Tag Archives: Homegrown Terror

CAIR Testimony Reinforces Fringe Ideology

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IPT News
May 14, 2013

 

Making the absence of proof a proof of its own, the Council on American-Islamic Relations argues that the FBI’s failure to identify Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as terrorist threats before the Boston Marathon bombings proves that counter-terror stings don’t work. That’s among a series of fatuous claims and misguided recommendations in written testimony CAIR submitted to a House committee last week.

The testimony minimized the theological underpinnings driving terrorism by al-Qaida and other Islamists and offered instead a series of grievances and misguided policy recommendations that do nothing to avoid future attacks like Boston’s.

CAIR long has cast FBI terrorism sting operations as entrapment, an argumentrejected by Attorney General Eric Holder and one that has never proven successful in court. Its proponents are wrong on the facts “or do not have a full understanding of the law,” Holder said in 2010.

Yet, in its testimony, CAIR said it “believes that stings should be executed to prevent crime, not create criminals.” Rather than stopping people like the Tsarnaevs – committed to waging jihad in the United States – CAIR said successful stings “contributed to a false sense of security within the FBI that led to its agents missing a more well-guarded threat like Tamerlan Tsarnaev. While well-publicized FBI sting operations create an official narrative that the government is preventing acts of terrorism, they have little to no effect in stopping real tragedies like the Boston attacks, the Fort Hood shooting, the growing list of mass shootings in places like Virginia Tech, Tucson, Arizona, Newtown, Connecticut, and Aurora, Colorado perpetrated by disturbed individuals, or near misses like the failed Times Square bombing.” [Emphasis original]

Under this logic, law enforcement gets no credit for interdicting a terrorist attack before anyone is hurt, but it gets the blame when people like the Tsarnaevs slip through the cracks. As we’ve noted, sting operations include numerous opportunities for the suspect to back out, but when they choose not to, the investigations thwart people determined to carry out mass casualty attacks in public places.

Read more at IPT

 

Keeping Our Heads in the Sand After Boston

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IPT News
May 14, 2013

 

The Obama administration’s policy banning references to “Islamic extremism” and “jihad” in discussions about terrorism drew criticism during last Thursday’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on the Boston Marathon bombings.

The bombings “should again teach us that the enemy we face is violent Islamist extremism, not just al Qaida,” said former U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman. “Osama bin Laden is dead. And the remaining leadership of al Qaida is on the run, but the ideology of violent Islamist extremism is rapidly spreading.”

The Boston investigation already has shown that Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev “adopted the outrageously false narrative of violent Islamist extremism, that Islam and America are involved in a struggle to the death with each other,” Lieberman said.

It has been more than five years since the Department of Homeland Security, under the Bush administration, issued a directive about “the difficult terrain of terminology” as recommended by unidentified academics and Muslim American activists. “Jihadist” and “Islamist terrorist” were identified as terms to be avoided. Jihad “glamorizes terrorism, imbues terrorists with religious authority they do not have, and damages relations with Muslims around the globe,” the memo said.

By identifying them as mere extremists or criminals, they lose some of the luster that attracts recruits, the argument goes.

Is it working? How can you tell?

Anecdotally, this strategy did nothing to dissuade the Tsarnaevs, or any of the otherhomegrown terrorist plotters in recent years. The policy’s effectiveness is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify. But skeptics, such as Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program Director Jeffrey M. Bale, say the language policy is illogical.

“Why, after all, would Muslims look to non-Muslims to interpret their religion for them, or for guidance about how to identify and label Islamists?” Bale said in response to an email from the Investigative Project on Terrorism. “Indeed, if we call jihadists ‘criminals,’ it may actually have the counterproductive effect of garnering more sympathy for them given the levels of anti-U.S. and anti-Western hostility throughout the Muslim world.”

Jihadists routinely make it plain that – while religion may not be the sole factor driving them to violence – their Islamic beliefs and identities dominate their thinking. “We in the West just don’t seem to want to believe what they constantly say,” Bale wrote. (Read his full response here.)

Read more at IPT

Refreshing Candor on Islamist Violence in Congressional Report

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American Jihadist Terrorism Combating a Complex Threatby IPT News:

The path from believing in radical Islamist political ideology to plotting attacks in the homeland can be triggered by a number of factors, a new Congressional Research Service report finds.

The report focuses on homegrown Islamic terrorism, which in itself is remarkable given the reluctance many in Washington have had to clearly naming a leading source of the terrorist threat. The title, “American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat,” uses the kind of language all-but-banned by the executive branch since 2008. Cabinet officials in the Obama administration have strained to avoid references to jihadist violence.

But the Congressional Research Service is tasked with producing “authoritative, confidential, objective and nonpartisan” analysis, rather than catering to political semantics. The 137-page report contains more than 500 references to “jihad” or “jihadist.” The term “Islam” or “Islamic” is used 117 times. It doesn’t deny the existence of other forms of violent extremism, including “radical environmentalism, animal rights, or anti-abortion causes,” but the report’s focus is on the threat of attacks motivated by radical Islam.

That is something House Democrats have treated with shrill accusations of bigotry.

The report examines 63 homegrown jihadist plots since 9/11, noting that nearly two-thirds of those took place in just the last three years. That spike “suggests that ideologies supporting violent jihad continue to influence some Americans—even if a tiny minority,” the report says.

Among those are two deadly attacks that have not even been charged as acts of terrorism. The shootings at Fort Hood and at a Little Rock, Ark. military recruiting office were “lone wolf” attacks that left 14 people dead.

“[W]hen someone moves from simply believing in jihad to illegally pursuing it via violent methods, he becomes a terrorist,” the report says. “Because the move from belief to violence is so individualized, there is no single path that individuals follow to become full-fledged terrorists.”

Social interaction – from online sources like terrorist forums to calls to action from al-Qaida operatives like Adam Gadahn or Anwar al-Awlaki and in Inspire magazine – has proven significant in many plots. In addition, converts to Islam were involved in 26 of the 63 cases, and many acted on a belief that “the West is harming the global community of Muslims (the Ummah), or even waging war against it.”

Other reports have agreed that the perception of a “war on Islam” is among the most effective messages in stirring Islamists to seek violence. Despite that, American Islamist groups have repeatedly made the claim.

The report also discusses the FBI’s use of informants and undercover agents in counter-terror investigations and concerns that the tactic might alienate some Muslim Americans. Lawmakers must decide if that tradeoff is worthwhile in facing what is a very real threat.

“A single successful attack can incur scores of casualties and cause considerable socioeconomic disruption. Regardless of their novelty, frequency, or lethality, violent attacks fostered by violent jihadists radicalized in the United States remain a security concern.”

Read the full report here.