In recent weeks and months since the Islamic State caliphate has been rolled up by U.S.-backed forces in Syria, the West has been presented with a new phenomenon: Western-origin female residents of the Islamic State caliphate pleading to be allowed to return home to the West, despite having joined ISIS:
Here in the USA, Hotha Muthana of Hoover, Alabama, left life as an honor student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham to travel to Syria in 2014 and join the Islamic State.
Muthana didn’t just become a resident of the caliphate, she became a social media propagandist for the organization. She also became a so-called “ISIS bride” twice over, marrying a jihadi and bearing a child—and then doing so again after her first husband was killed. Her second husband was also killed and, naturally, Muthana wants to leave Syria and return to Alabama, as if nothing ever happened.
Then there’s the case of Lisa Smith of Ireland, who left Ireland after converting to Islam in 2015. Smith, whose Muslim name is unknown, married a jihadi, had a child and, now that the sharia paradise has been eliminated, wants to return to Ireland.
The United Kingdom has received a similar request from Shamima Begum, who left Britain in 2015 for the caliphate and now also wants to come home.
Umm Usma of Belgium left Belgium to live in the caliphate for 6 years and now wants to go back to Belgium.
These are just a few of the examples of ISIS brides wanting to return home to Western nations.
All of them portray themselves as victims and show little or no remorse for joining a barbaric terrorist organization.
And that’s what’s inescapable. The ISIS brides can claim that they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into all they want, but they can’t claim they didn’t know what they were joining.
From its earliest origins, the Islamic State didn’t just commit atrocities, it broadcast them-widely and loudly. ISIS broadcast beheadings, crucifixions and other gruesome methods of torture and execution all over the internet via social media and jihadi chat rooms and bulletin boards. In many cases, Western media rebroadcast these vile videos.
Muath al-Kasebeh, a Royal Jordanian Air Force F-16 pilot was put in a cage and burned to death on 3 February 2015.
On 19 August 2014, American journalist James Foley was beheaded by ISIS.
On 2 September 2014, Israeli-American journalist Steven Sotloff was beheaded by ISIS.
On 13 September 2014, ISIS beheaded aide worker David Haines.
On 24 September 2014, ISIS beheaded Frenchman Herve’ Gourdel.
On 3 October 2014, ISIS beheaded British aid worker Alan Henning.
On 6 November 2014, ISIS beheaded American aid worker Peter Edward Kassig.
In January 2015, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto Jogo and contractor Haruna Yukawa were beheaded by ISIS.
Every one of these executions was distributed on video, along with numerous other brutal actions. And when it comes to ISIS atrocities and war crimes, they were just the tip of the iceberg.
Every single ISIS bride had to know about these barbaric executions and yet they chose to become residents of the ISIS caliphate. They may not have known what they were getting themselves into, but they surely knew what they were joining.
If they are allowed “home,” they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Better yet, though, they should live the rest of their lives in their former sharia paradise.
Hezbollah (Party of God) has long been known as a Jihadist terrorist organization of global reach. They have conducted operations throughout the Middle East, in Thailand, Bulgaria, Argentina, and elsewhere in Europe and Latin America.
Hezbollah has also conducted operations in Canada and the United States.
Hezbollah has become notorious since the early 1980s for its repeated terror attacks, including the Marine Barracks bombing on 23 October 1983 which killed 241 soldiers, sailors and Marines on peacekeeping duty in Lebanon.
But that was far from the only Hezbollah operation targeting Americans. In the late 1980s Hezbollah and allies of Hezbollah under their protection kidnapped Americans and other Westerners in Beirut, including Marine Lieutenant Colonel William Higgins, who they subsequently murdered in captivity. Also kidnapped and murdered by Hezbollah was William Buckley, the CIA station chief at the US embassy in Beirut.
Many Americans are not aware, however, that Hezbollah continued to target Americans in more recent times, with Hezbollah operatives directly involved in fighting US GIs in Iraq during the insurgency.
How Hezbollah Finances its Terror
In addition to its Jihadist operations, Hezbollah has a global network of illicit operations to fund itself. Its activities are the same as those of organized crime syndicates around the world: arms trading, drug smuggling, human trafficking, bootlegging and other forms of criminal activity.
Evidence of Hezbollah’s criminal activities has been documented for years, both by analysts and through counterterror and counternarcotics operations conducted by US and allied law enforcement.
In fact, an overview of Hezbollah’s criminal activity makes it seem as if Jihad is just a sideline for a global Mafia-like Islamic organization using every kind of illegal activity imaginable to make money.
Particularly with regard to the US, Hezbollah has avoided violent jihad attacks, probably to avoid massive US retaliation on its home turf in Lebanon, in favor of activities centered around drug trafficking, criminal schemes and scams, which have been going on for decades.
For example, Operation Smokescreen, conducted from 1995-2002, broke up a Hezbollah cell in Charlotte, North Carolina that was bootlegging cigarettes to raise money. This was detailed in the excellent book Lightning Out of Lebanon.
In 2013, in Operation Tobacco Road, 16 men in the US were indicted for trafficking bootleg cigarettes, the proceeds of which, according to then-NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, went to Hezbollah and/or HAMAS.
The scheme worked this way: Hezbollah garnered proceeds from cocaine sales in Europe and purchased expensive luxury goods to be resold back home in Lebanon. The profits from the sale of those goods was split between the cartels in South America that supplied the cocaine and the purchase of weaponry for Hezbollah.
Hezbollah’s involvement with drug cartels gained the attention of some in the US Congress. Last year, Rep. Ted Budd, R-NC, introduced the Hezbollah Kingpin Designation Act which would have resulted in broader sanctions against anyone associated with Hezbollah. Unfortunately, the bill, like so many other promising ideas and needed initiatives, died in the US Congress.
Of course, Hezbollah is not totally dependent on criminal activity for its funding. Iran has provided funding for Hezbollah since its inception and Hezbollah essentially operates as an arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Additionally, Hezbollah receives an undisclosed amount of funding each year in the form of zakat, an obligatory tax mandated by sharia. “Hundreds of thousands of Shiites in Lebanon and around the globe, who strictly adhere to this duty, pay such amounts on a yearly basis. Hezbollah receives considerable sums from these ‘legal rights or alms’, as they are known.” [1]
This suggests that Hezbollah’s criminal activity is driven not so much by need but by raw greed and the opportunities to inflict harm on enemies afforded by association with organized crime and narco-traffickers. In other words, in addition to being a Jihadist terror organization, Hezbollah is a gang of thugs and outlaws.
Hezbollah’s terror and criminal activity have global reach, with reports of activity stretching from their home base in Lebanon to Thailand and the Philippines to the east and Europe, Latin America and the United States and Canada to the west. It is Hezbollah’s Latin American operations that are particularly concerning to US observers, largely due to our undefended southern border.
The Globe and Mail reports that the US Treasury believes that Barakat has used his businesses in the Tri-Border Area as a front for fundraising for Hezbollah, as well as coercing local shopkeepers into giving money to the organization. A Treasury official said Barakat used ‘every financial crime in the book” to fund Hezbollah and ‘underwrite terror.’”
Hezbollah’s major presence in Venezuela is a particularly timely topic. Not surprisingly, Hezbollah’s operations there are characterized by criminal activity and interaction with Venezuela’s Iranian allies, who also have had a significant presence there.
Hezbollah’s support network in Venezuela dates back to the 1990s. It’s center of gravity in the country is on Margarita Island, with its thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants. Conveniently, the island is a prime location for the drug traffickers with whom Hezbollah has such a close relationship. Some of the members of the Charlotte, North Carolina Hezbollah cell and bootlegging outfit taken down in the previously mentioned Operation Smokescreen came from Venezuela.
Naturally, for years, due to the hostility of the socialist regimes in power in Caracas, as well as their close ties to Iran, US officials have long been concerned about Venezuela being a gateway from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere.[2]
Hezbollah works the connection between narco-trafficking in Latin America and Africa, one of the busiest drug smuggling thoroughfares in the world. This route is the means by which most cocaine finds its way into Europe. It is also a lucrative means of financing for Hezbollah and other Jihadist groups. According to the US State Department, cocaine from Latin America, including Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela passes through the African nation of Guinea-Bissau into southern Europe. Interpol and the United Nations both report that at least a portion of this trade involves Hezbollah. Those reports indicate that a considerable portion of Hezbollah’s income comes from cocaine traded through West Africa. The Lebanese expatriate community in both South America and West Africa provide a seamless connection to facilitate the drug trade.[3]
Hezbollah’s support network in the Lebanese expatriate community is one of the keys to its prominence in the narco-trafficking world. Latin American drug kingpins have come to depend on Hezbollah, particularly in the African pipeline into Europe. Lebanese merchants and cargo aggregators use their otherwise legitimate logistical infrastructure to facilitate the movement of drugs.[4]
Hezbollah’s role in drug smuggling has not escaped the attention of U.S. law enforcement.
In 2009, Michael Braun, then the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Special Operations Division, testified before Congress that members of Hezbollah were “rubbing shoulders with Latin American and Mexican drug cartels.” Braun described this alliance of Jihadists and drug traffickers as “hybrid terrorist organizations meaner and uglier than anything law enforcement or militaries have ever faced.”[5]
U.S. law enforcement agencies have in fact targeted Hezbollah’s narco-terror activities. For instance, in 2011, the U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted Lebanese drug trafficker and Hezbollah supporter Ayman Joumma along with nine of his associates and nineteen businesses that made up his trafficking and money laundering operations. Joumma’s operations spanned the globe, including Panama and Colombia.[6]
There is almost no country in the Western Hemisphere that hasn’t been infested by Hezbollah, which means that their narco-trafficking is as widespread as any of the known cartels. Among the nations in which Hezbollah has operated are Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Venezuela, Mexico, Canada, Chile, Paraguay, Curacao, Uruguay and, of course, the United States.
Hezbollah’s involvement in these activities is triply dangerous for America and its allies.
First of all, Hezbollah’s drug smuggling and other trafficking activities allow the organization to build up tremendous wealth which it can then use to wage its brand of global jihad.
Secondly, Hezbollah’s vast network and terrorist experience poses a great danger to our law enforcement agencies in the form of weapons and methods gained from experience in terror operations in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Finally, Hezbollah’s operations in both illegal and seemingly legitimate global businesses has allowed the organization to create a footprint unrivaled in the jihadist movement. Should Hezbollah choose to go kinetic, they are capable of targeting Americans and U.S. diplomatic and military targets anywhere in the world.
[1]Hezbollah: Born With A Vengeance. By Hala Jaber. Columbia University Press, NY, NY. 1997. P. 151.
[2]Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God. By Matthew Levitt. 2013, Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC. Pp. 342-344.
[3]Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Levitt, P. 272.
[4]Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Levitt, P. 275.
[5]Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Levitt, P. 273.
[6]Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God, Levitt, P. 274.
This is yet another example of the inadequacy of the U.S. criminal justice system for dealing with Jihad.
Amer Alhaggagi of California was an admitted Islamic State “supporter.” He set up Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus/Gmail accounts for other Islamic State supporters and posted terroristic threats online.
He even identified targets for an Islamic State member who turned out to be an undercover federal agent.
In the process of all this, he also ran an identity theft operation.
For all this he has been sentenced to just over 15 years in prison. Alhaggagi is 23 years old. When his assigned sentence ends, he will be 38 years old. But the reality is that he will be released sooner than 15 years if he behaves himself in prison.
So we have to HOPE that when he does get out of prison, he will have turned into a peaceful, patriotic American. Excuse me for being skeptical. Given the level of Jihadi activity in America’s prisons, it is just as likely that Alhaggagi will emerge from prison even more dedicated to Jihad.
This is part of a wider pattern. According to the George Washington University Program on Extremism, 123 Islamic State members or supporters in America have been convicted of various crimes over the past few years.
The average sentence for these convicts was 13.5 years. And it is highly likely that these people will NOT serve their entire sentences.
What will become of these jihadis when they get out of prison? Where will they go? What will they do?
America needs to overhaul its sentences for terrorist-related offenses and it desperately needs a terrorist offender registry modeled after the sex offender registry that has worked successfully for decades.
As the War on Terrorism winds down against ISIS in Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan, as Americans forget the years of unity following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York City and the Pentagon that killed 3,000, and embrace the new politics of divisive hyper-partisan quarreling, obsessed to distraction by our cold civil war — the conditions are ripe for another act of spectacular terrorism, another 9/11, that may well exceed the first in mass destruction.
According to The 9/11 Commission Report, the September 11 holocaust resulted from President Bill Clinton’s failure to retaliate for the Oct. 12, 2000, terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. The attack killed and injured 56 sailors and nearly destroyed a sophisticated guided missile cruiser worth nearly $1 billion.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) achieved its high-profile blow against USS Cole and the West with simple technology — a rubber dinghy armed with plastic explosives and suicide bombers, employed like a torpedo. Likewise the 9/11 attacks themselves would use low-tech means to achieve spectacular results.
For the next 9/11, look to Yemen’s “Houthis” so-called by the Western press for their late leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi — which misnomer displays the same kind of ignorance that blinded Washington to the threat from al Qaeda, before 9/11.
“Houthis” implies they are tribal, loyal to and identifying chiefly with interests of the Houthi tribe. In fact, they are radical Islamist fanatics, like al Qaeda, their Sunni enemies, with whom they are at war in Yemen.
The “Houthis” call themselves “Ansar Allah” (“Supporters of God”) and are a Zaydis/Shiite version of radical Islam dedicated to the universal triumph of their apocalyptic creed “uber alles” to borrow a phrase from Nazi Germany.
Ansar Allah’s motto, displayed on their flag, says it all: “God is great! Death to the U.S.! Death to Israel! Curse the Jews and victory to Islam!”
Just as in 2001, the United States was largely oblivious to the magnitude of al Qaeda threats from their safe-haven in Afghanistan, so today the United States is largely oblivious to threats from Ansar Allah to the U.S. homeland from their incubator in Yemen.
The warning signs are ominous Ansar Allah may be a greater threat than al Qaeda of 9/11.
Whereas al Qaeda in Afghanistan were guests of the Taliban, Ansar Allah has conquered most of Yemen, a nation more strategically significant than Afghanistan. Yemen, located at the mouth of the Red Sea, can threaten the trade and oil artery to the Suez Canal, and neighboring moderate Arab states who are U.S. allies.
Ansar Allah has rapidly metastasized, like cancer, growing from 1,000-3,000 fighters in 2005 to 100,000-120,000 fighters and loyalists today — far eclipsing al Qaeda’s manpower.
Yemen’s Jews and other “infidel” minorities under Ansar Allah are persecuted, imprisoned, ransomed, tortured and executed.
Ansar Allah routinely shells civilian areas of Yemen still not under their control, forces mass civilian evacuations and uses human shields.
Brainwashed children serve as Ansar Allah soldiers. About one-third of their fighters are children, according to Human Rights Watch
Ansar Allah’s closest allies — Iran and North Korea.
According to Phillip Smyth of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Iran regards all Shiites in the Middle East, including Ansar Allah, as “integral elements to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).” Ansar Allah leaders receive ideological education in Iran. Iranian and Hezbollah military advisers help train Ansar Allah fighters.
Iran uses Ansar Allah to fight a proxy war against moderate Arab states allied with the United States, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and others. Arab moderates are understandably fearful of strategically located Yemen become a terrorist state.
Iran and North Korea have provided Ansar Allah with increasingly advanced weapons:
• In 2013, the U.S. Navy intercepted a sophisticated class of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile not previously known to be in the possession of any terrorist group.
• In April 2016, the U.S. Navy intercepted a massive shipment of arms, including thousands of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AK-47 assault rifles, shipping from Iran to Ansar Allah.
• In August 2018, the United Nations condemned North Korea for arming Ansar Allah.
Ansar Allah is one of the few terrorist organizations in the world armed with ballistic missiles. They regularly make missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh.
In June 2015, Ansar Allah used a Scud missile strike on King Khalid AFB to kill the commander of Saudi Arabia’s Air Force, Gen. Muhammad al-Shalaam.
The Saudis are trying to protect themselves from Ansar Allah missiles with U.S.-supplied Patriot anti-missile batteries.
Now that Ansar Allah has largely consolidated its grip on Yemen, it is waging a “missile jihad” against “infidel” Saudi Arabia and has also fired missiles at U.S. Navy ships in the Red Sea.
Al Qaeda killed thousands of Americans and started a global war on terrorism — armed only with box cutters and four hijacked airliners.
Ansar Allah has ballistic missiles and allies nuclear-armed North Korea and near-nuclear Iran. Iran successfully launched a Scud missile off a freighter — a technique that could be used for a nuclear strike on Washington.
Will the next 9/11 be nuclear terrorism?
• Peter Vincent Pry, chief of staff of the congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Commission, served on the House Armed Services Committee and the CIA.
On Monday, February 18, the Arkansas House of Representatives sent a strong signal to law enforcement agencies within its borders to beware of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Representative Brandt Smith, the House Majority Whip authored HR1006 which calls on law enforcement to suspend contact and outreach with CAIR. The resolution was adopted by the House with overwhelming support.
The resolution was conceived due to CAIR’s nefarious ties and history, and especially because of the multiple CAIR directors, employees and members who have been convicted on terrorism and terrorism-related charges over the years.
The text of the resolution appears below:
WHEREAS, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has suspended all formal contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”) due to evidence demonstrating a relationship between CAIR and Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization of the United States Department of State; and
WHEREAS, in United States of America v. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the largest successful prosecution of terrorism-financing in our country’s history, CAIR was identified as an associate of the Muslim Brotherhood and was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial; and
WHEREAS, CAIR opened its first office in Washington, D.C., with the help of a grant from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a charitable organization that was closed by the United States Department of the Treasury for funding jihadist terrorist organizations; and
WHEREAS, United States ally, the United Arab Emirates, officially designated CAIR as a terrorist organization in 2014; and
WHEREAS, in March 2011, Muthanna al-Hanooti, a director within CAIR, was sentenced to a year in federal prison for violating United States sanctions against Iraq under Saddam Hussein; and
WHEREAS, in 2006, the co-founder of CAIR’s parent organization, Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), Sami Al-Arian, was sentenced to 57 months in prison on terrorism charges for financing Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated foreign terrorist organization; and
WHEREAS, in 2004, CAIR-Northern Virginia director Abdurahman Alamoudi pled guilty to terrorism-related financial and conspiracy charges, which resulted in a 23-year federal prison sentence; and
WHEREAS, in 2009, Ghassan Elashi, who served as a founding board member for CAIR’s regional chapter in Texas, was sentenced to a total of 65 years in prison after being convicted of 10 counts of conspiracy to provide, and the provision of, material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization; 11 counts of conspiracy to provide, and the provision of, funds, goods and services to a Specially Designated Terrorist as determined by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; 10 counts of conspiracy to commit, and the commission of, money laundering; 1 count of conspiracy to impede and impair the Internal Revenue Service; and 2 counts of filing a false tax return; and
WHEREAS, Randall Todd (Ismail) Royer, who served as a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR and trained with and set up an internet-based newsletter for Lashkar-I-Taiba, an al Qaeda-tied Kashmir organization that is listed on the United States Department of State’s international terror list, was also indicted on charges of conspiring to help al Qaeda in the Taliban battle American troops were fighting in Afghanistan and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on April 9, 2004; and
WHEREAS, in September 2003, CAIR’s former community affairs director, Bassem Khafagi, pleaded guilty to 3 federal counts of bank and visa fraud, and agreed to be deported to Egypt after he had funneled money to activities supporting terrorism and had published material advocating suicide attacks against the United States, illegal activities that took place while he was employed by CAIR; and
WHEREAS, Rabih Haddad, the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based CAIR fundraiser, was arrested on terrorism-related charges and was deported from the United States due to his work as Executive Director of the Global Relief Foundation, which in October 2002 was closed by the United States Department of Treasury for financing al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations,
NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS:
THAT the House of Representatives encourages law enforcement to suspend contact and outreach with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
For a few reasons, the American public is often in a state of complacency when it comes to the threat from Jihad.
One reason is simply that Americans are busy, hard-working people who focus on their own lives and don’t obsess over threats and bad news on a daily basis.
But the other reason is that our national news media often fails to report on terrorism-related news stories because they are too obsessed with the fantasy of Russian collusion and American pop culture.
But the threat of Jihadist terrorism is still with us and local media around the country still report the threat. Here are some examples that you may not be aware of from just the past couple of weeks…
On 29 January, Abdullah Ali Yusef, aka Damon Joseph, was indicted on federal terrorism charges in Ohio after being arrested in December in a plot to attack a synagogue:
On 30 January, Islamic State supporter Charlton LaChase of Fort Pierce, Florida, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervision, for making terroristic threats. (Just an aside: 18 months seems to be a ridiculously light sentence for an Islamic State supporter who made terroristic threats.) Fort Pierce clearly has a problem; the Orlando Pulse Nightclub Jihadi shooter, Omar Mateen, was from Fort Pierce and attended a mosque in Fort Pierce where his father, an avowed Taliban supporter, was a prominent congregant.
On 8 February, Wesley Dallas Ayers of Anderson, South Carolina, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for building and placing improvised explosive devices in South Carolina and making threats to wage Jihad. Ayers is a convert to Islam who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State…
Also on 8 February in Arlington, Texas, Michael Kyle Sewell was charged with conspiracy to provide material support for a terrorist organization after recruiting on behalf of Lashkar e Taiba (LeT), the Jihadist terrorist organization responsible for the horrific attack on Mumbai, India in 2008.
On the same day, Jesus Wilfredo Encarnacion, of New York City, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he was preparing to board a flight bound for Pakistan so that he could join LeT and join the Jihad. He was also a convert to Islam who expressed a desire to behead people…
If you were not aware of these stories it’s not your fault. None of them received significant national news coverage here in the U.S. Only media in the localities where these men were arrested and sentenced covered the stories, with the exception of the story involving the LeT recruit in New York—that one was covered by news organizations in India, but you wouldn’t have seen much about it on CNN.
Known usually by the euphemistic title “Islamic Finance,” designed to conceal its shariah basis, shariah-compliant finance continues to grow worldwide, with the help of the Western financial industry, as demonstrated by the relatively recent incorporation of blockchain into shariah banking and finance.
The incorporation of innovative financial tools may help shariah finance grow beyond its current $2 billion in assets, but no one in the regulatory environment or on Wall Street or Fleet Street seems to care about the potential troubling aspects of this sector.
The main purpose of shariah-compliant finance is to promote shariah, which is Islamic doctrinal law regarded in the Islamic world as immutable, indivisible and mandatory for all Muslims to follow in all aspects of life. Shariah can be accurately described as reactionary, and, in its implementation, barbaric. Shariah is the law of the land in three nations in the world today: Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, which all have dismal human rights records and extensive ties to Jihadist terrorism.
Shariah mandates as a religious obligation, conducting violent jihad against non-Muslims to establish Islam’s rule worldwide in a form known as the caliphate.
It comes as no surprise then that shariah is also the law of the land in Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, Boko Haram-controlled areas of Nigeria, Al Shabaab-controlled areas of Somalia and the last vestiges of the Islamic State caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
Shariah finance is indistinguishable from shariah itself since Muslims are not allowed to pick and choose different aspects of shariah to follow. Anyone that infers that shariah finance is something apart from shariah is simply being dishonest. In fact, the main purpose of shariah finance is to promote shariah.
Shariah finance is a threat to Western values, human rights and US national security. Shariah finance has a political objective: to legitimize shariah in the West. Evidence indicates that shariah-compliant finance provides financial support to Jihadist terrorism. Shariah-compliant financial institutions employ shariah scholars, many of whom have been shown to be associated with Jihadist organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, even to the point of advocating suicide bombing and jihad against America. Among the decisions these scholars make is the donation of 2.5% or more of annual earnings to Muslim charities in a system known as zakat. Similar to zakat, earnings from investments that are judged to have been unislamic must be purified through donations to charities as well.
Given the Jihadist tendencies of some prominent shariah scholars such as Sheikh Youseff al-Qaradawi and Mufti Taqi Usmani, as well as the fact that no fewer than 27 Muslim charities have been designated as funding terrorism by the US Treasury Department, the UK charity commission or the UN, this presents a hazard which could obviously threaten US national security.
The effect of legitimizing and promoting shariah in the West can already be seen in Western Europe. Promoting shariah encapsulates Muslim communities from mainstream society and even creates enclaves controlled by shariah. Shariah-compliant finance plays a particular role in this because, a devout Muslim living in a Western country in which there are no shariah-compliant banks are allowed to use conventional “infidel” institutions under the shariah doctrine of “extreme necessity.” However, once shariah-compliant institutions do exist, they are religiously obligated to patronize them exclusively. Thus, by allowing the spread of shariah finance in the West and the US, we are pushing Muslims toward shariah.
Importantly, there is nowhere near adequate disclosure of the true nature of shariah, the role of shariah scholars and the system of zakat and purification by any US or Western financial institution.
In sum, shariah finance represents a number of potential threats to the US, including possible financing of terrorism and Jihadist organizations and movements, infiltrating our financial markets and legitimizing shariah.
Border security is once again front and center on the American political scene as politicians in Washington posture in the debate over whether the U.S. should build some sort of border wall or fence on its porous southern border with Mexico.
Whenever the Mexican border is at the top of the news, it serves as a reminder that our southern border is almost completely unsecure. And there have been some reminders mixed in over the years that Washington has ignored this problem about the potential for a terrorist threat from south of the border, such as James O’Keefe of Project Veritas wading across the Rio Grande dressed like Osama Bin Laden.
Some on the Left insist on downplaying the threat from terrorism on America’s southern border, almost to the point that they insist that there is NO threat from terrorists associated with our insecure borders (the reality is that the potential threat exists on our northern border as well).
But there IS a Jihadist threat from south of the border and it is not new. It has been discussed since well before 9/11. The Jihadist threat on the southern border is real and it is multifaceted.
There is no way to estimate how many jihadists may already have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico. But the time to play politics with the border issue is long past. The shallow sloganeering and race-baiting that have dominated the national debate about border controls should be recognized as what they are: hindrances to sane and sensible national defense measures.
SIA-OTMs
OTM is an acronym for illegal aliens who are ‘Other Than Mexican’ — SIA stands for ‘Special Interest Aliens’ from 34 nations like Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.
Mexicans trying to enter the U.S. illegally are often simply processed at the border and sent back. But Mexico won’t allow us to send citizens from other countries back through Mexico, and under U.S. law, they’re entitled to a formal deportation hearing. The immigration service lacks beds to hold them, so the vast majority of OTMs are released from custody and asked to voluntarily return for their court date.
From 2008-2010, an estimated 180,000 OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) were believed to have crossed the border illegally. In that same period, 1,918 “Special Interest” OTMs were apprehended on the border.It is generally believed that for every illegal alien apprehended at the border, there are several who elude border security and are not apprehended.
Law enforcement sources in Arizona have told me that it has become increasingly common for Muslims in Mexico to change their Islamic surnames to Hispanic sounding names to facilitate moving across the border. Apologists claim this is simply to avoid discrimination.
Perhaps not coincidentally, there has been a noticeable proliferation of Salafist mosques in Latin America since the early 1990s and an increasing proselytization campaign on the part of Wahhabi and Saudi-funded nongovernmental organizations like the World Assembly for Muslim Youth (WAMY). It is worth mentioning that WAMY’s U.S. operations were shut down by the Justice Department due to the organization’s massive material support for Jihad.
My law enforcement sources tell me that drug cartels have been involved in trafficking Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab and Hezbollah operatives into the US.
The vast majority of the time, the media line is that the overwhelming majority of the people crossing our southern border are just poor innocents looking for work and a meager wage. Evaluated in the most simplistic terms, this is of course, partly true. But the more complex reality isn’t that simple or sanitary.
According to law enforcement personnel I have spoken to, the majority of border crossers are NOT economic immigrants.
An examination of anecdotes about general enforcement conditions on the U.S.-Mexican border paint a picture that indicates that America has not taken the steps necessary to defend itself from terrorist infiltration.
For instance, there are severe constraints on border enforcement personnel. The Border Patrol is forbidden from patrolling on federal land, opening large swathes of territory by default. Demoralized Border Patrol officers also report receiving instructions over the years to avoid detaining and processing illegal aliens.
Against these constraints, our border and immigration enforcement personnel are going up against a robust, sophisticated alliance of drug cartels and Jihadis.
According the law enforcement personnel in Arizona, cartels are buying real estate on both sides of the border to set up staging areas and camps. The cartels employ high-tech communications gear superior to that in the hands of US law enforcement. Cartels and “coyotes” employ scouts and snipers on the high ground along trafficking routes—as far north as Phoenix.
Border enforcement personnel report that the Mexican army has in fact provided surveillance and cover fire FOR traffickers on more than one occasion in the past.
Arizona ranchers report that they are afraid to use their cell phones in the open because cartel snipers might think they are calling in reports to law enforcement and kill them. Even U.S. law and border enforcement personnel are careful about using communications gear in the open on the southern border.
• In an infamous undated video, a Muslim cleric in Kuwait, Abdullah al-Nafsi, in a sermon in his mosque said that “there is no need for airplanes and planning; one man with the courage to carry a suitcase of anthrax through the tunnels from Mexico to the United States could kill 330,000 Americans in one hour.”
• In June 2004, the US Border Patrol arrested 77 “Middle Eastern” men attempting to cross the border from Mexico illegally.
• In October 2004, US intelligence officials received reports that 25 Chechans had illegally crossed into Arizona from Mexico.
• In December 2004, a Bangladeshi Muslim named Fakhrul Islam, was arrested crossing the southern border from Mexico in the company of the Central American gang MS-13.
• In January 2005, two Hamas operatives, Mahmoud Khalil and Ziad Saleh, were arrested as part of a criminal enterprise in Los Angeles. Both had entered the U.S. after paying a smuggler $10,000 each to take them across the border.
• In September 2007, Texas’ top homeland security official, Steve McCraw, told the El Paso Times that terrorists with ties to Hezbollah, Hamas and Al Qaeda had been arrested crossing the Texas border with Mexico in recent years.
• In November 2007, the FBI issued an advisory about a plan by jihadists in league with Mexican drug lords to cross the border via underground tunnels and attack the intelligence training center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, twenty miles from the border with Mexico. “The Afghanis and Iraqis,” one official explained, paid the Mexicans $20,000 or “the equivalent in weapons” for their help in getting into the U.S., and “shaved their beards so as not to appear to be Middle Easterners.”
• In February 2008, three Afghanis were arrested at an international airport in India for traveling on forged Mexican passports.
• A 2010 GAO report detailed the ease with which WMD might be smuggled across the southern border. In a simulation exercise conducted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in three states, investigators were able to cross undetected, successfully simulating the cross-border movement of radioactive materials or other contraband into the United States.
“The Border Patrol nabbed two Pakistani men with ties to terrorism at the U.S.-Mexico border in September in the latest instance of illegal immigrants from so-called “special interest countries” using the southern border as a point of entry to the U.S.
Muhammad Azeem and Mukhtar Ahmad, both in their 20s and from Gujrat, were caught Sept. 20 by agents south of San Diego and just over the international border from Tijuana. When agents checked their identities through databases they got hits on both of them: Mr. Ahmad popped up as an associate of a known or suspected terrorist, while Mr. Azeem’s information had been shared by a foreign government for intelligence purposes.
Both men had been processed two months earlier by immigration officials in Panama, suggesting they took advantage of smuggling networks or other routes increasingly used by Central American illegal immigrants to sneak into the U.S.”
• The recent migrant caravans originating in Central America have included “several SIAs, and potentially” known or suspected terrorists traveling toward the U.S. border.
• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security continues to prioritize the SIA threat as one of the top threats to the homeland because of the consistently “large number” of individuals from special interest countries that travel to the Western Hemisphere using illicit pathways.
• Written ISIS materials and publications have encouraged ISIS followers to cross the U.S. Southwest Border.
• DHS Border Patrol Agents “routinely” encounter SIAs at the border using routes controlled by transnational criminal organizations.
• Statistics on the number of known or suspected terrorists on routes to the border are often classified, but the threat posed by “the existence of illicit pathways into the United States” highlights that “border security is national security” as terrorist groups seek to exploit vulnerabilities among neighboring countries to fund, support, and commit attacks against the homeland.
• The report lists five open-source, unclassified cases representing the types of individuals and threats associated with illicit routes to the homeland. (CIS recently compiled and published a list of 15.) A number of heavily redacted cases are included in which biometric enrollment information uncovered suspected terrorists in 2013, 2015, and 2018.
• The frequency of international flights from special interest regions into Latin America and the Caribbean continues to increase due to economic and governance challenges in those countries that create an attractive environment for illicit SIA travel to the U.S. border.
• ICE Homeland Security Investigations is deeply enmeshed in investigations and operations throughout Central America to counter human smuggling organizations that move SIAs in Panama, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Brazil.
• The United States-Canada border “is also susceptible to exploitation by SIAs.”
• Abdulahi Sharif, Somalia, detained in Alberta, Canada, September 2017, ISIS (“It soon emerged that some years earlier, in 2011, Sharif smuggled through Latin America and Mexico to the California border.”)
• Ibrahim Qoordheen, Somalia, detained in Costa Rica, March 2017, probable al-Shabaab (Detained in Costa Rica en route to U.S. southern border)
• Unidentified Afghan national, reported smuggled into the United States, between 2014-2016, Pakistani Taliban. (In 2017, federal prosecutors convicted Sharafat Ali Khan, a Pakistani human smuggler based in Brazil, for transporting between 25 and 99 illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan from Brazil to Texas and California over the Mexican border. According to the Washington Times, at least one of Khan’s customers was an Afghan “who authorities said was involved in a plot to conduct an attack in the U.S. or Canada and had family ties to members of the Taliban.”)
• Muhammad Azeem and Mukhtar Ahmad, Pakistani nationals, Mexico-California border, September 2015, affiliation unknown. (U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended Azeem and Ahmad just north of Tijuana after the pair had traveled from their home in Gujrat, Pakistan, through Latin America. Database checks revealed that both migrants were on U.S. terrorism watch lists.)
• Unnamed Somali national, detained at the Texas-Mexico border port of entry, June 2014, probable al-Shabaab. (This Somali entrant told U.S. immigration officials that two months prior to his border entry to claim asylum he had completed training for a suicide attack in Mogadishu but instead went to African Union troops who were able to thwart the planned terrorist operation. He stated that he had trained with 13 other Somalis for 10 weeks to use suicide belts, AK-47s, and grenades.)
• Unnamed Sri Lankan national, detained at Texas-Mexico border, March 2012, Tamil Tigers. (This Sri Lankan was with two other Sri Lankans apprehended by Border Patrol agents in McAllen, Texas. He stated that he belonged to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.)
• Unnamed Somali national, detained at Mexico-California port of entry, May 2011, probable al-Shabaab. (Somali individual crossed the border at the San Ysidro, Calif., port of entry. He had previously been denied a U.S. immigration visa and was on multiple U.S. terrorism watch lists. His mother, father, and four siblings also were on terrorism watch lists.)
• Unnamed Bangladeshi national, detained near Naco, Ariz., June 2010, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh. (One of two Bangladeshis apprehended after traveling together and illegally crossing from Mexico admitted to U.S. Border Patrol interviewers that both had worked in the “General Assembly” for the U.S.-designated terrorist group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami Bangladesh. Subsequently, one of two detainees was deported, but the other was granted bond on an asylum claim and absconded.)
• Abdullahi Omar Fidse, Somalia, detained at Mexico-Texas Border, June 2008, al-Shabaab. (In July 2013, a U.S. District Judge sentenced Fidse on convictions for lying to the FBI about his terrorism associations after he traveled through Latin America to a Mexico-Texas port of entry in 2008. An FBI counterterrorism investigation found he had served as an al-Shabaab combat operative, crossed the border intending to conduct an unspecified operation, possessed the cell phone number of a terrorist implicated in the 2010 Uganda bombing that killed 70 soccer fans, and laid out details of a plan to assassinate the U.S. ambassador to Kenya and his Marine guard.)
• Mohammad Ahmad Dhakane, Somalia, detained at Mexico-Texas border port of entry, October 2008, al-Ittihad al-Islamiya. (In 2010, Dhakane was convicted at trial in San Antonio, Texas, on asylum fraud charges derived from an FBI terrorism investigation, which began when he was recorded speaking about his work as a terrorist to an undercover informant inside a Texas detention facility. Dhakane had worked as a Brazil-based smuggler of fellow Somalis to the U.S. border )
The Al Qaeda threat in Latin America has been well documented:
• On June 30, 2004 it was announced by the Honduran Security Ministry that high-ranking Al Qaeda operative Adnān Shukrī Jumaʿah (Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah) had been in Honduras during the previous month meeting with members of the MS13 street gang. He is also believed to have conducted surveillance of the Panama Canal. He was still one of the most wanted terrorists in the world at the time he was killed in Pakistan in 2014. (He happened to be the son of an Imam from Miramar, FL incidentally)”
• In July 2004, a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed was arrested at a Texas airport boarding a flight to New York after she either walked or swam across the Mexican border into Texas. According to the Washington Post, she was connected to a Pakistani terrorist group and was believed to be ferrying instructions to U.S.-based Al Qaeda operatives.
• In November 2004, captured Al Qaeda Egyptian Jihadist Sharif al-Masri told US interrogators that Al Qaeda sought to exploit the US’s porous southern border and possibly smuggle radiological material across it from Mexico.
• In February 2005, Porter Goss, the director of central intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that Al Qaeda had considered infiltrating the United States through the Mexican border.
• In February 2005, Adm. James M. Loy, the deputy secretary of homeland security testified before Congress that intelligence “strongly suggests” that Al Qaeda operatives have considered using the Mexican border as an entry point. Admiral Loy cited recent information from investigations and detentions as the basis for his concern about the Mexican border. He added, “Several Al Qaeda leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry for operational security reasons.”
• Also in 2005, FBI Director Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony indicated that “there are individuals from countries with known Al Qaeda connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic.”
• In November 2005, Texas Congressman John Culberson described on national TV how an Iraqi al-Qaeda operative on the terror watch list was captured living near the Mexico-Texas border.
The east African Jihadist organization Al Shabaab has been discovered to have a footprint in Mexico. They are receiving Mexican language and cultural assimilation training, have been discovered to have a relationship of convenience with the Mexican drug cartels, and have been smuggling their operatives into the United States to raise money and to recruit members to their cause:
• In 2010, a man named Ahmed Muhammad Dhakane allegedly secreted “hundreds of people” — including Somalis believed to be associated with Al Shabaab — into the United States. Prior to arriving to Congress, Congressman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) worked as chief of counterterrorism in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas — part of the Lone Star State that borders with Mexico. McCaul’s statement on this incident is chilling: “To this day we do not know where those 300 Somalis are … We do know they are in the United States.”
• In May 2010, the DHS sent an alert to Texas law enforcement to be on the lookout for a suspected member of Al Shabaab suspected of entering Texas from Mexico.
• In June 2010, Mexican Marines raided a house occupied by an Al Shabaab member in Mexico City, uncovering a large cache of explosives reportedly to be used in an attack on the US embassy, which was less than a mile away.
The Iranian-backed Shia Jihadist terrorist group Hezbollah is probably the biggest threat on the southern border:
• In February 2001, Mahmoud Kourani (the brother of Hezbollah’s security chief in southern Lebanon) came across the border from Tijuana into California in the trunk of a car, after bribing a Mexican embassy official in Beirut to get a visa. He eventually settled in Dearborn, Michigan. Kourani had received training in weapons, intelligence, and spycraft in Iran.
• In December 2002, Salim Boughader was arrested for smuggling 200 Lebanese, including Hezbollah operatives, across the border from Tiajuana into California. Boughader had previously worked for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV satellite network.
• In April 2006, FBI Director Robert Muller announced that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling operatives across the Mexican border into the U.S. Mr. Muller claimed the FBI had dismantled the smuggling ring, identified the people who had been smuggled in and “addressed” them. Or at least “addressed” those we knew about. Or something.
• In July 2010, Mexican authorities announced that they had broken up a Hezbollah network operating in their country.
• An indictment was handed down on August 30, 2010 by the Southern District Court of New York that showed a connection between Hezbollah and the drug cartels that violently plague the U.S.-Mexico border. In short, a well-known international arms dealer was trying to orchestrate an arms-for-drugs deal in which cocaine from FARC – the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which works with Mexican drug cartels to take cocaine into America – would be traded for thousands of weapons housed by a Hezbollah operative in Mexico.
• Michael Braun, a former Drug Enforcement Administration chief of operations, has even been quoted as saying, “Hezbollah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels. … They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected.” In February 2012, Braun testified before Congress that Hezbollah, had developed strong, sophisticated relationships with Mexican drug cartels: “And by developing those relations it provided them with the ability to operate far from home in our neighborhood and on our doorstep.”
• In September 2012, three members of Hezbollah–including a US citizen named Rafic Mohammad Labboun Allaboun–were arrested in Merida, Mexico and turned over the US authorities. Allaboun was carrying a fake passport identifying him as a citizen of Belize at the time of arrest. Once a prominent Muslim leader in Northern California, Labboun spent over two years in prison for credit card fraud. Authorities suspected that the $100,000 in credit card fraud was linked to Hezbollah’s money laundering activities.
What all this adds up to is that the American people are being sold a bill of goods.
When politicians call for action to “reform” immigration they ignore the reality that the most pressing need for true reform is border security and there has been no Congressional action on that issue whatsoever.
This is despite the fact that there is a true national security threat on the southern border. Our Jihadist enemies have openly discussed this vulnerability and have already exploited it in documented cases. Pundits who go on national television and declare that there has never been a single credible report of a terrorist threat on the southern border are either ignorant or dishonest.
The American people are right to be concerned about the vulnerability of our porous, undefended borders. Open borders in the age of global Jihad amount to insanity.
