Converts To Terror (Daniel Pipes Warns Of Al Qaeda Western Islamist Trojan Horse Alert)

Frontpagemag.com ^ | 12/06/05 | Daniel Pipes

[goldstategop]

Converts to Islam are taking over the terrorist operations previously carried out mainly by Muslim-born immigrants and their children.

This was dramatically illustrated when a Belgian convert to Islam, Muriel Degauque, 38, blew herself up near Baghdad on Nov. 9 in a suicide attack on U.S. troops, becoming the first Christian-born Western woman to kill herself for Islamist purposes. And of the fourteen people arrested because of connections to Degauque, half were converts to Islam. In neighboring Holland, a just-published government report specifically worries about radicalized converts.

Islamist terror organizations particularly prize converts. They know the local culture and blend in. They cannot be deported. They can hide their religious affiliation by avoiding mosques, lying low, even drinking alcohol and taking drugs to maintain their cover. One guide counsels would-be suicide bombers going to Iraq to “wear jeans, eat doughnuts and always carry your Walkman.”

Converts who either carried out a terrorist operation or were jailed come from many Western countries. Here is a partial listing. (Converts as yet only suspected, arrested, or indicted will be listed in a separate article at my website, www.DanielPipes.org.)

· Australia: British-born Jack Roche, nine years in jail for trying to bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra.

· France: David Courtailler, four years for abetting terrorists. Pierre Richard Robert, life for planning terrorist attacks in Morocco. Ruddy Teranova, three years for physically attacking a moderate Muslim.

· Germany: Steven Smyrek, seven years for planning a suicide mission for Hezbollah.

· Italy: Domenico Quaranta, twenty years for setting fire to a Milan subway station and trying to attack ancient Greek temples in Agrigento, Sicily.

· Netherlands: Jason Walters, the son of a black American father and a Dutch woman, belonged to the Hofstad Network, threw a hand grenade at police; his trial begins this week.

· United Kingdom: Germaine Lindsay, an immigrant from Jamaica, one of the London transport suicide bombers of July 2005, killing 26. Richard Reid, life for the “shoe bomber” who tried to bring down a Paris-to-Miami flight. Andrew Rowe, fifteen years for planning terrorist attacks.

· United States: Ryan Anderson, life for trying to aid Al-Qaeda while serving as a National Guardsman. David Belfield, assassinated a former Iranian diplomat outside Washington and fled to Iran. Clement Rodney Hampton-el, 35 years for helping bomb the World Trade Center in 1993. Mark Fidel Kools, death sentence for “fragging” and killing two of his army officers. John Muhammad, death sentence for his role as the lead “Beltway Sniper.” Randall Royer, twenty years for weapons and explosives charges “stemming from the investigation into a militant jihadist network in Northern Virginia.” Five members of Jamaat ul Fuqra, a Pakistan-based group suspected of at least thirteen murders in the United States, jailed for up to 69 years.

Lorenzo Vidino reports in Al Qaeda in Europe (Prometheus) that the authorities find “dozens of European converts have joined terrorist groups.” Nor is the problem restricted to Western converts to Islam.

· In the Philippines, for example, one convert confessed to bombing a ferry in February 2004, killing over 100, and others are linked to an attempt to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Manila. More generally, the government charges that Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah use the Rajah Solaiman Movement, a group of converts, to carry out terror attacks.

· Non-Western converts move to the West and engage in terrorism there. Consider three American cases: Rashid Baz, born a Lebanese Druze, 141 years for murdering a Jewish boy on the Brooklyn Bridge. Wadih el-Hage, born a Lebanese Catholic, life without parole for his work with Osama bin Laden. John Samuel, born an Ethiopian Christian, awaits trial at Guantánamo, accused of entering the United States to terrorize for Al-Qaeda.

The growing prominence of converts to terrorism means that such counterterrorism tools as looking for Muslim names or excluding potential terrorists at the border do not suffice. Instead, it is now critical also to know exactly who converts to Islam and to watch converts to see which of them are radicalized.

Even without becoming Muslims, some of the persons named above could have engaged in terrorism. But security in the West, the Philippines, and elsewhere requires coming to terms with a very awkward fact: Conversion to Islam substantially increases the probability of a person’s involvement in terrorism.

[goldstategop]

Belgian-born Muriel Degauque brought to public attention a new face in the Global War On Terror: the Islamist Trojan Horse. There are Fifth Columnists (AQ's American cell was composed of undetectable sleeper agents) in free societies that outwardly assume Western wear, customs and behavior but in fact have internalized the beliefs and values of the Islamofascist enemy bent on destroying the West. As Daniel Pipes warns, the job of profiling the adversary's agents just got much tougher. It used to be we could readily assume native born Muslims were likely terrorist candidates. Now we have to accept that radicalized Western Islamist converts are even more of a threat. How we deal with Al Qaeda's probing the weaknesses of modern societies will show how adeptly we can adapt to winning a war that has no frontiers and in which the enemy's visible adherents may turn out to be the mere tip of the iceberg.

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[samtheman]

But we better be careful who we question these people. And never ever ever take them to "secret prisons". Maybe the CIA should be converted to a support group, teaching terrorists self-esteem. That will solve all our problems.

[ThirstyMan]

Here it is folks:

"...a very awkward fact: Conversion to Islam substantially increases the probability of a person’s involvement in terrorism."

Our PC culture wanted so badly to believe this wasn't so!
But now we are being faced with a very sobering reality. PC'ness may be breathing its last breaths as people wake up to the threat of Islam to our cherished western values, values derived from Christianity but now adrift thinking they can remain alive and moored with secular humanism.

Liberty and freedom come from God, as our founding fathers wisely penned in our constitution, the Creator placed those values in us at the beginning, not humans and their courts.

Wake up America! Wake up Western civilization.

[Erik Latranyi]

This article supports the notion that racial profiling will not work against these girlie Muslims.

I have nothing against profiling....it is a proven tool...however, these dogs will change their tactics and use old women in wheelchairs to carry out their deeds.

It is wise that we check, randomly, everyone at the airports, regardless of appearance.

[ThirstyMan]

I guess you're right.
The tactics of al-Qada are much like a virus, mutating to stay alive.

[chronic_loser]

Well..... racial profiling ALONE won't work. However, RELIGIOUS profiling can and will....., and the odds are that a 24 year old single male from Syria seeking to enter the USA just MIGHT be a devotee of the "religion of death."

[rbg81]

PC'ness may be breathing its last breaths as people wake up to the threat of Islam to our cherished western values, values derived from Christianity but now adrift thinking they can remain alive and moored with secular humanism.

Don't bet on it. PC is as alive and powerful as ever--if anything it's becomeing more prevalent.

These "inconvenient" incidents will only motivate it's adherent's to come up with additional rationalizations. One article I read about radical feminism said that they were busy developing a hypothesis that symbols of Muslim oppression of women (e.g., the burka), were really expressions of female power! Its not a big leap for these fools to start equating suicide bombing with legitimate female resistance to male oppression.

These ideas are corosive drivel to any thinking person, but these people are not rational. They are entirely influenced by what they THINK SHOULD BE TRUE, rather than an objective analysis of what really is true. When the facts contradict their worldview, its just a matter of spinning them the right way in order to mollify their sensibilities.

What will it take to wake these myopic, self-centered people up? Probably direct harm to them or one of theirs. Any consequences short of that will simply be rationalized away.

[agite rem mente]

Be real

[Wiz]

ping

[Jeff Head]

In the DRAGON'S FURY SERIES of novels, this particular side of the war is shown in graphic detail as the Trojan Horse in the west, even within America, leads to the deaths of tens of thousands and the eruption of a full scale world war pitting the fundamental Islamic nations allied with Red China and her other allies, against the west.

[litehaus]

BTTT......for some reading on the possibilities....

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

..........................................

[olde north church]

... Liberty and freedom come from God, as our founding fathers wisely penned in our constitution, the Creator placed those values in us at the beginning, not humans and their courts.

ummm, actually the DESIRE for liberty and freedom from God. It is most often secured by those individuals willing to fight for it.

[Jeff Head]

Actually it is the RIGHT to it that comes from God. Some desire it...others don't. Some fight for it to obtain and secure it, others don't. But all have a RIGHT to it as enndowed by their Creator if they are willing to what is necessary to obtain and maintain it.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Publius6961]

One guide counsels would-be suicide bombers going to Iraq to “wear jeans, eat doughnuts and always carry your Walkman.”

What? No eating bacon and eggs?

[RoadTest]

Islam is like a virus. It IS a political virus, threatening the health of the whole world. If it ran out of non-Muslims, it would turn and devour eachother. It's demonic.

[RoadTest]

I knew it. The insanity pandemic converts logic to confusion and then perversion (not just the sexual kind but political perversion al well).

[Convert from ECUSA]

Daniel Pipes ping!

[FlyVet]

“wear jeans, eat doughnuts and always carry your Walkman.”

Yes, if you dress and act like this, you will be imprisoned, beaten, raped, tortured, shot, and beheaded. Unless you are a suicide bomber. Then it's ok.

[familyop]

"Muriel Degauque, 38, blew herself up near Baghdad on Nov. 9 in a suicide attack on U.S. troops, becoming the first Christian-born Western woman to kill herself for Islamist purposes . . . Randall Royer, twenty years for weapons and explosives charges 'stemming from the investigation into a militant jihadist network in Northern Virginia.'"

...terrible. But we'll probably be seeing a lot more of it in the coming years.