knew it was happening because they started capturing CIA agents so they may have seen it coming."

While this is not a reason to panic, Dr. Swails and DEA officials say problems like this are not going away.

Payne said, "There's only one more group that has killed more Americans and that's Al-Qaeda. Hezbollah is number two."

Dr. Swails said, "The people who hate the United States are out there and they're coming relentlessly so we have to accept the fact… We have to be on our guard."

The investigation continues. No official charges have been filed.

A clue to the attraction Leftists feel for Islamic supremacists? "Lebanese Drug Lord Indicted, Linked to Hizballah Funding," from IPT News, December 13:

A Lebanese drug lord, with connections to Hizballah, has been indicted on charges of moving over 100 tons of Columbian cocaine to the Zetas drug cartel and into the United States. Propublica.org's Sebastian Rotella states it is a "politically explosive case" that the terrorist organization funds itself through drug sales to America, which is backed up by previous government press releases.

"Ayman Joumaa is accused of facilitating the shipments of huge amounts of cocaine for the United States while laundering the proceeds all over the globe," said DEA Administrator Leonhart in the Justice Department's press release. "According to information from sources, his alleged drug and money laundering activities facilitated numerous global drug trafficking organizations, including the criminal activities of the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel. DEA and our partners will continue to expose and dismantle these worldwide networks," he added....

In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the "extremist ideology."

Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom's 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project's 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.

And in the summer of 2011 came another study showing that only 19% of mosques in U.S. don't teach jihad violence and/or Islamic supremacism.

And now here is more on the latter study:

Study Shows U.S. Mosques Repositories of Sharia, Jihad, and Muslim Brotherhood Literature and Preachers

Peer-reviewed study most extensive empirical examination of U.S. mosques to date

December 12, 2011 – New York, New York: A leading international peer-reviewed journal specializing in the empirical study of terrorism has published a study that found that 80% of U.S. mosques provide their worshippers with jihad-style literature promoting the use of violence against non-believers and that the imams in those mosques expressly promote that literature.

The study also found that when a mosque imam or its worshippers were “sharia-adherent,” as measured by certain behaviors in conformity with Islamic law, the mosque was more likely to provide this violent literature and the imam was more likely to promote it.

The abstract for the study summarizes the research findings:

A random survey of 100 representative mosques in the U.S. was conducted to measure the correlation between Sharia adherence and dogma calling for violence against non-believers. Of the 100 mosques surveyed, 51% had texts on site rated as severely advocating violence; 30% had texts rated as moderately advocating violence; and 19% had no violent texts at all. Mosques that presented as Sharia adherent were more likely to feature violence-positive texts on site than were their non-Sharia-adherent counterparts. In 84.5% of the mosques, the imam recommended studying violence-positive texts. The leadership at Sharia-adherent mosques was more likely to recommend that a worshipper study violence-positive texts than leadership at non-Sharia-adherent mosques. Fifty-eight percent of the mosques invited guest imams known to promote violent jihad. The leadership of mosques that featured violence-positive literature was more likely to invite guest imams who were known to promote violent jihad than was the leadership of mosques that did not feature violence-positive literature on mosque premises.

The study was published in December 2011 by Perspectives on Terrorism, a scholarly international journal of the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI), a global initiative that seeks to support the international community of terrorism researchers and scholars through the facilitation of collaborative projects and cooperative initiatives. TRI was established in 2007 by scholars from several disciplines in order to provide the global research community with a common tool than can empower them and extend the impact of each participant's research activities.

The mosque study had previously been published by the Middle East Quarterly in September 2011, an academic peer-reviewed journal which specializes on Middle East regional issues. Because of the ground-breaking nature of the study, which brings a rigorous empirical methodology to the question of home-grown jihadists, MEQ granted permission to Perspectives on Terrorism to publish a more extensive analysis of the study’s conception, methodology, and results.

The study’s authors, Professor Mordechai Kedar of Bar Ilan University in Israel and David Yerushalmi, who serves as general counsel to the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., have both published widely on terrorism, Islamic law and its underlying doctrines of jihad and violence against unbelievers.

The study may be accessed here at the Mapping Sharia website.

The study may be accessed here at MEQ.

The study may be accessed here at Perspectives on Terrorism.

Jihadists are escalating the terror battle even as Obama forbids all investigation of their motives and goals. "Pentagon: Terrorist threats by al-Qaida sympathizers against U.S. troops are real," by Leo Shane III for Stars and Stripes, December 7 (thanks to Kenneth):

WASHINGTON – Terrorist attacks by al-Qaida sympathizers against troops living in the United States or their families remain a real and disconcerting threat, defense officials told Congress on Wednesday.

But lawmakers at that hearing criticized Pentagon officials for their continued refusal to identify “radical Islamist extremists” as the core threat to military personnel, saying their insistence on being politically correct might be jeopardizing America’s safety.

The language semantics have been an ongoing fight between defense officials and members of the congressional homeland security committees since the 2009 Fort Hood attacks, a shooting where 56 base personnel were killed and wounded by a Muslim Army psychiatrist....

See how the Obama Administration's new See-No-Jihad policies entangle officials in self-contradiction here and here.