Tag Archive for: Tablighi Jamaat

Did the Texas Synagogue Jihadi Act Alone?

In the wake of the turbulence surrounding the 15 January 2022 Texas synagogue attack, it may be useful to take a step backward to review those events from a broader strategic perspective. John Guandolo at Understanding the Threat has done an excellent job explaining how this attack fits into the overall Islamic Movement jihad campaign against Western Civilization and the United States Constitutional Republic and the Jewish people in particular. Here, though, let us focus on the particular involvement of two international aspects: the Tablighi Jama’at Islamic revivalist/missionary organization and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

First, the event itself: from what we know as of this writing, a Pakistani jihadi with British citizenship named Malik Faisal Akram entered the Reform Jewish Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, TX (a Dallas-Ft. Worth suburb) around 10:40 the morning of 15 January 2022 during Shabbat services. The shul’s prayer and services schedule is helpfully posted online at its monthly calendar page. Services were being livestreamed for the benefit of congregation members praying from home, so much of the event and subsequent 10-hour stand-off with law enforcement was captured on audio, although apparently not on video.

Akram initially approached the closed front doors of the synagogue and was let in by Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, affectionately known by his congregation as ‘Rabbi Charlie”. At first Rabbi Charlie didn’t suspect anything untoward, but interrupting Shabbat services, decided to make tea for Akram. In a 17 Jan 2022 interview with CBS News, Rabbi Charlie recounted the moment when things turned terrifying. Reportedly, Akram pulled a gun and made claims about bombs. According to a portion of the synagogue livestream broadcast obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Akram is heard saying, “I’ve got these prisoners” and “I am going to die.” While his key spoken demand was the release from U.S. federal prison of the Pakistani jihadi known as “Lady Al-Qa’eda” – true name, Aafia Siddiqui – that was but a pretext for a broader objective. Akram claimed that he and Siddiqui would be “going to Jannah (Muslim belief of heaven) after he sees her,” according to a statement from the FBI on Saturday night.

What neither Rabbi Charlie, his congregation members, nor apparently Local Law Enforcement Officers (LLEOs) and the FBI have understood was that, with these statements, Akram was reciting his belief in core Islamic doctrine. As Robert Spencer wrote in PJ Media, antisemitism is deeply rooted in the Qur’an itself, where it is written that “Jews are called the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); they fabricate things and falsely ascribe them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); they disobey Allah and never observe his commands (5:13), and Muslims should wage war against them and subjugate them under Islamic hegemony (9:29), among many other slanders.” Further, as Spencer writes, the abduction of infidels as hostages is also sanctioned in the Qur’an (Sura 47, Verse 4), where it is stipulated that Muslims may choose to kill hostages, enslave them, ransom them, or “show favor” and release them. Similarly applicable is Sura 9, Verse 111, which offers the promise of paradise to those who “kill and are killed” for Allah, in the act of jihad, thus becoming a shahid.

While it is a tremendous relief to know that Rabbi Charlie and all the other hostages got out of the situation alive and unharmed, their unfamiliarity with these Qur’anic passages may well have contributed to their unquestioning acceptance of interfaith dialogue associations that in retrospect may be seen as unwise. Indeed, as the synagogue’s Mission Statement declares, “we believe in interfaith inclusion” and “Tikkun Olam (Repair the World).” Further, as the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue’s Facebook pages show, the Rabbi and his congregation had promoted interfaith events, including a 2 November 2019 and 6 November 2021 “Peace Together Walk,” with a photo of the walk beginning in front of the Colleyville Masjid, also known as the “Colleyville Association of Mid-Cities”. The Islamic Center of Southlake also was a participant. Unfortunately, each of these mosques has Muslim Brotherhood/jihadist connections, as documented by Understanding the Threat. Just one of those connections, for example, is the Imam Siraj Wahhaj, of the Brooklyn, NY Al-Taqwa Mosque, who was specifically named in a list of the unindicted co-conspirators at the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial.

Now, to the Tablighi-Jama’at and Pakistani connections. As we now know, Akram entered the U.S. through JFK Airport in late December 2021 with his British passport on the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP)’s visa waiver program. He would have obtained that entry permit through the CBP’s online portal. Once waived through Customs at JFK, Akram was free to travel onward anywhere in the U.S. that he wished. It is unlikely that CBP is aware of what Tablighi Jama’at is or that Akram was affiliated with it. CBP should have, but possibly didn’t know either about Akram’s criminal record, as revealed by his brother. As Ilana Freedman documented in her excellent October 2016 monograph, “Gateway to Jihad: Tablighi Jama’at,” Tablighi Jama’at (TJ) is a global Islamic proselytizing organization with millions of followers in at least 80 countries. Although TJ is jihadist, it is not known to commit terrorism per se, but rather sends its missionaries to preach in mosques and Islamic Centers to strengthen the commitment of Muslim faithful to the essential doctrine and law (shariah) of Islam. Such dawah efforts, however, in many cases, serve as a conveyer belt or gateway to kinetic jihad, as was the case with Akram.

Akram himself, born in the United Kingdom (UK) of a family that hailed from the Jhelum district in the Pakistani Punjab, reportedly had traveled abroad on just such missions. According to reporting from the Hindustan Times, in the Blackburn, Lancashire area of England where Akram grew up, he “served as the head of the Rondell Street Islamic Centre in the London area, also known as Reza Masjid, where largely Muslims of Pakistani origin prayed. He also prayed at the Eldorado Masjid that was frequented by Gujarati Muslims in the region.” Two teenagers, possibly Akram’s sons, were arrested by UK Counterterrorism police in South Manchester on Sunday 16 Jan 22 and held for questioning.

As we can see, the connections to Pakistan are many. Nevertheless, it must be said that any possible connections to the Pakistani government or to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency are premature at this point. It is instructive, though, to recall the many Islamic terror attacks in which ISI has been involved. We may begin with the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, India, in which, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) drawing on classified Indian government documents, the ISI was “heavily involved”. The following year, on 30 December 2009, according to declassified U.S. government documents, a Jordanian doctor reportedly recruited and dispatched by the ISI, detonated a suicide vest at the CIA’s Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, killing seven and injuring an additional six. Then, on 2 December 2015, U.S.-born Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistani wife, Tashfeen Malik carried out a deadly shooting attack at Farook’s office Christmas party in San Bernardino, CA.  The couple had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State online and expressed support openly for Islamic jihad. Malik had attended college and the Al-Huda International Welfare Foundation women’s Islamic seminary in the Punjab before marrying Farook through an online arranged wedding that took place in Saudi Arabia in 2014.

Once again, while direct ISI involvement in this attack has not been publicly documented, the area of the Punjab where Malik studied is known as a stronghold of Deobandi jihadist groups, such as Lashkar-e Jangvi and Lashkar-e Taiba, both closely affiliated with the ISI. Then, in June 2016, Omar Mateen, who identified himself as “an Islamic soldier” in talks with a crisis negotiator, opened fire inside the Orlando, FL Pulse nightclub, killing 49 people and leaving 53 wounded. Mateen, age 29, was a U.S. citizen, born in Queens, NYC to Afghan immigrant parents. At some point, Mateen had attended the Islamic Center of Ft. Pierce, whose imam, Syed Shafeeq Rahman, quickly after the shooting, named Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, a local leader of the Hamas-related Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), as the mosque’s new spokesman. Rahman, also a General Practitioner medical doctor, obtained his medical degree from the Ayub Medical College in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Finally, a brief mention must be made about the 2018 cybersecurity breach involving multiple Members of Congress. The Pakistani Awan brothers, who were given access to highly sensitive government information without a background check, were permitted to work remotely – from Pakistan – up to several months at a time, according to investigative reporter Luke Rosiak.

In summary, then, there are far too many Pakistani connections to jihadist attacks and operations, spanning many years, to ignore. Nevertheless, those connections would appear to be rarely noted and only perfunctorily investigated.  Certainly, in this most recent attack on the Texas synagogue, there must have been an extensive support network that conducted the pre-attack casing and surveillance, recruited and prepared Akram, and arranged for his travel to and within the U.S., his lodging, and provision of the funding and knowledge for how to purchase a gun on the street. Clearly, the Muslim Brotherhood/CAIR network in and around the Dallas-Ft. Worth area has been vocal in campaigns to get the Pakistan-born convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui released from prison. Siddiqui not only tried to kill U.S. personnel in Afghanistan in 2008, leading to her conviction on terrorism charges in a 2010 Manhattan trial, but had been married to a nephew of Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who remarked on her “obsession” with jihad. Educated at MIT, Siddiqui earned a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University in 2001, before returning to southwest Asia in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. She is serving her sentence at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell, Ft. Worth, located some 24 miles from the Congregation Beth Israel. Note: This does not automatically mean that CAIR was involved in the synagogue attack, but rather that it shares Akram’s antisemitic animus and purpose in obtaining Siddiqui’s release from prison.

This analysis is offered in the interests of encouraging the situational awareness of faith communities, law enforcement, and national-level security agencies alike. Comments such as that made by FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno at a press conference following the end of the hostage crisis attest to the critical need for such education. Although roundly criticized later, that evening, DeSarno said that the “hostage taker was specifically focused on an issue not directly connected to the Jewish community” and added that there was “no immediate indication that the man had was part of any broader plan”.

The fact that UK police and counterterrorism officials are assisting their U.S. counterparts in the investigation does indicate that the overall investigation extends internationally. At the same time, comments such as made by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Sunday 16 Jan 22, who said that it was “too soon to tell” if the Texas synagogue hostage situation was part of a “broader extremist threat” and that they were looking into “what this person’s motives were and whether or not there are any further connections” demonstrate just how far we yet have to go.

COLUMN BY

Clare M. Lopez is the Founder/President of Lopez Liberty LLC and serves as a senior advisory board member for the Near East Center for Strategic Engagement (NEC-SE).

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Homeland Security Whistleblower: 10 Jarring Revelations

A new book by Dept.of Homeland Security whistleblower Philip Haney is filled with first-hand testimony that will make your mouth drop.

A new book by Department of Homeland Security whistleblower Philip Haney, titled See Something Say Nothing, is filled with first-hand testimony that will make your mouth drop.

If you read the Clarion Project, then you’re aware of how U.S. governments, Democrats and Republicans, have tried to accommodate Islamism and political correctness. This book shows that it’s even worse than we thought.

A little background: Haney’s research on Islamist movements—rather than a narrow focus on membership in proscribed terrorist organizations derived from such movements– won the respect of his peers, many of whom are quoted in the book.

Haney was commended for identifying over 300 possible terrorist suspects and working on important and complex counter-terrorism cases. He and 10 colleagues were honored by a FBI Special Agent-in-Charge for proactively contributing to 98 FBI investigations, identifying 67 individuals engaged in suspicion activity who were previously known to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and identifying 24 persons of interest.

He developed a database of 185 Islamist terrorist groups in 81 countries and associated Islamist movements, believing that we need to “connect the dots” between the movements and radicalization, instead of only “connecting the dots” between individual jihadist operatives.

Here are 10 jarring revelations from DHS whistleblower Philip Haney’s new book:

Investigations into Islamist movements like the Tablighi Jamaat and Muslim Brotherhood were stopped by the federal government in the name of religious liberties.

The National Targeting Center investigation into the Tablighi Jamaat networks resulted in over 1,200 law enforcement actions, such as denial of visas to Jamaat members who wanted to enter the country. Then the State Department Civil Rights Division intervened.

“We know that members of the Tablighi Jamaat are fundamentalists, but they’re not terrorists,” Haney recalls a State Department representative informing him and his colleagues.

They informed the State Department official that its own consular officers were rejected three out of four Tablighi Jamaat-affiliated visa applications because of security concerns. That soon came to an end.

The same story happened with the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the fact that the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas are an intertwined network, as shown by the Justice Department in the trial of a Brotherhood front (Holy Land Foundation) for financing Hamas.

The hard work of the investigations was not only stopped; it was thrown out. Haney was ordered to delete over 800 records related to Islamist extremists.

Haney calls it the “great purge” and counter-terrorism personnel unconnected to him have also talked about databases related to Islamist extremist movements being cleansed.

Thanks to the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, a narrow focus on illegal activity in support of banned terrorist organizations took hold. The DHS deemed that data collection related to permitted Islamist movements like Tablighi Jamaat and Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to religious freedom and must be deleted in order to prevent profiling.

The deleted files may have prevented the “underwear” bomb plot, the Boston bombings and the San Bernardino attacks.

Haney’s story, along with copious amounts of other evidence, proves the worthiness of targeting the “radicalizer” (Islamist movements) and not just the radicalized (the jihadist terrorist). Underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Tsarnaev brothers, and San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik all associated with Islamist movements and institutions that were investigated by Haney and his colleagues. Had they continued, it is likely that they would have been denied visas into the U.S. and/or been put under surveillance.. He was exonerated each time.

When one of their own acclaimed experts offered to explain Islamism and its networks, the higher-ups didn’t even reply.

This is a bipartisan problem, as Haney can attest to. He saw the problems develop starting in 2006 under the Bush Administration with each year getting progressively worse. When the Department of Homeland Security began adopting politically-correct language that avoided the ideology, setting a precedent that the Obama Administration would later intensify, Haney offered to explain the ideology and his concerns to his supervisors and anyone who would listen. No one replied.

DHS even rejected the FBI’s request to use him for investigating a Muslim Brotherhood front.

Haney wasn’t just stopped from pursuing his investigations within Customs and Border Protection (which is part of DHS), his supervisors even stopped him from helping the FBI in regards to a Brotherhood front. He was not even told whether they replied to the FBI agent’s request for his help.

Senior officials intervened to let Islamists fly into the U.S. against the advice of their own personnel.

In addition to the changed attitude towards letting Tablighi Jamaat members into the U.S., the federal government also granted entry to terror-linked Muslim Brotherhood activist Jamal Badawi. Customs and Border Patrol had even prepared a dossier making the case against letting him.

Badawi’s complaints about receiving secondary inspections when traveling to the U.S. and lawsuit worked. The Brotherhood/Hamas-linked activist was allowed to enter the U.S. to speak at a Brotherhood/Hamas-linked organization’s conference.

Six individuals affiliated with Muslim Brotherhood fronts helped craft the Obama Administration’s Countering Violent Extremism approach to counter-terrorism.

The result, as you might have expected, was Islamist-friendly training guidelines; ones that even excluded “Muslim reformers” as trainers. You can read more the Clarion Project’s review of these guidelines and the personnel responsible here. Most recently, the Obama Administration picked an activist linked to a Brotherhood front as its liaison to the Muslim-American community.

Haney documented over 50 meetings between members of the executive and legislative branches and members of organizations identified by the U.S. government as Muslim Brotherhood fronts between 1998 and 2009.

There has been little, or no, controversy when members of the federal government, including members of Congress and the White House, meet and consult with Islamist groups that the Justice Department has labeled as Brotherhood entities and unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism financing. But when an opponent of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood teaches law enforcement, that’s a different story.

Islamist political pressure and lawfare works.

You can read Haney’s book for story after story of Islamists using political pressure, provocation and lawsuits to bend U.S. government agencies to their demands, with the above example involving Jamal Badawi being only one. If the U.S. government caves from lawsuits and complaining, then what will happen in the future if these groups continue to become more powerful?

Haney was repeatedly disciplined and investigated for his approach in tackling Islamic extremism, which took on the Islamist ideology as well as the results of that ideology. He was exonerated each time.

If only the government were that hostile to Islamists and their apologists.

ABOUT RYAN MAURO:

Ryan Mauro is ClarionProject.org’s national security analyst, a fellow with Clarion Project and an adjunct professor of homeland security. Mauro is frequently interviewed on top-tier television and radio. Read more, contact or arrange a speaking engagement.

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DHS Whistleblower: We had information that would have prevented the Slaughter in San Bernardino!

Phillip Haney, former DHS counterterrorism intelligence expert was interviewed on Fox News, The Kelly File, Thursday night, December 10, 2015. He claimed his Intelligence Review Unit (IRU) had compiled information that identified a group of 300 potential jihadis involved with the Pakistani Deobandi Salafist movement including the Al Huda women’s Islamic Institute with schools in Pakistan, Canada and the US. We have written about Tashfeen Malik’s attendance at the Al- Huda madrassa in Multan, Pakistan. She had also allegedly been a supporter of the Imam of the extremist Red Mosque in Islamabad.  According to reports from CBC News, three girls and a woman who were students at the Al-Huda Islamic Institute in Mississauga, Ontario had left Canada endeavoring to join Isis in Syria.

Haney also tracked Deobandi Mosques here in the US including the Dar al Uloom Al Islamlyah-Amer in San Bernardino, California where Sayed Razwin Farook, Malik’s late husband and co-perpetrator of the massacre on December 2nd, had been a member. Haney alleges that his DHS IRU after receiving a commendation for its findings was asked by the State Department to cease its profiling of Islamic organizations. Haney claims that based on the information his IRU had compiled Farook would have been put on a no fly list and Ms. Malik would have been denied a K 1 fiancée Visa. We note that Haney says that because of State and civil rights group complaints the data was destroyed after funding of the surveillance program ended in 2012. Doubtless more will be forthcoming about Haney’s accusations.

philip haney

Phil Haney former DHS Intelligence Analyst.

A Fox News Insider Report on the Haney interview reported:

A former Homeland Security employee says he likely could have helped prevent the San Bernardino terror attack if the government had not pulled the plug on a surveillance program he was developing three years ago.

Philip Haney told Megyn Kelly that as part of his investigation, he was looking into a collection of global networks that were infiltrating radical Islamists into the U.S.

But a year into the investigation, Haney said they got a visit from the State Department and the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, who said that tracking these groups, was problematic because they were Islamic.

His investigation was shut down and 67 of his records were deleted, including one into an organization with ties to the mosque in Riverside, Calif., that San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook attended.

Haney explained that if his work was allowed to continue, it could possibly have thwarted last week’s attack.

“Either Syed would have been put on the no-fly list because association with that mosque, and/or the K-1 visa that his wife was given may have been denied because of his association with a known organization,” Haney explained.

Watch this Fox News Kelly File segment with DHS Whistleblower Haney:

A Daily Mail report provided further information on the scope of Haney’s IRU surveillance:

Speaking with Fox News on Thursday night, Haney explained that in the early 2000s he had been working in a passenger analysis unit at the Department of Homeland Security in Atlanta.

As part of his job, he was expected to investigate individuals and organizations with potential links to terrorism, so security services could monitor their movements into and out of the U.S.

Haney explained that he began investigating dozens of individuals with links to a fundamentalist Pakistani group called the Deobandi Movement, and its sub-groups al-Huda and Tablighi Jamaat.

He claims the groups were using the visa waiver program to move suspected radicalized individuals in and out of the U.S. and so he began tracking them, entering their details into a DHS database.

Eventually, his efforts were picked up by the National Targeting Center, an umbrella organization within the US Customs and Border Protection, and he was asked to work for them instead – focusing specifically on Deobandi, al-Huda and Tablighi Jamaat.

Haney says that, during the course of his investigation, he was given an award for identifying more than 300 potential terrorists with links to the groups.

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EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review. The featured image is of Philip B. Haney (center), former DHS special agent, on the Kelly File. Photo: Fox News.clear