Robert Spencer at Human Events:

Jihad: As American As Apple Pie
by Robert Spencer
03/24/2010

“Jihad is becoming as American as apple pie and as British as afternoon tea.” So said American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi. And indeed, there has been a sharp uptick in jihad activity by Muslims in the U.S. and U.S-born Muslims since Barack Obama has become President, although some law-enforcement officials seem determined not to notice. And in this they are aided and abetted by American Muslim advocacy groups.

Just as al-Awlaqi issued his boast, the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) began a campaign against a textbook series because it noted that some Muslims in America are involved in terrorism. This once again raised questions about which side this unsavory Hamas-linked group -- which has just won the ringing endorsement of Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca -- is really on and questions about how aware and prepared law enforcement officials are about the jihad threat in America.

Al-Awlaqi, who was in contact with Nidal Hasan, the jihadist who murdered 13 Americans at Fort Hood in November 2009, and with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the jihadist who tried to bring down an airplane as it landed in Detroit on Christmas Day, had plenty of reason to claim that “jihad is becoming as American as apple pie:” Evidence of U.S. Muslims’ engaging in terrorism grows every day.

Recently a Chicago-based Muslim, David Headley, a.k.a. Daood Gilani, pled guilty to going on a reconnaissance mission to find targets for the devastating 2008 jihad attacks in Mumbai, in which over 150 people were murdered. Gilani also participated in a plot to bomb a newspaper in Denmark that published cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Also last week, Sharif Mobley, a Muslim from New Jersey, was arrested in Yemen because of his ties to al Qaeda and his murder of a guard in an escape attempt.

Before that, two American Muslim women, both converts to Islam, were arrested for their involvement in a plot to murder the Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks for his cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad as a dog. One was since released, although her mother and stepfather have voiced concerns about how she is teaching her six-year-old son to hate Christians and believe that Muslims must wage war against them.

And last month, a Muslim from Queens, N. Y., Najibullah Zazi, pled guilty to charges of leading a jihad plot to set off a bomb in the New York subway system. An Islamic cleric, Ahmad Afzali, pled guilty to tipping off Zazi that law enforcement officials had been asking about him, and then lying to them about having done so.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani government has charged five Muslims from Virginia with terrorism after they entered Pakistan and tried to join up with al Qaeda and the Taliban there in order to fight against American troops in Afghanistan. Initially the five tried to avoid being charged by explaining that they had come to Pakistan to engage in Islamic jihad, and that Islamic jihad was not illegal in Pakistan.

An undetermined number of Somali Muslims have gone from their new homes in Minneapolis back to Somalia in order to wage jihad in an al Qaeda-linked group. Bryant Neal “Ibrahim” Vinas, a convert to Islam from Long Island, has been charged with participating in an attack on an American military base in Afghanistan and, in 2009, giving information about the New York City subway system to al Qaeda operatives. Another American Muslim convert, Abdulhakim Muhammad (formerly Carlos Bledsoe), murdered Private William Long and gravely wounded Private Quinton Ezeagwula outside the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock, Ark., in June 2009. Muhammad explained that the shooting was “a jihadi attack.”

And in August 2009, Daniel “Seifullah” Boyd, yet another convert to Islam, and six other Muslims in North Carolina were arrested and charged with “conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and conspiring to murder, kidnap, maim and injure persons abroad.” On a surveillance audiotape Boyd proclaims: “I love jihad.”

Yet last week, CAIR took umbrage at a book that dared to say that some U.S. Muslims have engaged in terrorism -- and Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca denounced as “un-American” those who have criticized him for his close work with the group. What’s wrong with this picture?