In case you missed it this morning, it was announced that five young Muslim men from the Virginia suburbs were arrested in a jihadi safehouse in Sargodha, a city in northern Punjab. Trying to get in to Al Qaeda is kind of like trying to get in to the mob it seems. If you don’t have someone to vouch for you and you don’t know how to act the part, then you may be shit out of luck:
The men contacted extremist organizations, including two with links to al-Qaeda, and proudly told their Pakistani interrogators that “We are here for jihad,” said Usman Anwar, the local Pakistani police chief whose officers interrogated the men, all Muslims from the Alexandria area.
Anwar said police recovered jihadist literature, laptop computers and maps of different parts of Pakistan when the men were arrested near Lahore on Tuesday. The maps included areas where the Taliban train. The men first made contact with the two extremist organizations by e-mail in August, officials said, but the groups apparently rejected their overtures because they couldn’t find people to vouch for them. [Link]
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p>Also,
They were rebuffed in both places because of their Western demeanor and their inability to speak the national language, Urdu, an investigator said… [Link]
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p>The Washington Post identifies the five men:
The men, who range in age from 19 to 25, were identified by Pakistani officials and sources close to the case as Umar Chaudhry, Waqar Khan, Ahmad A. Mini, Aman Hassan Yemer and Ramy Zamzam. Chaudhry’s father, Khalid, was also arrested in Pakistan and is being questioned, authorities said. [Link]
In the years since the September 11th attacks we just haven’t seen much of this: young men who are U.S. citizens volunteering to become terrorists for Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. We saw our first hints of such a breach in the Somali community of Minnesota:
US prosecutors have announced charges against eight people as part of an investigation into young men leaving the United States to fight in Somalia.
Those charged are accused of giving financial support to recruits, and of training and fighting with Somali Islamist militants.
Up to 20 people are thought to have left Minnesota to fight with Somali militants in the last two years. [Link]
Here is what I find most intriguing about most of these new cases. The U.S.’s first line of defense against these would-be terrorists hasn’t been the Intelligence Community. It hasn’t been vigilant neighbors or NSA’s Echelon either. It has been the men’s own parents. It makes sense really. My overly protective parents are pretty vigilant about my activities. Even at 33 I doubt I could sneak out of the country for more than two days before they started to get worried and called the police (imagining that I was face down in a ditch somewhere). I remember once, a few years ago, when they called the police after my brother was out of contact for less than a day. I am SURE my parents are not out of the ordinary in this regard.
It’s a dilemma no parent wants to face — fearing a son or daughter may be mixed up in terrorism, wondering whether to turn in a loved one.
It was Washington-area parents who helped authorities find the young American Muslims arrested in Pakistan this week and parents in Minnesota who contacted the FBI last year with fears that their sons had gone off to Somalia to fight. Parents increasingly are reaching out to authorities for help when they think their children may be involved in terrorism, said Charlie Allen, formerly the top intelligence official at the Homeland Security Department. [Link]
My point? Law enforcement in the U.S. should learn from this and “target” the parents in at-risk communities by reaching out to them positively and proactively. They should also provide parents telephone access to people who specialize in intervention counseling. The immigrant American parent who wants to see their child go down this path is exceedingly rare. The point would not simply be to inform on their children but to monitor and intervene before they even go down this road. It is the same way you would watch for signs of alcoholism or drug abuse. I like the thought of parents being the first responders in the war against “homegrown” terror.
Well, interesting–but–parents in the UK, Pakistan, etc. have not been able to stop terrorists–is the USA that different? I’m hoping so, otherwise this “homegrown terrorism” meme is going to get very ugly, very fast. 🙁
Isn’t that signing off on profiling??
You mean Abhi is not PC, unlike the American school which banned Christmas since it would hurt the sentiments of some of the minorities?
I think the problem is also with parents. If your parents are radical then there are high chances that the kids are also radical. Just like the children of divorced parents have higher chances of divorcing, since they don’t have an example to know what it takes to make a relationship work.
Or you could raise them right.
there have been reports of canadian-somali youth [born in canada into middle-class households, integrated into the canadian lifestyle], tootling off to somalia to join something called a militia called al-shabab. appaerntly tehre are recruiters who come over looking for disenfranchised youth ; probably no different from your typical angst ridden alterna goth dungeons and dragons nihilist nineteen year old, except with the jihadi option and an offer of seventy virgins in heaven.
news story
No, I mean why are we profiling people like me, just because these guys are alleged to be bad? What about Timothy McVeigh? Muslim-Americans are no more likely than anyone else to act badly.
No, I mean why are we profiling people like me, just because these guys are alleged to be bad? What about Timothy McVeigh? Muslim-Americans are no more likely than anyone else to act badly.
Can we stop with this Timothy McVeigh comparison? It’s just not the same thing.
Why different Suki Dillon [sic]?
Why is the Muslim terrorist worse than the white one?
Luckily in Abhi’s article this isn’t the case, since it says that the parents turned them in. (:
Concerned – technically the difference is religion vs. race… but i think i understand where you were going.
Suki – Here’s an interesting difference for you McVeigh actually bombed a building, killing innocent people, these guys were looking to fight a war (possibly against other (willing) soldiers).
I think the problem is also with parents. If your parents are radical then there are high chances that the kids are also radical. Just like the children of divorced parents have higher chances of divorcing, since they don’t have an example to know what it takes to make a relationship wor
i think the key is that it does increase the probability a lot. but, a lot of the homegrown terrorists are not from those sorts of parents. rather, they identify with their peer groups, which for whatever reason are pro-jihad. do you really think parents have that much influence over kids? many indian americans on these message boards know a lot about india. cuban american fixate on cuba. jews are often obsessed about israel. the irish american community helped fund the IRA. why would anyone be surprised that muslims are preoccupied by conflict in muslim countries? and since we’re involved in those countries, it is probably inevitable that what happened in england will happen here. though the muslims here are a smaller, more diverse, and more assimilated community. so the risks are lower.
I think the problem does rest in the parents – but not because they are radical themselves. Immigrant parents often have to work long hours so they don’t have time to devote to their kids. They don’t understand what it’s like to grow up in America so they can’t engage in their kids’ lives. They see their kid showing interest in Islam or hanging out with other Muslim kids, they think “Good! He’s not doing drugs or getting girls pregnant.” Now that parents realize the possibility of their kids being terrorists, I’m sure they will be more vigilant about that too.
Targetting at-risk communities is exactly what needs to be done – not to penalize them, but to focus on community building so that these kids have positive influences in school and after school. Give the kids something to do besides surfing youtube all day.
BTW, the Timothy McVeigh thing is getting real old. The American Muslim community needs to stop bringing up irrelevant history and face the fact that we have a real problem with our kids. Thankfully, this case shows that we are working with law enforcement. I think America Muslims are a lot different from the ones in the UK and I hope we won’t have as deep mistrust of authority as they might in the UK.
It is funny how McVeigh is mentioned every time an incident like this happens. McVeigh bombed the building because it was a federal government building. His victims were of every color and religion, including his own.These guys and the earlier Virginia Jihad convictees (what is it about Northern Virginia that produces these guys) wanted to kill non-Muslims specifically. So much for growing up in a big metro multiculural area like Washington DC. I am curious as what constitues “at risk community” in this context. It is not as though they were poor uneducated guys with no other avenues in life. While watching the HBO film on the Mumbai massacre, Kasab the surviving terrorist says he was literally sold to the L-e-T by his father. Except for religion I see no other common factor between these nuts and Kasab. But we aren’t supposed to focus on that aspect as that would be profiling?
@razib
That what I wanted to say except it would not make sense to the saffronists.
@herewegoagain:
“These guys and the earlier Virginia Jihad convictees (what is it about Northern Virginia that produces these guys) wanted to kill non-Muslims specifically. So much for growing up in a big metro multiculural area like Washington DC”
what? Did they want to kill “infidels” or “infidels” who happened to be “invaders”? They are tons of “Infidels” in this part of the world too. By the way, the saffronnazis ( among the NRIs ) grow up in a multicultural society too, but that they didn’t stop them from celebrating Modi or spewing venom against Muslims and Christians.
Pakistani intelligence agencies have done good work here.
As a Afghan Muslim, you here extremism spouted in the mosque all the time.
Sunni Pakistani Americans will disparage Shia Muslims. They will also disparage India and Hindus in general.
Jihad is a theological concept in Islam, which conveys not only an inner struggle but could also be seen as military expansionism in the name and cause of God. However, who that should be waged is controversial.
I’m not saying Islam is militant, but Islam is triumphal and expansionary like Christianity. The conflicts between these two closely linked faiths is rooted in the tribal and ethnocentric nature of Judaism, which stressed a distinctness from the pagan religions prevalent in the Near East/Western Asia.
There are violent passages in the Qur’an but there are also violent and genocidal commandments in the Old Testament, one of the sacred cornerstones of Western civilization.
One of the mothers of the detained men was in Pakistan, but she seemed to be in denial about her son’s alleged involvements.
I’m 29, when I was 26, I involved myself with the Deobandi group known as Tablighi Jamaat, they are active in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. The Tablighis have an annual gathering in Bangladesh which is the second largest annual Muslim pilgrimage after the obligatory Hajj.
The Tablighi Jamaat are like the Jehovah’s Witness of Islam. They are into dawah (“ministering to non-Muslims to enter the fold of Islam”) but they are also an all-male movement. Women are not permitted in their mosques, except during the lunar month of Ramadan.
Apparently, one radicalized British Muslim of Asian ancestry was involved with the Tablighi Jamaat in 2007, however, my experience with the group is that they are apolitical. They are allowed to prosper in Muslim dictatorships like Pakistan because they are not seen as a threat to the state, and therefore, their secretiveness also allows few not intimately involved with them to know little about their organization.
I am Shia culturally, and I reject the notion of a pan-Muslim state or caliphate stretching from Rome to China, which would encompass all of India.
Neo-puritanicalism in Islam is rather novel and new.
Qutb, the philosophical father of al Qaeda, was an Egyptian literary critic, not schooled in classical Islamic Sunni jurisprudence. His view of Islam is one that calls for a return to a “prestine and unspoiled past” where Islam was at the center of world civilization and apex of human achievement.
These ideas are quite in vogue with young Muslim men who for whatever reason feel alienated from the mainstream.
However, they are a small minority of the Muslim community globally.
Most terrorists are middle-class and culturally assimilated in Western norms.
Poor peasant Muslims in Afghanistan are too poor to think of global jihad. They might sell opiates to markets destined for Europe and Russia, but they are concerned with basic necessities and survival.
Thanks, Gustavo, appreciate your upfront and non-PC comments here. The triumphalist and imperial aspects of islam are something people should worry about, I do think there isnt enough open rejection of that and acceptance that some of the past “triumphs” of islam involved mass killings and destruction of other cultures.
Many communities can spawn extreme violent movements, the secular (hindu foot soldiers, christian leadership) LTTE comes to mind, but the fact that scripture can easily be quoted to justify violence does make a large difference.
As you point out, the hebrew bible includes stories of the destruction of tribes and genocide but then there is this whole jewish model of interpretation and scholarship that mediates this history. Of course, interestingly enough you see radical jewish groups “short-circuit” this understanding to justify violence in the left bank and so on.
This is the foundation-stone of my pet-theory that radicalism thrives when you have an over-sensitive, over-secular culture (there is a difference between a secular state and a culture) that disconnects people from their roots. Without a firm grounding to give people an instinctive and emotional sense of who they are, people who grow into identity crises end up easy prey for radical outfits that offer easy black & white answers.
It’s like the estimable Habermas once said, “the postmodernists who have all but destroyed rational thought make the world more and not less vulnerable to the threat of fascism.”
I flirted with Islamism when I was younger, however, coming from a Shia background, I didn’t fit in.
Islamism provided me an identity, complete with a wardrobe, routine for personal hygiene, a mandate for food etiquette, etc.
I’m not being facetious, but at that moment in my life, I was vulnerable and felt a connection with men I deemed “pious.”
Ironically, most forms of Muslim extremism are being espoused by Sunni outfits.
Also, I’m Afghan and a Pushtun nationalist. I have an antipathy for Pakistan and the concept of partition. I feel it was unfortunate that Indian Shia Muslims went along with the concept of an “Indian Muslim commonwealth” since now Shia Muslims in Pakistan are often subject to persecution, harassment, and sometimes death.
To me Islam is a cultural banner of my ethno-religious heritage.
@15
That is an interesting statement you make there. Probably says more about your world view than anything else. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t these guys American citizens ? Isn’t that what Muslims in America state categorically in their protests against profiling ? That they aren’t being treated like American citizens ? So what “invasion” of America are these American citizens fighting against ? And to quote the examples of Modi supporters is meaningless here as there has yet to be a case of groups of second generation Indian American Hindus jumping on a plane and showing up at Godhra clamoring to join the RSS or other extreme Hindu group. In the past few years from London to now the US we’re seeing this specifically among second generation Muslims.
Yoga Fire, more and more I suspect you of being a crypto-fascist national anarchist.
fwiw, another group whose commendable efforts should be pointed out is CAIR who were another pivotal link in the chain –
This kind of stuff – done loudly / publicly / visibly – helps dispell the stereotype that CAIR is far more concerned about Islamophobia than policing extremism….
QUICK! Someone tell my parents!
As you point out, the hebrew bible includes stories of the destruction of tribes and genocide but then there is this whole jewish model of interpretation and scholarship that mediates this history. Of course, interestingly enough you see radical jewish groups “short-circuit” this understanding to justify violence in the left bank and so on.
some jewish radicals label the palestinians descendants of amelak, and therefore appropriately exterminated.
Bold = Countries/ Nationalism. Bold+italics = religion. Big difference.
Spewing venom is one thing. Plotting mass murder at an international scale and striving for global religious dominance is another. This is a false and specious moral equivalence, not uncommonly employed to deflect genuine criticism.
The problem is quite clear. Some parents instill basic values that promote intolerance . The seeds that they plant find the water of radical Islam, and the fertile soil of Pakistan .And then they bloom.
@ Gustavo “Also, I’m Afghan and a Pushtun nationalist. I have an antipathy for Pakistan and the concept of partition. I feel it was unfortunate that Indian Shia Muslims went along with the concept of an “Indian Muslim commonwealth” since now Shia Muslims in Pakistan are often subject to persecution, harassment, and sometimes death.”
Now, let assume you are truly an Afghan and a Pusthun nationalist, I was wondering whether you have antipathy toward Khorasan nationalists? They have wanted freedom from the Pushtun majority for centuries. I assumed given your utmost hatred toward Pakistan, you would understand Khorasanis hatred toward your people, no? The current president of Pakistan is a Shia Muslim, except nobody in Pakistan cares about it (minus the select few radicals from both sides).
@27
“Plotting mass murder at an international scale and striving for global religious dominance is another. This is a false and specious moral equivalence, not uncommonly employed to deflect genuine criticism.”
Somehow Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern speak?” came to mind when I read the above bullcrap.
another pitch for the first line of defence and keeping the eye on the ball.
i hope the attacks in pakistan take care of the skepticism highlighted above. nurse vipers and you get bit. not schadenfrude. the more pakistan sinks, india gets pulld along into the morass and we’re all in the shitter.
Lurker- I have read that article too, and I don’t think it fits this situation. You may consider my statement bullcrap, and it would have been helpful if you could elaborate a little more, but that is your choice.
Lurker,
Pakistan is a state that sponsors terrorism in India, Iran, and Afghanistan.
I’m aware of the concept of Khorasan.
Duh, all Afghans are aware of that.
Afghanistan was only created in the 18th century for military means. Afghans have been disunited and lacked national cohesiveness because we have been ruled as a people, never governed.
Pakistan is a post-colonial creation of British imperialism, “divide and conquer” tactics. Muslims fell pray to the Western concept of religious nationalism, Pakistan is no different from Israel in being a “homeland for one religious community” at the expense of other indigenous communities that once thrived there.
But why do you think India is courting the government of Kabul?
India knows it has an interest in maintaining pro-Indian sentiments in Afghanistan, that is largely due to disputes concerning the Durand Line.
And why would you question my ancestry?
Because my name is Gustavo? My dad is Mexican, my Afghan mother had intercourse with a “Catholic crusader” out of wedlock.
Muslims have been champions of interracial marriage since the inception of the community in the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia. Unlike in the Brahmanic tradition, where skin color is obsessed about even though Sri Krisna is a “black man,” Muhammad (wa alahi salaam), championed multiculturalism in the 7th century.
If you know anything about “radical Islam,” you would know that Sunni extremists consider Shia “kafir” and “Jews.”
This shit is being spouted in madrasas in Pakistan.
As the Taliban has targeted cities in the “heart of Pakistan” because to many Afghans “Pakistan is only the Punjab,” that nation’s obsession with India and failure to crack down on militants is coming back to haunt the Punjabi elites there.
Many Afghans I know even if we despise the Taliban, are in awe at their ability to strick in Lahore (at the footsteps of India and cultural capital of the country), Rawalpindi (the intelligence/military “Pentagon” of that country), and Islamabad (the political capital of that country).
Karachi has been spared, but who knows when the Sindh may see its share of Islamist attacks.
Communal violence in the Sindh between different religious communities is not unheard of.
Funny thing about Sepia Mutineers, no one cares about Muslim or Pakistani issues.
Anything Indian and you get like 500 responses.
Hahahahaha!!!!!!!
To be fair, at least part of that is due to certain usual suspects who make a point of trolling those threads.
Lurker,
I don’t totally hate Pakistan, afterall it is home to the largest community of Pushtuns in the world.
However, Pakistan was ill-conceived.
Bangladesh broke off from the “Indian Muslim commonwealth” and as history has shown, India, the multiethnoreligious polyglot committed to secular pan-Indianism has been far more successful.
Muslim extremists reject nationalism and cultural chauvinism. To them, unity of the Ummah is an upmost priority.
But the reality is, Muslims don’t get along and the tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan demonstrate that.
I’m not sure where you got this idea. Most indications are that the light-skin preference is a relatively recent thing dating to either the British Raj or the invasions of the Turkik/Afghan sultanates that preceded them.
I was under the impression that Afghans have always held India in high esteem right up until after the Taliban took over. I remember talking to some Afghan expats, one of whom was a former diplomat in Delhi, speaking of India in glowing terms.
On an unrelated note, Tagore also once wrote a beautiful story later made into a film called “Kabuliwallah” about a Kabuli fruit-seller in Calcutta. It makes even my stone-cold, Hindutvaadi, crypto-fascist, national-anarchist heart crack a little.
Gustavo wrote:
That’s because the majority of diasporic desis are Hindu Indians.
Just because we don’t comment, doesn’t mean we aren’t interested. I have nothing to add to what was already said.
This is true. The gods and goddesses of hinduism, the heroes and heroines of the Puranas are overwhelmingly black/dark. The 1000 year slavery under muslim and european invaders has screwed up the desi mind big time.
Growing up I found Muslim actors more handsome than Hindu actors because of their assumed foreign origins.
I’m not brown, in the Navy, I am a Muslim veteran, people assumed I was “Italian.”
But Muslims are not foreigners to Indian soil.
Most Desi Muslims are converts from Hinduism.
Thanks for all your insightful comments Gustavo.
“Can we stop with this Timothy McVeigh comparison? It’s just not the same thing.”
Exactly! A much closer more-Western counterpart of this case is the one described at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8365316.stm :
“Police in a town near Paris have foiled a 13-year-old boy’s plan to shoot his teachers and himself after being warned by his parents, officials say.
“When the boy approached the school in Beauvais with a loaded hunting rifle he found it guarded by police and turned back, according to judicial officials.
“Police detained the suspect after he was found by his parents in an internet cafe in the town centre…
“…His parents had found his behaviour disturbing and searched their home near Beauvais after he left for school on Tuesday, the agency says.
“When they discovered that the hunting rifle was missing, they contacted the police…”
Again, a middle-class young guy raised in a Western nation decided to get violent against others and his parents turned him in before it was too late.
Ganges?
Kids don’t tell anything to parents these days. Wrong expectation
Seconded
Stick fairly closely to the topic at hand or your comment will be deleted.
It’s natural that the parents would provide a protective barrier. Nineteen and twenty year old boys can get ideas into their heads—ideas that will often die out, given the time. Stopping them from getting into trouble is about protecting them, not just about fighting terrorism. As a rule, I’m not worried about people raised here in an open society. (This was not the case for some of the “home-grown” terrorists caught in the US: David Coleman Headley grew up in Pakistan as Daood Gillani).
The trouble with Pakistan is that the ruling establishment has been nurturing anti-American and anti-Indian sentiments over decades. Militant groups have become part of the fabric of society—Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar-e-Taiba addresses large gatherings attended by government officials and gives press interviews. Newspapers are not free to criticize the army, but they are free to publish propaganda highlighting real and imaginary outrages in Kashmir as news. Extremist rhetoric is par for the course in the media and in drawing rooms. Military academies teach cadets that one Muslim soldier is worth ten Hindus, etc. Under these circumstances, preventing young men from signing up is a much harder task for parents, especially if they are poor and the militants are promising cash and a purpose in life.
Irfan Hussain wrote a nice piece in Dawn today about Pakistan’s fears about being encircled by India:
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/14-pakistan-as-a-security-state-229-zj-02
It isn’t surprising that the extremist groups don’t accept just anyone who applies to join, otherwise it would be very easy for spies from the CIA or Indian/Pakistani/UK governments to infiltrate them.
Boston Brahmin,
I don’t know why educated Indians living in 21st century LIBERAL WESTERN cities are still so backward in their thinking, even as far as calling themselves by their barbaric caste system such as Boston Brahmin. These are the same people who would bash burka and beard, but would celebrate their own version of fundamentalism by stating that it is merely a reflection of their identity. I suggest Indian KKK as your new nickname.
Secondly, let’s examine some your points here: “Militant groups have become part of the fabric of society—Hafiz Saeed of Lashkar-e-Taiba addresses large gatherings attended by government officials and gives press interviews. Newspapers are not free to criticize the army, but they are free to publish propaganda highlighting real and imaginary outrages in Kashmir as news. Extremist rhetoric is par for the course in the media and in drawing rooms.”
You are a pot calling the kettle black.One does not need to look at liberal Hindutvas alone like Arun Shouries or Jaswant Singh to see the representations of ELECTED Indian leaders in Muslim-bashing and Pakistan-hating rallies.The former Prime Minister Atal Vajpayee attended RSS and Shiv Sena rallies and LK Advani demanded the restoration of Hindu honor by building Ayodha in countless rallies.The hate speech coming from these educated Hindu Indians were seamed into India’s social fabric, giving birth to the tattered Varun Gandhi, Gujarat, Pakistan or graveyard chant and the usual loyalty test.
The many educated NRIs who swallowed the concocted myths about Tejo Mahalaya and Hindu Holocaust didn’t lack brain cells, they just wanted to live in their own delusional world full of wounded annals spoken “truthfully” (without Romila Thapar) by Hindu/Indian nationalists cum historians.It is very easy then to reduce Pakistan to be the evil-other when one does not have a mirror.
Indian media engaged in Pakistan bashing and Chinese bashing all the time — just read the patronizing articles about Pakistan’s fashion week in Indian media. But then again, when a nation reduces its Muslim populations as backward, burka-clad, polygamous and violent, it’s not hard to see why Pakistan bashing derived its strength from these same images. Oh, of course they are “good Muslims” within India — those who dress accordingly and those who tone down their Muslimness. These people will face fewer questions than usual about their loyalty to their ancestral lands which in 1947 were annexed into being a nation-state called India.
This issue was simplified as young Muslims vs Infidels. Strangely enough , Pakistanis are overwhelmingly pro another infidel state called China. Maybe, when you look at Pakistan beyond its “backward, violent” religion, you’ll see your own reflection.
Is India’s Media Promoting China Bashing?: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2009/gb20091019_413243.htm