And why the authorities let it happen.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
The end of what law enforcement had called the most imminent Islamic terrorist plot since September 11 came when Gregory Vernon Patterson left his cell phone behind at a gas station.
Patterson and his roommate, Levar Haley Washington, had joined Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, a prison Islamic terror group, and had been conducting a robbery spree to finance terror plots against the LAX airport, the National Guard, and local synagogues during the High Holy days.
The shotgun robberies by the organization, whose name meant the Association of True Islam, were going well. The gang of criminal Jihadis had pulled off eleven gas station robberies in LA and Orange County to raise funds for their terror spree until Patterson dropped his phone during a robbery at a gas station in Torrance. The phone led authorities to the South Central apartment being used by Patterson and Washington where they found Bin Laden posters and a target list.
The target list included LAX which was convenient because Patterson already worked there.
Washington and Patterson were busted while trying to rob another gas station in Fullerton.
Patterson told cops that robbing gas stations was “part of a jihad against the U.S., particularly against American oil companies who are stealing from our countries” and that he wanted to die for Allah. The gas station robberies had been meant to raise money to buy weapons and to provide training to Patterson, who had no criminal record, in how to be a terrorist.
Patterson and Hammad Riaz Samana, a Pakistani, had all attended the Jamaat-E-Masijudal mosque where Washington had recruited the black convert and the Pakistani Muslim. The two terrorists swore allegiance to Washington and the shotgun robberies of gas stations began.
Washington, a former Crip, had done time in Folsom State Prison where he found a copy of the Koran, began calling himself Abdur Rahman, and was recruited by a terror mastermind.
There were two unique things about the 2005 terror plot. As Daniel Pipes pointed out at the time, it was the first “large-scale” terror plot organized by Americans, not Muslim immigrants.
But it was also the first Islamic terror plot in America that was organized from prison.
Kevin Lamarr James, a Crips gang member, had been sent away for a decade for a robbery in 1996. A member of the Nation of Islam, James made the same journey as Malcolm X and many other black Muslims, away from the racist black nationalist UFO cult, and to mainstream Islam.
On one hand, he had gotten a tattoo of Allah and on the other, the star and crescent of Islam.
The charismaic James created Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh or JIS to spread true Islam, recruit prisoners, and set off a wave of Islamic terrorist atrocities against American targets in California.
Members were told to swear an oath of secrecy, to wage war on infidels, especially Jews. In prison, they practiced Arabic, studied Islamic theology, and trained in martial arts. Out of prison, they were told to blend into society and build the Caliphate in America through Jihad.
By the time the robberies began, a Jihadist group had been secretly operating in Folsom Prison for nearly a decade, and was about to make the leap to carrying out attacks on the outside.
One of their target dates for a terror attack was the fourth anniversary of September 11.
“This incident is the first in a series of incidents to come in a plight to defend and propagate traditional Islam in its purity,” James, who had changed his name to Ahmed Binyamin Alasiri, allegedly declared in a press release for the attacks.
“We are not extremists, radicals, or terrorists. We are only servants of Allah.”
But James hadn’t picked the best servants for his deity. When Patterson left behind his phone, the authorities followed the trail right back to Folsom Prison and JIS’ mastermind.
The four-man cell was charged with levying war against the United States.
But James was the one with the brains. While Washington, his patsy, was slapped with a twenty-two year prison sentence, his ‘Sheikh’ who had built an entire terror group in prison, denied everything and then claimed that he suffered from a really bad childhood.
"Your honor, I'm thoroughly embarrassed and appalled by my actions. I don't even recognize who I was three years ago. Never before in my life before meeting these people, did I believe in violence or targeting innocent civilians,” the terror sheikh gushed.
Judge Cormac Carney, who would later illegally declare the death penalty to be unconstitutional, called James' missive “the most powerful letter I’ve ever received.”
The naive judge was also impressed by all of James' prison college classes and his evolution and repentance, and described him as a victim from a disadvantaged background.
In the portion of James’ letter that Judge Carney read out loud in court, the terror mastermind vowed that, “My country need never fear from me again.”
That was in 2009.
He was freed in September 2019. And in August 2020, he was busted selling meth.
James, now living in Orange County and officially being called Ahmed Binyamin Alasiri, had been selling nearly pure methamphetamine for thousands of dollars.
And all of this was going on while James was on supervised release.
The FBI had called the terror plot by Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, "probably the one that operationally was closest to actually occurring".
"Americans watched so-called 'home grown' terrorists unleash multiple bombings in the city of London. Some in this country may have mistakenly believed that it could not happen here. Today we have chilling evidence that it is possible,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said.
The terror plot had been aimed at military targets, as well as a number of Los Angeles congregations, including, allegedly, the ultra-progressive B’nai David-Judea, which would have been struck by armed gunmen pushing their way inside and opening fire on Yom Kippur.
The heavy security presence at Los Angeles synagogues, which includes heavily armed guards and bulletproof vests, is part of the legacy that James and his True Islam terror group left there.
James had built up a terrorist operation in prison backed by manifestos and operational documents making him the closest counterpart to the Blind Sheikh. Instead he was given a lighter sentence because the same charismatic gang member turned preacher, who had convinced hardened criminals from rival gangs to believe in him, had turned a judge.
Selling meth may have been the alleged hobby of a newly freed criminal, or something more. Traffic in certain drugs, including methamphetamines, has been used by Islamic terrorist groups to finance their operations. It’s unknown whether this is the case here, but the FBI, after Obama, is less likely to be looking for it or to even know what to be on the lookout for.
When Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh fell afoul of the FBI in 2005, law enforcement was acquainted with the methodology, infrastructure and strategies of Islamic terrorists. During the Obama administration, a cultural revolution was waged against counterterrorism from the inside.
If James is up to anything these days, the FBI is unprepared and unready to find out.
Fifteen years later, the terror plot, once a major event, has been largely forgotten. And the same is true of most Islamic terrorist attacks except for September 11. As the country enters another September and begins a countdown to 9/11, everything afterward is being forgotten.
During the Black Lives Matter riots, a white Muslim illegal alien stabbed a New York cop, grabbed his gun, and opened fire on other officers while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”. Despite wounding three cops and claiming, “my religion made me do it,” there’s been little coverage.
In the midst of a pandemic and nationwide race riots, we should not forget that there is more than one threat vector. Islamic terrorists don’t go away just because no one is paying attention. And the same prison system that helped produce the wave of BLM violence has also incubated Islamic prison terror cells like the one that plotted to kill Americans on another September 11.
The Nation of Islam has been a feeder for both Islamic terrorism and Black Lives Matter violence. All three are deeply violent, bigoted, and possessed of a feverish hatred of America.
Sweden: Muslims Riot Over Qur’an-Burning Danish authorities react swiftly -- by banning a critic of Islam from the country.
Mon Sep 7, 2020
Agence France-Presse reported last Saturday that “protesters threw stones at police and burned tyres in southern Sweden late on Friday, authorities said, hours after an anti-Muslim Danish politician was blocked from attending a Quran-burning rally nearby.” Were the “anti-Muslim Danish politician” or the participants at the “Quran-burning rally” throwing stones at police or burning tires? No, but as far as Swedish authorities were concerned, they were the problem, not the Muslim rioters.
According to AFP, “about 300 people were on the streets of Malmo with violence escalating as the evening wore on….The demonstration was connected to an incident earlier in the day in which protesters burned a copy of the Islamic holy book,” according to police spokesman Rickard Lundqvist.
The Danish politician Rasmus Paludan, who has burned the Qur’an before, was planning to go to Malmo to speak at the event, but Swedish authorities moved quickly to prevent that, barring him from entering Sweden until at least 2022. Apparently Paludan entered Sweden anyway, as AFP notes that he “was later arrested near Malmo.”
Malmo Police spokesman Calle Persson explained: “We suspect that he was going to break the law in Sweden. There was also a risk that his behaviour would pose a threat to society.” Police also swooped into the Qur’an-burning rally and arrested three people there for “inciting racial hatred.”
Paludan was, understandably, disgusted by all this, and pointed out, quite correctly, that there was a glaring official double standard at play. “Sent back and banned from Sweden for two years,” he wrote on Facebook (where he is, apparently, not banned yet, but that is certainly coming given the social media giant’s repeatedly affirmed commitment to enforcing Sharia blasphemy laws under the spurious guise of “hate speech”). “However,” Paludin added, “rapists and murderers are always welcome!” he wrote.
Yes, that’s quite right. Swedish authorities have made it clear who they think is the real threat: not criminal Muslim migrants, but those who dare offend them. I ’m not in favor of burning the Qur’an. I believe people should read it and understand its contents rather than burn it. But in a free society, book-burning is not or should not be illegal. It is part of the freedom of expression; we may dislike it, but to outlaw it would restrict the freedom of expression in ways that would have negative consequences for society in other ways: the group that was prevented by law from being criticized or insulted, including having its holy book burned, would be free from all restraints and able to work its will unchallenged and unopposed.
If Rasmus Paludin had intended to travel to Sweden to burn a Bible, would anyone have cared? Would he have been banned from the country or arrested? When that police spokesman, Calle Persson, said “We suspect that he was going to break the law in Sweden,” to what law was he referring? Is burning a Qur’an against the law in Sweden? Is Sweden under Sharia now?
And when Persson added that “there was also a risk that his behaviour would pose a threat to society,” note that this is the same sleight-of-hand British officials employed when they banned Pamela Geller and me from entering that country. Just as in our case, Paludin does not actually pose a threat to society. The people who were going to react violently and irrationally to his behavior pose a threat to society, and the Swedes lack the will to act against them, so they act against Paludin instead.
And now Muslims are rioting despite the Swedish authorities’ best efforts to prevent it from happening. The police did not burn the Qur’an, but they’re the ones getting stones thrown at them. The property destroyed and people injured in the riots likely had nothing to do with the people responsible for the Qur’an burning, but that is the deadly illogic of riots everywhere. We’re seeing the same thing now all over the United States.
The rioters were, of course, screaming “Allahu akbar.” For them, Allah is greater than the gods of Sweden, be they the God of Christianity, or the gods of secularism, hedonism, the welfare state, what have you. Will Sweden acquiesce to their declarations of superiority and supremacism? Does it, at this late date, have the will not to do so?
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad . His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster . Follow him on Twitter here . Like him on Facebook here .
No comments:
Post a Comment