According to my esteemed colleague Steven Emerson, (and as I noted yesterday), Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammed has been under investigation in an effort to understand his “possible contacts with extremists overseas.” Emerson believes that Muhammed probably attended “the (Al-Da’awah Center) madrassa in Dammaj, a tribal area of Yemen, run by a Salafi cleric named Yahya Hajuri.” Unbelievably, Hajuri is the designated heir to one Muqbil ibn Hadi, who once launched an attack on Mecca and a war against Christians in Indonesia.
Yemen: What do I recall about Yemen? Osama bin Laden’s father is from Yemen, from a place called Hadramut which, I am told, means “Death has come.”
More important, according to Emerson, Abdulhakim M. Muhammed “was urged by members of the local Muslim community, (in the United States), to travel to Yemen, for more education. The (country) is considered a hotbed for terrorists, and Muhammad may have been exposed to more radical ideas there.”
Yesterday, I suggested that we consider holding foreign governments and foreign jihadi groups, as well as American-based jihadi groups responsible, both criminally and civilly, for teaching, even ordering Muhammed to shoot two American soldiers, (Pvt. William A. Long who died and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula, who was wounded) in cold blood in Arkansas as part of his “jihadic” mission. As the evidence mounts–its seems that such connections may indeed exist.
Interestingly, today, on page A 16 (certainly not on the front page), the New York Times adds some biographical information which their reporters do not interpret. Apparently, this American-born jihadist and convert to Islam does not seem to come from a broken, indigent, or criminal family. On the contrary. His parents own a tour bus company which operates in Little Rock, Memphis, and Mississippi. He was employed in the family business. He did not turn to violence against his own country because he was impoverished, oppressed, religiously persecuted, had done hard jail time, etc. Like the Egyptian family of the infamous Mohammed Ata, the lead 9/11 “pilot,” Muhammed’s family also appears to be a productive, hard-working family.
Leave it to the NY Times, they never disappoint or surprise. They place Muhammed’s attack on the Little Rock military recruiting station in the context of two previous attacks, one in 2008, where no one was injured, and one in 2004, where a man, “angry about having failed basic training 20 years before, fired shots at an Air Force recruiter in San Leandro, California, before killing himself.”
Really relevant–don’t ya think?
Muhammed may, (or may not), fit the profile of a “lone wolf” militant which Scott Stewart and Fred Burton have just written about today for Stratfor Global Intelligence, a private service. (Thanks to Janet Lehr for calling this to my attention). “Lone wolf militants” can fly “solo and under the radar of law enforcement for a long time… Joseph Paul Franklin, Theodore Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph were able to operate for years before being identified and captured…. Muhammad, like Mir Amal Kansi, Hesham Mohammed Hadayet, and John Allen Muhammed” are other such examples.
In Stewart’s and Burton’s view, such “lone wolfs” might (or might not) be carefully recruited and trained to operate as soldiers–or they might also be psychiatrically unstable and attracted to extreme ideologies; they might hatch plots in utter secrecy and strike anywhere. Psychiatric instability does not justify their murderous deeds. However, it is important to factor in this variable as a way of contemplating how to identify such people in advance, before they strike. The Seattle Jewish Center Muslim shooter was one such individual.
In any event, I share Amir Taheri’s concerns about what President Obama will be saying in Cairo tomorrow. Will he mention that Islamist or Islamic extremists, who are hosted by Muslim countries, are converting and recruiting American citizens to attack America? Will he express the slightest displeasure about this as well as about the gross human rights abuses that characterize nearly every single Muslim country? Will President Obama defend or betray all those Muslims: moderates, dissidents, feminists, radicals, who are desperate for strong allies in their fight for freedom against Muslim tyrants?
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