Are There Really Jihadist Training Camps in the U.S.?

For years I have seen posters on Facebook and videos telling us that there are dozens and dozens, maybe even hundreds, of terrorist training camps throughout the U.S. I have greeted these reports with a mixture of some belief and a lot of skepticism.

It’s pretty clear from the September 11, 2001 massacre that there were Islamist sleeper cells in the United States. It is also pretty clear that jihadists get their inspiration from such savage organizations as ISIS and al-Qaeda, swear allegiance to them, and carry out terror attacks (such as in San Bernardino, Boston, Chattanooga, New York City, and elsewhere around the world). Why wouldn’t there be actual training camps hidden in the woods or the desert?

However, for the same number of years the press has “pooh-poohed” the ideas that large groups of Muslims are training for holy war against us in camps scattered throughout America. For example, in 2015 Business Insider basically said that all the stories about terrorist training camps run by Islamic groups such as Jamaat ul-Fuqra are just fiction without any hard evidence to back them up.

You can read the same kind of disbelief in these stories by the Dallas Observer,
Buzzfeed News, Vox, and even Fox News. In short, these media outlets are saying that most of the ideas about jihadist training camps come from one source: the Clarion Project. Since the Clarion Project is just a bunch of ultra-right-wing Islamophobes, we cannot take what they say with any kind of certainty.

But then there’s this story that recently broke from New Mexico. Police raided a camp inhabited by five Muslim adults and 11 children. At this “squatter camp,” adults were training children to shoot up schools. Authorities have also discovered the body of a small boy. Most of the mainstream media reported this, including CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and Fox.

From these stories we know that the man who was arrested, Siraj Wahhaj, was the son of a New York imam (Siraj Wahhaj senior) who served as a character witness for “the blind sheikh” (Omar Abdel Rahman), who conspired to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993.

It is also noteworthy that Linda Sarsour, a lover of jihad and founder of the Women’s March, considers Siraj Wahhaj (senior) to be her mentor and inspiration. Think about that: A man who was a character witness for a murderer like the “blind sheikh” is also Linda Sarsour’s mentor! Sarsour says so herself in this video:

So there is, or was, at least one confirmed “training camp” for jihadists. It was in a squalid squatter compound and there were only five adults. Hardly enough jihadists to take over America. Nothing to be afraid of, right?

But it was not the only jihadist training camp discovered. Here is a video from KRDO News (an ABC affiliate in Colorado Springs and Pueblo, Colorado) reporting on a 101-acre jihadist training camp that was operated by the group Jamaat ul-Fuqra (later known by its front group, Muslims of the Americas). The camp operated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and was later raided by law enforcement in 1992. Watch the video and ask yourself if this could be the only jihadist training camp ever in the United States.

The Clarion Project (much maligned by the Left) said that they had FBI documents proving the existence of several jihadist camps in the U.S. Here is their report detailing the existence of past camps (such as the one led by Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Colorado) and supposedly of present camps. You decide if the report has credibility.

Apparently Fox News thought the Clarion Project had enough credibility to put their claims on the air:

And get a load of the actual footage of Muslims training as a military force (in camouflage uniforms and weapons) in Islamberg, New York, in this video:

European sources confirm that there are jihadist training camps over on their continent. Read about this plague in Europe here, here, and here.

Here is a story from an ABC affiliate about former FBI Director James Comey admitting that ISIS has infiltrated all 50 states here in America with their terrorists. So then, why is it so difficult for anyone to believe that — since there have been real sleeper cells, there have been real terrorist training camps, there have been numerous jihadist terror attacks here in the U.S. — maybe there really are jihadist training camps operating in secret right now?

“But surely the FBI would know about them and shut them down!” First of all, the FBI did not know about (or failed to act on) the Tsarnaev brothers, they were not able to stop the September 11 hijackers, and they did not know about the San Bernardino murderers or the Chattanooga terrorist. They also did not know about (or failed to act on) Sayfullo Saipov, who mowed down people in New York City with his truck. The FBI is good at a lot of things, but they cannot watch every Muslim or predict the actions of everyone. (Here is an interesting article by the Heritage Foundation documenting some 97 jihadist terrorist attacks that have been foiled in the United States.)

Secondly, remember that a “terror camp” does not necessarily have to be a 100-acre farm. It can be 1 acre, or just somebody’s basement, or the back of an office, or a classroom.

In any case, we have a very, very serious problem in this country with a fifth column that does not see America as a wonderful place to become a part of. Instead, these militant infiltrators sees America as a land to be conquered for Allah, and its people as victims to be subjugated to the barbaric decrees of Sharia. The jihadists who live here have the motive to kill as many infidels as possible, they have the means to do it, they have the track record, and they have the patience to train and bide their time until the next opportunity presents itself.