The words “Islamic Society of Boston” do not appear in this Boston Globe article, which is full of head-scratching and bewilderment over why Boston has produced so many jihad terrorists. Yet the Tsarnaev brothers, Usaama Rahim (the “Roslindale man” in the second paragraph), and Tarek Mehanna, as well as Aafia Siddiqui, who is doing 86 years for jihad activities, and Ahmad Abousamra, the Islamic State’s propagandist (apparently now slain), all went there. The ISB was founded by Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who is doing 23 years for financing al-Qaeda. Yet none of these learned analysts quoted in this story thinks to call for an investigation of the Islamic Society of Boston, and as far as is publicly known, no such investigation is being conducted or is even being contemplated.
It is more important today to preserve politically correct fictions than to safeguard the public.
Oh, and by the way, Bishop McManus, how is that “dialogue” working out?
“Are Boston terrorism cases a trend?,” by Shelley Murphy and Peter Schworm, Boston Globe, June 7, 2015:
The Tsarnaev brothers exploded bombs at the Boston Marathon. Tarek Mehanna translated documents for Al Qaeda from his Sudbury home. Ashland’s Rezwan Ferdaus planned to crash model airplanes laden with explosives into the Pentagon and US Capitol.
All were homegrown terrorist plots in and around Boston in recent years. And then, last week, a Roslindale man who was being tracked by an antiterrorism task force and who allegedly had vowed to kill police officers was shot to death by investigators as he allegedly brandished a knife.
These episodes raise a question: Is Boston more vulnerable to violent extremism than other parts of the country? Antiterrorism specialists interviewed by the Globe said there is no easy answer.
Some said the region is no more likely to be home to extremists than anywhere else in the United States, while others suggested that Boston’s emergence as an international hub may leave it exposed to strains of radicalized behavior.
“Clearly, there have been a number of incidents here, and some of that is because Boston is really an international city,” said former Boston Police Department commissioner Ed Davis, who is an international security consultant and a consultant to the Globe.
Rahim’s alleged plot was the latest in a series of terrorism cases with connections to the state stretching back to Sept. 11, 2001.
Still, he said, “I don’t want to downplay the fact there have been repeated incidents. I think we have to look closely at it at this point.”
J.M. Berger, coauthor of “ISIS: The State of Terror” and author of “Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam,” said there have been more incidents involving violent extremism in Boston than many other places, but not as many as in some cities, including New York.
The Boston-area cases cannot be traced to one network, and individuals and groups do not appear to be connected, Berger said.
Yet, he said, there was a “robust radical presence” in the Boston area in the 1990s, when members of the Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. — which was linked to the 1993 truck-bombing attack at the World Trade Center — moved to Massachusetts and operated an organization that sent fighters and supplies to Bosnia. Most of that group’s members were sent to prison or deported.
“There is some degree of social network here that seems to be involved in radical thought, but very few radicals actually become violent,” Berger said.
Even if there are remnants of that radical social network in the Boston area, Berger said, all of the recent local cases are not necessarily connected to it.
“Unfortunately, ISIS has been more effective in inspiring people to carry out individual attacks,” Berger said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group active in Iraq and Syria.
One of the few indicators of whether someone will become a violent extremist is with whom they associate, whether over the Internet or in person, Berger said. “If you’re friends with a violent extremist, you are likely to be one,” he said.
James Forest, director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell’s Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, said many US cities have felt the threat of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001. Boston, he said, is not an outlier.
“We’ve seen similar kinds of plots in many cities,” he said. “These guys could just have easily been in Chicago, Denver, or Houston.”…