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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

New Jersey Muslim gets prison for inciting jihad violence

Apr 25, 2014 4:10 pm By Robert Spencer

Yousef al-Khattab is now trying to pretend that it was all a joke, but he made no secret of his love for jihad terror and hatred of the infidels. He praised Osama bin Laden, filmed himself rejoicing in the murder of Daniel Pearl and saying he had no problem eating popcorn while watching the video of Pearl’s beheading, and mocked the killing and maiming of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Al-Khattab pleaded guilty to posting material online supporting jihad terror attacks and targeting Jews. He was a founder of the Revolution Muslim group, as well as the Islamic Thinkers Society. He has said: “I love Osama bin Laden…I love him…because I haven’t seen that he’s really done anything wrong from the Sharia. I love him more than I love myself.” Of Fort Hood jihad mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan, al-Khattab wrote:

An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a preemptive attack. Get Well Soon Major Nidal We Love You. We do NOT denounce this officer’s actions… .Sharing a Smile with the International Community, Yousef al-Khattab.

All this (and there was much more like it) was bad enough, but al-Khattab also demonstrated a decided inclination not just to praise jihadi killers like bin Laden and Hasan, but to follow in their footsteps. Philadelphia Magazine reported that al-Khattab,

posted a message asking Allah to punish Jewish people using “liquid drain cleaner in their faces” and by making “their fingers and brains stick on cafe walls from impact.”

Snapshot 2009-05-11 16-26-23

He strongly hinted that Muslims should take up that job for Allah and kill Jews themselves. This glorification of jihad mass murder of Jews is all the more chilling in light of the fact that Yousef al-Khattab is a convert to Islam from Judaism. Formerly Joseph Cohen, he lived in Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and Israel before violently rejecting his religion, culture, and heritage.

Al-Khattab seemed particularly intent on inciting the murder of his former friends and associates. According to the Washington Post,

in a January 2009 post, he told viewers to seek out leaders of Jewish Federation chapters in the United States and “deal with them directly at their homes,” court records show. In another post that year, Khattab, who lives in Atlantic City, added a photo of the Chabad Jewish organization headquarters in Brooklyn with a link to a map, court records show. He noted that Chabad’s main temple was always full at prayer times and wrote, “Make EVERY attempt to reach these people and teach them the message of Islam or leave them a message from Islam.”

What kind of message from Islam he had in mind was illustrated by an image he once posted of himself with his three sons, photoshopped onto the Jerusalem skyline, with the Dome of the Rock prominently in the background. Al-Khattab and each of his sons, Abdel Rahman, Abdel Aziz, and Abdullah (who looks about eight years old), is holding an AK-47.

“New Jersey man sentenced to prison for extremist Islamic Web posts,” by Matt Zapotosky, Washington Post, April 24, 2014:

A New Jersey man who used his Islamic organization’s Web site to advocate violence against those whose ideals he found offensive to his religion was sentenced Friday to two and a half years in prison — a modest term that a federal judge said he imposed so people would “understand the line” between free speech and criminal calls for violence.

Yousef al-Khattab, 45, renounced his postings during the hearing in federal court in Alexandria, asking district Judge Liam O’Grady to hold him responsible only “for what I say, not how other people understood it.”

Derisively calling himself a “clown” and “the Gilbert Gottfried of the Muslims,” al-Khattab said he did not intend to incite violence but would not make the postings today that he did years ago.

“I look back now, and I’m very wrong,” al-Khattab said.

For his part, O’Grady said that he believed al-Khattab would not make the postings again but was skeptical that his intention was only to spark discussion. O’Grady asked al-Khattab particularly about a post he made seeming to direct followers to attack the Chabad Jewish organization headquarters in Brooklyn.

Court records show that in 2009, al-Khattab posted of photo of the headquarters, with a link to a map, and noted the main temple was always full at prayer times. In another post that year, he told viewers to seek out leaders of Jewish organizations in the United States and “deal with them directly at their homes,” court records show.

Khattab pleaded guilty in October to using the Internet to put another in fear of death or injury.

“To a reasonable person, you were espousing violence, encouraging violence, praising violence in very plain language,” O’Grady said. “What you did is criminal.”

Prosecutors argued, too, that authorities had connected more than a dozen followers of al-Khattab and the organization he helped found — Revolution Muslim — to various terrorist plots or organizations. Among them were Colleen LaRose, the American woman who used the nickname JihadJane as she allegedly recruited people to “wage violent jihad,” and Samir Khan, who is said to have founded the notorious al-Qaeda magazine Inspire. He was killed in a controversial drone strike alongside American Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda operative.

“Mr. Khattab’s aim was to inspire Muslims to engage in terrorism,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon D. Kromberg said in court. “He succeeded.”

Alan H. Yamamoto, al-Khattab’s defense attorney, argued that his client’s postings were no different than those of several anti-Muslim groups, and al-Khattab thought what he was doing was legally protected as free speech. He acknowledged that al-Khattab “stepped over the line,” but disputed the notion that he was “the reason all these nuts are out there doing things.”

Al-Khattab himself renounced some terrorist attacks, including the Boston Marathon bombing, and referred to some of his former affiliates as “scum.”

“To hold him responsible for all the hate and anger that’s out there is just not correct,” Yamamoto said. “He was a block in that wall, but he’s not the wall.”

Prosecutors had asked that al-Khattab spend three years in prison; Yamamoto sought just a year and a day for his client.

O’Grady said he agreed that al-Khattab’s actions warranted a lesser punishment than those in similar cases. Revolution Muslim co-founder Jesse C. Morton, for example, was sentenced in 2012 to 111 / 2 years in prison after he admitted that he encouraged extremists to attack the writers of the “South Park” animated TV show because an episode featured the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.

But O’Grady also said “freedom of speech carries with it responsibility,” and Al-Khattab’s posts were “horrific.”

Al-Khattab, who was allowed to report on his own to jail at a later date, told O’Grady after the sentence was imposed: “I have no hard feelings, and I thank you.” He declined to comment after the hearing.

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Filed Under: converts to Islam, Jihad in the U.S. Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. mariam rove says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 4:44 pm

    when it is pay back time, he is sorry. so he says!!!!! M

  2. Bradamante says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 5:06 pm

    I’m glad this little freak is going to prison. I had no idea he was born Jewish. Very sad. He appears in the movie “The Third Jihad” and comes across as a creepy cultist. You can tell he was drawn to Islam because he’s psychologically messed up and that, like bacteria growing in a petri dish, he found an ideal environment to nourish his pathology.

  3. voegelinian says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 5:09 pm

    “This glorification of jihad mass murder of Jews is all the more chilling in light of the fact that Yousef al-Khattab is a convert to Islam from Judaism. Formerly Joseph Cohen, he lived in Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and Israel before violently rejecting his religion, culture, and heritage.”

    The apotheosis (= the Islamic nadir) of the Self-Hating Jew.

  4. Rob says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 5:32 pm

    The take home message for me is that the US remains committed to due process.
    This guy breaks the law, he is tried and convicted.

    • defcon 5 says

      Apr 26, 2014 at 1:22 pm

      @Rob

      Tell that to the victim of the Zombie Muhammad assault, in which a muslime judge dismissed all charges against his muslime attacker for insufficient evidence despite the fact there were witnesses and that his muslime attacker admitted to police he had attacked the man for imitating muhammud.

  5. mortimer says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 6:32 pm

    an enemy of everything in the American constitution and a big liar

  6. Elise says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 6:59 pm

    For those of us brought up in a freedom loving world with self discipline and compassion for our fellow human beings, it’s difficult to fathom so much hate from one person or a group of people who pretend to follow a loving God. The being that the Muslims worship and their prophet appear to be the Devil who promotes fear, hatred, sexual abuse, hell on earth and in the afterlife, unless they become martyrs for Allah. Anyone with some common sense and intelligence would question such hatred and want to improve life for all on planet earth. Unfortunately, the majority of Islamic followers are illiterate and those who can read don’t understand enough Arabic to ask questions. Of course with the questions come the fear of being labeled an apostate and being imprisoned or killed for blasphemy. This fear of death imprisons Muslims to their archaic and evil beliefs. The lie about the number of houri that men who die for Allah will receive in heaven provide endless warriors for Allah. If men are promised endless sex in Heaven, why is sex so taboo on earth? One has to be crazy to believe in such hatred and fear imposed by a prophet who loved to kill and enslave. People who ban having fun, singing, flying kites, wearing tight pants or wearing bikinis, to name a few so called sins, are mentally ill.

    • Salah says

      Apr 26, 2014 at 12:43 am

      “.. Of course with the questions come the fear of being labeled an apostate..”

      You’re right, what’s keeping them in the dark prison of Islam is Ignorance and, of course, Fear. But things are changing.
      Muslims are leaving Islam by the millions, though no one talks about it.
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xS9qcYhdls
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdVnILalpeo
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnh8kdnfYyE
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTpvaEWjXWs
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8BH9D7US8

      Al-Jazeera TV:
      http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/05/dying-islam-lislam-mourant.html
      http://crossmuslims.blogspot.ca/2014/01/egyptian-muslims-tear-up-quran.html

  7. john spielman says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 7:14 pm

    This man clearly crossed the line from criticizing even ridiculing a religion (as I always do to Islam and the false prophet of Islam – the demon possessed mass murderer thief liar misogynist and pedophile Muhammed) and advocating or counseling to commit a felony- murder ! MORE PROOF AS TO THE FACT THAT ISLAM DRAWS THOSE INCLINED TO CRIMINAL ASSAULT

    • EYESOPEN says

      Apr 26, 2014 at 12:19 am

      You hit the nail on the head, John.

      In addition: “Al-Khattab … has said: “I love Osama bin Laden…I love him…because I haven’t seen that he’s really done anything wrong from the Sharia. I love him more than I love myself.”

      I don’t think there was any “love” in this creature. He was merely infatuated by the evil of OBL.

  8. jewdog says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 8:04 pm

    This guy is a real mental case. I’ve seen him “featured” on TV as an Islamic radical, but the reporters always neglected to mention that he was born a Jew. He was interviewed by Richard Dawkins in which he expressed his contempt for Israel in a very slanderous way and venomous way.
    I think his original Jewishness is important to mention because it strongly hints at his unstable mental state and unsuitability to serve as a credible spokesman or example of much more than a crazy cult follower, though in a sense that is what those jihadists are, n’est-ce pas?

  9. clod says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 8:13 pm

    I do not understand why his case was in Virginia. It is rumored that one judge came from a KKK family In southern Va. Why wasn’t the case in NJ?

  10. clod says

    Apr 25, 2014 at 8:24 pm

    I do not understand why his case was in Virginia. It is rumored that one judge came from a KKK family In southern Va. Why wasn’t the case in NJ??????????

  11. Descendentofacrusader says

    Apr 26, 2014 at 8:53 am

    Nice touch the garishly golden dome with it’s defiantly up turned, Satan’s claw making up the background of this demonically inspired, family poorly pasted onto this unnatural picture. “Unnatural” as Satan feverishly tries to carve out squatter’s territory on the holiest place on earth to God’s people: the Jews and the Christians.

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