The Terrorist Next Door

For starters, we knew the group that owned and occupied the compound, a radical Islamic sect called Muslims of America (MOA), had a long history of violence on U.S. soil. During the 1980s, MOA members firebombed Hindu and Hare Krishna temples and assassinated two rival Muslim leaders. Federal raids on the group’s Colorado compound in the early ’90s turned up bombs, automatic weapons, and plans for terrorist attacks, and additional MOA members have been arrested since 9/11 on weapons charges.¹ Many in the group are hardened ex-convicts and, according to local sources in Red House, are known to train with firearms at the compound. In fact, I had been told by locals prior to our trip that an armed guard manned a tower at the entrance of the community at all times. I had even seen footage of another investigative team being threatened by MOA members and then having their car attacked with blunt objects as they sped away from the property.

MOA consists overwhelmingly of African-American converts to Islam. I had been informed that members were none too fond of whites—particularly nosy white journalists like the three of us, who turned up on their property asking questions. Add our affiliation with an “infidel” Christian TV network into the equation, and you had a recipe for serious danger.

But our cameraman—who we’ll call Mike—didn’t perceive any danger. As we sat parked on the side of the road about a half-mile from the compound, he laughed off my warnings to exercise extreme caution on the shoot. “C’mon, they’re not gonna do anything,” he said with a wave of the hand. “You’re being paranoid. We’ll just walk into the compound and tell them we’re journalists. They’ll talk to us, trust me.”

I tried to hide my aggravation with Mike, who was a great guy and a superb cameraman, but a novice in covering terrorism. “Let me put it this way, Mike,” I answered. “We’re in the middle of nowhere, unarmed, with no cell phone reception. We’re not black and we’re not Muslims. Every grown man in the compound probably owns at least two guns. And if they want to, they can just shoot us and bury us out in the woods somewhere.”

My thoughts turned for a moment to our encounter with the animal skeleton. “If we go up there and they tell us to leave, then we leave, no questions asked,” I said. “Who knows, we might not even get past the guard. Our trip may have been a waste of time.”

I planned to put together an investigative report about MOA for CBN’s flagship program, The 700 Club. I knew all along we might embark on the eight-hour round trip excursion to Red House only to come back empty-handed. But as someone who covers Islamic terrorism and jihad for a living, I had to at least try to see the place for myself.

Muslims of America, according to a 2006 Department of Justice report, has some 3,000 members nationwide and owns and operates up to thirty-five such compounds in rural areas across nineteen states, including Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.² The group’s compound in upstate New York, located at the foot of the Catskill Mountains, is called, aptly enough, “Islamberg.” Covering seventy acres of land, the compound is reportedly MOA’s largest. But since the Red House locale was the closest to my D.C. home base and had quite a dubious reputation of its own, we decided it would be our best bet. Now Mike and I needed to get on the same page—fast.

“I think you’re both going overboard,” offered Daveed, as always, a cool head and voice of reason. “Erick, this group knows it’s being monitored by law enforcement, and the last thing it wants is the kind of attention three missing journalists would bring. People know we’re here.”

Indeed, we had informed local authorities that we would be visiting the compound.

“All that said,” he continued, turning to Mike, “these guys are not the Boy Scouts, and they’re armed. We can’t just walk in there with a video camera and start asking questions. We need to be careful and have some tact.”

Daveed, a former Islamist who, in his Muslim days, had interacted closely with al-Qaeda-linked jihadists, serves as a counterterrorism consultant for law enforcement and the U.S. military. His firsthand knowledge of the subject matter has made him a welcome collaborator on several of my homegrown jihad stories, and MOA was undoubtedly one of our most intriguing investigations to date.

Our drive into Red House revealed a dusty, dilapidated little town whose better days were far behind it. Except for the occasional passing pickup truck or suspicious granny peering at us from a front porch, the place seemed abandoned. A few shack-like houses were scattered along the main road into town, where we stumbled upon the MOA compound.

Based on the phone conversations I’d had with locals before my trip, I was anticipating something like a scaled-down al-Qaeda training camp, complete with obstacle courses and shooting ranges in plain view.

Instead, there were rows of run-down trailers separated by laundryfilled clotheslines. A small group of women and children milled about outside; all of them, including the kids, wore ultra-conservative Islamic garb that covered most of their bodies. For the moment, there was not a man in sight. But there was indeed a guard tower at the compound’s entrance, albeit empty and only a few feet above ground level. A large, green “Muslims of America” sign stood below the tower, and several “No Trespassing” signs hung from fencing that enclosed the sprawling, 40-acre community. To my amusement, there was also an American flag hanging from a pole planted in front of the compound. It was added, according to a local source, after 9/11, when many Islamist groups in the United States were donning a patriotic veneer to deflect newfound attention from the authorities. Located at the compound’s entrance was perhaps the most telling symbol of MOA’s purpose, showing why the group’s ownership of an abundance of land across rural America had so aroused my alarm. It was a street sign that looked much like any other except for one major difference: this one bore the name of a man with longstanding ties to global Islamic terrorism.

Sheikh Gilani Lane was named in honor of Sheikh Mubarak Gilani, the founder of Muslims of America and a man whom MOA members follow with messianic fervor. MOA has close ties to a violent Pakistani Islamist group, also founded by Gilani, named Jamaat al-Fuqra. According to a 1999 U.S. State Department report on terrorism, al-Fuqra “seeks to purify Islam through violence.”³ Sheikh Gilani serves as al-Fuqra’s and MOA’s ideological bedrock; his images and messages dominate the MOA website. He founded the group during a visit to Brooklyn in 1980, encouraging his pupils—mostly African-Americans—to move to rural areas and establish Muslim communes free of Western decadence. Shoe bomber Richard Reid and Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad are rumored to have been among his followers.⁴

Gilani also trained jihadists to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s,⁵ and he attended a 1993 terrorist conference in Sudan that included members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and yes, Osama bin Laden himself. According to a Weekly Standard account of the conference, “In the evening, large crowds regaled the assembled jihadists with chants of “Down, down USA! Down, down CIA!” and (in Arabic) “Death to the Jews!”⁶ As if that weren’t enough, American journalist Daniel Pearl was on his way to interview Gilani in Karachi, Pakistan in 2002 when he was kidnapped by jihadists and brutally murdered .⁷ The sheikh denies any connection to Pearl’s killing, but suspicion of his involvement is understandable: in 1990, for instance, Gilani produced a video called “The Soldiers of Allah” in which he instructs his American followers in tactics including guerilla warfare, murdering enemies, hijacking cars, kidnapping, weapons training, and explosives.⁸

Prior to our trip to Red House, I spoke to “Mustafa,” a former MOA member who fled the group and now fears for his life. He told me he and others had lived in Pakistan and were trained in paramilitary tactics by Gilani and the Pakistani military for several months.⁹ According to Mustafa, Gilani runs MOA with an iron fist from Lahore, Pakistan, and members almost literally worship him; they believe he is a direct descendant of Islam’s prophet Mohammed. Moreover, like the founder of Islam, Gilani reportedly kept several wives—including some black American converts—at his opulent residence in Lahore.

“He’s the leader of the group,” Mustafa said of Gilani. “He’s a former member of the Pakistani military. His father was one of the founding fathers of Pakistan. He has great connections to Pakistani intelligence, the ISI.”

Given the history of corruption and pro-jihad sympathies among Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, Mustafa’s account of Gilani’s connections within those two entities did not surprise me.

He went on to tell me that Muslims of America serves as a cash cow for Gilani and for Jamaat al-Fuqra. Each member is required to send 30 percent of his or her income to Gilani in Pakistan. The group even has a treasurer that checks members’ pay stubs.

“[Sheikh Gilani] said that the 30 percent is money that God has chosen to take from you,” Mustafa recounted. “And if you spend that 30 percent you are stealing from God. The money got to Pakistan through the [MOA] elders who traveled to Pakistan. They carried cash with them or they sent it Western Union. Since there’s Americans under Gilani’s rule who live in Pakistan, it’s like from one American name to another American name and it’s never linked to Gilani at all.”

Sheikh Gilani uses these American dollars to help fund the Taliban and other terrorist groups, according to Mustafa. Group members hand deliver thousands in cash at a time to Gilani in Pakistan. Mustafa said the money is “earned” by MOA members through illegal means, and that male members often set up kiosks at local shopping malls or on the street to hawk their wares.

“A lot of the guys will do bootlegging—you know, it’s all illegal—videotapes, CDs, clothing,” Mustafa explained. “The counterfeiting comes in with the bootlegging. It’s all counterfeit movies not sanctioned by Paramount or MGM or things like that—they’re not legitimate.”

Now, as Sheikh Gilani Lane loomed before us, I replayed my conversations with Mustafa in my mind—he had confirmed that all MOA members possessed at least one gun—and tried to summon any important details about the compound that we may have missed.

Mike, however, was in no mood for baby steps. “Let me out,” he ordered. “It’s nothing but a bunch of women and children in there. I want to go get some footage.” We reluctantly agreed to let the old pro go and prayed silently to ourselves that no one would come charging out of the compound once they saw a white man with a $20,000 camera filming their private property. In the meantime, Daveed and I brainstormed about what I would say when I taped my report from beneath the Sheikh Gilani Lane street sign.

Since we were constantly glancing over our shoulders to make sure Mike wasn’t dodging bullets as he filmed, I didn’t have much time to be clever or creative. Instead, I kept it simple, attempting to paint a picture for viewers of the jarring contrasts at work in Red House: on one hand, you had an overwhelmingly Christian, dirt-poor, southern town. On the other hand, you had a sprawling compound filled with radical, well-armed Muslims who had dedicated their lives to a terror-linked Pakistani cleric. “Red House, Virginia is as rural as it gets,” I began as Mike’s camera rolled. “There are no traffic lights, and the only signs of industry are a pair of convenience stores. So when a street sign popped up here named after a radical Pakistani sheikh—along with men and women dressed in traditional Islamic garb—locals took notice.”

Just as I finished speaking, a carload of African-American women and children came driving out of the compound. We waved hello, and the car stopped at the entrance. A veiled woman in the passenger seat stared out at us bemusedly.

“Hi,” I said as I approached the car. “My name is Erick Stakelbeck. We’re with CBN News in Washington. We’d love to interview one of your spokespeople for a story we’re working on. Is there anyone around who we could speak to?”

The woman seemed unfazed. Strange visitors bearing notepads or video cameras and questions about the goings-on inside the compound had become more common since 9/11.

“The guy you want to talk to isn’t here,” she replied. “But if you go inside and ask, someone will help you.”

With that, she turned to the woman driving and said something. They immediately sped away before I had a chance to thank them. Daveed, Mike, and I looked at each other. “You guys ready?” I asked. Both of them nodded, and we entered the compound.

You might be shocked that a compound like the one in Red House exists in rural America. After all, we’re not talking about Afghanistan, Yemen, or Somalia—we’re talking Dukes of Hazzard country. As I write these words, I can just hear our enlightened Left’s indignant response: “We’d believe it if you found white supremacist rednecks and far-right militia types setting up a backwoods shooting range and railing against the government. But sprawling camps filled with Islamic jihadists (er, ‘violent extremists’), just a few miles from the local Wal-Mart? Stakelbeck, you’re an alarmist fearmonger and an intolerant Islamophobe. Anyway, there are no Muslims in the South.”

Oh no? Have you heard about the $10 million al-Farooq Masjid mega-mosque that opened in 2008 in Atlanta?¹⁰ Or what about Abu Mansoor al-Amriki (formerly Omar Hammadi), the Alabama-bred kid who has become a leading spokesman for the al-Qaeda-linked Somali terror group al-Shabaab? And have you checked out the demographics lately in Tennessee? About twenty years ago, following the first Gulf War, Nashville was designated by the U.S. State Department as a “gateway city” for Iraqi refugees fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime.¹¹ In the ensuing two decades, those gates were opened to Muslims from Iraq as well as other countries—because our government elites aren’t satisfied to see Islam only spreading in major cities like New York, Detroit, and Chicago. No, the residents of America’s Christian heartland must also learn to be “tolerant” and “accepting” of Islamic culture, and open their longestablished communities to a way of life that is completely antithetical to their values. Whether they want it or not, it will be rammed down their throats with bureaucratic efficiency, and their neighborhoods and towns will be changed irrevocably. Forget about waking up to the sounds of the rooster crowing, Farmer John. The call to prayer billowing from the local mosque will be your new alarm clock.

A 2008 survey showed the percentage of non-Christians in Tennessee’s population tripled from 1 percent in 1990 to 3 percent in 2008.¹² The greater Memphis area is now home to an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Muslims, and local Islamic leaders put the number of Muslims in Nashville at around 20,000.¹³ It’s tough to verify those numbers, but spend a few days on the ground in Nashville and in nearby towns in middle Tennessee like Murfreesboro and Shelbyville, as I have, and the growing Islamic influence is unmistakable—from shops to schools to restaurants to, of course, the shiny new multi-million-dollar mega-mosques.

As we discussed in chapter one, this trend comports with a specific agenda: Islamists are taking the fight directly to what they view as the heart of American Christendom. What better way to show Allah’s dominion over infidel land than to build giant victory arches in the form of sprawling Islamic centers?

If the current Muslim influx continues, terrorist recruiters overseas may begin to take Tennessee’s nickname, “The Volunteer State,” quite seriously. And if the case of Abdulhakim Muhammad is any indication, they’ve already begun. Muhammad, as you’ll recall, is the Little Rock jihadist who murdered a U.S. soldier and seriously wounded another in a 2009 attack on an Army recruiting center—and he was born and raised in Memphis.

But back to those U.S.-based jihadi compounds. Their genesis dates back to late 1999 and early 2000, when a Seattle native named James Ujaama attempted to enlist some powerful foreign connections to help him set up a terror training camp in rural Bly, Oregon. Ujaama, an African-American convert to Islam, was an associate of the notorious London-based cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, a jihadist firebrand who is currently imprisoned in Britain on terrorism charges. U.S. authorities are still seeking al-Masri’s extradition to this country to face charges over his role in attempting to set up the Oregon terror training camp.

The purpose of the camp was to school aspiring holy warriors from the United States and Great Britain in the finer arts of hand-to-hand combat and automatic weapons skills in preparation for joining the jihad in Afghanistan. ¹⁴ According to a fax sent by Ujaama to al-Masri, Oregon was a “pro-militia and fire-arms state” where a little gunplay out in the woods wouldn’t raise eyebrows. Al-Masri sent two of his cronies, including convicted terrorist Haroon Rashid Aswat, to scout out the Bly locale in the fall of 1999. Aswat engaged in firearms training with Ujaama and his cohorts during his month-long stay at the Bly ranch, but was ultimately turned off by the amateurish operation he found there. He returned to London, and Ujaama’s grand plan to establish an international jihadi training hub in southern Oregon subsequently fizzled out.¹⁵

Other terror cells, however, have taken advantage of the vast rural expanse of the continental United States. The so-called Virginia Jihad Network featured eleven men training for jihad in a wooded area near Fredericksburg, Virginia—about an hour’s drive south of the nation’s capital—in 2000 and 2001. After using paintball to simulate battlefield combat, members of the group traveled overseas to fight alongside the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar e-Taiba against Indian forces in Kashmir. Other members made their way to Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks in an attempt to join the Taliban and fight against U.S. troops in neighboring Afghanistan.

Ultimately, thirteen men were convicted in connection with the Virginia case. One of them was a white convert to Islam named Randall Todd “Ismail” Royer, a former employee of both the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim American Society (MAS)—two groups that, as we’ll see, have been embraced by successive U.S. administrations despite their radical connections and pro-terrorist track records. Royer and several of his fellow cell members worshipped, it should be noted, at the Dar al-Arqam Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, just miles from the White House. No reason to be concerned or anything, though. Again, just a merry band of isolated Taliban wannabes who just so happened to be fanatical, well-trained, and within spitting distance of the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.

The Fort Dix Five were another recent, homegrown Islamic terror cell that trained for jihad by playing paintball in a secluded area, this time in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. The five young Muslim men (anyone sensing a pattern here?) were convicted in 2009 of plotting to storm New Jersey’s Fort Dix and massacre U.S. soldiers.

No region in America, however, presents the perfect storm of gun culture, rural expanse, and growing Muslim populations quite like the South. In that sense, the strange case of a jihadist named Daniel Boyd may be a harbinger of things to come.

Willow Springs isn’t Mayberry—but it’s close. This sleepy North Carolina hamlet, population 11,576, is nestled in the rolling countryside outside of Raleigh, just a stone’s throw from North Carolina State University. A drive past the well-kept cul de sacs and freshly mowed lawns that dot rural Willow Springs reveals scenes from a simpler time. Old folks stroll hand in hand while young children ride bikes together in the streets. Churches are filled on Sundays and neighbors look out for one another.

Clad regularly in fundamentalist Muslim garb, Daniel Patrick Boyd and his family were not your typical Willow Springers. Boyd wore a long, Islamic-style beard and his wife was often seen wearing an all-encompassing, black burqa that left only her eyes visible. If this were a liberal Hollywood production, frothing fundamentalist Christian neighbors would have ridden the Boyds out of town on a rail, hanging their cat from a tree for good measure. But reality has a way of shattering liberal stereotypes. I found that Boyd and his family were not only accepted by their Christian neighbors, they were wholeheartedly embraced. Strangely enough, Daniel Boyd, despite his present jihadist beliefs, actually had an all-American upbringing familiar to many folks in Willow Springs.

Raised Episcopalian in suburban Washington, D.C., the fairhaired Boyd played defensive line for his state champion high school football team and was reared by a Marine father who earned four Purple Hearts. Engaged to his high school sweetheart in a region brimming with job opportunities, Daniel Boyd had a bright future. But his life took an unlikely turn in 1988, when the 17-year-old made a fateful decision that would lead to his eventual arrest on terrorism charges two decades later. Daniel Boyd converted to Islam.

Boyd’s parents had divorced when he was a teen. His mother soon remarried a devout Muslim lawyer named William Saddler, who made a profound impact on Daniel and his brother. Both young men embraced Islam with a fervor that led them to the notorious tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan shortly after high school graduation. And the two white, suburban teens certainly didn’t travel halfway around the world to a godforsaken backwater for the scenery. Once they arrived in Afghanistan, the Boyds linked up with Islamic “mujahedeen” fighters who were battling Soviet occupying forces. Years later, Boyd would boast to fellow worshippers at his Raleigh Islamic Center about his days spent waging jihad against Soviet infidels in the mountains of Afghanistan. He was building the “street cred” that would enable him to assemble an eight-man Islamic terrorist cell in the Raleigh area that sought to attack U.S. military installations.

Boyd first captured U.S. media attention years earlier, in 1991, when he and his brother were arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan, after allegedly robbing a bank. Boyd was convicted by an Islamic court and sentenced to have his right hand and left foot amputated according to Islamic sharia law. (This is the same type of legal “verdict,” by the way, that U.S.-based Islamists would like to see enforced here via sharia.) The U.S. State Department got involved in Boyd’s case, and a Pakistani appeals panel eventually tossed out the verdict against him and his brother. Boyd soon returned to the United States and settled in Willow Springs with his wife, Sabrina—his high school girlfriend who had since converted to Islam and followed Daniel to the wilds of Afghanistan.

It’s no surprise that Boyd found it difficult to suppress his hunger for jihad upon returning to the United States. After spending years fighting in a foreign terrorist hotbed alongside battle-hardened jihadists, it wasn’t like Boyd could easily transition into a 9-to-5 gig at the local gas station. A Muslim friend of the Boyd family told me Daniel had an insatiable appetite for jihad and talked about it all the time. He found the American South to be the perfect place to pursue his “hobby.”

And why not? Land is plentiful in Old Dixie, including lots of remote, potential training grounds allowing for plenty of cover to fire weapons, conduct drills, and plot. And in most rural southern areas, guys owning several guns, God love ’em, just go with the territory. Another reason the South is attractive for jihadists (and which may stun the deans of the mainstream media) is that the people are, well, downright tolerant—perhaps self-consciously so, given the region’s checkered history of race relations. As anyone who has recently spent even a few days in places like Arkansas and Tennessee can tell you, this is not your granddaddy’s South—yet old stereotypes and outdated media narratives die hard. The Klan is now a decrepit, vanishing punch line, and I can say from firsthand experience that blacks and whites co-exist more harmoniously down South than in Philadelphia, New York City, or Washington, D.C., the three “enlightened” liberal cities in which I have spent my entire life.

In the case of Daniel Boyd, the devout, friendly people of the South welcomed him and his Muslim family. In fact, I found that Boyd’s overwhelmingly Christian neighbors adored him. He was seen as a leader, a pillar of his quiet suburban subdivision, where a lake resting behind his well-kept single home added to the tranquility. I spent some time in Willow Springs interviewing Boyd’s neighbors shortly after he and two of his sons were arrested on terrorism charges in July 2009. One close neighbor, a woman in her late thirties, told me the Boyds formed “the biggest welcoming party in the neighborhood” when she moved in, and that they were full of “kindness” and “empathy.” She nervously fingered a cross around her neck and shot glances at her young daughter as she described how Sabrina Boyd had “helped her through a tough time” in her life. A practicing Christian, she had engaged in some friendly religious debates with the Boyds, but said they never tried to press their Islamic beliefs upon her. She also said she found the terrorism charges against Boyd and his boys hard to believe. As for the huge weapons cache that authorities found hidden beneath Boyd’s home, she had no idea.

Across the street, a grungy young guy with a ponytail took time from working on a car in his driveway to adamantly declare Daniel Boyd’s innocence. He said that young people like him considered Boyd the neighborhood “advice-giver,” a father figure in whom they could confide. He added that Boyd helped steer him back on the right path after he ran away from home. Like the other neighbor, this young guy, who looked like he just strolled out of a Marilyn Manson concert, maintained that Boyd never tried to impress his Islamic beliefs upon anyone. Yet it was obvious that he deeply admired Boyd, and he may not have been completely forthcoming with me.

Indeed, as I conducted more interviews in and around Willow Springs, a fuller and much less flattering portrait began to emerge of Daniel Boyd than the one presented by his trusting neighbors. In the course of my investigation, I learned that Boyd took the Koranic justification for lying to non-believers and the Islamic doctrine of “taqiyya,” or deception, quite literally.

On my first day in Raleigh, I visited a strip mall in nearby Garner, North Carolina, where Boyd had owned an Islamic store that also served as a gathering place for local Muslims. The store—which sold Muslim garb and halal meats—was unsuccessful, and Boyd closed it down after less than a year. It was replaced by a thrift shop whose owner, Ramona McWhorter, told me she believes Boyd stole several storage shelves from the property months after he had vacated it.

According to McWhorter—and corroborated by an independent witness—Boyd entered the property illegally through the back entrance one day shortly before his arrest in July 2009, probably using a spare key he had kept. He casually loaded several storage shelves into his truck and drove away. One wonders if the shelves helped store the weapons cache in the ditch he had dug out beneath his home.

Boyd’s Pied Piper act with local youths was most effective at the Raleigh Islamic Center, which he attended for a time. Before leaving the mosque, apparently because it was not extreme enough, he was able to recruit an eight-man crew of impressionable young Muslim men—including his two sons—whom he would later lead in weapons training in the remote countryside of Caswell County, North Carolina. Their ultimate goal, according to the federal indictment against them: attack a U.S. military facility in Quantico, Virginia, and kill as many U.S. soldiers as possible. The indictment stated that Boyd had also traveled to the Gaza Strip with one of his sons in 2006 in order to link up with Palestinian jihadists. He was denied entry by Israeli authorities upon a return visit in 2007 and detained for two days.

As more details emerged, it became obvious that the Boyd cell wasn’t just some hackneyed, country-bumpkin affair. Almost one year after Boyd’s July 2009 arrest on terrorism charges, authorities uncovered an overseas connection to his jihadist cell, revealing that it had international clout and backing.¹⁶ The link comprised a co-conspirator in Kosovo who was providing funding and working on grander plots outside his country along with Boyd and the other defendants. The damage Boyd’s cell eventually intended to inflict was global, to be done in cooperation with the jihadist movement in Kosovo.¹⁷

So what, if anything, did Boyd’s fellow mosque-goers at the Raleigh Islamic Center know about his activities, and when did they know it? Did the Muslim community in Raleigh realize that Boyd was consulting with international jihadists, planning terrorist attacks, and recruiting followers? The pro-jihad worldview of Daniel Boyd could not have been a secret to them. Some would say he wore his intentions on his sleeve. One man who frequented the Raleigh Islamic Center told me he voiced concerns about Boyd but was ignored. I also spoke to a regular at the mosque who said it was “hard to argue with anything that is in the indictment” against Boyd and the other cell members, noting that Boyd spoke “openly” and often among fellow Muslims about the need to wage violent jihad. The source described Boyd’s views about U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and about the Israel-Palestinian conflict as “very strong.” Much like the grungy neighbor, young Muslims from dysfunctional backgrounds at the mosque gravitated to Boyd and looked up to him, enthralled by his tales of fighting alongside the Afghan mujahedeen.

According to my source, not all Muslims at the Raleigh Islamic Center agreed with Boyd’s viewpoints, and there were some arguments. But he noted that American Muslim communities in Raleigh and elsewhere are fiercely insular and often enforce a “code of silence” when it comes to fellow believers. This trend toward self-segregation is exactly the blueprint that Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood encourage for Western Muslims, as we saw in chapter one.

At least one local Muslim apparently assisted the FBI in bringing down Boyd’s southern-fried terror cell, and that is encouraging news. But the fact remains that Boyd, who is now awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to conspiracy charges, was able to build an eight-member team—right under the noses of Raleigh’s Muslims—that was allegedly training for attacks both overseas and on U.S soil.

The Boyd case shows that the U.S. government should consider any American Muslims who fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early ’90s—alongside men who would later form the vanguard of al-Qaeda—not as washed-up adventurers, but as serious security risks. It is unclear when exactly Daniel Boyd entered federal authorities’ radar screen. What is clear is that for Boyd, jihad was not a passing fancy that could be discarded in favor of the NASCAR-and-BBQ culture of rural North Carolina. As increasing numbers of young American Muslims return to the South and elsewhere from time spent in terrorist training camps overseas, U.S. officials would do well to consider Daniel Boyd a cautionary tale.

In the case of Muslims of America, any lessons the feds learned during the height of the group’s terrorist activities in the ’80s and ’90s have apparently been forgotten. As we walked up the gravel road and entered the Red House compound, I braced myself for physical confrontation and, frankly, almost expected it. Since there were just three of us without so much as a butter knife on our persons, I didn’t like our odds. We parked our van strategically near the entrance to enable a quick getaway. But as we moved closer to the columns of run-down trailers, we saw no one. All the women and children we had seen earlier had apparently disappeared inside the trailers. Was this some sort of ruse to draw us in?

As a slender black man in his mid-40’s emerged from one of the trailers and began to walk toward us, I knew we were about to get our answer. He wore a skullcap and loose fitting Islamic clothes, and did not look like someone preparing for conflict. He stopped about three feet in front of us and asked, a bit warily, “Can I help you?” Introducing myself and my two colleagues, I told the man we were from CBN News and would love to interview someone from the compound concerning reports of MOA’s ties to terrorism. His response was simple but firm. “We’re not doing any more media, because we’re always misrepresented,” he replied. “Sorry you came all the way down here, but we can’t help you. Have a good day.” His look told me the matter was not open for debate, and as I gazed around at the trailers that surrounded us on all sides, I was in no mood to push my luck.

We thanked him and headed back to the van as he watched our every step. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, we pulled away and began chatting about the footage we had captured. And just like that, our muchanticipated visit to the MOA compound was over—but not without a final, unnerving incident. As we drove away, I noticed in the rearview mirror that a car we had seen parked at the compound was behind us, creeping ever closer to our van. I alerted Mike, who was driving, and he stepped on the gas. The car, which was driven by two black men in Islamic garb—obviously MOA members—followed on our heels for another half mile before abruptly turning around and heading back toward the compound. Message received: we shouldn’t think about coming back.

My investigative report about Muslims of America, featuring footage of our trip to the Red House compound, aired in September 2007. My goal was to raise awareness about the group and the threat posed by its thousands of radical, well-armed members scattered across multiple rural compounds nationwide. MOA’s history of violence and its open allegiance to a jihadist Pakistani sheikh should be enough to warrant steady surveillance and the occasional raid by federal authorities, not to mention the fact that ex-cons are likely bearing firearms at its compounds, violating state and federal law. But it’s unclear how closely these compounds are being monitored. Some federal law enforcement officials have assured me MOA is on their radar screen, but others tell me MOA compounds are a potentially lethal powder keg—possible mini-Wacos—that the feds have all but ignored.

Which is it? It’s tough to say, although a video I found on MOA’s website was certainly not encouraging. It featured the former head of South Carolina’s FBI branch—yes, the state’s top federal law enforcement official—speaking at a Muslims of America-sponsored event in 2004 honoring “diversity.” It was an ironic topic, given that the audience was almost exclusively Muslim.

That event, it must be noted, occurred under the Bush administration. Today, with the Obama administration and its relentless push to charm Islamists here and abroad, MOA is no doubt riding even higher. The group’s website is much more comprehensive than it was just a few years ago, and I’ve picked up copies of its official newspaper, The Islamic Post, at Muslim stores around Washington, D.C; predictably, it’s filled with anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. At the end of the day, MOA has a good thing going in rural America—particularly in the South—and its leaders know it.

Other Islamic jihadist groups, however, have had once-successful southern operations thwarted in recent years. One of the most notable cases was a cigarette smuggling ring masterminded by the terrorist group Hezbollah out of Charlotte, North Carolina, that raised millions for terrorism overseas.¹⁸ Another example was a Hamas fundraising operation outside of Dallas, Texas, that turned into the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history: the now infamous Holy Land Foundation case, which saw several U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to prison terms.¹⁹ So a sliver of hope remains that MOA will one day receive its comeuppance, although under the Obama administration it is more likely to receive encouragement as a “moderating force” in American Islam, with perhaps some million-dollar grants to build new madrassahs on MOA compounds.

As for the good people of the South? Well, they’ll just have to learn to stop worrying and start loving Islam.