Tag Archives: al-Shabaab

Spitting hatred on YouTube: Thousands of terror videos urging British Muslims to maim and kill

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By ARTHUR MARTIN:

Thousands of vile terror videos urging British Muslims to maim and kill can still be found on the internet within seconds.

An investigation by the Mail has found an alarming number of Al Qaeda training videos and hate-filled sermons still being screened on the hugely popular film sharing website YouTube.

This is despite YouTube’s claims that it has ‘community guidelines’ that prohibit ‘dangerous or illegal activities such as bomb making, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts’ and only accepts ‘religious’ films.

Hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed praised the alleged Woolwich killer Michael Adebolajo as a 'courageous hero' Hate preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed praised the alleged Woolwich killer Michael Adebolajo as a ‘courageous hero’

 

Youtube has 108 videos of hate preacher Anjem Choudary (pictured). In his rants he urges Muslims to wage jihad while in others he tells his fanatics to take advantage of the welfare stateYoutube has 108 videos of hate preacher Anjem Choudary (pictured). In his rants he urges Muslims to wage jihad and tells his fanatics to take advantage of the welfare state

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of YouTube-owner Google, has said he would allow extremist websites to continue being listed because he believes it can help police track potential terrorists.

‘We cannot prima facie identify evil and take it down,’ he said at the Hay literary festival. ‘We have taken the decision that information, if it’s legal, even if it’s despicable, will be indexed.’

He went on to argue that extremists are usually possible to detect through their internet activity and that their online presence can sometimes help.

‘Extremists are not clever enough not to be found out,’ he added. ‘They leave a digital trail the police can follow.’

On Saturday the Mail reported how, within hours of Lee Rigby’s execution, vile messages praising the attack began appearing online.

 

This video shows Anwar al-Awlaki, the dead ideological leader of Al Qaeda, describe how ¿Islam is spread by the sword¿This video shows Anwar al-Awlaki, the dead ideological leader of Al Qaeda, describe how Islam is ‘spread by the sword’

 

Mohammad Sidique Khan warns: 'I'm avenging my brothers and sisters. You will be our targets'Mohammad Sidique Khan warns: ‘I’m avenging my brothers and sisters. You will be our targets’

Police are still investigating if the soldier’s two killers were indoctrinated by videos.

But, despite the pledges by major search engines that they do pull incendiary videos from their sites, hundreds of Islamist propaganda videos can easily be found by impressionable young British Muslim men through simple internet searches.

One hour-long clip tells every Muslim that it is their duty to wage jihad to follow ‘Allah’s path’. Another video uploaded by extremist terror sect Al-Shabaab shows a fighter, wearing a balaclava, giving a demonstration of how to assemble an AK47 assault rifle. Al-Shabaab is the Islamic terror group in Somalia which Woolwich killer Michael Adebolajo was attempting to join last year.

A search for Al-Shabaab on YouTube produces 65,000 results. The popular site also has 108 videos of hate preacher Anjem Choudary.

Read more at The Daily Mail

 

ARREST ANJEM CHOUDARY, OR WE WILL!

 

Three Terror Cases Wrapped in One Day

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IPT News:

Monday was a productive day in law enforcement’s ongoing effort to thwart terrorist plots before people get hurt.

Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame

Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame

In New York, a judge unsealed a December 2011 guilty plea by a Somali national for providing material support to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame‘s plea has been under seal. He was taken into custody in the Gulf of Aden in April 2011 as he traveled between Somalia and Yemen. He was kept at sea for two months of questioning by intelligence officials before the criminal charges were filed.

In addition to fighting for al-Shabaab, Warsame procured weapons from AQAP and taught others to use explosives. He also worked with American citizens in conspiring to support AQAP with money, equipment and people. Warsame has cooperated with U.S. investigators, providing what a source described to CBS News as “an intelligence watershed.”

“Ahmed Warsame served as a critical link between two foreign terrorist organizations and was an operational terrorist leader, commanding hundreds of fighters,” Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Carlin said in a statement. “His capture, successful interrogation, and guilty plea demonstrate how U.S. military, intelligence, and law enforcement assets coordinate to neutralize threats and protect the country.”

In addition, a jury convicted Abdel Hameed Shehadeh of repeatedly lying about his attempts to join the Taliban or al-Qaida during trips to Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. When Pakistan refused to let him into the country, Shehadeh returned to the United States and tried to enlist in the U.S. Army.

“[H]is true motive was to deploy overseas, where he would commit treason by defecting and fighting alongside insurgent forces,” a government statement said. Shehadeh, a 23-year-old former Staten Island resident, faces a maximum 21-year prison sentence.

Another would-be terrorist was sentenced Monday. A federal judge in Seattle ordered Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif to spend 18 years in prison for plotting to attack a military processing center with machine guns and grenades. Latif, a convert to Islam born as Joseph Anthony Davis, pleaded guilty in December to conspiring to murder U.S. officers and to use weapons of mass destruction.

An informant alerted law enforcement to plans Abdul-Latif made with a co-conspirator to attack the center. Their discussions were audio and videotaped, and Abdul-Latif worked to obtain the weapons needed. He planned to attack the center on a Monday in July 2011, when it would be crowded with new recruits. Officials fear children at an adjacent day-care center would have been killed had the attack occurred.

“Abdul-Latif undertook his plot in furtherance of his long-standing and deeply felt radical beliefs,” the prosecution sentencing memo said. “To this day, he has not disavowed the radical ideology that inspired his attack plot, nor has he expressed any meaningful remorse for his conduct.”

CAIR’s Walid: Silent on Jihad, Sows Fear of Law Enforcement

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Dawud Walid

Dawud Walid

IPT News:

FBI agents are devils lurking online to entrap young Muslims in bogus terrorist plots, a leading Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) official told a group of Michigan youngsters earlier this week.

Dawud Walid, director of CAIR’s Michigan chapter, lectured area youth on Monday about his belief that FBI agents are waiting to set them up through informants. He wants the message to reach a broader audience, posting the audio online and promoting it on his Twitter feed.

Noting the 48th anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination this week, Walid told the youth audience that history is riddled with spies who betray their own, from Malcolm X to the Islamic prophet Mohammed’s companions, to Judas among Jesus’ apostles.

Today, “you have agent provocateurs and people who are acting as informants that are trying to further their careers, to get out of trouble, to get arrests, try to set people up,” Walid said. “And guess the No. 1 group of people who are targeted by these FBI agent provocateurs? Does anyone have a guess? Muslims.”

That may be true specifically in terms of counter-terrorism cases. But a quick search of news stories from the past week shows informants and undercover agents are used in sting operations almost daily in cases involving drugs, prostitution, onlinechild sex predators and more.

But Walid’s talk, at just less than 15 minutes, had no room for context. He also devoted no time to warning the youngsters that they need to be wary of actual extremists and their message. He described hearing from a woman who said the FBI offered to help her with an immigration problem if she created a Facebook page supporting the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab.

The group is responsible for killing dozens of people in bombing attacks. It directly recruits young Somali men living in America.

“What are you waiting for O’ youth?” an official says in one online recruiting video. “If you do not fight Jihad today then when will you? O Muslim youth, free your brothers from the darkness of oppression and the brutality of the enemy blows. Search for death and you will attain life. Come to jihad, you will gain honor in this life and the next.”

More than 20 young Somalis reportedly left the Minneapolis area to join the group, with several dying. One, Shirwa Ahmed, became the first known American suicide bomber. It also is suspected of killing some of those Americans after they tried to leave the group.

Walid mentioned none of this to his youth audience. Rather, he cast doubt on Shabaab’s terrorist designation.

Read more with audio

Terror Tweets

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Omar-Hammami-YouTube

Omar-Hammami-YouTube

BY:

Twitter and YouTube accounts claiming to be operated by a suspected al Qaeda terrorist who is listed on the FBI’s most wanted list have been disseminating jihadi propaganda, according to terrorism experts.

A user claiming to be Omar Hammami, an American citizen who joined forces with the al Qaeda-aligned al-Shabaab terror group in 2006, has been tweeting about “martyrdom” and U.S.-led operations against terror cells in Africa via his Twitter account, “abu m.”

The 102 users who follow the virtual Hammami, who is also known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, have access to an ongoing stream of unfiltered radical thoughts and possible tips about clandestine U.S. operations taking place in Somalia, where al-Shabaab is based.

Users are also directed to view a YouTube page, which features videos about jihad starring Hammami sitting before al-Shabaab’s black war flag and an automatic weapon.

Hammami’s purported social media presence has raised red flags among terrorism experts who cite both YouTube and Twitter for promoting such radical figures.

“It’s pretty outrageous that someone on the FBI’s most wanted list can communicate on a Twitter page and a YouTube account and no one has removed it,” said Steven Salinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser told the Washington Free Beacon that the organization does not “comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.”

He also cautioned “against reporting an account’s ownership with such certainty unless you’ve independently verified it with the supposed owner themselves or they have a Verified account,” meaning that Twitter has confirmed the user’s identity.

Critics of the social media sites said that even if the account in not operated by Hammami, the sites should proactively take steps to remove users who post terror-related material.

“If you look at the words, it’s singular voice of ‘I’ when referring to questions and he has a long history of being on these jihadi forums,” Salinsky said. “He definitely communicates and even if it’s not him, it’s pretending to be a terrorist. So are they afraid to remove the page of someone who says they’re a terrorist, who a few months ago was put on the FBI most wanted list?

“It says a lot about a company when they will close a user account for violating some vague notion of political correctness or criticizing the excesses of militant Islamism, but will open their floodgates to calls for genocide and incitement to mass murder,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser who has written extensively on terrorists.

The Twitter user claiming to be Hammami routinely engages with a wide variety of Twitter users who reach out to him for insights or advice about al-Shabaab and its terrorist activities. He was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list in mid-November.

Al-Shabaab also has an official and highly active Twitter account.

As of Friday afternoon Hammami’s supposed account was still active, with his last tweet being sent out on Monday.

MEMRI has reported extensively on Hammami’s sophisticated social media use.

Twitter has long treaded a fine line between free speech and the promotion of terror-related activities.

Read more at Free Beacon

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Money Jihad: How Islamists Finance Their Operations

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by: Ryan Mauro

The author of the Money Jihad blogwishes to remain anonymous. The daily blog documents how Islamists finance their operations. The author previously served in military-intelligence and has been blogging about terrorism financing for three years.

The following is RadicalIslam.or’s Security Analyst Ryan Mauro’s interview with the author of the Money Jihad blog about how the Islamist terrorism continues to be lavishly funded 11 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Ryan Mauro: What legal loopholes are the Islamists using to finance their operations worldwide?

Money Jihad: Saudi Arabia’s approach to terror finance is a giant loophole in and of itself.  The Islamic zakat tax, what some call “Islamic charity,” is a massive source of jihadist revenues.  The Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency is supposed to approve charitable zakat transfers overseas, but it’s a fig leaf; the Saudis still fund the spread of radical Wahhabism abroad.  Also, it took Saudi Arabia’s Senior Ulema Council nine years after 9/11 to criminalize the financing of terrorism.  Whenever the Council comments on terror finance, it vigorously defends zakat in the same breath.  The Council won’t even define terrorism to include suicide bomb attacks against Israel.

In the U.S., we need a totally different approach to regulating hawala, the traditional Islamic system money transfer system that has helped fund terrorists.  But on balance I would say that most of the terror finance shortcomings in the West involve inadequate enforcement of existing laws rather than a lack of laws.

Ryan Mauro: What laws aren’t being enforced and why?

Money Jihad:  First, the Patriot Act prohibits providing material support to terrorism such as transferring money to Hamas.  The Holy Land Foundation (HLF) trial revealed that Islamic organizations such as the North American Islamic Trust and the Islamic Society of North America worked closely with HLF.  The Bush administration never intended HLF to be their final prosecution, but they ran out of time to pursue HLF’s associates.  Especially now that HLF’s final appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court, this would be a great time to enforce the material support provisions of the Patriot Act against HLF’s unindicted co-conspirators.

Second, the Foreign Agents Registration Act isn’t being enforced with respect to CAIR which engages in political activities in the U.S. but is funded from abroad.

Third, the nonprofit provisions of the Internal Revenue code are being abused by Islamic organizations that claim to be charities but are actually engaged in business activities.  For example, Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA) is a certifier of halal foods.  It gets most of its revenues from inspecting food manufacturers that seek a halal certification label, but IFANCA claims tax-exempt status on the false basis of receiving revenues from charitable donations and grants, which is discredited by a simple review of their tax forms.  Canada does a better job than the U.S. of stripping bogus charity fronts of their tax-exempt status.

Fourth, Bank Secrecy Act and Treasury regulations require money services businesses, including hawala dealers, to register their business with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. One study showed that about 85 percent of hawala businesses simply ignore the requirement.

As to why these laws aren’t being enforced, I think it’s political.

Ryan Mauro: What methods are the Islamists using today to raise money, besides soliciting wealthy donors?

Money Jihad: Well, it’s not just about zakat from wealthy donors.  Folks like Amina Farah Ali in Minnesota, Shabaaz Hussain in London, and Irfan Naseer in Birmingham have fundraised for relatively small donations from individual Muslims to support jihad overseas.  A few thousand dollars from the West goes a long way to fund a holy warrior on the ground in Somalia.

But apart from zakat donations, there are a whole host of other Islamic taxes that receive less attention but are huge revenue stream for jihad.  Western reporters call it extortion, but the mujahideen don’t look at it that way.

Take for example two terrorist organizations with a ground game:  Al-Shabaab and the Taliban.  They have fighters on the ground and control definite territory.  Organizations like that rely to a great extent on levying Islamic taxes on the people under their jurisdiction.  The Taliban still gets money from ushr, the Islamic tax on harvests, which includes poppy yields.  Al Shabaab imposes harbor taxes, checkpoint taxes (a practice from the early days of Islam up through Ottoman times), and a zakat on the lucrative Somali charcoal trade.

Ransoms, which are also permitted against infidels by the Koran, are a major revenue source for organizations like AQIM and Abu Sayyaf.  For Hezbollah, the West focuses on their drug money, but they get a lot of money from khums, the Shia Muslim tax on individual profit.

Counterfeiting, Sharia finance, street crimes, welfare fraud — those are all being used as well in different parts of the world to fund terrorism, individual Islamists or both.

Read more at Radical Islam

Ryan Mauro is RadicalIslam.org’s National Security Analyst and a fellow with the Clarion Fund. He is the founder of WorldThreats.com and is frequently interviewed on Fox News.

The Changing Face of Al Qaeda

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By Kerry Patton On January 17, 2012 at Front Page

Osama Bin Laden, the presumed mastermind behind the creation of Al Qaeda, originally formalized a global network of militants mostly comprised of Muslim Brotherhood members. These Brotherhood members, like Ayman al-Zawahiri, tapped into their own personal networks which later socially conditioned and recruited a mass movement of followers. Many were active militant fighters while many more were passive supporters to a newly established global terror network. Interestingly enough, many have argued that the original Al Qaeda Network no longer exists.

As Al Qaeda grew long after the Russian-Afghan war, many of its leaders became empowered. They split off moving into strategically positioned bases around the world. Their mission was to embolden Al Qaeda’s radicalized views of Islam in an attempt to create a “World Caliphate.” Needless to say, many leaders in this movement sought to achieve this strategic objective through government infiltration, passive social conditioning, and even through means of violent terror activities.

With time, an internal struggle existed within the original Al Qaeda network. Some members believed joining forces with non-Sunni Islamic persons would only strengthen their ultimate goals. Others believed working with such persons was off limits. Still, additional non-Sunni terror groups aligned with former Al Qaeda elements. Examples of these non-Sunni factions include Hezbollah, Colombia’s FARC, and even cartels such as Los Zetas in Mexico. Of course, many times these newly “joined forces” are not always direct. Many times, the joining of forces comes through third party initiatives.

Like most mass movements, they are formed by a handful of individuals simply seeking power. These individuals groom members, yet, like street gangs, when certain members feel they have enough power, they move onto their own initiatives. These initiatives often involve the creation of their own groups. These groups are separate from their original mother group, yet at times maintain some allegiance, as seen in several Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs.  Such a move has been seen between Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Muslim Brotherhood recently.

This means that Al Qaeda is no longer the terror network we once knew it to be. Today, Al Qaeda can arguably be construed as a label for radical Sunni Islamic factions. As an example, Somalia’s Al Shabaab Islamic terror group is a single terrorist organization yet members have a history serving within the Al Qaeda network. It is a completely separated organization yet often labeled as one falling within the Al Qaeda domain due to some continued ties between the two.

Understanding an elementary example of Al Shabaab, one should ponder then whether it is reasonable to include the non-Sunni factions known to be aligned with Al Qaeda as elements within Al Qaeda itself. As an example, it is known that Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist group, has close ties with Al Qaeda.  In fact, today, many CT professionals understand how closely tied Al Qaeda has become with Iran itself.

The Iranian-Hezbollah-al Qaeda relationship is known. Most recently, U.S. courts revealed the 9-11 alliance. Surprisingly, no counterterrorist specialist will ever claim Hezbollah or Iran is part of Al Qaeda.

Why won’t an agreement be made claiming Hezbollah falls under Al Qaeda? The simplest reason often obtained is that “Hezbollah is Shiite and Al Qaeda is Sunni.” Amazingly, professionals will observe one ideology stemming from religious differences but not through any other known ideology—especially, the ideology of power.

So a few key questions must be asked when attempting to understand what Al Qaeda truly is today. First, is Al Qaeda still the terrorist network it was once believed to be? Secondly, has too much emphasis on ideology been placed on today’s different radical Islamic terrorist organizations? Lastly, should counterterrorist professionals even stress about Al Qaeda any longer as one large terror movement or should they simply concentrate on the hundreds of terrorist groups in existence?

The later of these questions is likely the most debatable of those listed needing to be answered. Unfortunately, an entire shift in critical thinking would need to occur throughout an entire global system of those attempting to defeat a possible monster that, well, may no longer exist as we once believed. Shifting cognition within such a mass global system would entail a complete overhaul of social and cultural constructs. As any social psychologist knows, making such a move takes a long time to achieve.

In the end, Al Qaeda is possibly no longer who we once knew it to be. Arguably, Al Qaeda is nothing more than a label placed on Sunni Islamic terrorists groups. We now know that these groups have joined forces with non-Sunni terrorist factions. Who will be the maven to pitch this thought in an attempt to change counterterrorists’ ways of thinking?

Kerry Patton is the co-founder of the National Security Leadership Foundation, a non-profit organization pending 501c (3) status. He has worked in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, focusing on intelligence and security, and has interviewed current and former terrorists. He is the author of Sociocultural Intelligence: The New Discipline of Intelligence Studies and the children’s book American Patriotism. You can follow him on Facebook.

Islamofascism And The War on Nigeria’s Christians

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IBD EDITORIALS:

 

Islamofascism: Scores of Christians attending Catholic mass in Nigerian churches were slaughtered in their pews by massive bomb blasts on Christmas Day. While decried as “un-Islamic,” a frightening number of Muslims believe the bombings are justified.

The year that began with a New Year’s attack on an Egyptian Coptic Christian Church that killed 21 worshippers is ending with attacks on two Nigerian churches that killed 35 and injured at least 57.

While such attacks are officially condemned, they are part of a campaign of violence and suicide bombings for which 34% of Nigerian respondents in a Pew Global Attitudes Project poll last year expressed support.

The first explosion occurred Sunday as Christmas service was ending at St. Theresa’s Church in Madalla near the Nigerian capital of Abuja. Some 35 people were murdered and 57 injured in the attack for which a radical Muslim sect known as Boko Haram, which translates to “Western education is a sin,” claimed responsibility.

Another blast occurred at a church in the central city of Jos, where last year at least 32 people were killed and more than 70 wounded in three bombings targeting Christian areas on Christmas Eve.

Jos is located roughly on the divide between Muslim north and Christian south. Sharia law was introduced in 12 northern states, where most Nigerian Muslims live, a decade ago.

Boko Haram is reported to have links to Somalia’s al-Shabaab and to al-Qaida’s North Africa affiliate, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. Pew’s 2010 poll found 49% of Nigerian Muslim respondents viewed al-Qaida favorably.

Nigerian Islamic scholar Sheikh Muhammad Isa told the News Agency of Nigeria that the attackers were not adherents of any faith, while Alhaji Quasim Badrudeen of the Muslim Students Society in Lagos described the attacks as “unfortunate and un-Islamic.”

“Un-Islamic” they may be, but they are part of a systematic campaign of violence and hatred against anything Christian and Western by Islamofascists that include the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, the attacks on Danish cartoonists for merely depicting an image of the prophet Mohammed, and the prosecution of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, who dared to speak his mind about militant Islam and immigration and the threats he felt both posed to his country and democracy at large.

Mark Steyn, whose words often grace these pages, felt Wilders’ pain in 2008 when the columnist went on trial for “Islamophobia” in Canada. Like Wilders, this consisted largely of quoting Muslim speakers verbatim and drawing some obvious conclusions.

These latest violent attacks on Christian churches in Nigeria mirror the Oct. 31 onslaught on Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad in which 68 people were murdered. The Islamic State of Iraq, another al-Qaida linked group, took credit for that attack and vowed a campaign of violence against Christians wherever they are.

The Iraqi church bombing was followed by a series of targeted attacks on Christian homes by bombers who clearly knew every Christian address. Many Iraqi Christians are fleeing northward to Kurdish areas while seeking asylum in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In a terrorist attack one minute after midnight last January, 21 Christians attending a New Year’s Mass were killed, and 97 people, mostly Christians, were injured after a car bomb detonated outside a Coptic Christian church in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria.

If this is yet another example of the hijacking of a religion of peace and tolerance, not everyone apparently got the memo.

Christians from Iraq to Egypt to Nigeria, as well as their Christian brethren worldwide, want to know when someone in authority will say “let’s roll” and wrest control from the hijackers.