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Chicago jihadist “thought that Islam was the greatest thing since sliced bread”

Dec 8, 2009 11:11 pm By Robert Spencer

Interestingly enough, his half-brother is a public relations officer for Pakistan’s prime minister. Headley seems to be quite devout, and yet somehow seems to have misunderstood Islam thoroughly, somehow getting the idea that jihad terror and mass murder in Mumbai would please Allah. And none of the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims seem to have taken him aside to explain to him how he was getting Islam wrong, wrong, wrong. “Portrait of Mumbai attacks terror suspect David Headley takes shape,” from AP, December 8 (thanks to Choi):

[…] “Call me old-fashioned, but I feel disposed towards violence for the offending parties,” Headley allegedly wrote on a Web site, referring to people he believed had defiled the sacred name of Islam. He was angered by a Danish newspaper that featured a series of cartoons, one showing the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.

“They never started debates with folks who slandered our Prophet, they took violent action,” Headley wrote, according to federal court documents. “Even if God doesn’t give us the opportunity to bring our intentions to fruition, we will claim ajr (a religious award) for it.”

Headley was charged Monday with conspiring in the planning of the November 2008 attacks. Prosecutors accused him of scouting out targets, including the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, the Leopold Cafe, a landmark called Nariman House and a large railroad station, all of which were struck by terrorists. […]

Headley also is charged with planning an armed attack on the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, which published a dozen cartoons in 2005 that depicted the Prophet Muhammad and set off protests in the Muslim world.

According to the government, Headley dubbed the cartoon-related attack “the Mickey Mouse project.” His attorneys have declined to comment.

Headley grew up both in the United States and Pakistan, the son of an American mother and a Pakistani father. By his teen years, he already had developed strong feelings about Islam, according to Lorenzo Lacovara, who helped Headley’s mother open a bar in Philadelphia in the 1970s.

“He was all full of himself and thought that Islam was the greatest thing since sliced bread. He was full of contempt,” Lacovara says. “He was fully convinced that it was the 14th century and that it was time for Islam to take over the world.

It sounded a lot like teenage bravado, but I think he became a lot more serious.”

Headley’s interest led him to terrorist training camps operated by Lashkar-e-Taiba — Army of the Pure in Urdu — a group focused on the decades-old friction between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Prosecutors say Headley repeatedly attended the camps to learn terrorist tradecraft.

Prosecutors say Headley got marching orders from Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2005 to do surveillance for the group in India. Soon after he was given the assignment, he changed his name from Daood Gilani to David Coleman Headley to “present himself in India as an American who was neither Muslim nor Pakistani,” according to court documents.

Headley took photos and made videotapes of the targets that were attacked in Mumbai by 10 terrorists trained by Lashkar, prosecutors say. […]

Headley was born in 1960 in Washington, where his Pakistani father, Syed Saleem Gilani, worked for Voice of America, according to Headley’s half-brother, Danyal Gilani, a public relations officer for Pakistan’s prime minister. The family moved to Pakistan soon after Headley’s birth. […]

Both Rana and Headley occasionally worshipped on Fridays at Jame Masjid of Chicago, sometimes heading around the corner to Zum Zum, a sweet shop where men in the neighborhood often gather to talk politics and cricket over samosas and chai.

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Filed Under: Jihad in the U.S., Pakistan, Pakistan's double game Tagged With: Jihad in America, Pakistan


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