Home Grown

From Bill Roggio's story on the air strike reportedly targeting Al Qaeda external operations chief Saleh al Somali:

"At least two Americans have carried out suicide attacks in Somalia this year. Both attacks were high-profile: one killed three Somali ministers, and another killed the deputy commander of the African Union forces serving in the country.

"'This is why we have been freaking out,' the official said. 'The number of Americans being recruited here in the US is deeply disturbing. That they are leaving the US to train in Somalia and fight for Shabaab is worrisome. Some of us have feared al Somali would take advantage of these recruits to hit the US mainland.'"

Government officials aren't the only ones reportedly "freaking out" over young Americans going abroad for Jihad, and Somalia isn't their only destination - as demonstrated in the aftermath of this week's news of the arrest of five Americans in Pakistan:

"Those are our children," Essam Tellawi, the imam, said in an emotional sermon to about 30 worshipers after noontime prayers at the ICNA Center -- which is affiliated with the Islamic Circle of North America. "I could never describe the difficulties and hardships that our five families have been afflicted with."
<...>
In Pakistan, the Americans -- ages 18 to 25, the sons of immigrant families from Pakistan, Egypt and East Africa -- spent another day behind bars.

More on The Islamic Circle of North America here. The New York Times reports the five "may end up being at least the fourth case prosecuted this year in which Muslim Americans traveled to Pakistan" to join extremist groups there.

Emotional pleas from their imam aside, at least one of the families isn't experiencing hardships and difficulties at long distance. From the Times report: "The police [in Pakistan] said Khalid Farooq, the father of Umer, one of the young men, had been arrested and was also being questioned Friday on the grounds that he knew the young men were wanted by the F.B.I. but had not reported their whereabouts. Mr. Farooq and his wife, who run a computer business in northern Virginia, were in Sargodha when the young men turned up there after landing in Karachi on Nov. 20, police said."

In fact, they were all together at an uncle's house at the time of the arrests:

The men were arrested at a four-room home in a government housing complex belonging to an uncle of the eldest of the group, Umer Farooq, 25, according to Chief Anwar.
<...>
Mr. Farooq's parents were staying at the house at the time, and his father, Khalid, was arrested as well. The police chief said the elder Mr. Farooq knew that his son and the other men were being hunted by the F.B.I., but had failed to inform the authorities of their presence.

Umer Farooq's mother, Sabria Farooq, who was wearing a traditional chador, was interviewed Thursday at the house. She said she and her husband emigrated to the United States 20 years ago from Sargodha and returned in September to start a computer business, similar to the one they have in the Virginia suburbs close to Washington.

The Washington Post reports the men were "found in the home of an activist linked to a radical group that has been banned by the Pakistani government."

In something of a computer-related coincidence, the men "bonded together in the jihadi cause, watching jihadist video clips on YouTube that showed attacks by the Taliban on allied forces in Afghanistan".

Before they left the United States, the men appeared to have come to the attention of an Islamic militant, identified as Saifullah, through their YouTube activities, the police chief said. Saifullah, who has links to Al Qaeda, traced their e-mail addresses through YouTube, Chief Anwar said.

After establishing the Internet connection with the militant, the men planned their journey to Pakistan and into North Waziristan, where they intended to train near Miram Shah, a headquarters of the Afghan Taliban, the police said.

(See Jawa report on "Saifullah" here.) Also speaking out at the Alexandria, Va. ICNA Center press conference (video here) was Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, who declared the arrests a "wake up call" for the Muslim community to rise up against the threat posed to youth by the internet:

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia -- The arrest of five US nationals in Pakistan for trying to join Islamist militant groups is a "wake up call" about Muslim radicalization in the United States, a local imam said Friday.

And imam Mahdi Bray said his community in Virginia would hit back against viral Internet postings by militants with an online effort of its own.

Leaders of the Alexandria mosque attended by the five youngsters described them as normal, career-focused kids.

"This is indeed a wake up call," Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, told reporters outside the mosque.

"We are determined not to let religious extremists exploit the vulnerability of our young children through slick propaganda on the Internet," Bray added.

"We are sending a message loud and clear that those days are over when we don't respond... We are going to be active, proactive."

But he acknowledged that the emotions of young Muslims were stirred by "injustices" they see unfolding in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the United States is engaged in wars to root out extremists.

More on Bray here, and a video interview on YouTube here. More on the Muslim American Society here.

If his "injustices" they see unfolding quote sounds familiar, it could be due to the similar explanation Abdulhakim Muhammad gave for killing a US Army Private in Little Rock last June. "I do feel I'm not guilty," Muhammad told The Associated Press in a collect call from the Pulaski County jail. "I don't think it was murder, because murder is when a person kills another person without justified reason." He called it "a act, for the sake of God, for the sake of Allah, the Lord of all the world, and also a retaliation on U.S. military." More specifically,

..."he wanted revenge for claims that American military personnel had desecrated copies of the Quran" (thanks, Newsweek) and raped and killed Muslims. (Edited to simply "anger over what soldiers had done to Muslims" in most national coverage.)

An FBI joint terrorism task force based in the southern U.S. reportedly had been tracking Muhammad after he traveled to Yemen and was arrested and jailed there for using a Somali passport, an official told The Associated Press. The probe had been in its early stages and based on Muhammad's trip to Yemen, ABC News reported.

While his pilgrimage may seem similar to theirs, Newsweek reports a possible stronger connection between the Americans held in Pakistan and another killer of soldiers. According to their report, at least one of the families worshiped at a location other than the ICNA Center: "the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque, located in a Virginia suburb of Washington; the mosque was also once attended by Maj. Nidal Hasan, the accused Fort Hood shooter."

Following the Ft Hood shootings, the Washington Post reported

Hasan attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church in 2001, when its spiritual leader was Anwar al-Aulaqi, a figure who crossed paths with al-Qaeda associates, including two Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers, one senior U.S. official said.

Since Aulaqi left in 2002 and settled in Yemen, his lectures promoting the strategies of an al-Qaeda military leader have shown up in computer files of suspects in terrorism cases in the United States, Canada and Britain, officials said. It is not clear whether Hasan knew the preacher well then or only later through his lectures on the Internet.

Not long after, Andy McCarthy wrote at the National Review:

It's been brought to my attention by several reliable sources that the Defense Department has brought Louay Safi to Fort Hood as an instructor, and that he has been lecturing on Islam to our troops in Fort Hood who are about to deploy to Afghanistan. Safi is a top official of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and served as research director at the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT).

Worse, last evening, Safi was apparently permitted to present a check (evidently on behalf of ISNA) to the families of the victims of last month's Fort Hood massacre. A military source told the blogger Barbarossa at the Jawa Report: "This is nothing short of blood money. This is criminal and the Ft. Hood base commander should be fired right now."

Original Jawa report story here. More on the Islamic Society of North America here. (Not to be confused with the previously mentioned ICNA.) And more on Louay Safi here. That last link is to The Investigative Project on Terrorism, the group cited in the earlier Newsweek report on the five suspects in Pakistan.

The project says that one of the men, Ramy Zamzam, is a dental student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. The project also identifies Zamzam as the president of the D.C. council of the Muslim Students Association (MSA).

More on the Muslim Students Association here.

(Part two here.)