“Gifted this morning not only with Eid but w/ the news of a brother puttin fear n the heart of kufar [non-believers] n the city of my birth. Alhamdullilah [thanks be to God].” Once again we see that a convert to Islam gets the idea that converting to this new religion also requires committing treason. No authorities, however, show any curiosity about this phenomenon.
“Chattanooga woman marries ISIS fighter, cheers for Marines shooter,” by Joy Lukachick Smith, Times Free Press, July 26, 2015:
After Ariel Bradley met a Muslim man online and moved to Sweden to marry him, most of her friends stopped hearing from her.
They weren’t surprised that she had flown so far away. Or that she had so wholeheartedly adopted her new Muslim faith. That was her style.
The Hixson-born 29-year-old had once been home-schooled and Pentecostal. She wrote Bible verses in black marker on the roof of her car. “I love JC,” it read.
Later, during her teenage years, she ran away from home and school and abandoned that identity. She moved into a socialist group home on Tremont Street where the floor was covered in mattresses and stale Panera bread left for anyone who was hungry. Those who knew her then said she was a full-fledged egalitarian, a feminist who refused to wear much more than a bra and a mini skirt, an atheist who called Christianity a delusion.
She was among the first activists working with Chattanooga Organized for Action in 2010, a group that pushes for racial equality, fair housing policy and empathy for the poor. During the same year, she became interested in The Twelve Tribes, a religious sect that owns and runs The Yellow Deli restaurant and lives communally. She started to dress more modestly, pulled cardigans over her bare shoulders and wore skirts past her knees.
Then she started wrapping a scarf around her head. She was working at the University Pizza and Deli, which was owned by a Palestinian man and was a gathering spot for local Muslims. Friends say she was infatuated with a young Muslim man. On her Tumbler account, she started writing about the teachings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. At some point, she converted.
Friends thought it was just another phase. They laughed about her new obsession. They called her “vanilla ice cream” because she went with everything so easily. But her views became extreme very quickly. It seemed even the Muslim Americans she befriended weren’t truly following Allah. Online, she began to search for a husband.
“But her views became extreme very quickly. It seemed even the Muslim Americans she befriended weren’t truly following Allah.” It is likely that Joy Lukachick Smith’s source for this tidbit is the local mosque, anxious to distance itself from Bradley and her support for the Islamic State. The question of where Bradley got the idea that the local Muslims in Chattanooga were wrong is not broached. The question of how both Bradley and Mohammod Abdulazeez, the Chattanooga jihad murderer, could have misunderstood the benign Islam they were presumably being taught in Chattanooga mosques is not broached.
She argued with her non-Muslim friends, who questioned her abrupt ideological shift. Aria, a friend who didn’t want her last name used, said the once staunch feminist became judgmental of other women.
“The way women dress is like rags on a soulless hanger,” Aria said Bradley told her.
Not long after, she disappeared overseas. A few people from home saw her return to Chattanooga a handful of times over the next few years, once when she had her daughter, but almost no one, including her mother, knew much about her life abroad.
Then on the day after a 24-year-old Muslim man from her hometown attacked two military sites in Chattanooga, killing five servicemen, a tweet, found and confirmed by the online news site BuzzFeed, offered some terrifying insight.
“Gifted this morning not only with Eid but w/ the news of a brother puttin fear n the heart of kufar [non-believers] n the city of my birth. Alhamdullilah [thanks be to God],” Bradley wrote, before making her Twitter feed private.
Now many believe that Bradley, who changed her name to Umm Aminah on social media, is living in an ISIS-controlled territory with two children and her husband. On a YouTube account, also found by BuzzFeed, Bradley’s posts indicate that she was planning a trip to Syria in late 2013. BuzzFeed reported that she confirmed her husband was an ISIS fighter, but none of her friends or family at home have any direct knowledge of their link to ISIS….
In Chattanooga, Bassam Issa, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, has said how shocked he was to find out that a young man who went to his mosque harbored radical ideas. He doesn’t see how anything Abdulazeez learned locally could have led to such thinking or to such a tragic plan. Moving forward, though, he said they will be very conscious of the risk.
Yes, of course he was shocked. Shocked!
Is everyone just taking his word for it, or is any investigation being conducted of what this mosque actually teaches?
The imam and other spiritual leaders plan to pay close attention to the youth, especially since the attack on July 16, to make sure the young people understand what Islam actually teaches.
“[We are] trying to protect them from the information on the Internet and other sources that are not Islamic,” Issa said. “We’re offering more guidance from the imam for the true Islamic peaceful way of living.”
Issa added that he has always been open to working with law enforcement, both local and national. Their mindset has been that threats to America must be reported to authorities. Had they known of Abdulazeez’s intentions, they would have done something about it.
Other experts on terrorism and radicalization believe it’s the responsibility of the community — parents, churches, friends, local leaders — not the government to monitor their children to guard them against radical doctrine….
Churches? Churches have to monitor their children to guard them against radical doctrine and make sure they don’t become one of those hordes of Christians who blow themselves in crowds of non-Christians while screaming, “Jesus is Lord”? Notice that there is no mention of mosques having any responsibility to monitor their children to guard them against radical doctrine.