The Jihadist Next Door

[Guest SUNTZU]

Long read, but interesting.

The Jihadist Next Door - NYTimes.com

ON A WARM, cloudy day in the fall of 1999, the town of Daphne, Ala., stirred to life. The high-school band came pounding down Main Street, past the post office and the library and Christ the King Church.

Trumpeters in gold-tasseled coats tipped their horns to the sky, heralding the arrival of teenage demigods. The star quarterback and his teammates came first in the parade, followed by the homecoming queen and her court. Behind them, on a float bearing leaders of the student government, a giddy mop-haired kid tossed candy to the crowd.

Omar Hammami had every right to flash his magnetic smile. He had just been elected president of his sophomore class. He was dating a luminous blonde, one of the most sought-after girls in school. He was a star in the gifted-student program, with visions of becoming a surgeon. For a 15-year-old, he had remarkable charisma.

Despite the name he acquired from his father, an immigrant from Syria, Hammami was every bit as Alabaman as his mother, a warm, plain-spoken woman who sprinkles her conversation with blandishments like “sugar†and “darlin’.†Brought up a Southern Baptist, Omar went to Bible camp as a boy and sang “Away in a Manger†on Christmas Eve. As a teenager, his passions veered between Shakespeare and Kurt Cobain, soccer and Nintendo. In the thick of his adolescence, he was fearless, raucously funny, rebellious, contrarian. “It felt cool just to be with him,†his best friend at the time, Trey Gunter, said recently. “You knew he was going to be a leader.â€

A decade later, Hammami has fulfilled that promise in the most unimaginable way. Some 8,500 miles from Alabama, on the eastern edge of Africa, he has become a key figure in one of the world’s most ruthless Islamist insurgencies. That guerrilla army, known as the Shabab, is fighting to overthrow the fragile American-backed Somali government. The rebels are known for beheading political enemies, chopping off the hands of thieves and stoning women accused of adultery. With help from Al Qaeda, they have managed to turn Somalia into an ever more popular destination for jihadis from around the world.

More than 20 of those fighters have come from the United States, many of them young Somali-Americans from a gritty part of Minneapolis. But it is Hammami who has put a contemporary face on the Shabab’s medieval tactics. In a recent propaganda video viewed by thousands on YouTube, he is shown leading a platoon of gun-toting rebels as a soundtrack of jihadi rap plays in the background.

He is identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Mansoor Al-Amriki, “the American,†and speaks to the camera with a cool, almost eerie confidence. “We’re waiting for the enemy to come,†Hammami whispers, a smile crossing his face. Later he vows, “We’re going to kill all of them.â€

In the three years since Hammami made his way to Somalia, his ascent into the Shabab’s leadership has put him in a class of his own, according to United States law-enforcement and intelligence officials. While other American terror suspects have drawn greater publicity, Hammami exercises a more powerful role, commanding guerrilla forces in the field, organizing attacks and plotting strategy with Qaeda operatives, the officials said. He has also emerged as something of a jihadist icon, starring in a recruitment campaign that has helped draw hundreds of foreign fighters to Somalia. “To have an American citizen that has risen to this kind of a rank in a terrorist organization ­â€” we have not seen that before,†a senior American law-enforcement official said earlier this month.

Not long ago, the threat of American-bred terrorists seemed a distant one. Law-enforcement officials theorized that Muslims in the United States — by comparison with many of their European counterparts — were upwardly mobile, socially integrated and therefore less susceptible to radicalization. Perhaps the greatest proof of this came with the absence of domestic terrorist attacks following 9/11, a period that has brought Europe devastating homegrown hits in Madrid and London.

Lots more at the link above.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Good, if even from NYT:eek:

[molonlabetn]

Or, in other words: You can take the muslim out of the jihad, but you can't take the jihad out of the muslim...

[Raoul]

That was an interesting piece.

[Luckyforward]

Well written and thought provoking

[Krull]

[StPatrick]

"While Europe Slept" by Bruce Bawer. I can't recommend it enough, if you're interested in creeping militant Islam in western countries. It's a critical and apolitical look at the process of Islamization in Europe.

Mr. Bawer and I don't agree politically on many issues, but the book is a must-read. He and Mark Steyn are on the forefront of the issue of creeping Sharia, and the Islamists' use of western institutions against the institutions themselves. To boil it down in one quick sentence, "While Europe Slept" is a primer on how militants use our tolerance of their intolerance to further a radical anti-freedom political agenda.

[ShaunM]

Or, in other words: You can take the muslim out of the jihad, but you can't take the jihad out of the muslim...

It seems that way.