While concerns about Muslim attackers infiltrating the homeland from the outside have monopolized the conversation about terrorism, the majority of Americans appear to fear the threat of homegrown jihadis more than anything else. According to a new Quinnipiac poll, a staggering 55% of Americans believe that homegrown jihadis pose the greatest terror threat; that’s compared to 18% who believe that radicalized outsiders constitute the greatest threat to national security at home.
Brand new Quinnipiac poll on national security shows the majority of voters fear homegrown jihadists pic.twitter.com/UW8h50ARTg
— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) December 23, 2015
Homegrown jihadis may share some similarities with radicalized outsiders, but they are a different breed entirely. Americans are right to fear them. Here are 5 reasons why:
1. Homegrown jihadis blend seamlessly into general society.
Naturally, Muslims naturalized in the US and acclimated to Western traditions can exploit this cultural literacy while planning to wreak havoc on soft targets, like schools, theaters, or disability centers (as the San Bernardino terrorists appeared to do). The theatrical appearance of a stable social life and job thwarts suspicion, allowing homegrown jihadis to operate in the shadows.
2. Neighbors and friends are less likely to report homegrown Muslim terrorists.
Even when neighbors and friends sense something from their Muslim neighbors, the curse of political correctness often shuts down one’s capacity for common sense, allowing homegrown jihadists to carry on with their terrorist activities (as evidenced by the neighbor that forestalled calling the police on Syed Rizwan Farook’s bizarre behavior).
3. Terrorists groups are aggressively encouraging homegrown jihad. ISIS even released a handbook for lone wolves.
Blending into American society and adorning the culture and garb of the West does wonders for your local homegrown jihadi. They can access sensitive areas, like baseball stadiums, without anyone batting an eye. That’s why ISIS encourages feigned assimilation under the guise of taqqiya, or Islamic-sanctioned deceit. The Islamic State even released a manual, entitled “How to Survive in the West,” informing its wannabe jihadis about the necessity of keeping a low-cover and blending in.
“The jihadi manual operates under the premise that your true, real self is the jihadist, and that the normal guy (‘Al instead of Ali, or a neutral name like Adam’) is the fake identity. Get past that teensy detail, however, and this manual seems to be barely capable of stopping itself short of superhero costumes,” reports Vice News. “There’s talk of wigs, contact lenses, and even the powerful ‘Moustache Disguise.’”
Although the actual handbook is amateurish at best, its advancement of infiltration and covert ops is horrifying. Vice notes:
The manual, which has been floating around on the internet for a few months, offers would-be “secret agents” in enemy territory tips and tricks for how to secretive and sneaky while preparing to get their jihad on. The problem is, if you go through it a couple times, it becomes apparent that if this handbook is a damning indictment of anything, it would be Hollywood.
These 70 pages of creative capitalization and questionable punctuation lead off with a philosophical pitch to justify jihad:
“The leaders of disbelief repeatedly lie in the media and say that we Muslims are all terrorists, while we denied it and wanted to be peaceful citizens. [Which has] forced us into becoming radicalised, and that will be the cause of their defeat and be the cause for the conquest of Rome.”
So, the reasoning goes, the only way to prevent the West from accusing Muslims of being evil terrorists and killing everyone is to be evil terrorists and kill everyone.
“The jihadi manual operates under the premise that your true, real self is the jihadist, and that the normal guy (‘Al instead of Ali, or a neutral name like Adam’) is the fake identity.”
Vice
4. By the numbers, homegrown jihadis pose a greater threat to national security than any outsider.
Although there has been a series of high-profile attacks against the West featuring radicalized outsiders, a significant number of the assaults come from within. Even leftist social justice organizations appear to acknowledge this fact. Surprisingly, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the group notorious for peddling the fiction of “white privilege,” has even documented something other than big bad whitey —the proliferation of homegrown jihad. In just the single decade since 9/11, threats of homegrown jihad skyrocketed. Here is a list of threats according to the SPLC (note that the vast majority of attackers or would be attackers are legalized US citizens):
May 2002 Muslim convert Jose Padilla is arrested at O’Hare Airport in Chicago on suspicion of planning to explode a radioactive “dirty bomb.” He becomes the first American citizen arrested on U.S. soil to be declared an “enemy combatant.”
May 2003 Iyman Faris, a Pakistani-born naturalized U.S. citizen, pleads guilty to surveilling the Brooklyn Bridge and sending coded E-mail messages to Al Qaeda operatives about a highly improbable plan to destroy the bridge by severing its cables.
June 2003 Eleven men from Northern Virginia — known as the “Paintball” terrorists — are accused of being part of a jihadist network that sought to wage war against nations deemed hostile to Islam. Two others are later charged, including spiritual leader Ali al-Timimi, an Iraqi-American U.S. citizen. Eleven of the men are U.S. citizens.
June 2003 U.S.-born Muslim Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, raised in Northern Virginia, is arrested in Saudi Arabia on charges that he plotted to assassinate President George W. Bush and launch a 9/11-style attack in the U.S.
August 2004 Just days before the GOP national convention, James Elshafay, a U.S. citizen,and a Pakistani immigrant are arrested on charges of planning to bomb a subway station near Madison Square Garden in New York City.
August 2004 Two Albany, N.Y., men are arrested as the result of an FBI sting operation involving a plot to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat with a shoulder-fired missile in New York City. Yassin M. Aref, an imam at the Masjid As Salam mosque in Albany, is a refugee from Kurdistan. Mohammed Mosharref Hossain is an immigrant from Bangladesh who had lived in the U.S. for decades.
August 2005 Four men are charged with planning to attack Jewish institutions, military installations and the airport in Los Angeles. Leader Kevin James, a U.S. citizen and Muslim convert, formed a jihadist group and recruited one of the other defendants while in prison.
December 2005 A Pennsylvania man, Michael Curtis Reynolds, is charged with plotting to blow up a Wyoming natural gas refinery. He sought to enlist Al Qaeda operatives to engage in attacks on pipelines and refinery targets.
March 2006 Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Iran, drives an SUVinto a crowd at a popular student gathering spot at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
April 2006 Two Atlanta men are charged with conspiring to support foreign terrorists. Authorities say Virginia-born Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, videotaped targets in the Washington, D.C., area, including the U.S. Capitol, the World Bank and a fuel farm.
June 2006 Seven men, led by former Chicago delivery truck driver Narseal Batiste, are arrested for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, the FBI building in North Miami Beach and other government buildings in Dade County, Fla. The group includes five U.S. citizens. December 2006 Derrick Shareef, an American Muslim convert, is arrested in Rockford, Ill., on charges he planned to set off hand grenades at a mall just days before Christmas.
May 2007 Six men— including Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, a U.S. citizen from Jordan, and Serdar Tatar, a Turkish-born legal permanent resident — are arrested in a plot to attack and kill soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey with assault rifles and grenades.
June 2008 Christopher Paul, a U.S. citizen from Columbus, Ohio, is arrested on terrorism charges after joining Al Qaeda overseas and plotting to launch bomb attacks in the U.S.
November 2008 Muslim convert Bryant Vinas, the U.S.-born son of immigrants from Peru and Argentina, is arrested in Pakistan on U.S. terrorism charges after receiving Al Qaeda training and helping fire rockets at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan. He later admits plotting with Al Qaeda to bomb the Long Island Rail Road.
June 2009 A U.S.-born Muslim convert allegedly shoots and kills an Army private and wounds another at the U.S. Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock, Ark. Abdulhakim Muhammad, born in Memphis as Carlos Leon Bledsoe, claims ties to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
September 2009 North Carolina resident Daniel Boyd, a U.S. citizen, is indicted along with his son and one other person in a plot to attack the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Va. Boyd, who trained with terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, obtained armor-piercing ammunition and maps of the base.
September 2009 Najibullah Zazi, a legal U.S. resident from Afghanistan, is arrested in New York City for plotting a suicide bombing of the city’s subways. He and two others planned to strap on explosives and board trains at Grand Central Station and Times Square during rush hour. Authorities charge 11 others in the Al Qaeda-orchestrated plot.
September 2009 A U.S. citizen who had converted to Islam while in prison is arrested after allegedly driving a van he thought was loaded with explosives to a federal building in Springfield, Ill. Prosecutors say Talib Islam, who changed his name from Michael C. Finton, tried to detonate the fake, FBI-provided bomb with a cell phone.
October 2009 Pharmacist Tarek Mehanna, a dual U.S. and Egyptian citizen from a Boston suburb, is arrested on charges he plotted with two other men to kill two U.S. politicians and shoot people at a shopping mall.
November 2009 U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the son of Palestinian immigrants who was born and raised in Virginia, allegedly opens fire at the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood in Texas. Thirteen people are killed and another 43 are injured. Hasan, a psychiatrist who was about to be deployed to Afghanistan, is shot and taken into custody.
May 2010 Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, parks an SUV containing a crude incendiary device near Times Square in New York City. A T-shirt vendor alerts police after seeing smoke coming from the vehicle. A bomb squad defuses the device, which contains three 20-gallon propane tanks.
October 2010 Farooque Ahmed, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, is charged after conspiring with undercover FBI agents posing as Al Qaeda operatives to bomb subway stations in Washington, D.C.
November 2010 Somali-born U.S. citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud is arrested moments after trying to detonate a van he believed to be packed with explosives during a Christmas tree lighting in Portland. The dummy explosives were supplied by the FBI in a sting operation.
December 2010 A Baltimore man is arrested after allegedly trying to blow up a military recruiting station in Catonsville, Md. Antonio Martinez, a U.S. citizen who recently converted to Islam, parked an SUV in front of the station, but the bomb was a fake supplied by an FBI informant.
May 2011 Two North African immigrants from Queens are arrested in a sting operation for plotting to attack an undetermined Manhattan synagogue and the Empire State Building. Algerian immigrant Ahmed Ferhani, a permanent U.S. resident, and Mohammed Mehdi Mamdouh, a naturalized Moroccan, are accused by state prosecutors of attempting to purchase a hand grenade and guns to attack the synagogue.
June 2011 Two men are arrested for allegedly planning a suicide raid against a military processing center in Seattle. Prosecutors say the men hoped to use grenades, machine guns and assault rifles to kill soldiers and recruits they believed would eventually fight Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Muslim convert Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif and Walli Mujahidh are both U.S.-born citizens.
July 2011 Army private Naser Jason Abdo, who grew up in a Dallas suburb, is arrested on charges that he plotted to attack soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas with guns and a bomb. Police say they found weapons and instructions for making a bomb.
5. Homegrown jihad is much harder to stop and prevent.
The problem with homegrown jihad is its ubiquity. Muslims exposed to extremist ideologies at their local mosque or community center can turn into jihadists in no-time, despite enjoying the privileges of Western education for their entire lives. The doctrine of Islam is often a drug. After reading a few select verses of the Quran and studying the early history of Islam, Muslims can adopt an anti-Western mentality, blaming all the world’s ills on the West and yearning for a return of the Islamic caliphate. The sickening nostalgia combined with internalized resentment may portend violence and terror for any would-be jihadi. At the moment, law enforcement has little if any way to stop the radicalization of young Muslims. Furthermore, there is only so much law enforcement can do to track the development of a would-be jihadi.