DOJ, 9 Dec 09: A State Department employee was sentenced today to 12 months of probation for illegally accessing more than 125 confidential passport application files. Kevin M. Young, 42, of Temple Hills, MD, was also ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Alan Kay in the District of Columbia to perform 100 hours of community service. Young pleaded guilty on Aug. 17, 2009, to a one-count criminal information charging him with unauthorized computer access. . . . . .
. . . . Young is the eighth current or former State Department employee or contractor to plead guilty in this continuing investigation. . . . .
Reuters, 10 Dec 09: Five young Americans detained in Pakistan, which is fighting a violent Taliban insurgency, wanted to join a holy war and were in contact with militants through the Internet, officials said on Thursday. The five men, students in their 20s from northern Virginia, were detained this week in the city of Sargodha in Punjab province. . . .
. . . . “We watched them for one and a half days and then arrested them,” Usman Anwar, police chief of Sargodha, told reporters. “We seized laptops and other things from their possession. Later we came to know that they have come here with the intention of ‘jihad’.”
The case could fan fears in Western countries that the sons of immigrants from Muslim countries are being drawn to violent Islamist militancy, a process made easier by the Internet. . . .
. . . . The suspects were wary about being detected through sending emails so instead they shared a password so different members of their group could access the same email site and read messages saved there as drafts, he said. “This is the same method used by al Qaeda,” said the official.
The suspects also surfed the Internet to get access to Pakistan-based militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), he said. . . .
. . . . The Americans were in contact with militant groups in Pakistan through the Internet. Laptops, computers, CDs, mobile phones and maps of Pakistani cities had been recovered from them, said Anwar. . . . .
5 U.S. Men Arrested in Pakistan Said to Plan Jihad Training
New York Times, 10 Dec 09: Five young Muslim American men arrested here Wednesday were on their way to the heart of the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal areas with the intention of training to fight against American troops in Afghanistan.
The men, a tight circle of friends in their late teens and their 20s from the Washington suburbs, had been in contact through YouTube with a Pakistani militant with links to Al Qaeda before arriving in Pakistan on Nov. 30, said the Pakistani officials, who had firsthand knowledge of the case.
After touching down in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, the men tried to join an extremist Islamic school near Karachi and approached another extremist organization, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, in the eastern city of Lahore, the officials said.
They were rebuffed in both places because of their Western demeanor and the fact that they did not speak the national language, Urdu, an investigator said. They then came here, to Sargodha, a city in the north of Punjab Province, en route to North Waziristan, said the police chief of Sargodha, Usman Anwar. . . .
. . . . The arrests were made at a four-room home in a government housing complex belonging to an uncle of the eldest of the group, Umer Farooq, 25. Mr. Farooq’s parents were staying at the house at the time, and his father, Khalid, was arrested as well. The police chief said the elder Mr. Farooq knew his son and the other men were being hunted by the F.B.I. but had failed to inform the authorities.
His mother, Sabria Farooq, was interviewed Thursday at the house. She said she and her husband had emigrated to the United States 20 years ago from Sargodha and had returned in September to start a computer business, similar to the one they have in the Virginia suburbs close to Washington. . . .
. . . . .On Wednesday, a Pakistani official said that Khalid Farooq, the father of Umer, was believed to have ties to Jaish-e-Muhammad, a banned Islamic extremist group created by the government in the 1990s to conduct guerrilla attacks in the disputed territory of Kashmir. It was banned by the Pakistani government after the Sept. 11 attacks and has since joined forces with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. . . .
. . . . The police identified the others arrested in Sargodha as Ramy Zamzam, 22, a dental student of Egyptian background at Howard University, who was described as a sort of “ringleader”; Waqar Khan, of Pakistani background, who was reported to have family connections in Karachi; Ahmad A. Mini, 20, born in Eritirea; and Aman Hassan Yemer, 18, a native Ethiopian.
“They are U.S. nationals,” Chief Anwar said. “They have valid U.S. passports and valid Pakistani visas.”
The five men bonded together in the jihadi cause, watching jihadist video clips on YouTube that showed attacks by the Taliban on allied forces in Afghanistan . . . .
New York Post/Ralph Peters, 10 Dec 09: In recent weeks, a renewed epidemic of suicide bombings has swept Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, climaxing in huge blasts in Baghdad that killed 130 innocents on Tuesday.
The Obama administration says these bombings have nothing to do with religion. It’s purely coincidental that the perps preach severe Islam. The attacks are merely meant to destabilize governments.
Once again, we grasp at a comforting explanation, deceiving ourselves. Yes, Islamist fanatics want to disrupt Pakistani society and Iraq’s upcoming elections. But they’re not butchering thousands of Muslims just over ward politics. . . .
. . . . When we lie and deny that religion has anything to do with Islamist terrorism, we’re not doing Muslims a favor. We empower the worst elements in the Islamic world.
But we don’t want to hurt the feelings of fanatics. So we insist that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood avenger for Allah, was upset. And the deeds of Gitmo inmates had nothing to do with religion (although we rush to pander to their beliefs). Al Qaeda and the Taliban just want political power. And so on.
But men don’t rush to die to achieve political power they won’t live to exercise. The current epidemic of massacres is about faith gone homicidal. It’s about uncompromising hatred in Allah’s name, a hatred unappeasable on this earth.
And it’s about punishment, that word we no longer dare think. Wahhabi Islam delights in tormenting women (paging Dr. Ali bin Freud). Our response to the general deprivation, enforced masking, lifelong imprisonment, random beating and cult murder of a half-billion human beings? “What right do we have to judge the culture of others?”
We’re not only fools, but cowards, too.
The worst jihad isn’t against us or the governments we back, but against a half-billion women. Think you’ll ever get Washington to admit that?
Faced with supremely dedicated enemies blazing with faith, we make excuses for their love of death. Then we wonder why we don’t make progress. . . . .
FrontPage/Pam Geller, 10 Dec 09: Wafa Sultan’s seminal moment was when she took on an Islamic cleric on Al-Jazeera. The clip went viral on Youtube, and it really was a defining moment in the clash of civilizations. Here was a woman, basically considered “property” in the Muslim world and expected to do what she was told, turning around after she had been interrupted numerous times, and saying in effect, “Quiet, it’s my turn.”
Now comes her new book, A God Who Hates, which will undoubtedly prove to be a key resource in the resistance to jihad and Islamization. In it, the brilliant psychiatrist from Syria, now an American citizen, tells her own story. . . . .
. . . . She recounts in the book certain momentous events that jarred her thinking, such as in 1979 when Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” murdered one of her professors, the ophthalmology lecturer Dr. Yusef Al-Yusef, whom she respected and admired. Wafa witnessed the murder – and at that exact moment started to question the nature of the Islamic faith.
“But I was afraid,” she explained when I interviewed her recently, “to express my feelings. I was afraid to express my thoughts, because under Islamic sharia, a Muslim who dares to leave Islam or dares to convert to any other religion is to be killed. And every Muslim has the right to kill someone who has left Islam without being asked a question. This is the Islamic law. Once you were born as a Muslim, you’re not allowed to leave it. This is simply the Islamic law, and it seems to me it’s very hard to convince Americans that this is the way it is.” . . . . .
Bloomberg, 10 Dec 09: Al-Qaeda has become “increasingly indiscriminate” in attacks that kill mostly Muslims in countries including Iraq and Pakistan, according to a study released by the U.S. Military Academy’s counterterrorism center.
From 2004 to 2008, 15 percent of al-Qaeda’s victims were Western, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point said in a report. Only 2 percent were from the West between 2006 and 2008.
The network has “limited capability to strike against its Western enemies” and “maintains its relevance by attacking countries with Muslim majorities,” according to the center. “If history provides a glimpse into the future, the group and its associates will pose the greatest threat to fellow Muslims.” . . . . .
Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al‐Qa’ida’s Violence Against Muslims (Combating Terrorism Center)
From a quote at the beginning of Ibn Warraq’s 1995 book, “Why I am not a Muslim”:
“Muslims are the first victims of Islam. Many times I have observed in my travels in the Orient, that fanaticism comes from a small number of dangerous men who maintain the others in the practice of religion by terror. To liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.” –E. Renan (1823-1892)
