ANWAR AL AWLAKI DEATH CULT

Kamran Pasha.Hollywood filmmaker, author of "Shadow of the Swords" and "Mother of the Believers"



Anwar Al-Awlaki: The Jim Jones of Islam

As a Muslim and an American, let me say this loudly and clearly --
Anwar al-Awlaki is a servant of evil and a traitor both to Islam and
to America. He is intent on misleading the world by spreading the lie
that Islam permits the killing of civilians. It does not.

Prophet Muhammad forbade the killing of non-combatants and reacted
with horror when he heard of civilian deaths on the battlefield. In
order to expound his own political agenda, Al-Awlaki is defaming the
Prophet and the global Muslim community, which rejects terrorism. And
in the process, he is revealing himself to be a modern Jim Jones -- a
narcissist creating a death cult.

In 1978, Jim Jones led 900 of his devoted followers to mass suicide by
forcing them to drink cyanide mixed in a fruit beverage. The term
"drinking the Kool-Aid" has since become synonymous with people who
blindly follow their leaders to their doom. And it is clear that
al-Awlaki's followers are very much drinking his brand of Kool-Aid.
Indeed, the alleged Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was
apparently a follower of al-Awlaki before he turned on his fellow
soldiers in an orgy of murder. Like Jim Jones, al-Awlaki has
remarkable charisma and uses it to lead his followers down a very dark
path.

I say all of this with great grief. Al-Awlaki was once a highly
regarded Muslim scholar who taught a message of peace and brotherhood.
But his story is like that of the archetypal villain of the movie Star
Wars -- Anakin Skywalker, a defender of justice, who devolves into
Darth Vader, a monster who cares only for his own twisted quest for
power.

I have never met al-Awlaki, but those who have tell me that in his
early days as a preacher, he espoused a moderate Islam based on
scholarship and appreciation for Muslim history. Yet after the
terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, al-Alwaki began to change. He began to see the
world in a binary "us versus them" outlook -- the hallmark of
fundamentalism. After being detained by the Yemeni government in 2006
(apparently under American pressure), he appears to have left his
moderate past behind him and embraced a dark vision of Islam at
perpetual war with America -- and became its most passionate scholarly
advocate.

Al-Awlaki's story could be dismissed as the sad tale of a good man who
became lost. And yet his personal moral decline has greater
consequences. For he built up a widespread and devoted following among
Muslims in his heyday and is now in a position to brainwash many of
his followers into following his own descent into darkness.

When I have publicly criticized al-Awlaki, I have received emails from
his devotees saying that he is being "set up" by the US government.
And yet when I ask them what they mean by this, there is always
pin-drop silence. His followers seem to want to believe that the good,
charismatic man that they adore is somehow being falsely portrayed in
the media as a villain as part of some PSY/OPS manipulation game. And
yet when I ask if someone else is posting his increasingly radical and
extremist sermons through his website (a CIA agent posing as
al-Awlaki, let's say), there is more silence. It is as if his
followers want to keep clinging to the man he once was and selectively
ignore his recent calls for the murder of civilians in the name of
Islam.

Like Jim Jones, a personality cult has formed around al-Awlaki. It is
a personality cult that is blinding his followers into a series of
non-sequiturs and conspiracy theories that allow them to overcome the
cognitive dissonance of reconciling the good scholar they once knew
with the deranged and hateful man he has become.

There is a word for that kind of personality cult in Islam: idolatry.
If there are any Muslims out there who believe that a man should be
followed unquestioningly, even when his words violate basic Islamic
teachings, then they have committed shirk, the worst sin in Islam:
ascribing a partner to God. They have given their devotion to a false
god, a fallible human being rather than the infallible Creator, the
Merciful and Compassionate, the Lord of the Worlds, whose moral
commandments cannot be rationalized away by men.

I was sickened and outraged by al-Awlaki's recent video, where he
rationalized terrorist plots to blow up airplanes, saying that the
deaths of civilians are just "a drop of water in the sea." Similar
rationalizations were used by pre-Islamic Arabs who practiced female
infanticide, burying their newborn baby daughters alive. Such innocent
lives were also simply "drops in the sea" for a pagan culture obsessed
with male progeny. But when the Holy Qur'an put an end to this
barbarism, it said that on the Day of Judgment, the innocent girls
will rise from their graves and confront their murderers, and God will
ask: "For what crime was she killed?" (Surah 81:8-9). And then the
murderers' excuses will vanish and they will be flung into Hell.

The God of the Qur'an is the God of life, of mercy, of justice, a God
that says "no soul shall bear the burden of another" (53:38) when
confronted with moral relativists who believe in "guilt by
association" and collective punishment.

If Muslims wish to find in their history a true example of a noble
warrior, they should turn away from this false teacher al-Awlaki and
look at the example of Saladin, the great Muslim leader who conquered
Jerusalem in 1187 C.E.

In my new novel, Shadow of the Swords, I show how, despite calls for
collective punishment against the Christians of Jerusalem for the
crimes of the Crusaders, Saladin showed mercy to the populace. He let
the Christian population remain unmolested and gave them freedom of
worship and pilgrimage to their holy sites. When Richard the Lionheart
led the Third Crusade to expel the Muslims, Saladin treated his enemy
with stunning generosity. When Richard fell ill, Saladin sent his
personal doctor to tend to the enemy king. When Richard's horse was
killed in battle, Saladin sent his personal horse to his adversary as
a gift.

Saladin's acts of honor and wisdom single-handedly shattered the
negative image that many Christians held of Muslims. And for this, he
is lauded by both Christian and Muslim historians as a true statesman
and moral leader.

I ask any follower of al-Awlaki: which is the greater example you wish
to be associated with? The example of your "teacher" who calls you to
turn into monsters without empathy? Or Saladin, who reminded the world
that Islam stood for justice and moral restraint, not barbarism and
rationalization of murder? If you have any hesitation about the right
answer here, then you have left your religion and become the very evil
that anti-Muslim bigots have long claimed Islam represents.

The confusion al-Awlaki has created among Muslims is in many ways far
more insidious than that of his fellow madman, Osama Bin Laden. For
Bin Laden does not claim to be -- and is not -- an Islamic scholar.
Bin Laden's calls for attacking the West are steeped not in Islamic
scholarship but in a rather crude "eye for an eye" philosophy that
says that because Americans are killing Muslim civilians, Muslims have
a right do the same in return to American civilians. Bin Laden has
little understanding of, or interest in, Islamic jurisprudence,
primarily because he finds its rules against murdering civilians to be
inconvenient. Therefore Bin Laden's appeal is really based on an
emotional bait-and-switch. Get Muslims riled up about all the
injustices they have experienced so that they follow him and don't ask
too many questions about the justice of his own movement.

But al-Awlaki's brand of evil is far more sinister. As a trained
Muslim scholar, he is an expert in perverting traditional Islamic
teachings with strange analogies that have no historical basis, such
as his self-serving argument that Americans elected and pay taxes to a
government that kills Muslims, so all Americans are complicit and are
lawful targets of revenge. Aside from the fact that this is a
nonsensical leap of logic, it ignores what Prophet Muhammad himself
did when faced with the opportunity for collectively punishing a
population for the crime of its leaders.

In my novel Mother of the Believers, I discuss how, when the Prophet
defeated Mecca, he was in a position to unleash vengeance on the city
that had driven him out and killed his family and friends. And yet the
Prophet, to his enemies' surprise, instituted a general amnesty and
not only forgave the general populace, which under al-Awlaki's
argument was complicit in Mecca's war against Islam, but also its
leadership that organized the war. The lords of Mecca -- including the
villainous queen Hind, who had cannibalized the Prophet's uncle as an
act of terror -- were forgiven and incorporated into the new Muslim
state as leading citizens.

So I ask the followers of al-Awlaki again: what vision of Islam do you
wish to follow? The false Islam of collective punishment claimed by
your "teacher"? Or the magnanimous Islam of mercy and wisdom lived by
Prophet Muhammad?

Al-Awlaki's credentials as a former religious scholar are troubling
and dangerous. But it should be noted clearly that al-Awlaki does not
represent the face of mainstream Muslim scholarship. In fact, in his
own country of Yemen, there is a remarkable Muslim scholar who has
dedicated his life to defeating extremism: Hamoud al-Hitar, a Yemeni
judge who deprograms terrorists by teaching them the truth about
Islam.

Judge al-Hitar is living proof of the power of true Islam to defeat
the false Islam of the extremists, of light to overpower darkness.
Al-Hitar works with the Yemeni government to counsel Muslim extremists
who have been brainwashed by men like al-Awlaki. He talks to them
about the Holy Qur'an and traditional Islamic law, and demonstrates to
them -- line by line, point by point -- why terrorism is a violation
of Islam's basic teachings. Remarkably, al-Hitar has deprogrammed over
300 extremists and is said to have even won over high-level Al-Qaeda
agents, who have repented and turned on their leaders.

Al-Hitar served as the basis of a character I wrote for an episode of
the Showtime television series Sleeper Cell. A clip from that episode
has been uploaded onto YouTube and has become a global phenomenon, for
it shows how a Muslim scholar like al-Hitar argues with -- and proves
wrong -- an al-Qaeda extremist.

I ask the followers of al-Awlaki to look at the clip and let the truth
of its arguments -- coming straight from the Holy Qur'an and the
teachings of Prophet Muhammad -- touch their hearts.

If you still prefer the false words of your "teacher" over the truth
of Islam's message of peace and beauty, then there is no more hope for
you than there was for the many misguided souls who followed Jim Jones
to their destruction.

With the forces of evil now cloaking themselves in the garb of
righteousness, there are two paths before the Muslim community. One of
light and one of darkness. And of this moment, the Holy Qur'an says:

"God is the Protector of those who have faith: from the depths of
darkness He will lead them forth into light. But of those who reject
faith, their patrons are the evil ones: from light they will lead them
forth into the depths of darkness. They will be companions of the
Fire, to dwell therein." (2:257)

My fellow Muslims, the choice between light and darkness is yours.

ANWAR AL AWLAKI & KILLING NON COMBATANTS

*** SO by this logic, who is responsible for the deaths during the 5 years the Mujahideen were fighting each other before the rise of the Taliban? How many thousands died?

And is it by this same logic that you justify the killing of Muslims - of Afghans - by bombing the market places frequented by women and children? How about attacking Muslims in the Masaajid and pronouncing kufr and nifaaq as if to say you do indeed see into the hearts of people? Is this what Muhammad (SallAllahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) did?

In the worst times - when battles raged - did he (Peace Be Upon Him) EVER slay his own people to advance his goals? Even ONCE did he (Peace Be Upon Him) do this? You and the likes of you have to answer for the blood of ALL innocent people - do you really feel that confident as if to say Allah has made you of the Ashra Mubasharah? Then meet your maker willingly and brazenly, Anwar. MS ***


FROM: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/world/middleeast/24awlaki.html?partner=rss&emc=rss


WASHINGTON — In a newly released video, Anwar al-Awlaki, the Muslim cleric believed to be an inspiration for a series of recent terrorism plots, justifies the mass killing of American civilians and taunts the authorities to come find him in Yemen.

Terrorism experts said on Sunday that the full video interview, excerpts of which had previously been released, shows an increasing radicalization by Mr. Awlaki, an American-born imam who this year became the first United States citizen to be placed on a Central Intelligence Agency list of terrorists approved as a target for killing.

In his remarks, Mr. Awlaki praises the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Northwest flight headed to Detroit.

“Those who could have been killed in that plane are a drop in the sea,” Mr. Awlaki said, in a translation provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors statements by jihadists. “And we should treat them the same way they treat us and attack them the same way they attack us.”

Mr. Awlaki has been on record defending attacks on American military targets, both overseas and within the United States. He has praised the Fort Hood, Tex., shootings, carried out in November by an Army psychiatrist with whom Mr. Awlaki had exchanged e-mail messages. But the new video shows that Mr. Awlaki is now urging his supporters not to distinguish between military and civilian targets, citing what he claims are “no less than a million women and children” who had been killed as a result of American military action in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Mr. Awlaki’s sermons have drawn followers in spots around the world. A senior administration official said on Sunday that it had become clear that Mr. Awlaki “is not just someone who seeks to inspire others to undertake murderous acts, but has been and continues to be operational in plans against our interests and against the homeland.”

The interview also shows how tight the collaboration has become between Mr. Awlaki and the Yemen-based group known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, said Richard Wachtel, a spokesman for the Middle East Media Research Institute, which also translated the remarks, which were released by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Qaeda leaders there recently released a statement defending Mr. Awlaki and offering him protection.

In the video, Mr. Awlaki said he had cut off telephone communications to avoid being detected.

“If the Americans want me, let them search for me,” he said. “Allah is the best protector.”

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made it clear on Sunday that the search for Mr. Awlaki was very much underway. “We are actively trying to find him and many others throughout the world that seek to do our country and to do our interests great harm,” Mr. Gibbs said on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.”

YEMEN TO TRY AWLAKI FOR TERRORISM

*** What makes Yemen qualified to hold ANY legally tenable prosecution let alone that of Awlaki? You call for Jihad against the U.S., you dispatch bombers and killers and then you wonder why they want you dead? How thin is the air down there anyway? Sheesh! MS ***

FROM: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6495GW20100510

Yemen will not hand over to Washington a militant Muslim cleric wanted dead or alive by U.S. authorities, but instead put him on trial if he is arrested, the Yemeni foreign minister was quoted on Monday as saying.

U.S. officials said in April President Barack Obama's administration had authorized operations to capture or kill U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki -- a leading figure linked to al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, which claimed responsibility for a failed bombing of a Detroit-bound plane in December.

"The man the U.S. wants to be extradited will stand trial in Yemen under the national law," the state news agency Saba quoted Foreign Minister Abubakr al-Qirbi as saying, referring to Awlaki, who is of Yemeni origin.

"Because of his recent terrorist activity, Awlaki is now wanted by the Yemeni government. Hence, he must be tried ... in his homeland but never by other governments," Qirbi was quoted as telling Kuwait's al-Dar newspaper.

Awlaki has said he had contacts with a Nigerian suspect in the attempted bombing of the transatlantic passenger plane and with a U.S. army psychiatrist accused of shooting dead 13 people at a military base in Texas in November.

In a resurgence of violence in northern Yemen, clashes between government forces and Shi'ite rebels forced the closure of a main road from the capital Sanaa to the northern city of Saada on Monday, a local official told Reuters.

In the south, where the government faces growing separatist unrest, one of two security men injured by a home-made bomb in a park died of his wounds, a defense ministry website said on Monday. No one was reported hurt by a second bomb that went off near a bank in the southern port of Aden on Sunday.

Armed separatists abducted three government soldiers to press for the release of fellow activists arrested in recent weeks, an official told Reuters.

Born in New Mexico, Awlaki led prayers at U.S. mosques. He returned to Yemen in 2004 where he taught at a university before he was arrested and imprisoned in 2006 for suspected links to al Qaeda and involvement in attacks.

Awlaki was released in December 2007 after he was said to have repented.

Western countries fear that al Qaeda's resurgent regional wing is exploiting instability in Yemen, an impoverished country bordering oil giant Saudi Arabia, to launch attacks in the region and beyond.

North and south Yemen united in 1990 but many in the south, where most of Yemen's oil facilities are located, complain northerners exploit the south's resources and discriminate against southern citizens. Officials deny the allegations.

AL AWLAKI AT IT AGAIN - CONFIRMS UNDERWEAR BOMBER HIS STUDENT

*** Strange logic: the American govt. is bad so we can punish the civilian population that voted them in? By that example, the ENTIRE Awlaki tribe should be bombed to bits because you are trying to actively bomb the Americans to bits. Sound right? Back to the laws of the tribal days - just like in the time of Jaahiliyyah - and you claim to advance Islam? You are taking it into a proverbial stone age that it shunned, remember? MS ***


FROM: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100204/world/ml_yemen_al_qaida

SAN'A, Yemen - A radical American-Yemeni Islamic cleric suspected of ties to al-Qaida has said the Nigerian accused in the failed Christmas airliner attack was his student but that he didn't tell him to carry out the operation, Al-Jazeera television reported.

The U.S.-born cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, is believed by U.S. officials to be working with al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen, which has claimed responsibility for planning the attempt to bomb an American passenger jet. Al-Awlaki also is known to have had contacts with the U.S. Army major accused in the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at the Fort Hood military base.

Yemeni officials have said they believe al-Awlaki met in Yemen with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused in the Christmas bombing.

Al-Awlaki, who is believed to be hiding in the remote mountains of Yemen, spoke in an interview with a Yemeni journalist who reported it to the Al-Jazeera Web site.

It was not clear when the interview took place or whether it took place in person. The journalist, one of the few said to have direct contacts with al-Awlaki, previously interviewed the cleric after the Fort Hood shooting.

"Brother mujahed Umar Farouk - may God relieve him - is one of my students, yes," al-Awlaki said in the interview, which Al-Jazeera reported on its Web site Tuesday. "We had kept in contact, but I didn't issue a fatwa to Umar Farouk for this operation," al-Awlaki was quoted as saying.

Al-Awlaki said he supported the Christmas attack, but it would have been better if the target was a U.S. military target or plane.

"I support what Umar Farouk did after seeing my brothers in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan being killed," he was quoted as saying. "If it was a military plane or a U.S. military target it would have been better...(but) the American people have participated in all the crimes of their government."

"Some 300 Americans are nothing compared to thousands Muslims they have killed," he said.

Al-Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents and who once preached in mosques in California and northern Virginia, moved to his ancestral hometown in Yemen in 2004. He has become popular among Islamic militant sympathizers for his English-language Internet sermons, in which he explains to young Muslims the philosophy of violent jihad and martyrdom against the West and its allied Muslim and Arab governments.

Al-Awlaki exchanged up to 20 emails with the alleged shooter in the Fort Hood attack, U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan months before it. Hasan initiated the contacts, seeking religious advice.

Yemeni officials have said they believe al-Awlaki met with Abdulmuttalab when the Nigerian was in Yemen late last year allegedly to study Arabic.

Yemeni security officials suspect he is involved in recruiting new members for al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen and in dealings between al-Qaida fighters and Yemeni tribes.

Yemen has attracted renewed and concerted international efforts to fight al-Qaida. Members of the group have increasingly found refuge in the many mountain ranges of Yemen, where the central government has little control and tribal loyalty is key.

U.S. and Yemen are increasingly co-operating to fight the terror network, with the U.S providing nearly $70 million in military aid, as well as intelligence support, this year.

ANWAR AWLAKI : IDEOLOGUE OF TERROR

FROM: http://www.jamestown.org/programs/gta/single/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=35908&cHash=60468b529e

The Radical Source for Non-Arabic Speaking Muslims: Anwar al-Awlaki
Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 8 Issue: 2
January 14, 2010 02:04 PM Age: 3 hrs

By: Murad Batal Al-shishani

Anwar al-Awlaki

In November 2001, an American Muslim cleric told the Washington Post that he had no sympathy for the perpetrators of 9/11, that Muslims and non-Muslims needed “more mutual understanding,” and that the Taliban had no right to impose the burqa on women (Washington Post, November 19, 2001). The cleric, Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, is the same man who is now believed to have played a major role in radicalizing Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. army psychiatrist who killed 13 American soldiers at Fort Hood last November, and 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to detonate explosives aboard an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.

In an exclusive interview, al-Awlaki told Yemeni journalist Abdulilah al-Sha’i (the only journalist to interview the leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir al-Wuhayshi), that Major Hasan contacted him on December 17, 2008, to inquire about the legitimacy of killing American soldiers and officers. Further correspondence discussed Shari’a-based justifications for killing Israeli civilians.

Al-Awlaki considered the Fort Hood attack a legitimate act of jihad as it was a military target and described Hasan’s attack as a “heroic act.” At the same time, al-Awlaki said that he has not recruited Hasan. “America did with its crimes and injustices” (al-Jazeera, December 23, 2009). A Yemeni official stated that Nigerian terror suspect Abdulmutallab met al-Awlaki in Shabawa, east of Sana'a. (AFP, January 7).

There is a huge difference between the moderate statements al-Awlaki made in the period between 2001-2002 and the radical views he has expressed since 2007. In the intervening period, al-Awlaki moved to Yemen, where he was banned from re-entering the United States and detained without charge in a Yemeni prison for over a year. Al-Awlaki believes he was imprisoned at the request of the United States, but describes his detention as “a chance to review the Quran and to study and read in a way that was impossible out of jail. My time in detention was a vacation from this world” (Interview with Infocusnews.net [Anaheim], September 17, 2008). The shaykh says he was interrogated in prison by the FBI about his connections to the 9/11 terrorists (Interview with cageprisoners.com, December 31, 2007).

After his release, al-Awlaki translated and summarized the works of Yusuf al-Ayiri, an al-Qaeda ideologist who was killed in a security operation in northern Saudi Arabia in 2003 (muslim.net, Jan 15, 2009; Asharq al-Awsat, April 30, 2007). He then went on to write the guide 44 Ways to Support Jihad, in which he says, "Jihad today is obligatory on every capable Muslim. So as a Muslim who wants to please Allah it is your duty to find ways to practice it and support it." The 44 ways of supporting jihad include giving the mujahideen money, praying for them, preserving their secrets, sponsoring their families, providing moral encouragement and urging others to join the jihad.

In the same book, al-Awlaki encourages followers to be "Internet mujahideen" by, among other things, "setting up websites to cover specific areas of jihad, such as: mujahideen news, Muslim POWs and jihad literature." Al-Awlaki also offers some advice to potential mujahideen: “Shaykh Abdullah Azzam used to say: ‘Luxury is the enemy of jihad.’ Jihad is difficult and demands sacrifice. Therefore avoiding the life of luxury removes some of the obstacles that may stand between a person and Jihad. You need to be able to sleep on the floor, eat food different than what your mother or wife cooks for you, use cold water for [ablutions] and not mind being unable to take a shower everyday.” The would-be jihadist is also advised to learn Arabic, he argues, saying, “Arabic is the international language of jihad. Most of the jihad literature is available only in Arabic and publishers are not willing to take the risk of translating it. The only ones who are spending the money and time translating jihad literature are the Western intelligence services…and too bad, they would not be willing to share it with you.” [1] The book was published on the shaykh’s blog, www.anwar-alawlaki.com, currently offline.

Furthermore, in a lecture entitled “Allah is Preparing us for Victory” (recommended reading by many jihadi forum contributors), al-Awlaki says, “Some Muslims say the way forward for this Ummah [community] is to distance itself from terrorism and spend their time in becoming good in business, good in technology, agriculture, and the rest; and this is how we can compete with the rest of the world. The Prophet of God (p.b.u.h) said that this is wrong and Allah will dishonor us if we do that” (salaattime.com, n.d.; see also muslim.net November 9, 2009).

Al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico in 1971, when his father, Nasser al-Awlaki, a former government minister before the 1994 unification of North and South Yemen, was studying there. Anwar spent his childhood in Yemen, returning to the United States in 1991 to obtain a BA in engineering from Colorado University and a Master’s degree in education from San Diego University. Al-Awlaki then served as Imam of a San Diego mosque, where he met Khaled al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, two of the 9/11 hijackers. In 2001 he became Imam of Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia, near Washington, before leaving the United States in 2002. His next stop was London before leaving for Yemen, where he spent 18 months in prison, for reasons that remain unclear (hanein.info, November 13, 2009; albidaweb.com, December 26, 2009). Currently he is based in Shabawa, east of Sana’a, and is associated with Shaykh Abdulmajeed Zandani’s al-Iman University. He is apparently living among his tribal relatives as he belongs to one of the largest tribes in southern Yemen. His relatives have warned against targeting him, saying it would escalate the tension the country is already experiencing instead of calming it down (albidaweb.com, December 26, 2009).

It is worth noting that al-Qaeda in the south of Yemen is uniquely combined with the tribal structure (explaining the protection al-Awlaki is being offered), but it is worth noting that al-Awlaki’s influence is greater among non-Arabic speakers. In Arabic language jihadi forums, Anwar al-Awlaki’s writings are very rare as most of them are in English and more Western-oriented. They are made available in different e-libraries and Islamic e-bookshops in the United States and the UK, where his radical views form a major resource for non-Arabic speaking Muslims, especially in the West.

ANWAR AWLAKI LINK TO BOMB ATTACK ATTEMPT

FROM: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-terror-intel31-2009dec31,0,5057893.story

Reporting from Washington - U.S. counter-terrorism agencies are investigating whether an American-born Islamic cleric who has risen to become a key figure in the Al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen played a role in the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing over Detroit, intelligence and law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Intercepts and other information point to connections between terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Anwar al Awlaki -- who also communicated with the accused U.S. Army gunman in last month's attack on Ft. Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead.

Some of the information about Awlaki comes from Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with attempting to detonate a hidden packet of PETN explosive aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day, the officials said.

Under questioning by the FBI, Abdulmutallab has said that he met with Awlaki and senior Al Qaeda members during an extended trip to Yemen this year, and that the cleric was involved in some elements of planning or preparing the attack and in providing religious justification for it, officials said.

Other intelligence linking Awlaki to Abdulmutallab became apparent after the attempted bombing, including communications intercepted by the National Security Agency indicating that the cleric was meeting with "a Nigerian" in preparation for some kind of operation, according to a U.S. intelligence official.

Intelligence analysts did not realize the importance of that piece of information at the time because the name of the Nigerian was not included and the information was vague and lost in a flood of threat information coming in, the intelligence official said.

Awlaki, 38, emerged as a subject of intense interest and concern to the U.S. government after the Sept. 11 attacks, when authorities discovered he had been a spiritual leader of several of the hijackers while preaching at mosques in San Diego and the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Born in New Mexico, Awlaki spent much of his life in the United States before moving to London to escape intense FBI scrutiny. He has been living in Yemen for at least five years, spending at least a year of it in custody.

Since his release, he has used Yemen as a safe haven from which to build his Internet site into a popular global forum to spread jihadist rhetoric and encourage attacks on Western interests.

The FBI has been investigating possible criminal charges against Awlaki stemming from his suspected attempts to spur extremists on to violence, including Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, an FBI official confirmed Wednesday.

But counter-terrorism officials say it was only recently that Awlaki forged close ties with the Yemen-based regional affiliate of Osama bin Laden's terrorism network, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

And he has done so at a time when the group has stepped up its terrorist operations against U.S. targets in the region and far outside it. On Monday the group claimed credit for training and equipping Abdulmutallab with military-grade explosives for his suicide bombing mission. U.S. officials quickly corroborated the claim.

The two officials and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation or the classified intelligence-gathering effort against Awlaki.

Evan Kohlmann, a government counter-terrorism consultant, said Awlaki had been providing fatwas, or Islamic decrees, endorsing attacks by Al Qaeda in Yemen and playing a central role in its recruitment efforts, logistics, strategy and communications.

More recently, he said, Awlaki has been instrumental in negotiating alliances between the Al Qaeda affiliate and powerful Yemeni tribes that protect it from government crackdowns.

U.S. authorities are alarmed by Awlaki's new role within the Al Qaeda affiliate not only because of those alliances and his influence on the Internet, but because of his familiarity with the United States, its customs and security measures, said the U.S. intelligence official.

"The concern is that now that they are more of a global threat, that he will use his knowledge of the United States to help them," the intelligence official said. "Everybody is looking at that, certainly everyone in the intelligence community."

The FBI official agreed, saying that while there is no reason to doubt them, Abdulmutallab's claims are now being investigated intensively by counter-terrorism authorities on three continents as part of their probes into the Christmas Day attack and the escalating threat of the Al Qaeda affiliate to U.S. interests worldwide.

"He's saying all this but we haven't determined all of it is true; whether [Awlaki] blessed it or gave the green light or was the impetus behind it," the FBI official said. "It's very possible and it's being investigated. But it's also possible he's saying it to give himself credibility" among militants who look up to Awlaki.

"What is certain," the FBI official added, "is that we share the concern about Awlaki's familiarity with the United States and the customs process, and that that could be something he's sharing with others. He is the main subject in a major counter-terrorism investigation, so obviously the FBI considers him to be a serious threat."

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), chair of the House intelligence subcommittee, said Awlaki's role in the Ft. Hood and Detroit cases raised serious concerns, as did his potential role in the regional Al Qaeda cell, which authorities say has direct links to Al Qaeda headquarters in Pakistan.

Harman said an airstrike last week against suspected Al Qaeda targets in Yemen may have killed Awlaki, but U.S. intelligence officials tell her they have not been able to confirm that. Some extremist websites have claimed that Awlaki is alive.

"Even if we were able to take him out last week, that doesn't solve our problem," Harman said. "There are others in Yemen who can do us great harm."

The disclosures about Awlaki came as Harman and other lawmakers intensified their demands for more information about whether U.S. agencies had enough intelligence to thwart Abdulmutallab before he boarded the aircraft. The plane and its nearly 300 passengers were saved only because his attempt to detonate the explosives failed and he was subdued by passengers and crew, President Obama said Tuesday.

Obama said "there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together," which would have allowed authorities to flag Abdulmutallab as he flew from Nigeria to Amsterdam and then Detroit.

Two ranking House Republicans sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano with a list of 12 questions that they said needed to be answered. Many focused on suspected lapses in information-sharing.

The lawmakers also want a report on what actions were taken by the CIA and other intelligence agencies after Abdulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria in mid-November with concerns about his son's radical extremism and ties to militants in Yemen.

In the Senate, a senior congressional official briefed on the U.S. intelligence community's handling of the case said that the CIA did take appropriate steps to disseminate the information provided by Abdulmutallab's father, but that there were growing concerns about how aggressively the information was investigated.

"I don't see this as an information-sharing problem as much as not acting on information with enough urgency," the official said. "Information can be available but it may not be acted on unless it meets certain thresholds. What does it take, how much information is needed, until action is taken?"

FT. HOOD and the TORONTO 18

The Fort Hood massacre & “Toronto 18” connection
By Doug Hagmann Tuesday, December 15, 2009

SOURCE: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/17969

There is a direct connection between the Islamic terrorist attack at Fort Hood to the members of the so-called “Toronto 18,” an Islamic terrorist cell broken up by counter-terrorism authorities in 2006. That nexus is Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (a/k/a Aulaqi), the former Imam of the Dar al Hijrah Mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. Al Awlaki privately counseled at least three of the 9/11 terrorists in the months prior to 9/11, and was found to be in contact with Nidal Malik HASAN, the Muslim terrorist who murdered 14 Americans (including one unborn child) at Fort Hood on November 7, 2009 in the weeks and months leading up to that attack.

The convoluted relationship of terror suspects also involves two Muslim Americans who embarked on a week-long trip to meet with Canadian terror suspects in a March 2005 “Islamic terror summit” in Toronto, Ontario. Both were sentenced last week to lengthy prison terms for their planning terrorist attacks, and the recruitment and training of others.

On 20 July 2006, Canada Free Press & the Northeast Intelligence Network were the first to report that two terror suspects from the U.S., Syed Haris AHMED and Ehsanul SADEQUEE met with other subjects of ongoing counter-terrorism investigation in Toronto, Ontario “to engage in activities in support of violent jihad.” They met with several members of the group subsequently dubbed the “Toronto 18” as first reported in this CFP June 4, 2006 exclusive. The “Toronto 18” were originally charged with plotting to engage in various terrorism acts including the importation of weapons, plotting various bombings and assassinations, and other acts of terrorism against public officials and facilities in Ontario.

Yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department announced that Syed Haris AHMED, convicted in June of conspiring to support terrorism in the US and abroad was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge William S. Duffey, Jr. to 13 years in prison followed by 30 years of probation. SADEQUEE, who was convicted on August 12, 2009, was sentenced to 17 years in prison followed by 30 years of supervised release.

ANWAR AWLAKI OR MUHAMMAD?

Anwar Awlaki is acting contrary to the example of the Prophet of God - as is every single one who thinks by rebellion and war alone, will Muslims gain dignity, honour and power.

For CENTURIES, Muslim theologians were also the scholars of philosophy, medicine, sociology and so on. Today, only a handful of (traditionally-trained) Muslim scholars can engage the works of Plato and Aristotle. Heck, some say to even learn philosophy is blasphemy - and they have the decapitated heads to prove it.

I agree we should go back into the Golden Age of Islam but that supposes we are masters of knowledge, faithful to God and respectful of all humanity. Peace, Justice - this is what Islam calls for. Jihad was supposed to be a means to an end - not the very goal we strive for. But what would Allah know about that right?

For CENTURIES, Christians, Jews and Muslims lived in peace and harmony and created an environment in which great learning spread through the lands. Jewish linguists took great benefit from the scholars of Arabic language. Christians took back with them, the very philosophical foundations of the Enlightenment (all of the major Enlightenment scholars are post Muslim Spain).

Today, this environment is found only in the West we love to condemn. True, it has its failings but that is a part of the human experience. Stop trying to push this idea of a magical, Islam-land in which everyone is like the Sahaba. That is NOT the reality.

These great things that Muslims achieved in those centuries was a direct result of what Islam taught them. The Crusades were not called for by Muslims and every historical account shows Muslims acted far more justly than the Christian Crusaders. Need we cite the magnanimity of Salahuddin Al Ayyubi during this period? We look to him only as a General who routed the Christians and recaptured Jerusalem yet we forget HOW he did it: high moral ground folks. Richard the Lionheart was most impressed with him. Read about the Knights Templar and how much respect they had for their Muslim opponents. THOSE were days of chivalry and honour - today, we put cooking pots with explosives in it - blow up 10 Muslims to kill one Infidel and we call it Jihad?! How about you FEED the people with those pots? Crazy idea, I know.

Let's go right back to the originator of the Great Example: after years of torture and persecution by the pagan Arabs, and even after he was in a position of superiority over them, what did Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) do when he returned victorious to Mecca?

Did he slay everyone? Did he kill their children? Destroy their crops? Their buildings? The stables for their animals? Did he then go on a killing spree of every non Muslim?

"Go - you are free" is what everyone knows from the reliable Islamic sources. He gave amnesty to one of his worst enemies, Abu Sufyan.

Now you know why he was called Mercy to the Worlds - why his number one quality was trustworthiness and not deception, honesty not propaganda, love not hate.

Today, so-called "Shuyukh" like Anwar al-Awlaki feed Muslim minds with emotion; with ideas that sound very Islamic but are totally against the example of our human role model. Teaching our youth to go and fight instead of making something in which ALL people in the world can benefit. Where are our masters of science? Where are those wonders of poetry, of math, of trade?

They blew themselves up yesterday in Jihad - they were still only in their 20's. You are sending boys to be killed for only one reason: you are not man enough yourself.

Anwar Awlaki, I ask you: how do you think Ft. Hood's attack benefits the Deen of Allah? How does peace come upon the earth by these actions? There are millions of us living in the West who have this crazy idea that people should come to know Allah - Who He is and what He expects from us, "..in a way that is kind and just".

Anwar Awlaki: Repent and reflect on the error of this death-cult of perpetual jihad against everyone, everywhere, at all times by self-righteousness labels of who is a murtad, a munafiq and a kafir as if Hudhayfah Ibn Al Yaman's list is in your hands.

You prevent people from knowing Allah and that is a crime I find you guilty of.

TAKE HIM AWAY!


*** As of Dec.17, 2009, reports indicating Anwar Awlaki has been killed by a drone strike are premature. MS ***