In recent years we have seen mosques used to preach hatred; to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house a bomb factory; to store weapons; to disseminate messages from bin Laden; to demand (in the U.S.) that non-Muslims conform to Islamic dietary restrictions; to fire on American troops; to fire upon Indian troops; to train jihadists; and so we know they’re places of peace, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a greasy Islamophobe.
“Jihad,Va.: Awlaki may be dead, but his radical American mosque remains,” by Paul Sperry in the New York Post, October 9:
The 9/11 imam Anwar al-Awlaki may be dead, but his old mosque is still open for business and remains a dangerous breeding ground for terrorists — and it’s right in the president’s back yard.
Nothing much has changed since 2002, when Awlaki voluntarily left the pulpit of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in the Washington suburbs of Falls Church, Va.
It maintains the same radical leaders who hired him, and the same owners — even the same fax number that investigators believe 9/11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh used to send instructions to Awlaki and key hijackers he aided there. An unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, moreover, still leads prayers there. […]
In 2001, while Awlaki was preparing the hijackers for their martyrdom operation, Abdul-Malik raised the banner of Palestinian jihad, saying it’s within Islamic law to “blow up bridges” and other infrastructure. “You can do all forms of sabotage,” he said at a US conference held by a Hamas front group, while cautioning against killing “innocent” people.
Three years later, a founding mosque member was arrested for allegedly casing the Chesapeake Bay bridge for possible attack. Ismail Elbarasse was released on $1 million bond after Dar Al-Hijrah leaders put up their homes as collateral.
After Awlaki fled the country, Abdul-Malik told me in an interview he saw nothing wrong with Awlaki’s sermons encouraging Muslims to become martyrs.
Martyr in an Islamic context refers to someone who kills and is killed for Allah (cf. Qur’an 9:111).