Opinion: Pamela Geller - Jihad in America 2015: ‘The Danger to the Homeland Has Never Been Greater’
by PAMELA GELLER
“The danger to the homeland has never been greater”: so said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, in September as he released a new report on the global jihad.
In each of the past few years, I have done an end-of-the-year summary piece on jihad activity and Islamization during the year in review, so that people might better understand the overarching progress of the jihad in the U.S., and connect the dots. You won’t find this material summarized elsewhere: the Obama administration and the media have gone to obscene lengths to adhere to Islamic law by deceiving and disarming the American people about the motive behind war we’re engaged in, and they never discuss its overall progress.
Here is what is really happening. A study showed that ISIS supporters in the U.S. are focusing their energies on plotting jihad attacks here. In April, three jihad terror plots were disrupted in three weeks, showing the scope of the jihad threat. The FBI revealed that it foiled Islamic State-inspired attacks on July 4. The director of the FBI, James Comey,has said that the Islamic State is now actively recruiting in all 50 states. A new ISIS manual shows the United States in the jihad group’s crosshairs, and the image is apt: the FBI revealed in November that it is pursuing no fewer than 900 active investigations related to Muslims in the U.S. getting involved with ISIS.
These devout Muslims won’t be easy to find: ISIS has issued an e-book titled “How to Survive in the West,” teaching Muslims in the U.S. and elsewhere in the free world to appear to be secular and moderate – until the time comes to strike.
Meanwhile, law enforcement officials don’t know the whereabouts of 9,500 immigrants whose visas have been revoked for terrorist activity.
For well over a decade, my colleagues and I have been smeared, defamed and libeled because we told the truth. Since I wrote my book Stop the Islamization of America and established the Stop Islamization of America initiative of my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), we have seen this nation effectively crippled. Our elites are surrendering our freedoms without so much as pang of their collective conscience.
Terrorism arrests in the US and Europe are now at record highs. Even the lily-livered Lilliputians over at the Washington Post reported “an unprecedented number that officials attribute to a heightened threat from the Islamic State and the influence of social media on potential recruits.” G-d forbid they attribute it to Islam. Still crazy after all these years.
A little 9-year-old boy in New York City was nearly beheaded by a jihadist in an “ISIS audition,” and it barely made news. Black Lives Matter didn’t even blink, even though the boy was black. Likewise buried was the story of a Muslim in California, Jihad Mufaddi Khalaf Haddadin, who was arrested in December for making a bomb threat against police in El Monte, California. And in New York City, it took a full year for two NYPD policemen who were executed by a jihadi in December 2014 finally to be honored.
Jihadis in the U.S. appeared heedless of interference from authorities. A Muslim teen busted in Pennsylvania was seeking to buy a Yazidi slave girl. In Syracuse, a Muslim airport worker threatened to “get my gun and kill everybody.” Harlem Suarez, a Muslim who plotted a jihad attack on a Florida beach involving weapons of mass destruction, had been cleared for a Key West Airport job that gave him direct access to secure areas.
The Muslim bloodlust became more brazen. In September, the FBI foiled an Islamic plot to kill the Pope during his visit to the U.S. In Ohio, a Muslim hospital worker who called for American soldiers to be beheaded in their homes was arrested. In California, a Muslim with a sword chased down his non-Muslim neighbor while screaming, “I would die and kill for Allah.” A Muslim in Mississippi threatened to murder non-Muslim hospital staff after making a series of bomb threats. A Muslim shooter was behind the killing of a Philadelphia cop in March.
In February in California, two Muslims got 25 years each for planning to kill Americans. In January, a Muslim teen in Portland, Oregon was accused of threatening to blow up a store “in the name of Allah.” Also in January, a Muslim cab driver from Virginia was added to the FBI’s ‘Most Wanted Terrorists’ list. And in Washington, D.C. in November, a knife-wielding Muslim slashed a woman at Union Station, and then charged at a police officer.
New York City, as always, was a particular target. A New York City subway motorman called for an Islamic State (ISIS) attack in an unhinged rant. In November, an NYPD undercover officer foiled a jihad bomb plot in New York City. In February, three Muslims were arrested in New York City for conspiring to support ISIS. They targeted Obama, the FBI, and the police.
In June, other Muslims from Florida were charged with devising yet another jihad mass murder bomb plot in New York City. They had also been also charged with attempting to murder U.S. marshals while screaming “Allahu akbar.” Also in June, a Muslim student in New York was found to have plotted to bomb a New York City landmark. That same month, five Muslims were arrested in connection with a Brooklyn ISIS plot. Taking Sharia into his own hands, a Muslim brutally beat a gay couple in a New York City restaurant.
Likewise targeting gays was a “strict Muslim” from Seattle who was charged with murder and terrorism. Ali Muhammad Brown was charged with murdering two gay men in Seattle and then killing a random teen in New Jersey. Before that, Brown had been prosecuted after the FBI investigated a Muslim group that was suspected of supporting foreign jihadists. This devout Muslim is also a registered sex offender for crimes against a 6-year-old girl, the same age as Aisha when Muhammad “married” her.
The Islamic State throughout 2015 continued to win the allegiance of Muslims in the U.S. A senior female Islamic State recruiter turned out to be a student from Seattle. A Muslim in Minneapolis was charged threatening to kill FBI officials if they didn’t free six Muslims who were being held in connection with an Islamic State case. Also in Minnesota, a Muslim refugee from Somalia was arrested for aiding ISIS. In September, yet another Muslim in Minnesota became the third to plead guilty to joining Islamic State; five more are facing trial.
A Muslim who was arrested in New York City said: “I’m ready to die for the Caliphate.” In New Jersey, an ISIS-supporting Muslim teen was charged in a plot targeting the 9/11 Memorial. In Philadelphia, a Muslim teen with 57 Twitter accounts was arrested for aiding and abetting ISIS. A Muslim in Arizona was charged with supporting ISIS.
A Muslim in Ohio was charged with providing material support to the Islamic State. In May, two Muslims were arrested in California on their way to join ISIS. One had said: “It would be a blessing to fight for the cause of Allah.”
In March, a Muslim on the Harvard campus was discovered to be raising money for the Islamic State’s “charity.”
In September, ISIS posted photos, names, and addresses of US soldiers, and threatened: “Theres gonna be attack this month on soldiers in America.” Instead, ISIS-supporting Muslims murdered American civilians in San Bernardino in December. Islamic State-supporting Muslims were arrested in March in Illinois. They had been planning another Fort Hood-style jihad massacre at Fort Riley.
A Muslim teen in Virginia was jailed for more than 11 years after being convicted of working on social media for the Islamic State. In Upstate New York, a Muslim pizza shop owner was charged with recruiting for the Islamic State. A Muslim in New Jersey was arrested for organizing a “small army” of ISIS fighters in his home state and in New York as well. Another Muslim in New York who was arrested for joining Islamic State said that its murders were justified because “the victims were not Muslims.”
A young Muslim married couple in Mississippi was charged for trying to wage jihad alongside the Islamic State. The New York Times was “shocked” and “perplexed” that this young couple went jihad.
Other jihadis remained active as well. In December, a Muslim who had become a U.S. citizen was charged with helping a Syrian rebel group that is linked to al-Qaeda. A Muslim engineer at a U.S. defense contractor got eight years in prison for giving details on U.S. jets to Iran. In Washington, D.C., a Muslim was charged with fundraising and recruiting for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. And reminding us that all this is not new, a Muslim cleric from the U.K. who plotted years ago to build a jihad-terror training camp in Oregonwas sentenced.
Converts to Islam were active in the jihad. In Kansas, a convert to Islam pled guilty to a WMD suicide plot against the Wichita Airport, aimed at inflicting “maximum carnage.” Another convert to Islam from Kansas was accused of plotting to detonate a jihad bomb at the Fort Riley military base for the Islamic State.
And yet another Muslim convert, the son of a police captain in Boston, was charged with plotting Islamic State jihad attacks on a college campus. He had planned to put “explosives filled with black powder, nails, ball bearings and glass, in places where large numbers of people congregate, like college cafeterias.”
The Muslim who plotted to plant weapons of mass destruction on a Florida beach, Harlem Suarez, was also a convert to Islam. He threatened to “cook American[s]…in cages” and boasted: “We will destroy America,” “We will raise our black flag on top of your White House.” In Ohio, yet another convert to Islam was indicted on charges of supporting the Islamic State.
All these arrests don’t dampen the enthusiasm of these converts for committing murder in the cause of their new religion. A young American convert to Islam who is in prison for his role in a bomb plot against Barack Obama and Washington, D.C. landmarks said:
“We are waiting for the perfect moment.” He also said: “I’m very dedicated to establish the Sharia in America, to wage war against non-Muslims,” and: “We are indeed here in America…we’re in each and every state.”
They do indeed seem to be everywhere, and more are coming: In a harbinger of things to come, a Muslim “refugee” in Michigan was found to have lied about his ties to the Islamic State. In Brooklyn, also in January, a Muslim was charged with orchestrating a truck bomb that killed 5 U.S. soldiers.
The most catastrophic failure of our refugee resettlement and intelligence apparatuses came on December 2 in San Bernardino, when devout Muslims cold-bloodedly murdered fourteen innocent Christians and Jews at a Christmas party. This was a catastrophic intel failure because all roads from the jihad attack on our American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) free speech event in May in Garland, Texas led to San Bernardino. The jihadis in both cases had the same MO, followed the same pattern, and even had the same contacts. Both events – our Muhammad Cartoon Contest and the San Bernardino Christmas party — offended Muslims. Both events violated the sharia: one was an art exhibit with depictions of Muhammad in art and literature over the past 1400 years, and the other celebrated a Christian holiday. Both deeply offensive to Muslims.
The jihadis in both attacks trained at shooting ranges. The jihadis in both attacks were also “radicalized” long before they plotted and executed that jihad.
Both attacks were Islamic State (ISIS) attacks in America. Both jihadis, Ibrahim Simpson at Garland and Syed Rizwan Farook in San Bernardino, were linked to American ISIS recruiter Mohammed Abdullahi Hassan, also known as Mujahid Miski. Why Obama’s FBI and counter-terror agencies didn’t make his capture a priority is deeply disturbing.
Even more disturbing is that the Garland Muslims and the San Bernardino Muslims were both known to law enforcement and both were of concern, but law enforcement officials did nothing, either. The Garland jihadi Ibrahim Simpson and the San Bernardino jihad Syed Rizwan Farook both attended mosque daily, and were very religious, and then their mosques in both cases covered for them, downplaying their presence there.
The San Bernardino jihadi considered an attack in 2011. He visited 11 school cafeterias, scouting out a target for his massacre. He should have been on the radar of law enforcement officials in 2015. But instead of pursuing all this, the Obama administration nixed a probe into the Southern California jihadists. Adding to the intel failure was the failure of our refugee intake process: San Bernardino jihad murderer Tashfeen Malik was vetted by five different government agencies – and none of them discovered her extensive jihadi ties and loyalties. This is more of the poison fruit of the denial of jihad by Obama administration officials.
That denial was also operating at full strength after jihadis attacked our event in Garland in May. Instead of discussing the jihad on free speech, politicians, pundits and commentators who should have known better, including Donald Trump, Bill O’Reilly and Laura Ingraham, attacked me for violating Sharia blasphemy laws instead of attacking the jihadis for trying to kill me for free speech.
What got lost in the post-Garland jihad shooting arguing and sharia-compliant rhetoric, is the simple fact that ISIS is here. Islamic terrorism is here, and it will only get worse. An informant in the Garland jihad attack said in August that there were between 50 and 80 more Muslim terrorists out there, ready to strike. Shutting up the few who speak candidly and openly about jihad terror will only make us all more unsafe.
Islamic jihadists kept trying to shut me up. A 2017 trial was set for two Muslims who plotted to behead me in the wake of the Garland event. They were indicted on charges that included material support for the Islamic State. After this plot was foiled, Muslims were still baying for my blood: an ISIS jihadist tweeted out my home address as he issued numerous calls for my death.
Yet the denial was still in force on July 16, a Muslim named Muhammad Abdulazeez murdered four Marines and a sailor at a Navy-Marine reserve center in Chattanooga. While the media and law enforcement searched for a motive, it came out that Abdulazeezwas a follower of the late American Imam Anwar Awlaki, who was involved in numerous jihad plots in the U.S. His family practiced polygamy and was steeped in Jew-hatred. His father sexually assaulted his wife and beat his son, and said he wanted to take another wife because it was “allowed under Islamic law.”
Topping it all off was the fact that the jihad mass murderer had worked at an Ohio nuclear power plant.
While all that was happening, the jihad was advancing on U.S. campuses. In November, ISIS warned American colleges and universities: “We are coming.” But jihadis were already there: in November, a Muslim named Faisal Mohammad went on a stabbing spreeat the University of California Merced, while smiling the whole time. Law enforcement sources said that Mohammad was on a terror watch list, and that the college had been warned of the threat he posed. They did nothing, of course.
Meanwhile, non-violent Sharia incursions continued. Minnesota Muslims declared in May: “We want Sharia.” A Muslima stewardess refused to serve alcohol, and predictably, Hamas-CAIR claims the airline violated her Constitutional rights.
On campus, a leading college Muslim group, the Muslim Student Association, rejected a moment of recognition resolution for 9/11, saying it was “Islamophobic.” The Muslim Student Association also came out against the already weak and watered-down “Countering Violent Extremism” measures.
Wichita State University ripped up chapel pews and removed crosses to accommodate Muslims. Outrage over this was dismissed as “Islamophobia.” A professor complained to Catholic University that there were too many crosses on campus for Muslim students to pray. One Muslim student declared: “my Islamic faith prevents me from paying interest on my student loans.” Swarthmore students heckled and abused a victim of Egyptian torture. And when I spoke at Brooklyn College in April, Muslim students made the one-finger signof allegiance to the Islamic State and shouted out their support for it.
The Islamization of public schools also continued. Minnesota high school students sang “Allahu akbar” at their Christmas concert. In Virginia, students practiced calligraphy by writing “There is no god but Allah” in Arabic.
A Florida public school forced kids to learn and recite an Islamic prayer, and to make Islamic prayer rugs. In North Carolina, Pitts Public School parents were apoplectic over Muslim propaganda and open proselytizing for Islam in class. A shocked mom with children in another school called a TV news stationafter reading the pro-Islam answers on her son’s worksheet.
When a New Jersey school district declined to add Eid to the list of school holidays (only because they hadn’t been given sufficient notice), furious Muslim parents shouted, “We’re going to be the majority soon!” In Minnesota, the opening of a charter school was derailed after questions were raised about its possible ties to a Muslim Brotherhood group. In Pennsylvania, scores of teachers bowed to Allah, celebrated Islam, and visited a local mosque to learn more about Islam. In San Diego, a high school piloted halal school lunches. An upstate New York school recited the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic: “One Nation Under Allah.”
An Ohio public school hosted “A Covered Girl Challenge,” asking students to wear hijab for a day. NP3 High School in California observed “Hijab Day.” In Denver, schoolgirls wereforced to wear headscarves and were told that their ankles “must be covered” during a school trip to a local mosque. In New York City, Mayor “Red Bill” de Blasio announcedthat he was going to close City schools for Muslim holidays. In the wake of Muslim demands for their holidays to be days off from school, a Maryland School District decided to scrap Jewish and Christian holidays.
Meanwhile, Muslim students who harassed Jewish students in an Arizona high school. Muslim cleric and charter school leader Fethullah Gülen was captured on video saying: “Explode yourselves like a bomb against the U.S.”
In Maine, a head coach was forced to resign after criticizing Islam on Facebook. In Massachusetts, a school retaliated against students for parental opposition to its pro-Islam, anti-Israel propaganda. A California school district banned middle schoolers from drawing Muhammad. In Seattle, Muslims demanded that a teacher be fired for showing Muhammad cartoons. Parents of students at a Tennessee middle school were outraged that their children were assigned to write the Shahada: “Allah is the only God, Muhammad is his prophet.” Suspiciously, Tennessee school districts refused to comply with Open Records Requests that would have revealed the contents of their lessons about Islam.
We have seen the increasing Islamization of public-school curricula. History lessons in Islam are dawah – proselytizing for Islam. The Saudis have bought large public school publishers. Islamic supremacists have hijacked the Department of Education, the Gates Foundation, Pearson and other textbook publishing companies and the testing companies. They have also hijacked our public-school curricula, and textbooks (i.e., Common Core).
Enough is enough. It’s time we fought back against this scourge and reclaimed our schools – and our society. We should see less jihad in 2016, but instead, it is certain to be more. We need a president who understands the threat and is not afraid to fight the enemy. AFDI has proposed an 18-point platform to defeat the enemy. Send it to your Presidential candidate, Congressmen and Senators. It’s must be adopted in order to win the war on freedom.
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Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.