Islamist Paintball, Anyone?
October 10, 2004
When Muhammed Aatique pleaded guilty on Sep. 23, 2003 to being part of northern Virginia jihad network, he acknowledged that the paintball games played by him and his fellow jihadists were "conducted as sort of a military training." Another member of the network, Nabil Gharbieh, told the court how Muslims regarded paintball as a form of jihad.
These admissions come to mind on learning that the Tampa branch of the Muslim American Society is hosting a paintball game today in Ocala, Florida. (Paintball is a fast-moving war simulation in which competitors shoot paint-filled bullets at each other.) Here is its poster announcing the event:
 MAS Paintball flyer |
Note MAS's repeated emphasis on the manhood of the participants – "Serious Manly Brothers Only!!" "We're going to separate the men from the Boys," and "if you're really a man join us." Also worthy of attention is the implicit violence of "We're going to separate … The guns from the toys."
What is this about? Well, the Muslim American Society is the U.S. face of the Muslim Brotherhood – the single leading Islamist organization worldwide and, as I noted in "The Islamic States of America?" the MAS is not terribly subtle about its intention of "establishing an Islamic state" to replace the existing Constitutional order. Add to this the Muslim Brotherhood's six-decade history of resorting to violence and one can only wonder about the purpose of a paintball exercise for "Manly Brothers." (October 10, 2004)
Oct. 11, 2004 update: The Muslim American Society has taken down the paintball flyer and the above picture is small, so I have posted a full-sized version.
Oct. 12 2004 update: It's interesting to note that Islamists are not recent arrivals to the game of paintball but claim more or less to have invented it. In an article in Paintball Times, Mohammed Alo writes that he, Sami Khan, their brothers and some friends in medical school "decided to play paintball" in 1990, when they were high school students in the Toledo, Ohio area. Two years later, they began publishing what later became Paintball Times.
Mohammed Alo is (or has been – the dating is not clear) secretary of the United Muslim Association of Toledo, a clearly Islamist organization (to see this, one need go no further than its constitution, which states, "The Quran and the Sunnah are the constitution for Muslims. No article is valid unless it conforms to these laws"). In addition, Alo writes nasty anti-Israel articles (such as this one and this one) for UMAT and he has spoken for the Muslim Student Association, Wahhabism's contribution to the North American campus.
(Full disclosure: I have no particular fondness for UMAT, which claimed to have blocked me from a presidential appointment in 2000 – when I was not up for one – and in 2003 both sponsored a form letter calling on Fox News not to put me on television and the Senate not to approve my appointment to the U.S. Institute of Peace.)
 The Dar al-Madinah Islamic Society in Vancouver |
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Comment: The connection between paintball and jihad is one an enterprising researcher might look into.
Oct. 21, 2004 update: The Canadian Press broke the news today that Sheik Younus Kathrada, an immigrant from South Africa who teaches at the Dar al-Madinah Islamic Society in Vancouver, calls overtly for military jihad and attacks on Jews. It also turns out that one of his pupils was Rudwan Khalil Abubaker, 26, an explosives expert who was one of four men killed in Chechnya earlier this month in a shootout with Russian special forces. Naturally, the Dar al-Madinah Islamic Society in its "BC Muslim Youth" program offers paintball as one of its activities ("Field Trips: These are our monthly FUN activities. We will go skiing, bowling, paint balling, horse back riding, etc to have fun in a sound Islamic environment").
Jan. 13, 2005 update: A CBC timeline on accused Canadian terrorist Mohammad Momin Khawaja contains some interesting entries:
Summer 2002
Momin begins working at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.Summer 2003
Momin meets Younes Lasfar. Momin and his brother Qasim begin playing paintball games with Younes.Summer 2003
The same group of friends begin visiting a shooting range once or twice a month to shoot pellet guns. They sign in using fake names. Later, Younes gives two rifles and ammunition to Momin who registers them and stores them under his bed.
Jan. 18, 2005 update: In the Virginia "paintball" trial that ended in June 2004, the U.S. government proved that the Pakistan Islamist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba was purchasing American equipment with military uses (such as parts for an unmanned aerial vehicle) via its American friends. Very interesting is to note, in Government Exhibit 2A20a, that a Lashkar-e-Taiba official asked Masoud Khan (one of those on trial, convicted of conspiring to levy war against the United States and of providing support to Lashkar-e-Taiba) to purchase for him paintball equipment. Here is an excerpt from the exchange of e-mails:
From: John Smith johninformation@yahoo.co.uk
To: ELISABETH KHAN masaudk@msn.com
Subject: Re: khalid paintballs
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 18:32:08 +0000 (GMT)order as flows
1, 8 tipman 98 custom paintball gun package fromm extrempaintball.com price 160 u.s dollars
2, 50000 JT Elite Premium Paintball 2000 rnd case $33.95 from the paintball store.com
3, 4 Level 1 GT Commando2 Package $139.95 from thepaintballstore.com
4, 1 MP1000 SYS price 750 i have attached the form fill and fax it to them
Comment: One cannot be sure why a terrorist organization would be ordering paintball equipment, but it certainly appears to be in the context of war preparations.
June 18, 2005 update: Today is the day when the New York branch of the Council on American Muslim Professionals, known as CAMP, gets together for three hours, 5 p.m. – 8 p.m., of paintball. They are meeting at the Paintball Arena in West Babylon, New York and have no less than a 18,000 square-foot area booked for the CAMP teams. The announcement, complete with the graphic below, indicates that all the equipment is provided for the $50 fee, including semiautomatic paint guns, 500 paint balls, camoflauge, CO2, goggles, and headgear.
July 16, 2005 update: Mohammad Momin Khawaja, a young Canadian Muslim locked up for more than a year, may well be connected to the jihadis responsible for the 7/7 London attacks, reports Colin Freeze in the Globe and Mail. In addition, he has paintball games in his background, and of a particularly suspicious sort.
By several accounts, Khawaja watched the 9/11 attacks in horror but it also stimulated his curiosity and his piety. He grew a beard and prayed daily. He studied computers and in his spare time
he began playing paintball with some friends. Given the Sept. 11 backlash, they thought it prudent to do this somewhat surreptitiously: When making plans on the phone, they said they were about to play "hockey" and gave themselves Western names like Robert and Matthew when they talked about doing this. "You never know who is listening in and reading our e-mails," [his friend Younes] Lasfar told the CBC. "So maybe they might not hear about it and we'll just play in peace."
Sep. 17, 2005 update: Ali Asad Chandia, 28, a legal permanent emigrant from Pakistan who lives in College Park, Maryland, was indicted yesterday of helping Lashkar-i-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group, acquire various useful items, including an electronic autopilot system, video equipment for use on model airplanes, and 50,000 paint balls.
Nov. 17, 2005 update: A BBC inquiry into the radicalization of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the four London suicide bombers, found that "Khan became part of a tight-knit group of young, radicalised Muslim men from Dewsbury, Leeds and Huddersfield. The men used to spend time paintballing, trips that would take place immediately after watching extremely violent videos depicting Muslim suffering around the world."
Feb. 10, 2006 update: The Muslim American Society of Tampa will be holding its MAS Olympics 2006 on March 11-12, reports Joe Kaufman. Of course, the event includes paintball. A flyer advertises paintball for 13 to 16 year-olds, with the following statement: "We're trying to separate the men from the Boys, The guns from the toys, The real ones from things that just make noise."
Aug. 29, 2006 update: Islamist paintball has crossed the Atlantic Ocean, according to a New York Times article by Serge F. Kovaleski, "Young Muslims in Britain Hear Competing Appeals," that investigates the ways that recruits are pulled into the jihad network. Two excerpts:
In the midst of an afternoon drizzle in June, Ali Zafar, 19, was approached by several young men who nonchalantly mentioned that they were affiliated with the East London Youth Forum and were curious about his views on the war in Iraq. To Mr. Zafar, it seemed like a strange solicitation, because the forum promoted itself as a community organization that sponsors paintball games and works with Muslims on social problems like drug abuse. "They ask you about Iraq or Lebanon and then they go on about stuff like the caliphate and that things are not the way they should be," he said. "When you are just walking home, they will tell you to come to a meeting, and that they will get you on the right path." …
In East London, Hamzah Mahmood, 15, said that he had encounters with people linked with the youth forum, and that they had asked for his e-mail and home addresses. He said he declined. "They try to pump you up with football and paintball so they can get in your head," he said.
Sep. 10, 2006 update: The New York Times informed us glancingly about the East London Youth Forum; today, the The Sunday Times (London) provides an in-depth investigative report by Abul Taher and Ali Hussain on the Cheetham Hill Youth Forum, filling out the picture whereby, as its headline puts it, "Paintball imams spread militancy."
The party of youths pulled on their blue overalls, snapped shut their visors and, taking aim with their paintball guns, prepared for four hours of licensed mayhem. But the men who pursued each other last Sunday morning through the wooded grounds of Delta Force's paintballing park near Congleton, Cheshire, had little in common with the stag parties and company teams nearby. Instead of listening to corporate pep talks between sessions, the young Asian men were instructed by an imam dressed in fatigues on the need to unite Muslims worldwide in an international empire. …
The reporters watched 10 youths, in their late teens or early twenties, arrive and were invited to join the session. During a lull in the game, they were approached by an imam, Ahsraf Bader, 34, who was with the group. Bader, wearing a fleece jacket and jeans, described Osama Bin Laden as a "Muslim brother" and said it was the "responsibility" of every Muslim to bring back the caliphate, or a pan-Islamic government.
Kasim Shafiq, a senior member of the group and who said that he was a member of HT [Hizb-ut-Tahrir], declared that Muslims should not vote in British elections. "Our own shahadah [creed] tells us that the authority and law do not belong to the non-Muslims, so why are we going to vote for non-Muslims?" he said. Shafiq, 27, an IT specialist, added: "If you think that you can win power, if you look at the logistics of how this country works . . . you've got to change the [minds and opinions of the] whole of the cabinet towards Islam, you've got to change the whole of the army towards Islam, then you will gain power."
The group organising the paintballing activity, the Cheetham Hill Youth Forum, states it is a community body that works on social problems in the inner-city district of Manchester. The 15-strong paintballing party arrived in a silver Mercedes, a dark blue VW Polo and a Vauxhall Astra at the venue in Brereton Green, Congleton. …
The Asian group paid no attention to the 300 or so other players at the six-acre site, although they kept their voices down when, at the end of a game, the winning team called "Allahu Akbar [God is great]". During one game, a player said: "I've been shot." His team-mate replied: "Don't worry, the shahid [martyr] never dies."
The leaders of the group questioned the undercover reporters about their backgrounds and, once satisfied about their credentials, appeared eager to win them over to their beliefs. "Leave me your number and next time I am in the area [east London] I'll call you and show you the brothers around there," said Shafiq. "They do a lot of paintballing and . . . hiking. They call themselves the East London Youth Forum." …
Shafiq described the activities of the Cheetham Hill Youth Forum: "It's off our own backs. There's me, five, six of us brothers. And we thought, just engage in something, I suppose. Obviously at a young age that's the best time to speak to the Muslims, because when they get older, obviously it's much harder to try and get them to practise Islam than when they're younger." He said that while he was a member of HT, the youth forum was supposed to be independent of the organisation. Blair announced after the London bombings last year that he was considering banning HT.
Shafiq said the authorities were using the fear of terrorism to pressure Muslims to integrate: "Right now there is this big integration thing going on at the moment, isn't it. And they use this terror thing as a way to make the Muslims integrate with the western way." …
One young Asian, who has taken part in past events organised by the Cheetham Hill Youth Forum, said it was a sophisticated recruitment operation. "They organised paintballing, five-a-side football and other social events to persuade parents to let their sons go off with them," he said. "The kids' fathers have little idea what their sons are getting up to because they work 18 hours per day as taxi drivers, and the mothers are uneducated. Many of the HT leaders have jobs in the corporate world, so they borrow bonding techniques used on management courses."
Sep. 14, 2006 update: Erick Stakelbeck looked into this topic in a piece for CBN News titled "Paintball Terrorists," relying on research by Jeffrey Epstein, president of America's Truth Forum, and terrorism analyst Laura Mansfield.
Mansfield supplied CBN News with an al-Qaeda tape posted on a Muslim message board in the U.S. It begins with images of missiles taking out America, then moves on to a speech by Adam Gadahn, an American-born member of al-Qaeda. Next come scenes of two men playing paintball. But that's not all. The men also conduct mock suicide bombings, and practice explosives training. But most of the footage shows them playing paintball, until the video ends with this chilling message: "Feel the rush! High speed paintball!" and then more images of missiles hitting America.
Epstein said, "It shows a tie. It's as if al-Qaeda put this thing together to get the message out to their citizens or their followers on how to train using paintball, and what's expected of them." If that is the case, jihadists are listening. One of the London subway bombers, Mohammed Khan, was an avid paintball player. Likewise, 17 Toronto Muslims charged this summer with plotting terrorist attacks in Canada used paintball to train. … Another Canadian Muslim charged with planning terrorist attacks, Mohammed Khawaja, played paintball. Here in the U.S., two Georgia Muslims charged earlier this year with plotting attacks against u.s. targets played as well. …
Dr. Mohammed Alo runs Paintball Times, the largest paintball Web site in the United States. Alo, a Muslim, has been playing paintball since he was a teen. … Alo says paintball is just a game, and that it's nothing like real warfare. "If you're using paintball to train for some kind of military activity or some kind of terrorist plan, then your plan is most likely gonna fail. And I would consider these people idiots," Alo asserted.
But Epstein said paintball may be the next best thing. "Paintball is a relatively inexpensive way to target practice," Epstein said, "as opposed to spending a larger amount of money on securing modern weaponry and ammunition." … the Muslim Students Association, has sponsored several paintball outings. The group's online publication has called paintball an "excellent way to learn about combat." The Muslim Students Association was founded by the Saudi government. It's active on campuses throughout the United States and Canada. Alo has spoken at Muslim Students Association events. He says they're not radical.