Robert Spencer: The War at Home

by Robert Spencer


 

As the Islamic State beheads a third hostage and the world recoils in horror and reassures itself that all this has nothing to do with Islam, it is useful to remember that jihad activity continues in the United States – although hardly anyone notices amid the rush to dissociate Islam from the mounting violence committed in its name and in accord with its literal teachings.

Take, for example, a Muslim from Seattle, Ali Muhammad Brown. KING 5 News reported that Brown is “currently in jail on $5 million bail for the alleged murder of a college student in late June.” He has “already been charged with gunning down two men at 29th and King Street in Seattle’s Leschi neighborhood on June 1.” And he is “now the prime suspect in a fourth homicide.”

The report noted laconically in its fifth paragraph, without elaboration, that “multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation say Brown told police he carried out the murders because he was on a jihad to kill Americans.” NJ.com added, also deep in its story on Brown’s murders: “Prosecutors say Brown is a devout Muslim who had become angered by U.S. military intervention in the Islamic world, which he referred to as ‘evil.”

That report also noted: “Ali Muhammad Brown said he considered it his mission to murder 19-year-old Brendan Tevlin as an act of ‘vengeance’ for innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. ‘All these lives are taken every single day by America, by this government. So a life for a life.’” This is a reference to the Qur’an: “We ordained therein for them: ‘Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal’” (5:45).

New York radio host Todd Pettengill, host of WPLJ’s “The Todd Show,” said that Brown’s murder of Tevlin was evidence that “domestic terrorism is already here.” Pettengill declared: “It was in fact an act of jihad, perpetrated by a fellow American who sympathized more with those who want to annihilate us than with his own country and its people.”

Pettengill is right. Domestic terrorism is indeed already here. And it was here before Ali Muhammad Brown went on his killing spree. Another Muslim from Seattle, Musab Mohamed Masmari, was sentenced on July 31 to ten years in prison for pouring gasoline onto a stairway in a famous gay nightclub, Neighbours, and setting the stairway on fire last New Year’s Eve, when the club was crowded. If the fire had not been put out – the carnage would have been great.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg said: “One of Masmari’s close associates was interviewed by investigators and reported that Masmari confided in him that he ‘burned a gay club’ and that he did it because ‘what these people are doing is wrong.’” In another report from February, we learn that an informant told the FBI before this attack that Masmari could be planning “terrorist activity,” and that he had “opined that homosexuals should be exterminated.”

This incident should have been the impetus for a national discussion of violent Sharia enforcement in the U.S., and an examination of what could be done to stop Sharia vigilantism. Instead, the mainstream media largely ignored the obvious motive; in this report, it is discussed as “homophobia,” with no hint that this was one of the first incidents of violent Sharia enforcement in the U.S.

There are many more recent domestic terrorism cases as well. In mid-June, a Tampa Muslim named Sami Osmakac was convicted of plotting to bomb a Tampa bar and then blow himself up in a jihad-martyrdom suicide attack in another crowded area of the city. Osmakac said of non-Muslims: “We will go after every one of them, their kindergartens, their shopping centers, their nightclubs, their police stations, their courthouses and everything until we have an Islamic state the whole world.” Shades of “slay them wherever you find them” (cf. Qur’an 2:191; 4:89; 9:5).

Then there was Ahmed Abassi, who, according to the New York Post, wanted to derail a New York-to-Toronto Amtrak train. He also discussed with another jihad terrorist “a plot to release bacteria in the air or water to kill up to 100,000 people.” He was also, according to Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, plotting to “commit acts of terror and develop a network of terrorists here” in the U.S.

Abassi could have gotten fifty years in prison, but he “avoided terrorism charges by pleading guilty in Manhattan federal court to lying on his visa application and to immigration officials when asked why he flew to the United States in 2013.” Consequently, he could soon be a free man. What could possibly go wrong?

And let’s not forget Mufid Elfgeeh, a Muslim businessman from Rochester, New York. AP reported on June 2 that Mufid Elfgeeh “bought two handguns and the silencers as part of a plan to kill members of the U.S. armed forces returning from war as well as Shiite Muslims in western New York.”

AP, as anxious as Barack Obama or David Cameron to absolve Islam of responsibility for the evils done in its name, explained that Elfgeeh (like Ali Muhammad Brown) was plotting to kill troops “as vengeance for American actions overseas.” So why did he want to kill Shi’ites as well? As vengeance for Iran being a bitter enemy of his bitter enemy, the U.S.? Obviously Elfgeeh is a Sunni Islamic jihadist who wants to kill members of groups that he considers to be enemies of Islam. But AP will never tell you that.

The war is not just in Iraq and Syria (and Nigeria, and Thailand, and the Philippines, and Afghanistan, and Israel, and Egypt, and on and on). It is in the United States already. That war is the Islamic jihad against the West and the free world. There will be many more men like Ali Muhammad Brown and Musab Mohamed Masmari in the United States in the coming years. Actions like theirs will one day, not too long from now, be a more or less daily occurrence in the United States. But no need to be concerned: just remember, when things get really hot, that all this has nothing to do with Islam.


Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book, Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We're In, is now available.

Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/robert-spencer/the-war-at-home/

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