U.S. Terror Suspect's Niqab-Clad Mom Tells ISIS To "Leave Our Children Alone!"

Remember the Chicago 19-year-old- Mohammed Hamzah Khan - who was caught at the airport last October trying to make his way to Syria to fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, along with his 16-year-old bro and 17-year-old sister? Well, an inconsolable mama Khan is really upset at those ISIS dudes for brainwashing Muslim kids to join ISIS, especially after the "unspeakable acts of horror" in Paris last week. So upset, she felt the need to speak her mind- in the courthouse lobby, of course- right after her poor baby pleaded not guilty to attempting to aid and abet a foreign terrorist organization. The guy does face up to 15 years in prison, so a little anti-terrorist rhetoric is opportune.

Zarine Khan, standing next to her husband Shafi, had this to say:

"The venom spewed by these groups and the violence committed by them ... are completely at odds with our Islamic faith." "We condemn the brainwashing and recruiting of children through the use of social media and the Internet."

And this message for ISIS and its appointed Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:

"We have a message for ISIS, Mr. Baghdadi and his fellow social media recruiters," she said, raising her voice. "Leave our children alone!"

But this woman needs to take a good, hard look at herself and her bearded husband for the reasons why her three kids, all of whom lived at home, chose to run away to join join an Islamic terrorist group. She wears a niqab in a Western country. Not even a hijab. A niqab! It covers everything but her eyes. No effort to assimilate and integrate for these Indian-born immigrants and their U.S.-born kids. As devout as the parents are it's not surprising the kids could become so easily radicalized, if they weren't somehow radicalized at home. They claim they had no idea

Mohammed's attorney, Thomas Durkin, says the guy was radicalized online. The letter he left his parents is proof enough, along with the ISIS flag doodles. And his sister posted on her Twitter account @DeathIsVNear a smiley face and a heart in response to an ISIS propaganda video full of   beheadings.  Mohammed still aspires to live in an Islamic Caliphate. Were his parent's that stupid that they had no clue what was going on in their kids' lives?

In December 2014, The Washington Post had an interesting and thorough write-up about the wannabee terrorist siblings,.

Mohammed wasn't the only one who left a letter. The other two did as well.

Mohammed wrote:

“An Islamic State has been established and it is thus obligatory upon every able-bodied male and female to migrate there." “Muslims have been crushed under foot for too long. . . . This nation is openly against Islam and Muslims. . . . I do not want my progeny to be raised in a filthy environment like this.”

Where does a 19-year-old learn to hate the West? From uber religious parents.

Sis wrote:

 “Death is inevitable, and all of the times we enjoyed will not matter as we lay on our death beds. Death is an appointment, and we cannot delay or postpone, and what we did to prepare for our death is what will matter.”

The kids asked the parents to join them and to not tell the police.

When the FBI showed up at their door with a search warrant they were allegedly shocked and "stunned."  In an interview at Durkin's office one day, Zarine insisted:

“What they wrote in those letters is not from us." “Those are not our teachings. That’s not what we believe in. This didn’t even come from our family, friends, neighbors — nobody.”

You won't convince me that it didn't somehow start at home.

"We tried to be the best parents we could,” she said. “That’s all I can say — we tried our best. And they are good kids. This thing came out of the blue. We are still trying to figure it out.”

Tried their best? Obviously not. One child running off, I might believe it, but all three, there's something fundamentally wrong in the way they were raised. They even went to an Islamic school, who knows how they were indoctrinated there.

And then this:

Shafi Khan, who came to Chicago from India almost 30 years ago, and Zarine Khan, who followed her husband 20 years ago, said they consider themselves “average” Muslims, no more or less religious than any of their friends and neighbors in Bolingbrook, Ill., a suburb of about 73,000 people southwest of Chicago.

They try to pray five times a day but said they often don’t. Shafi Khan wears a bushy beard and a white knit skullcap, which he said is an attempt to follow the example of the prophet Muhammad. Zarine Khan covers her head and most of her face, which she considers a sign of modesty, not extreme piety.

Sorry Zarine, but the niqab is a sign of extreme piety and religious fundamentalism, not a sign of modesty.

The Washington Post article inadvertently, or maybe not, points out all the contradictions in how the kids were actually raised and how the parents claim they raised them. It's worth a read.

Younger bro and sis lucked out, they have not been charged, as of yet. They also have a three-year-old girl.

Sources: Al Arabiya, Chicago Sun Times

Colorado "Islamic Jihadist" Threatens Mormons and Catholics

An "Islamist jihadist" has threatened Mormons and Catholics in Fort Collins, Colorado, but he's not being considered a terrorist.

“(His behavior is) way out of line for what we consider terrorism,” said Sgt. Paul Wood, who oversees property crimes and is the agency’s terrorism liaison to the Colorado Information Analysis Center. Known as CIAC, the center was established post-9/11 to coordinate efforts to prevent statewide crimes and acts of terrorism.

Fort Collins Police Services isn’t actively searching for the white man who reportedly called himself the Archangel Michael and threatened the demise of Catholics and Mormons in the coming two weeks.

“Right now, we don’t feel there’s any danger to the public,” Wood said Monday morning. But he encouraged people — and religious organizations, especially — to report suspicious behavior to authorities.

The man, who was spotted by police in Steamboat Springs last week wearing a T-shirt wrapped around his head hasn’t been seen in Fort Collins, Wood said, nor did he know the man’s current whereabouts.

Given the information he’s collected, Wood doesn’t believe the man has a criminal background or is wanted for any crimes, which is why police haven’t released his name. And while the man hasn’t made any specific threats — other than to say everyone will soon know who he is — police aren’t ready to write him off.

More here.

Fools for not taking it more seriously.

Pro-Taliban Man Tries To Blow Up Bank To Set Off Civil War

Matthew Aaron Llaneza, the 28-year-old former marine and Muslim convert who calls himself  "Tarq Khan" who was arrested by the FBI for planning on bombing a Bank of America in Oakland, CA,  was a Taliban sympathizer.

The FBI press release states:

According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, on November 30, 2012, Llaneza met with a man who led him to believe he was connected with the Taliban and the mujahidin in Afghanistan. In reality, this man was an undercover FBI agent. At this initial meeting, Llaneza proposed conducting a car-bomb attack against a bank in the San Francisco Bay Area. He proposed structuring the attack to make it appear that the responsible party was an umbrella organization for a loose collection of anti-government militias and their sympathizers. Llaneza’s stated goal was to trigger a governmental crackdown, which he expected would trigger a right-wing counter-response against the government followed by, he hoped, civil war.
The complaint further alleges that Llaneza subsequently selected the Bank of America branch at 303 Hegenberger Road in Oakland as the target for the attack. Llaneza ultimately specified a spot next to a support column of the bank building as a good location for the bomb, expressed a desire for the bomb to bring down the entire bank building, and offered to drive the car bomb to the bank at the time of the attack.

According to the complaint, in January and February 2013, Llaneza and the undercover agent constructed the purported explosive device inside a sport utility vehicle (SUV) parked inside a storage facility in Hayward, California. As part of the process of assembling the device, Llaneza purchased two cell phones to be used in creating and operating the trigger device for the car bomb. One of these cell phones was incorporated into the trigger device itself. The other was reserved for use on the night of the attack.
The criminal complaint alleges that on the evening of February 7, 2013, Llaneza drove the SUV containing the purported explosive device to the target bank branch in Oakland. He parked the SUV beneath an overhang of the bank building where he armed the trigger device. He then proceeded on foot to a nearby location a safe distance from the bank building, where he met the undercover agent. Once there, Llaneza attempted to detonate the bomb by using the second cell phone he had purchased to place two calls to the trigger device attached to the car bomb. Federal agents then arrested him.

According to the San Jose Mercury News, he also happened to have a history of mental illness. Mental illness + Islam = Lethal combination.

It will be interesting to see what unfolds as more information is gathered.

Fort Hood Massacre Still Considered 'Workplace violence" - Victims Sue

 I don't ever recall being so jaded and skeptical when I was growing up. Something terrible would happen and the initial shock and outrage turned to sadness. I never assumed the worst. When a mother appealed on national television for the return of her children, I never thought she would eventually turn out to be the killer. But now, when a husband finds his wife dead, or parent's claim their child is missing, I automatically assume they're guilty. Right or wrong, it's only natural to jump to conclusions, especially in an ever increasing violent world.

So, when a U.S. Army psychiatrist went on a rampage in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009 killing 13 people (including a pregnant woman), wounding 30 more, his name turned out to be Nidal Malik Hasan, and his battle cry was "Allahu Akbar", you bet I assumed the worst. At the time, we were cautioned not to jump to conclusions by President Obama and others in the media, but some of us new better. Even before his name was mentioned I jumped to conclusions. Why? For various reasons. First of all, there had been serious threats by homegrown jihadists to attack military installations and malls in the U.S. And then six radical Islamists were charged in 2007 with a plot to attack Fort Dix.

Then there was the 23-year-old Muslim convert, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (also known as Carlos Bledsoe), who killed several U.S. Army recruiters in West Little Rock, in June 2009, who was eventually sentenced to life in prison without parole.

So yes, I considered Hasan a jihadist even before information concerning his extremist activities started to surface. And yes, he should be considered a terrorist, regardless of his religious affiliation. With premeditation, he gunned down over 40 people in cold blood, including two females.

If the U.S. government was in denial, so was his family who believed their sweet Nidal was incapable of such violence:

"I've known my brother Nidal to be a peaceful, loving and compassionate person who has shown great interest in the medical field and in helping others," his brother, Eyad Hasan, of Sterling, Va., said in a statement Saturday. "He has never committed an act of violence and was always known to be a good, law-abiding citizen."

And yet he did what he did.

Colleagues, however, painted a different picture. According to them, Hasan had showed signs of extremist thought, but most were too afraid to say anything for fear of seeming Islamophobic.

[Hasan] once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats. He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.

Fellow doctors told of how Hasan would say he was a "Muslim first and American second." They also claim he became very disturbed because he was about to be deployed to Iraq. Some people claim PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) triggered the attack, and yet he had never had to fight! There have been thousands of soldiers who have returned from military action in Iraq and Afghanistan with PTSD. Too many, sadly, have committed suicide, some have had violent episodes, but none have ever gone on a shooting spree, as a result of their PTSD.

Also in denial about his motives, the media  made it seem as if this was some random act of workplace violence- that this poor man simply snapped under pressure from being harassed about being a Muslim, and not wanting to fight in Iraq. But weeks prior to the massacre, Hasan gave away some of his possessions, and:

One of Hasan's neighbours described how on the day of the massacre, about 9am, he gave her a Koran and told her: "I'm going to do good work for God" before leaving for the base.

Witnesses have also described him as being cold and calm during the attack, not quite the demeanour one would expect from someone who had spontaneously gone off the deep end.

He had also been linked to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia, which he attended in 2001. The same mosque where radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, was "spiritual advisor" to several of the 9/11 terrorists. Fellow Muslim soldiers also talked about his radical points of view, including religious justification for suicide bombings.

Why was nothing done when so many people witnessed Hasan's anti-American and Islamic extremist rhetoric? Since 2005, both the Army and FBI had quite a bit of information regarding email correspondence between Hasan and al-Awlaki. Being in denial about the potential of terrorist acts by religious fanatics in this country isn't going to make the problem go away. And cries of Islamophobia don't help the matter. Muslims need to realize that as long as they continue to apologize for the violence rather than condemn it, we will continue to jump to conclusions. There are some that do, but there has to be a greater voice of condemnation.

The video below has testimony and eye witness accounts of what happened that day during the Fort Hood massacre, by some of the wounded victims. In the video they ask that the attack be officially designated as what it rightfully should be called: a terrorist attack. And this past November 148 victims and their families filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the government, Hasan, and the estate of al-Awlaki.