Prison converts to terror 
Dear Harold,
We frequently read in the media about Muslims who have been “radicalized.” Rarely is there an examination of what that means or how it happened.
We know that a high percentage of mosques in this country contain materials that promote political Islam, sharia law, hatred of Jews and “infidels,” and jihad. Not surprisingly, the number of homegrown jihadists in America is growing.
But another area that has been exploited by Islamists is our prison system, which is also contributing to the accelerating threat of homegrown jihadism.
http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/converts_to_terror_obRTTSrOgZxZDoVzcKdzaP
Sep. 2, 2010, 4:01 AM
Converts to terror
By PATRICK DUNLEAVY
Reporting on the terrorism trial now under way in federal district court in Manhattan is focusing on defense attorneys' "entrapment" claim. But to me, the more interesting question is how the four accused were radicalized to the point
where they'd even consider plotting to bomb synagogues in The Bronx and shoot down aircraft with missiles.
What stands out is the prison connection.
All four defendants were former inmates. More important, all three imams at the mosque in Newburgh that the
defendants attended after being released from prison had a connection with the prison system.
Imams Salahuddin Muhammad, Hamin Rashada and Melody Rashada worked for the Department of Correctional Services. All had been hired by Warith Deen Umar -- who for years headed ministerial services for the New York
state prison system.
Umar stated in a 2003 Wall Street Journal interview that prisons were a prime place to recruit homegrown terrorists.
As recently as last year, at an Islamic Society of North American convention, he made disparaging remarks about
Israel and Jews in 2009. He's an an avowed Salafist.
The Wahabbi/Salafist sect of Islam adheres to a strict interpretation of the Koran and aims to restore the caliphate
form of government, functioning under Sharia law. It views Jews and other groups of nonbelievers as infidels and
enemies of Islam.
And it has been the dominant Islamic theology in the prison Muslim community for decades -- thanks to generous
Saudi funding for literature and training for the chaplains. It's been so dominant that Shia Muslim inmates in New
York filed a class-action lawsuit against the prison administrators, claiming religious persecution, threats and overt
acts of intimidation by other Muslim inmates at the behest of the civil-service chaplains.
Several years ago, authorities recorded conversations of convicts in Imam Salahuddin Muhammad's congregation.
One claimed that both the governor and the president of the United States were "Zionist puppets." Another called
Jews "pigs and dogs."
Is it any wonder that one of the defendants, alleged ringleader James Cromitie, was recorded making anti-Semitic remarks and stating that he wanted to destroy the Jews, seeing them as enemies of Islam.
Where and when were these seeds of hatred planted -- and where was the prison chaplain when all this was going
on?
In an interview with The New York Times after the arrest of the four suspects in May 2009, Imam Salahuddin
Muhammad insisted he'd seen little evidence of radicalization in prison, claiming, "I don't hear any of that wild stuff,
" he said, "and if I did hear it, I would stomp it out. It's totally un-Islamic."
Yet, during his time as chaplain in the Fishkill State Prison, he hired several inmates with known radical Islamic ties
as clerks in the chaplain's office. One was a Palestinian Hamas member; another was a Yemeni inmate with ties to
the Lackawanna Six -- a US-grown terrorist cell that attended al Qaeda training camps in the Middle East. He even allowed the inmates to use his office phone to call the Middle East and North Africa.
One need only look at the amount of money from inmate funds that were sent to the Newburgh mosque over the
years to see a well-established connection. Inmates from the chaplains' prison congregations have also sent
thousands of dollars to pseudo-Islamic charities, such as the Holy Land Foundation and others, which in turn
provided material support for terrorist organizations.
Radical Islamic recruitment in the prison system is a reality. Years of sowing seeds among a captive audience are bearing fruit.
It was no coincidence that the authorities focused on this particular congregation.
Patrick Dunleavy, a former deputy inspector general of the state Department of Correctional Services, spent more
than 26 years working in law enforcement. As head of the Criminal Intelligence Division, he probed the radical
Islamic-recruitment movement inside and outside prison walls. A version of this article ran at investigativeproject.
org.
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Saturday, 4 September 2010
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