More Questions About ICNA's Incitement

As we noted previously, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) has a history of statements and deeds in support of violent jihadists. Now, additional evidence of the organization's extremism has surfaced from its Southern California branch.

The group's web page featured hadiths calling on Muslims to fight against non-Muslims. The offending passages were captured at the Americans Against Hate website. Among the postings:

"May Allah fight the jews and the christians. They took the graves of their Prophets as places of prostration. Two deens [religions] shall not co-exist in the land of the Arabs."

In addition to isolated religious statements endorsing violence and hate, ICNA SC's website contained sophisticated Islamist manuscripts such as Yusuf Al-Qaradawi's Priorities of the Islamic Movement in the Coming Phase. This text expresses the importance of "the liberation of Palestine" through war. Quotes from the website link the cause of Jihad everywhere, stating:

"The Islamic Movement should consider itself at the beck and call of every Islamic cause, responding to every cry for help wherever that cry may come from."

Priorities also states that Palestine "is the first and foremost Islamic cause, and its liberation is the first and foremost duty, as the Afghan Mujahideen themselves believe." In addition, it states:

"…jihad is fard ayn [a general obligation] for the Muslims living on the land and that all the Muslims must support them with money, arms, and men as required until all their land has been liberated from any aggressor who usurps it."

After stating its support for rallying to this cause and any other jihad in the world, the website carried Priorities' endorsement of Hamas:

"The [Islamic] revolution... has been crystallized in the steadfast, brave, aware Islamic resistance movement 'Hamas'... Hamas is an embodiment of the Palestinian People's belief in its Muslim and Arab origins, and a testimony that this people is still alive and will never die and that its jihad will be carried on by pure hands and clean hearts until victory is achieved with the will of Allah."

ICNA is among the groups promising to combat homegrown radicalism in the wake of the arrests of five D.C.-area Muslim men in Pakistan. The young men, who attended an ICNA center outside Washington, wanted to join the jihad against American soldiers in Afghanistan.

ICNA claims that "Extremism has no place in Islam, and ICNA works tirelessly to oppose extremist and violent ideology." If ICNA doesn't believe that calling for violence against Jews and Christians is a problematic form of extremism, then there's not much left to say.

Relatives Dispute Claim That Anwar Al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen Air Strike

Reports out of Yemen last week that radical, U.S.-born cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki may have been killed in an air strike targeting a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives appear to be incorrect.

Relatives say he was not killed in the strike. Awlaki, a former imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., has been linked to a series of terror plots and is considered an inspiration to Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan.

Reports about the failed attempt to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight Christmas Day indicate investigators may be looking for a connection to Awlaki in that plot, too. A new report says evidence shows alleged bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is a "big fan" of Awlaki's.

The Northwest plot has increased attention on the strength of Al Qaeda and other terrorist movements in Yemen. It could mean that last week's strike won't be the only time Awlaki's name appears on a list of possible targets.

Question for the White House

Two Muslim extremists plotted to kill Americans with guidance from terrorists in Yemen. As we all watched over the Christmas holiday, a Nigerian man's attempt to blow up an airliner bound for Detroit may have succeeded if not for a failed detonator and the swift and brave reaction of a passenger and the flight crew.

The White House immediately labeled the incident an "attempted terrorist attack."

Seven weeks earlier, an Army psychiatrist who repeatedly expressed radical beliefs and communicated with a radical cleric in Yemen, opened fire at a Fort Hood processing center, killing 13 people and wounding 30 more. The Yemeni cleric has said that Nidal Malik Hasan even sought his blessing before the shooting spree on American soldiers.

Hasan faces 13 counts of murder and other charges. But the White House has not labeled his massacre a terrorist attack.

The question is, why?

Guantanamo Bay Closing, Prisoner Transfers Face New Delays

The Obama Administration continues to struggle in its efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

President Obama has said that the government would not meet the January 22 deadline for shutting down Guantanamo, and officials told the New York Times that they are unlikely to be able to transfer the terror suspects to new prison facilities like Thomson Correctional Center until at least 2011. It could take 8 to 10 months to install the necessary new fencing, towers and other security upgrades at Thomson, a nearly vacant maximum-security prison in rural northwestern Illinois.

Money is another issue. The United States Bureau of Prisons lacks the estimated $150 million needed to buy the Thomson facility from Illinois. The House Appropriations Committee rebuffed the administration's attempt to add roughly $200 million for the project to the Fiscal Year 2010 spending bill.

In arguing for the transfer, the White House has emphasized the economic benefits of the Thomson site and the tight security there, including armed outer and perimeter towers and a fiber-optic surveillance network.

It's an issue that has broken down along partisan lines. Democrats say the U.S. prisons would be fully secure and that shutting down Guantanamo takes away a valuable recruiting tool for jihadists. A senior administration official called the acquisition of Thomson "an important step forward as we work to achieve our national security objectives."

Republicans like Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-Illinois), whose district contains the prison, say their primary objection has never been the possibility of escape. Rather it is "that the vitriol now pointed toward Gitmo will transfer to the village of Thomson and this facility, creating a new magnet for terrorists' activity and contributing to their recruiting rhetoric," Manzullo recently wrote.

This is not a purely hypothetical concern. Manzullo and fellow lawmakers like Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va) point to the case of Uthman Abdul Rahim, a Guantanamo detainee from Yemen who was captured in Afghanistan eight years ago. The United States claims he is an Al Qaeda fighter with links to two of the terrorists who bombed the USS Cole in October 2000, killing 17 U.S. sailors. Uthman's family says he went to Afghanistan to teach the Koran and has no connection to terrorists.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Uthman's brother Arif expressed confidence that President Obama would close Guantanamo next year. If Obama fails to do this - or if Uthman and other detainees are sent to a prison in the United States - many families would consider it an even greater betrayal, Arif said.

"The families, their friends, their tribesmen will have more hatred for the United States," he warned. "And perhaps they will consider taking the same path as the extremists."

Awlaki Reportedly Dies in Yemen Air Strike

An American-born cleric considered an inspiration to Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan may be among 30 militants killed Thursday in an air strike by Yemeni forces.

Officials believe that Anwar Al-Awlaki is among the dead in what news reports indicate was a strike targeting a meeting of Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.

Also believed to be among the casualties are two leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. None of the identities has been confirmed.

Awlaki was the subject of repeated investigations when he lived in America and preached at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va. He is believed to have known two of the 9/11 hijackers. Since leaving the U.S. around 2002, Awlaki's preaching turned even more radical. He argued that the U.S. was leading "a war against Islam," a message that seemed to resonate with Hasan, an Army psychiatrist.

Hasan reportedly communicated with Awlaki in at least 18 emails last year. Awlaki claimed one email came in a year ago "asking for an edict regarding the [possibility] of a Muslim soldier [killing] colleagues who serve with him in the American army." The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has a must-read translation of an interview with Awlaki about his communication with Hasan.

Hasan's shooting rampage Nov. 5 left 13 people dead and 30 more wounded at Fort Hood. Hasan is reportedly paralyzed after being shot himself, faces a military trial for the killings.

For more on the Yemeni air strike, click here and here.

Book Claims Bin Laden Linked to Clinton Assassination Plot

Al Qaeda boss Osama Bin Laden narrowly missed assassinating President Clinton during a 1996 trip to the Philippines, according to a new book on the impeachment battle of the 1990s. In The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, author Ken Gormley says he learned of the plot from former Secret Service Director Louis Merletti, who said it occurred during the president's 1996 visit to Manila.

At one point during the trip, Clinton was scheduled to travel across a bridge in central Manila to meet a local politician. But as his motorcade was about to depart for the meeting, Secret Service officers received a message stating that intelligence agents believed an attack was imminent.

"The motorcade was quickly re-routed and American agents later discovered a bomb had been planted under the bridge," the London Telegraph reported Tuesday summarizing Gormley's account. A subsequent investigation revealed that the assassination plot had been masterminded by Bin Laden.

"The thwarted assassination attempt was never made public," Gormley writes. "It remained secret except to select members of the U.S. intelligence community."

At the time there were media reports that several bombs had been located in the Manila area. But they were said to be linked to a Philippine communist insurgency rather than an attempt on Clinton's life.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a top aide to Bin Laden who masterminded the September 11 attacks, has admitted plotting to kill Clinton and former President Carter.

"I was responsible for surveying and financing for the assassination of several former American Presidents, including President Carter," Mohammed said at his March 10, 2007 Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mohammed said he was also responsible for an assassination attempt on President Clinton during a mid-1990s visit to the Philippines.

New ICE Asylum Policy Ignores Deadly History

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

This is a famous quote invoked by Sir Winston Churchill. It is too bad officials who run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have paid no attention to Churchill's warning. On December 16, ICE issued a new policy memorandum related to detention of alien asylum seekers who enter the United States. Since the 9/11 attacks, such detention policy has been viewed in favor of detaining such aliens until their asylum cases had completed administrative processing or court litigation, releasing only those determined to be no potential threat to US security and whose release would be for true humanitarian purposes. This stricter detention posture stemmed from enhanced national security concerns.

The newly issued revised policy, effective January 4, 2010, changes this posture dramatically. In fact, it creates a presumption that such asylum seeking aliens should be released. "The new guidelines also mandate that all such arriving aliens should automatically be considered for parole," it says. Asylum seeking aliens who are determined from available information to not be a risk of flight or a threat to the community will be released from custody on an immigration parole status.

ICE officers will, of course, conduct the standard interviews and record checks against any such asylum applicants before deciding if they will be released from detention. The problem will be if a terrorist alien, or some other person who is a serious threat, presents false documents, or no documents, and their biometric information is not yet registered in the available databases. It is likely such a terrorist alien will be released, and provided temporary legal immigration documents in the process.

What history is there to be learned?

Here are but a few examples of terrorist aliens who abusively applied for asylum in the United States and were released while their asylum cases were processed, presumed to be "ordinary" asylum seekers, after a standard battery of background checks and interviews.

Omar Abdel Rahman (the "Blind Sheik") convicted in the 1990s in terror plots to attack New York City;

Ramzi Yousef, convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing attack;

Mir Aimal Kansi, convicted and executed for the 1993 terrorist assassinations of CIA employees outside CIA headquarters in Virginia;

Shahawar Matin Siraj, convicted in 2006 of plotting to bomb the New York City subway system;

Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, convicted in 1999 of plotting to bomb the New York City subway system;

Nuradin Abdi, linked to al-Qaeda, convicted in 2007 of providing material support to terrorists in a plot to attack a shopping mall in Ohio.

While the vetting process for those background checks may now be somewhat improved, it is far from being foolproof. If the U.S. government's own internal security and counter-terrorism control mechanisms failed to recognize, after numerous warning signs over a long period of time, the threat posed by the alleged Fort Hood assailant, those same systems will not identify foreign threats entering the U.S. 100% of the time.

There will be serious failures. The new presumptive release policy for asylum seekers will almost surely result in more Rahmans, Yousefs and Kansis being freed onto American streets, with legal immigration documents, so they can further their murderous plots against us. Sir Winston would not be pleased, and neither should we.

MPAC Promotes a New Blood Libel

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) sunk to a new low Monday, referring to a decades-old medical program in Israel, misconstruing the facts of that program and renewing the new blood libel that Israelis are indiscriminately killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs.

Highlighting an Op-ed in a Swedish newspaper which claimed that the Israeli army kidnapped and killed young Palestinians to harvest their organs, MPAC justified its distribution of this "story" by claiming it wants a "healthy debate within our society, particularly between American Jews and Muslims." "Healthy debate" is important, and MPAC and its leadership are entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts. Here are the facts as have been reported by other news outlets.

During the 1990s, a state-run forensic laboratory in Israel harvested organs from bodies in its labs without consent from surviving relatives. This involved both Israelis and Palestinians. When news of these inappropriate actions came to light, Israel established new guidelines to ensure that these actions would never be repeated.

MPAC's statement, however, acts as if the disclosure validates the original Swedish article, which claimed the existence of an active cabal of Jews stealing the organs of non-Jews all over the world, as part of a shadowy network with "tentacles everywhere" and a motivation of "revenge, restitution, reparation for the Holocaust."

There's nothing close to that in the latest reports and MPAC knows it. When CNN contacted the author of the Swedish article, Donald Bostrom, he admitted that "he had no proof that Israeli soldiers were stealing organs." The repetition of this blood libel is not new, and while it is unsurprising that MPAC would be so craven in republishing a clearly anti-Semitic lie, it is surprising that they would do so without any regard for the facts.

Alleged Al Qaeda Drug Dealers Busted

Three West African men are expected to appear in federal court in Manhattan Friday afternoon to face charges they were part of a drug trafficking ring that helped finance Al Qaeda.

The men were arrested Wednesday in Ghana. According to a New York Times report:

"The case grew out of sting operation, officials said. Two Drug Enforcement Administration informants posing as members of FARC, the Colombian terrorist group, approached the men, seeking their help to move large quantities of cocaine from West Africa, through North Africa and the desert and into Spain, the officials said.

The three men, who identified themselves to the informants as either associates of Al Qaeda, or of a related group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, told the informants that they had provided similar transportation and security services to members of Al Qaeda, the officials said."

ABC News reports that the men agreed to ship as much as 1,000 kilos of cocaine and face charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy and conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.

Journalist Douglas Farah has some analysis here.

Treasury's Record Haul on Iran

The Treasury Department on Wednesday announced the largest sanctions settlement in the history of its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), following a $536 million global settlement with Credit Suisse. The settlement followed an extensive investigation during which Credit Suisse ceased doing business with the Iranian government and began cooperating with the OFAC.

In announcing the settlement, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Stuart Levey explained:

"This case also provides a critical and timely lesson about the Iranian Government's use of deceptive practices to evade sanctions and the fact that banks that do business with Iran expose themselves to the risk of becoming involved in Iran's proliferation and terrorism activities."

As we have previously reported here and here, the Iranian regime has recently been the target of intense international efforts to squeeze its financial resources in hopes of getting it to end its nuclear proliferation and support for terrorist groups. This incident reflects not only the necessity of cutting off funding to Iran, but also the need for financial institutions to partner with governments to ensure that banks are not used for nefarious purposes.

While this is the most recent example of international efforts at curbing the ability of the Iranian government to fund its violent goals, it follows a long line of successes. As the Treasury Department explained:

"It is because of these kinds of tactics that the overwhelming majority of major banks and an increasing number of other companies are forgoing business with Iran altogether."

Without question, Credit Suisse can now be added to that long list of businesses that will not cooperate as Iran continues shirking its international responsibilities.

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