'Jihad Jane' Pleads Not Guilty
THE TELEGRAPH: An American woman who authorities say dubbed herself "Jihad Jane" online pleaded not guilty to charges of involvement in an overseas terrorist plot.

Colleen LaRose an American woman known as Jihad Jane. Photograph: The Telegraph
Colleen LaRose, 46, from Pennsburg near Philadelphia, appeared before a federal court wearing a green jumpsuit and with corn rows in her blonde hair.

A May 3 trial date was set.

She was accused of conspiring with jihadist fighters and pledging to commit murder in the name of a Muslim holy war.

Authorities say she wanted to kill a Swedish artist who had offended Muslims, and grew acquainted online with violent co-conspirators from around the world.

They say she posted a YouTube video in 2008 saying she was "desperate to do something" to ease the suffering of Muslims.

She was arrested in October 2009 in Philadelphia while returning to the United States.

LaRose spent most of her life in Texas, where she dropped out of high school, married at 16 and again at 24, and racked up a few minor arrests.

After a second divorce, she followed a boyfriend to Pennsylvania in about 2004 and began caring for his father while he worked long hours, sometimes on the road.

As she moved through her 40s without a job or any outside hobbies, her boyfriend said she started spending more time online.

Though her boyfriend, Kurt Gorman, did not consider her religious, and she apparently never joined a mosque, LaRose had by 2008 declared herself "desperate" to help suffering Muslims in the YouTube video.

"In my view, she sort of slipped sideways into Islam. ... There may have been some seduction into it, by one or more people," said Temple University psychologist Frank Farley. >>> | Thursday, March 18, 2010

U.S.-born Al Qaeda Cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki Calls for American Muslims to Wage Jihad Against Homeland
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS: The American-born Muslim cleric who may have inspired the gunman in the Fort Hood massacre has a message for other American Muslims: turn against your country.

In a 12-minute audio message obtained by CNN, Anwar Al-Awlaki of Yemen calls his former country "evil" and praised Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who has been charged with gunning down 13 people in Fort Hood last year.

"To the Muslims in America, I have this to say: How can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful co-existence with a nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brother and sisters?" Al-Awlaki says in the message, according to CNN.

Al-Awlaki has emerged as a major figure in Al Qaeda's attempts to recruit American insurgents through Internet sermons. The FBI had questioned him about his role as "spiritual adviser" to Sept. 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour at the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., before he fled to Yemen. >>> Ethan Sacks | Daily News Staff Writer | Thursday, March 18, 2010

Jihad Against US ‘Binding’


CNN: Purported al-Awlaki message calls for jihad against U.S. >>> Paula Newton | CNN | Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Recruiting Americans for Jihad
Watch New York Times video: Recruiting Americans for Jihad: More than 20 young American men from the Minneapolis area have traveled to Somalia to fight for the Shabaab, a militant Islamic organization that is waging an insurgency against the country's government. >>> Produced by Matthew Orr

Muslims in 21st Century America: Warning from Europeans
NEWS WITH VIEWS: Part 18: Warnings from Europeans concerning onslaught of Islam

We Americans remain deaf, dumb and naive as to the onslaught of Islam in America. Because immigration ‘built’ this civilization, we think it remains wholesome, normal and needed. We think millions of immigrants stampeding into America share our values, our language and our excellence in education. We assume everyone enjoys spiritual and religious similarities that can only enhance America.

Up until 1965, that emotional paradigm ‘worked’ as 150,000 immigrants arrived annually from Europe. They couldn’t wait to speak English and couldn’t wait to become Americans. Most engaged a Christian spiritual foundation. We numbered a mere 194 million at that time.

But the late Senator Teddy Kennedy changed the dynamic in 1965 to include 1.2 to 1.5 million immigrants annually from over 150 countries. They piled into America while adding 100 million within 40 years. Hundreds of thousands of them, right out of the third world, had never seen a toilet, shower or lavatory. They lacked education. They enclaved and they remain entrenched in enclaves in major cities around the country.

Quite naturally, Americans flee such areas, which allows more enclaving with gross examples such as Detroit, Michigan.
Few Americans understand that out of the next 100 million people added to this country by 2035—a scant 25 years from now—over 70 million will be third world immigrants. If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, you may be brain-dead, but still breathing.

When Muslims began migrating in huge numbers in 1990, they entrenched themselves in enclaves, and today, no matter how much you hear from the main stream media telling us how Muslim immigrants have successfully melded into the American mainstream—that cannot be farther from reality. One look at Detroit, Michigan; Freemont, California; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Houston, Texas; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois and dozens of other cities see a growing separation of Muslims from Americans. To give you perspective, … >>> Frosty Wooldridge | Monday, January 18, 2010

Five American Members of the ‘Religion of Peace’ Arrested in Pakistan
TIMES ONLINE: The FBI is investigating five American Muslim students who are thought to have been arrested in Pakistan yesterday on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks after disappearing from their homes in the US last month.

Pakistani police said they arrested the five men, aged from 18 to their early 20s, in a raid on the house of a member of the banned militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, in the town of Sargodha in the eastern province of Punjab.

The FBI has yet to confirm their nationalities or identities, but Pakistani officials said the men were all US citizens, including three of Pakistani descent, one of Egyptian descent and one of Yemeni descent, and had been staying at the house since November 30.

Their arrest came as David C. Headley, another American citizen, of Pakistani origin, pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges in a case that has raised fears about Islamic militant groups' ability to recruit and operate inside the United States.

Muslim leaders in Washington said the five men - all students - had been living with their families in northern Virginia until they disappeared last month, and one had left behind a jihad-style "farewell" video message.

Officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) told reporters that the men's families contacted the organisation after they went missing.

Nihad Awad, CAIR's executive director, declined to give the men’s names, ages or nationalities, but one of them has been identified as a dental student at Howard University in Washington.

Mr Awad said the families brought along a video that included war images, verses from the Koran and showed one of the five men delivering a "final statement".

"It's like a farewell," he said of the 11-minute, English-language video that one of the families reportedly found in their home. Five US Muslims arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of terror plots >>> Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent | Thursday, December 10, 2009

U.S. Sees Homegrown Muslim Extremism as Rising Threat
LOS ANGELES TIMES: This may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11, anti-terrorism experts say.

Reporting from Washington - The Obama administration, grappling with a spate of recent Islamic terrorism cases on U.S. soil, has concluded that the country confronts a rising threat from homegrown extremism.

Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters' trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.

Europe had been the front line, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said:

* There were major arrests of Americans accused of plotting with Al Qaeda and its allies, including an Afghan American charged in a New York bomb plot described as the most serious threat in this country since the Sept. 11 attacks.

* Authorities tracked other extremism suspects joining foreign networks, including Somali Americans going to the battlegrounds of their ancestral homeland and an Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo.

* The FBI rounded up homegrown terrorism suspects in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., saying that it had broken up plots targeting a synagogue, government buildings and military facilities.

Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano issued her strongest public comments yet on the homegrown threat.

"We've seen an increased number of arrests here in the U.S. of individuals suspected of plotting terrorist attacks, or supporting terror groups abroad such as Al Qaeda," Napolitano said in a speech in New York. "Home-based terrorism is here. And, like violent extremism abroad, it will be part of the threat picture that we must now confront."

Officials acknowledged that her tone had changed, though they said terrorism has been her focus since becoming Homeland Security chief.

In some of the 2009 cases, extremist leanings are suspected but motives are not known.

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- accused of killing 13 people in a Ft. Hood, Texas, shooting rampage last month -- has apparently suffered emotional problems. But in interviews, officials and experts have also raised his Muslim beliefs as an alleged motive.

A previous attack on the U.S. military, a shooting in June by an American convert who killed a soldier and wounded another at an Arkansas recruiting center, was apparently a case of a lone wolf radicalized in Yemen, according to Homeland Security officials.

"You are seeing the full spectrum of the threats you face in terrorism," former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

"Radicalization is clearly happening in the U.S.," said Mitchell Silber, director of analysis for the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department. "In years past, you couldn't say that about the U.S. You could say it about Europe." >>> Sebastian Rotella | Monday, December 07, 2009

Muslims Seeking Greater Influence
CHICAGO TRIBUNE: Effort puts resumes of top candidates in White House hands

In a bid to get more Muslim Americans working in the Obama administration, a book with resumes of 45 of the nation's most qualified—Ivy League grads, Fortune 500 executives and public servants, all carefully vetted—has been submitted to the White House.



The effort, driven by community leaders and others, including Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), was bumped up two weeks ahead of schedule because White House officials heard about the venture, said J. Saleh Williams, program coordinator for the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association who sifted through more than 300 names.



"It was mostly under the radar," Williams said. "We thought it would put [the president] in a precarious position. We didn't know how closely he wanted to appear to be working with the Muslim American community."



The effort aims to get the administration focused on Muslim Americans, a group that has at times felt like a pariah. During the campaign, Obama's staff prevented Muslim women wearing head scarves from being photographed behind him, in one of many incidents that left Muslim Americans feeling slighted by the candidate.

Now, Muslim Americans—who according to a recent study overwhelmingly backed Obama in the November election—have been carefully watching the administration's every step.



Most expressed disappointment with Obama's initial silence during Israel's offensive in Gaza. They've been encouraged by the video message the president issued recently to the Iranian people on the eve of the Persian holiday of Nowruz, and they want more diplomacy with Syria and Iran. They've been troubled by FBI admissions of sending what activists call "agents provocateurs" into mosques, and the bureau's break in ties with Muslim American organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. >>> Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Tribune reporter | Sunday, March 29, 2009

Muslim Americans Encouraged, Hopeful after Obama
REUTERS: WASHINGTON - Iraqi Americans Wasan Alqaisi and Sumer Majid made a Fourth of July family picnic of kebab -- served on hamburger buns with slices of American cheese.

Celebrating Independence Day in the U.S. capital, the two Muslim women were doing what generations of Americans have done before them: blending their faith and lifestyle with a U.S. national identity.

Eight years after Middle East militants carried out the September 11 attacks, Muslim Americans are raising their profile, encouraged by the election of Barack Obama, a U.S. president proud of his Kenyan father's Muslim heritage.

The president, who is a Christian, used his middle name, Hussein, at his inauguration. He called for new dialogue with Islamic nations and named a special envoy for the Middle East on his second full day in office.

"We are more optimistic about the future for us here," said Alqaisi, an accountant. "They changed the way they communicate with the Muslim countries. We feel like we have more value here now. We hope that will continue in the future."

Like other immigrant groups in a country of immigrants, Muslims were drawn to the United States seeking opportunity and relief from poverty in their home countries. Arabs went to industrial centers, south Asian Muslims to the West Coast. Some arrived to study in universities; some arrived as slaves.

A 2007 Pew Research Center study says 21 percent of Muslim Americans arrived from abroad during the 1990s.

The September 11 attacks put a magnifying glass on what until then had been a largely invisible Muslim American community, prompting many to organize. The Patriot Act limited civil liberties. Many felt they were being profiled. The Council of American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group, said more than 60,000 people were subject to new government actions such as interrogations, detentions, raids and the closure of charities.

CAIR reported a 64 percent increase in the number of civil rights complaints in the year after September 11, 2001. >>> Wendell Marsh | Sunday, July 12, 2009

Obama Says US Can Work with Muslims: OIC
KHALEEJ TIMES ONLINE: RIYADH - President Barack Obama told the Organisation of Islamic Conference that he has full confidence that the United States can work together with the world's largest grouping of Muslims, the OIC said on Sunday.

In a letter to OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihasanoglu, Obama said he would work to improve relations with the group, the Jeddah-based organisation said in a statement.

It did not release the text of the letter.

Obama also thanked the OIC, which represents 1.5 billion Muslims in 57 countries, for its congratulations on the occasion of his inauguration on January 20, the organisation said.

In an open letter published in major US newspapers on January 21, the OIC urged Obama to work for a "shared" peace in the world rather than one that is "imposed."

"We warmly welcome your expressed desire to give a major address in a Muslim nation soon after you assume the presidency and hope it will mark the beginning of a more fruitful and better-informed dialogue between the West and the Muslim world," the OIC said at the time.

"We firmly believe that America, with your guidance, can help foster that peace, though real peace can only be shared -- never imposed. A nation can either be great or feared, but rarely both at the same time." [Source: KTO] AFP | Sunday, February 1, 2009

Hat tip: Jihad Watch >>>

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

American Muslims Quick to Congratulate Obama
REUTERS: WASHINGTON - The largest U.S. Islamic civil rights group was among the first to congratulate President-Elect Democrat Barack Obama, a man who some opponents tried to portray as a Muslim because of the childhood years he spent in Indonesia.

“President-elect Obama’s victory sends the unmistakable message that America is a nation that offers equal opportunity to people of all backgrounds,” the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement just minutes after Obama’s victory speech in Chicago.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the group, said they hoped to offer the Obama administration some support and advice.

“We look forward to having the opportunity to work with the Obama administration in protecting the civil rights of all Americans, projecting an accurate image of America in the Muslim world and playing a positive role in securing our nation,” Awad said. >>> Andrea Shalal-Esa | November 5, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>

Muslim Group Reports Jump in Workplace Bias Complaints
MARKET WATCH: WASHINGTON, DC: (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- A report released today by a prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group shows an increase in American Muslim complaints of workplace bias in 2007.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) report, called "Without Fear of Discrimination," outlines 2,652 incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment in 2007. That is the highest number of civil rights cases ever recorded in the Washington-based group's report -- the only annual study of its kind. (Note: The higher number of cases is due in part to inclusion of a new category of cases related to mailed, faxed and e-mailed hate messages. Without the inclusion of those cases, the total number of cases dipped slightly over the previous year.) Muslim Group Reports Jump in Workplace Bias Complaints: CAIR: Reports of Anti-Muslim Hate Crimes and Violence Decrease in 2007 >>> | September 14, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback (US) Barnes & Noble >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Hardcover (US) Barnes & Noble >>>

Surprise, Surprise! Muslims for Obama!
Hat tip: Always On Watch

Muslim Americans Support Obama
Mark Alexander (Paperback)
Mark Alexander (Hardback)