Over at PJ Media, I ask why authorities are still taking mosque leaders’ statements after terror arrests at face value.
It’s an iconic moment in American cinema, from Casablanca: Captain Renault tells Rick Blaine that he is “shocked! shocked!” to discover that gambling is going on in his establishment, and that it will be immediately closed — just as a clerk approaches and hands Renault his winnings. Muslims aren’t generally known for cinematic tributes, but mosque leaders around the country deserve Oscars for how they reenact this scene every time a jihadi is apprehended. For how long are law enforcement officials going to fall for the act?
The latest example comes courtesy of Arafat Nagi of Lackawanna, New York, who was arrested last week for recruiting for the Islamic State. According to WIVB, the local Muslim community is “devastated and in shock.”
In shock, eh? Dr. Khalid Qazi, President of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, said that Nagi “had withdrawn from the community about three years ago. He had some domestic issues, some family issues.” Ah, that does explain it. Qazi is implying that Nagi was a bit unbalanced, leading to his involvement with the Islamic State, and that if he hadn’t withdrawn from the peaceful Muslim community three years ago, this wouldn’t have happened.
But wait: back in 2002, Nagi had wanted to join the Lackawanna Six – six local Muslims who attended an al-Qaeda training camp.
According to Qazi, Nagi only withdrew — he wasn’t expelled for his “extremism,” but withdrew — from the local Muslim community only three years ago. That means that for ten years after trying to join an al-Qaeda group, Nagi was presumably a member in good standing of the local Muslim community.
Clearly his recent arrest shows that he hadn’t given up his “extremism.” Yet when Nagi is arrested, the local community is “in shock”? They knew for at least thirteen years that Nagi was a supporter of the violent jihad doctrine they supposedly reject and abhor. What was shocking about his arrest?
Qazi was, of course, posturing for the media and law enforcement authorities, and there is no indication that either didn’t wholly swallow his act. Indeed, despite the fact that this same act has played all over the country, it always gets rave reviews.
It played in Birmingham, Alabama, last April, when a young Muslim woman fled to the Islamic State. A spokesman for the girl’s parents — why did they need a spokesman? — said:
For them this is worse than losing the life of a child, to have them join such a horrible, horrible gang of violent extremists. Nothing can describe the pain they are facing.
The spokesman was none other than Hassan Shibly, a lawyer and the chief executive director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group with established ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Shibly claimed that the woman had withdrawn from the local Muslim community a year before joining the Islamic State, and added:
The reason she withdrew from the community is because the Muslim community is very vocal against groups like ISIS … she made the decision based on her communication online with them that she wanted to join them.
He didn’t bother to explain why the peaceful Islam the young woman presumably learned from the community and her shocked and devastated parents wasn’t able to withstand the appeal of a supposedly twisted, hijacked version of the religion. He didn’t have to: he could be secure in the knowledge that no one would ask him to do so.
And so it goes. After the July 16 jihad massacre of U.S. Marines in Chattanooga by Mohammod Abdulazeez, the Times Free Press reported that 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.
And last April, a Muslim woman named Noelle Valentzas was arrested for plotting, along with another Muslim woman, a jihad bombing on U.S. soil. Valentzas’ husband, Abu Bakr, said of his wife’s arrest:
I don’t believe any of it, period. We are all shocked, the whole community. That’s not who she is.
But back in 2007, Abu Bakr was photographed at the Muslim Day Parade in New York City with the black flag of jihad. He carried it at other parades as well.
A particularly hammy version of this play-acting came in Rochester, New York in June 2014, when Mufid Elfgeeh, a Muslim local restaurant owner, was arrested for plotting to murder American soldiers. Sareer Fazili, President of the Islamic Center of Rochester, said:
Our religion is one of peace and one of submission and I think all of our friends in the faith based community know that. … I’m very shocked, I’m very upset, very disappointed that somebody who claims they follow Islam, the same religion that has been taught for so many years would think that he is within the bounds of our teachings because nothing could be further from the truth.
He was shocked to hear that someone who professes to be a Muslim would commit an act of violence? Really?
Had Sareer Fazili never heard of 9/11? 7/7? The Bali bombing? The Boston Marathon bombing? The Fort Hood massacre? Or any of the thousands of other jihad attacks perpetrated by people who not only profess to be Muslim, but say that when they bomb and kill they are following the teachings of Islam?
Fazili also said, according to WHEC, that he “does not believe Elfgeeh has ever been a member of the Islamic Center.” That may be, but it is noteworthy how so many devout Muslims who turn to violent jihad — Elfgeeh had tweeted “about the prophet Muhammad and terrorist groups fighting in the name of Allah” — never seem to go to mosque.
Every time there is a jihad attack or plot in the U.S., local Muslims say that no one knew him, he never went to mosque. Yet by their own words, these people are fanatically devout and observant….
Read the rest here.
Guy Macher says
Why is that none of the goatbeards reach out to the apostates?
ich says
Robert……..YOU ARE A HERO
Please keep up the vigilance !!!
Even when it seems to fall on deaf ears, keep fighting.
Things have to change.
If we dont battle this evil cult , then no one will.
t says
Yes I 100% agree! Robert examines any specimen from the sick body of Islam like no other biologist or pathologist would do, even if it was with the help of the latest state-of-the-art microscope!
He is a source of inspiration to me.
Victor Redlick says
Barack and a right ticked-off Lady Obama never heard the Irreverent Wright spew a vitriolic sermon of racist hostility or threatening the damnation of America, in the 20 years of sitting in his church`s pews, either. Captain Renaud was a fictional movie character, blundering President Obama is stark-raving reality.
Westman says
Typical: “He was a nice boy, a little off, but we never saw him around the Mosque.”
Uhh, where did you Imams see him in order to form that opinion?
Angemon says
For some reason, that blatant contradiction doesn’t seem to register with the people in charge…
mortimer says
The mullah said…
… “I was shocked…SHOCKED…to learn there are 164 jihad verses in the Koran and KAFIR HATRED and JEW HATRED on almost every page! Furthermore, I was HYPER-SHOCKED when I discovered Muslims recite SUPREMACIST prayers 17 times a day that curse JEWS AND CHRISTIANS! There are even HUNDREDS of hadiths that talk about fighting and killing kafirs, subjugating them, raping them and enslaving them! A HUGE proportion of the Sharia law is concerned with the issue of SLAVERY! They even teach that ONLY KAFIRS may be enslaved! I’m ULTRA-SHOCKED that Islam has such teachings…those SUPREMACIST teachings suddenly showed up after I’ve been a Muslim for 50 years! I’m so mortified!”
Jaladhi says
I am shocked, shocked that there are only 164 jihad verses in Quran – I demand a recount, there has to be a few more!!! LOL…
EYESOPEN says
{;o)
Scott Galletto says
I’d like to see some one infiltrate all of these peaceful mosques and video/audio tape what is being taught, then release them after they come out and act like Frenchy did in Casablanca. Kind a like those guys did to Planned Parenthood.
William says
That has been done already, in Britain. Remember the TV exposes, I believe involving schools! I don’t believe anything worthwhile came of it. If you catch them in the act, recorded or otherwise, they will weasel their way out of it. They will say that they are shocked that those things are happening and that the will correct the problem immediately. They never do. And they are never held to account.
duh_swami says
Our religion is one of peace and one of submission…
‘The Ministry of Peace wages war’, and the Ministry of Submission supplies the jihadists…
That’s not shocking, it’s standard Islam…
duh_swami says
What’s shocking is Rand Paul’s hair…Trump’s is a close second, but at least he uses a comb…What does this have to do with Islam?…Nothing…But it is shocking…
Jaladhi says
Please tell me why are Muslims allowed to come to any non-Muslim country and create problems. There is nothing, nothing of value that Muslims bring with them!! They only bring terror and grief to any country they go – that is in their DNA!!
Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY) says
Lackawanna, NY, is contiguous with West Seneca, NY,
and we residents of both towns are shocked, shocked to find
out that jihad has been going on under our very noses.
dumbledoresarmy says
A short, sharp article by “Hugh Fitzgerald”, over at New English Review. “Hugh” (nom de plume) used to post here a lot – both in feature articles and in the comments stream – some years ago; he reappeared here, not very long ago.
This article, which appeared at New English Review, discusses “Mosques in the West”. But it would also apply to mosques in Christian and animist Africa, and mosques in India, and in Thailand, and mosques, well, within *any* majority non-Muslim land, *anywhere*.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/46020
Saturday, 2 February 2013
Fitzgerald: Mosques in the West
Excerpt:
“Western governments [and not only western governments – dda] simply will not stop to examine, will not dare even to discuss, the nature, the meaning, the menace of Islam and Jihad.
“Those whose duty it is to protect us will continue to pretend that what goes on in mosques is as “religious” in nature as what goes on in churches or synagogues.
“But it isn’t.
“Visits to mosques, or tapes of what goes on, or the testimony of those who have jettisoned Islam but can still recall what they heard (or if their faces are not recognized, enter mosques still) confirm that what goes on is dangerous to Infidels, to their legal and political institutions, to their physical security.
“The national governments of the Western world have failed those whom they are supposed to protect. They have failed to exhibit any intelligent curiosity about Islam as a Total Belief-System, and the role of the mosques as a basis for Jihad — that is, the “struggle” to promote Islam and remove all obstacles to its spread, and dominance.
Yet local governments, or local officials, have been forced to change or cancel permits by aroused citizens, who have made their cases against this or that mosque on the basis of size — the proposed mega-mosque in London appears to have been stopped — rather than on the basis of the bristling and aggressive nature of these huge structures, their minarets rising like missiles (as Erdogan once famously said).
If more non-Muslims came to understand the texts and tenets and attitudes of Islam, they would not be so uninterested in the mosque-building that goes on, sometimes even with the aid of local governments (e.g., Mayor Menino encouraging the building of the Boston Mosque, and even agreeing to sell land far below the market price), but would move heaven and earth to stop as many such projects as possible, and what’s more, to make sure that existing mosques and madrasas are monitored for the contents of what they preach (and what Muslims practice, when they are in a position to do so).
“The word “religion” keeps getting in the way, but greater knowledge would give Infidels the confidence not to be bamboozled or impressed by such a word, and determined not to be deterred in their opposition to mosques and madrasas.
“For the first is not simply, or mainly, a house of individual worship, but a center where a collectivist and aggressive Total Belief-System can more easily maintain or reinforce its hold over local Believers.”
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
For how long are law enforcement officials going to fall for the act?
Until such fakery is no longer necessary. One day in the not too distant future, the cat will be out of the bag and the Infidels will finally come to understand what the long term program is for them under Islam. That’s when the “Shocked! Shocked!” acting will end. Every time I see a local Moslem spokesperson on TV talking about this or that young Moslem joining ISIS and getting caught up in a Jihad mass murder operation, I feel a little sorry for the spokesperson guy. Man, it must turn his stomach to spew such lies; he must burn with desire for the day when such nonsense will no longer be necessary.
But for now, hey, the cash flow is good so why not appear before the cameras every couple of weeks and lie your ass off?
Alarmed Pig Farmer says
Our religion is one of peace and one of submission and I think all of our friends in the faith based community know that … I’m very shocked, I’m very upset, very disappointed that…
Define that and the question comes up whether the root word of submission — submit — is stated in the passive or active voice. Anybody who’s read the Holy Ko-Ran, or even just turned on a TV set the last 15 years, knows that submit is in the active voice, as in *you* submit (to us).
When you wipe away the foot thick mud of doggerel and bullshit from your windshield, this just isn’t that hard to understand. Islam is a corrective and predatory belief system.