The Terrorist Next Door

My source told me he had a pretty good inkling as to how the bombs made it onto the planes. He described for me how pre-teen boys were pulling bags out of X-ray machines at the Yemen airport and essentially acting as porters, complete with uniforms. No word yet on whether they’ve been hired by the TSA, but give it time. My source also noticed a good deal of large bags, “thirty or forty of them,” being brought by porters—grown men, this time—to the personal baggage terminal, rather than to the cargo terminal.

“This was odd,” he told me. “Some of these packages looked like they could fit a piano inside. But no one said a thing.”

He added that virtually all the women on his Yemen-to-Dubai flight wore full-body Islamic garb, yet security did not ask them to remove their face coverings. Considering that male terrorists have repeatedly disguised themselves under burqas, who knows who could have been under there? When jihadists stage mini-reenactments of Some Like It Hot, a lot of innocent people can get burnt.

Yet according to my source, none of the Yemeni airport employees seemed to have a care in the world about the circus atmosphere unfolding around them, acting as if it was all just business-as-usual.

“People need to know what’s going on at that airport in Yemen,” he told me firmly before hanging up. “It’s a threat to our national security.”

Given the insane conditions my source had seen firsthand, it isn’t hard to imagine how two suspicious packages made their way onto the planes. It also isn’t difficult to imagine that al-Qaeda has sympathizers or operatives actually working at the Yemen airport who would help get explosives onto flights. After all, something similar happened in Britain, where in March 2011 an Islamist working as a computer expert for British Airways was convicted of plotting with al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to blow up in mid-flight a U.S.-bound passenger airplane. A jury found Rajib Karim had secured a job with British Airways specifically to advance his terrorist plan. As a prosecutor on the case said, “The most chilling element... is probably the fact that Karim tried to enroll as cabin crew and anyone can imagine how horrific the consequences of this could have been, had he succeeded.”²

As for the so-called Yemen Cargo Plane Plot, we indeed soon learned that it was an al-Qaeda creation hatched by the group’s Yemen branch, known as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)—the same al-Awlaki-connected outfit that was behind the British Airways plot as well as the failed Underwear Bomber scheme to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009.

My source in Yemen told me that AQAP was growing in size and influence—with thousands of indigenous new fighters, particularly from south Yemen, lining up to join the cause. While troubling, this news was hardly shocking. With al-Qaeda’s leadership in the tribal regions of Pakistan feeling increased pressure in recent years due to a steady barrage of CIA predator drone strikes, the organization’s operational focus has gradually been shifting to other AQ hotspots like North Africa, Somalia, and yes, Yemen.³

If Yemen’s airport was unsecure then, imagine the situation now as Yemen—like Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Oman, Bahrain, and other Middle Eastern countries—is roiled by civil unrest. The revolutions sweeping the Middle East have given rise to a host of national security problems that the Obama administration has utterly failed to address or even comprehend. In most of the Arab countries now gripped by revolutionary fervor, there is a well-organized Islamist movement waiting in the wings. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood comprised the most popular opposition movement to now-deposed strongman Hosni Mubarak. In Yemen and Libya, the tottering regimes, though brutal, have found it in their own interests to suppress al-Qaeda-linked terrorist organizations. Those same terrorists would likely find a friendly safe-haven in both countries if central authority collapsed or fell into the hands of Islamic radicals.

No one knows the shape of the new Middle East that will emerge from the current chaos. But considering the rising popularity of Islamism throughout the region and the poisonous hostility to America—notwithstanding President Obama’s seemingly endless tributes to the “peace and justice and fairness and tolerance” of Islam, as he puts it⁴—there is a good chance the outcome will not be favorable to America’s national security. The Mubarak government and various now-unstable Arab regimes formed a bulwark against the malign influence of Iran, which stands to emerge from the wreckage greatly empowered. As argued in chapter seven of this book, Iran is the epicenter of the global jihad, a nation whose threatening activities—from developing its own arsenal of nuclear weapons to helping turn Venezuela into a jihadist safe haven in our own backyard—the Obama administration has entirely failed to restrain. But the fact that Obama officials seem indifferent to the rising global tide of Islamic fanaticism is, sadly, unsurprising, considering their duplicity in coping with the same threat we are facing right here at home.

For example, the administration is recklessly downplaying a crucial new strategy adopted by al-Qaeda. Even while pursuing spectacular, 9/11-style attacks, the terror group is increasingly interested in smaller-scale assaults on softer targets—such as the foiled 2009 attempt to bomb the New York City subway system; the failed Times Square bombing plot of 2010; the 2009 attack on an Army recruiting office in Little Rock that left one soldier dead and another seriously wounded; and the gruesomely successful jihadist massacre at Fort Hood. Even as I write these words, we are receiving news that two U.S. servicemen were shot and killed in a jihadist attack at Germany’s Frankfurt airport by a gunman yelling “Allahu Akbar.”

As described in chapter two, al-Qaeda has endorsed this modus operandi, which I call the Chip Away strategy, in its own publications and in video statements by its spokesmen. Yet the Obama administration insists that every new terrorist attack is the work of a lone “isolated extremist.” Prevented by their “Islam-is-peace” dogma from analyzing these attacks as part of a wider strategy, Obama officials are allowing key vulnerabilities in our national security to remain in place.

In recent decades, we’ve seen a growing number of homegrown terrorists in America, both converts to Islam and those raised Muslim. You’ll meet these American jihadists throughout the pages of this book; people like Daniel Patrick Boyd, an all-American kid, former high school football player, and son of a Marine who converted to Islam and pled guilty in 2010 to charges stemming from a plot to massacre U.S. soldiers at Quantico, Virginia; Adam Pearlman Gadahn, a former heavy metal fan who was raised Christian by hippie parents before adopting Islam and becoming al-Qaeda’s chief English-language propagandist; and Anwar al-Awlaki, the aforementioned AQAP honcho who is, in fact, a New Mexico-born U.S. citizen and alum of Colorado State University.

Far from being the proverbial “isolated extremists,” these individuals moved within a rapidly growing American Islamic community. And if that community is dedicated to peace and tolerance and co-existence, as its spokesmen and government officials both emphatically claim, a lot of its own members have yet to get the message. In chapter five I describe my investigation of Halalco, the largest Islamic supermarket in the Washington, D.C. area, where I found for sale scores of jihadist tracts including dozens of propaganda videos by none other than Anwar al-Awlaki. Likewise, in chapter three you will read about my visit to one of many secretive Islamic compounds springing up across America, this one located in the rural town of Red House, Virginia, where neighbors listen to the enclave’s residents conduct firearms training and where a back country road is named after a notorious jihadist leader from Pakistan.

Another unspeakable truth for the Obama administration is that the threat of domestic Islamic terrorism increases along with the rising number of Muslims in America. According to a Pew Research Center report, America’s Muslim population is projected to nearly triple, from 2.6 million to 6.2 million, by 2030.⁵ As Islam spreads, so does the main location for preaching Islam: mosques. As recounted in chapter one, American Muslims are already engaged in a nationwide campaign of mosquebuilding—including in the very heart of the Bible Belt. Consequently, there are currently over 2,000 mosques operating in the United States and an untold number of Islamic schools. To put it in perspective, in the year 2000, there were only 1,200 mosques in the United States⁶—so in just over ten years, their number has nearly doubled, despite the 9/11 attacks and an unceasing onslaught against the West by Islamic jihadists during that same timeframe.

There is plenty of evidence that the creed being preached at American mosques is often not the “tolerant” doctrine that Obama officials tell us constitutes “mainstream” Islam. Take, for example, my visit to one of the largest mosques in America, the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn, Michigan. As described in chapter eight, the imam there is an unabashed supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini and of the Hezbollah terrorist group. While that mosque is Shia, Sunni mosques don’t seem particularly interested in co-existence either; many of them are funded by Saudi Arabia and are highly influenced by Saudi-style Wahhabism, replete with all the hatred for Christians and Jews for which that ideology is rightly infamous.

As explained in chapter three, these rapidly growing Islamic communities have taken root not just in the traditional coastal gateway cities, but in rural areas and heartland states like Tennessee, where the local culture is being fundamentally altered by the erection of mosques, the appearance of burqa-clad women, and the insistence on “accommodations” for Islamic traditions and religious practices. One of the fastest growing segments of Islamic America today consists of Somali immigrants. As described in chapter four, the continued arrival of thousands of Somali immigrants every year is part of a fraud-ridden State Department program whose overseers, believing in diversity-uber-alles, seem unconcerned by the growing number of terrorism cases related to the Somali newcomers. The most recent such example is the November 2010 alleged attempt by Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to massacre thousands of gatherers at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon.

All of these threats to American security are being allowed to fester due to the Obama administration’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge the violent jihadist impulse within Islam. Insisting, in the face of all evidence, that Islam is inherently peaceful, government officials recoil from listening to our enemies’ explanation of why they are attacking us—that is, because Islamic scripture commands them to do so.

This was the constant refrain I heard when I travelled to England to interview some of the world’s most notorious jihadists, all of whom walk the streets of London as free men. As described in chapter six, I spoke to Saad al-Faqih, a reputed associate of Osama bin Laden himself, who explained to me the inner workings of al-Qaeda and warned of coming attacks against the West that will be bigger than 9/11; Yasser al-Sirri, a longtime al-Qaeda associate who earned a death sentence in Egypt for his part in a jihadist assassination attempt against a former Egyptian prime minister; and Anjem Choudary, the leader of Britain’s most notorious Islamist organization, who uttered to me, on the record, a thinly veiled terrorist threat against the British state.

The overall ideological threat we face is known by various names, including Islamic supremacism, Islamism, and jihadism. With those terms, I’m referring to everyone from Armani-wearing stealth jihadists like the Muslim Brotherhood to violent ones like al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. Some Islamists are Sunni Muslims and some are Shia. As you will see throughout this book, some conduct their jihad through legal, subversive means, while others use terrorism as the means to their end. But while they may employ different tactics, all of them—from the Saudi Wahhabis to the Iranian regime to the Taliban to Hamas and beyond—share a similar desire: to see the world subjugated to Islamic law, or sharia, and to see all non-Muslims bow to the will of Allah.

I realize that not all of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims subscribe to this line of thinking, and I’m sure that most just want to raise their families and be left alone. But credible polls show that roughly 10 percent of the world’s Muslims do hold Islamist views and, in the very least, support terrorism against non-Muslims.⁷ Ten percent of 1.6 billion means that roughly 157 million of the world’s Muslims are Islamic supremacists who loathe the United States and Israel and are partial to Osama bin Laden. That’s problematic, to say the least. So are polls showing that 13 percent of American Muslims support at least some instances of suicide bombings, with that number rising to 26 percent among young American Muslims.⁸ Furthermore, because violent jihad and Islamic supremacism is advocated throughout Islam’s fundamental texts, those who believe in those concepts dominate the discussion within Islam. They control most of the world’s mosques, the main Islamic seminaries, and the Islamic political parties, as well as the U.S.-based Islamic interest groups.

Like other totalitarian movements, Islamism—in its various reincarnations over the past 1,400 years—has always sought world domination. At times, it has come awfully close to achieving that goal, mainly through jihad: holy war, as mandated by Allah through his prophet, Mohammed, in the Koran:

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (9:29)

This is the infamous “Verse of the Sword.” It is one of Mohammed’s final “revelations” in the Koran, and throughout the ages, it has been interpreted by a sizable chunk of Muslims as an open-ended call to violent jihad, for all times. The “People of the Book” that the verse refers to are Jews and Christians. The “jizya” is a crushing tax that non-Muslims living in Muslim lands are forced to pay to remind them that they are vassals of Islam—and that is the precise status to which millions of Muslims are fighting to reduce “infidels” like you and me, including here in America.

Baby boomers still remember exactly where they were on the day JFK was assassinated. Likewise, a defining question for my generation has become, “Where were you on 9/11?” As for myself, when the first plane rammed into the World Trade Center, I was a 25-year-old kid working on a freelance article in my Philadelphia home. As I turned on the TV to see the World Trade Center engulfed in flames, it was clear to me that America was facing the kind of sink-or-swim moment it hadn’t seen since Pearl Harbor: would we fight or would we fold?

My thoughts immediately turned to the friends I had made during a recent stint working in New York City, including some who lived near the Twin Towers. As footage of the Towers’ collapse exploded across my television screen, I feared for their safety. That concern quickly turned to anger. Then alarm. Since Philly is a major city rich in national landmarks that lies in between Manhattan and Washington—where the Pentagon had also been struck—I thought it might very well be next on the terrorists’ target list.

I called my brother right away because he, at the time, worked in a federal government building in downtown Philly. He was already preparing to board the train and head home to his family, as were tens of thousands of confused, frightened people who had been deeply shaken by the apocalyptic images they had just witnessed on television. I next called my parents’ house, reaching my father. Little did I know that I was about to have a conversation that would help change the direction of my life.

My dad was a former paratrooper in the 101st Airborne: the legendary Screaming Eagles. A self-made man through and through, he possessed a razor-sharp mind and was one of the most well-read people I have ever known. Before passing away in 2003 at the age of sixty, he was a student of military history, a Christian Zionist before I even knew what the term meant, and an all around bad dude—respected at home and on the street. He had grown up in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Philly, a decaying cauldron named Kensington that had a reputation for turning out fierce brawlers. My dad—who in his heyday was 6’ 2”, 260 pounds of solid muscle—certainly fit that bill. Up to that point I had only seen him cry once in my entire life. But that morning when he answered the phone, he was sobbing.

“Those bastards,” he rasped. “If I was younger, I’d sign back up and go over there tomorrow.”

His emotional, patriotic call to action was jarring. Once he calmed down, he hit me with what would prove to be an even bigger bombshell.

“It was bin Laden,” he said, lowering his voice to a hoarse whisper. “He hit us in Africa, now he’s hitting us here.”

You couldn’t live under my father’s roof and not have a solid knowledge of current events and foreign affairs, particularly concerning the Middle East. Growing up, my brother, sister, and I were treated to nightly lessons from my encyclopedic father on everything from Alexander the Great to King David to Stalingrad.

On the night of September 11, after devouring hours of news coverage and watching President Bush address the nation, my father’s words echoed in my ears: “Know your enemy,” he had always told me, quoting The Art of War, Sun Tzu’s ancient masterpiece of military tactics. It dawned on me that I needed to read everything I could get my hands on about Islam, terrorism, al-Qaeda, and the Middle East. And I had to do it immediately. Though I already had a solid background knowledge courtesy of my dad, I soon learned that I had a long way to go to fully understand this latest installment of a 1,400-year war waged by Islamic supremacists against the West.

The next day, I began studying the Koran and poring over Islam’s other core texts. I wanted to know more about the people who had attacked us: their culture, their motivations, their strengths and weaknesses, and their history and ideology. In essence, I did what our elected officials in every branch of government should have done, but didn’t: I set about getting to know the enemy, with zero consideration given to political correctness or my own preconceived notions.

I already knew of Islam’s bloody legacy of conquest; how it spread by the sword out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, covering the entire Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Parts of Europe were also subjugated—Spain and Sicily in the first great jihad, and later, Greece and the Balkans at the hands of the Turkish-led Ottoman Empire. But I didn’t yet know the full extent of the oppressive tyranny that the conquered peoples suffered—those who were not butchered or bullied into converting to Islam were deprived of basic rights, frequently physically and psychologically abused, restricted from building new houses of worship, and sometimes forced to wear distinctive yellow garments identifying them as non-Muslims.⁹

All of this was in accordance with Islamic law, or sharia, a system that dictates every aspect of a Muslim’s life, from how and when they should wage jihad, to how they wear their pants, to how they treat their wives, to how they are to deal with non-believers. A handy summary of what the West could expect under sharia law—if Islamists were to some day get their way—is provided in an indispensible little pamphlet called Sharia Law for the Non-Muslim, published by the Center for the Study of Political Islam:

Sharia: Sharia is based on the principles found in the Koran and other Islamic religious/political texts. There are no common principles between American law and Sharia.

Under Sharia law:

• There is no freedom of religion.

• There is no freedom of speech.

• There is no freedom of thought.

• There is no freedom of artistic expression.

• There is no freedom of the press.

• There is no equality of peoples—a non-Muslim, a Kafir, is never equal to a Muslim.

• There is no equal protection under Sharia for different classes of people.

• Justice is dualistic, with one set of laws for Muslim males and different laws for women and non-Muslims.

• There are no equal rights for women.

• Women can be beaten.

• A non-Muslim cannot bear arms.

• There is no democracy, since democracy means that a non-Muslim is equal to a Muslim.

• Our Constitution is a man-made document of ignorance, “ahiliyah,” that must submit to Sharia.

• Non-Muslims are dhimmis, third-class citizens.

• All governments must be ruled by Sharia law.

• Unlike common law, Sharia is not interpretive, nor can it be changed.

• There is no Golden Rule.¹⁰

By the fall of 2002, I had begun focusing all my work on national security and the jihadist threat to the West. I contributed articles to websites and major newspapers, became a senior writer and analyst for Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), and appeared as an IPT terrorism analyst on nationally syndicated radio programs and TV networks. I eventually moved on to the Christian Broadcasting Network, where I’m host of my own show, Stakelbeck on Terror.

To my great distress, my work has brought me to realize that today, ten years after 9/11, America is losing the war against Islamic fascism. Yes, we have had military successes against the jihadists and have killed or captured several top al-Qaeda leaders, hearing the usual self-congratulatory rhetoric out of Washington whenever an attack is thwarted. However, in the war of ideas—the ideological war, which is even more important than the military sphere against this particular enemy—America is getting its tail kicked. Why are we letting the Islamic supremacist government of Saudi Arabia fund mosque-building across our nation and help place textbooks in American public schools that give the Saudi version of Islamic history? Why is the Obama administration openly embracing groups that have intimate ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, a jihadist organization whose Palestinian branch is none other than the genocidal terror group Hamas? Why was a Brotherhood-linked Islamist invited to speak to U.S. troops at Fort Hood in 2009—one month after the terrorist massacre there? Why are our schools devaluing Judeo-Christian civilization but teaching our children that, in the unenlightened words of Presidents Bush and Obama, Islam is a “religion of peace?”

We are facing an existential threat, yet Islamic terrorism remains the enemy we dare not name. “Violent extremism,” anyone?

Yes, there are moderate Muslims who want no parts of jihad, sharia, or the caliphate. I know such Muslims, and I fully support and appreciate them. I pray that they can spearhead an Islamic Reformation that brings their faith into the twenty-first century and somehow mitigates sharia and the many calls to violence against non-Muslims that are found in the Koran and the hadiths. But I am not optimistic. The pushback against such a movement in the Muslim world is just too strong.

The surging tide of Islamic supremacism, and the vulnerable position occupied by the few brave souls in the Islamic world who oppose it, was starkly illustrated by the January 2011 assassination of Pakistani governor Salman Taseer and, two months later, the killing of Pakistan’s sole Christian government minister, Shabaz Bhatti—both men gunned down for their efforts to reform Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which can impose the death penalty for the crime of insulting Islam. A correspondent for The Economist issued the following report a month after Taseer was murdered by his own bodyguard:

Lawyers showered [Taseer’s] traitorous bodyguard with rose petals. The killer has become a hero. It has been almost impossible to find a judge who will dare take on the case. In parliament no senator would lead a prayer to commemorate the slain politician. Almost none of Pakistan’s articulate and educated liberal voices have dared speak out in his defence. Even Mr Taseer’s allies mostly stayed away from his funeral. By contrast, in Lahore on Sunday, I was caught up in a huge crowd of Islamists celebrating noisily the death of the hated liberal.¹¹

In fact, if followed to the letter, Islam is inherently incompatible with Western democracy and values. I sincerely wish it weren’t so. But based on Islam’s core texts, the example of its warrior prophet, Mohammed, and a review of Islamic history—both recent and older—no intellectually honest individual could say with a straight face that Islam is a religion of peace. The evidence against this is just too overwhelming to ignore.

I’ve interviewed Islamic jihadists who have told me to my face that Islam is much more than a religion: that it is an all-encompassing ideological system that is destined to achieve global domination. Leading Islamic scholars throughout the ages, up to the modern day, have seconded this notion. Before more Americans needlessly get killed, the U.S. government needs to accept this unpleasant fact and adjust its policies for what the Obama administration has laughably dubbed the “War Against Violent Extremism.” At stake is not only our country but also Western, Judeo-Christian civilization—which, despite its human flaws, has been a gift from God and a gift to the world overall.

That’s why I’m writing this book. It’s both an educational tool and a call to action to our government and our people.

Too many have forgotten. I never will.

Because I don’t want to see my daughters or my wife forced to cover up, confined to the house and deprived of any form of joy or opportunities. I refuse to wear a special badge or pay a special tax that marks me as a non-Muslim “dhimmi.” I want to be able to laugh, dine, and converse with my Jewish friends around the world just as I always have, without fear of them being snatched up by Islamic stormtroopers. I want to be able to read the Bible in public and attend church freely. I want to live in a society where art, education, science, and culture are encouraged and valued. I want to be able to worship, speak, read, and socialize wherever and with whomever I see fit. And I refuse to even entertain the possibility of a day when the state of Israel does not exist. Under an Islamic sharia system—the kind that is slowly gaining traction in Western societies—none of these things would be possible.