Jihadi Du Jour: Indoctrination and Training Camps

The new US President, Barack Obama, hit the ground running. He wasted no timein making his first phone to a foreign dignitary, it was to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; his first major interview as the American President was on an Arab TV network; in spite of the UN preparing itself to try the murderers of Lebanon's Rafik Hariri, Obama dispatched Senator Kerry to woo Syria's Baby Assad and try to tear him away from under Iran's wings (fat chance!). In a few days, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be in Cairo where she will announce a $900,000,000 grant to help Gazans rebuild (under the aegis of Hamas, perhaps with the help of Mahmoud Abbas... if Hamas comes to some convenient temporary agreement with him!). At the same time, we in the US under Obama's direction are ready to import thousands of Gazans to our shores and give them a chance for a better life (even if that means turning to terror and/or preaching hatred of all things American.

Yet, the British daily Telegraph reports:

CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US

American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain.

They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.

Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.

A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain.

And a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama told The Sunday Telegraph that the CIA has stepped up its efforts in the last month after the Mumbai massacre laid bare the threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group behind the attacks, which has an extensive web of supporters in the UK.

The CIA has already spent 18 months developing a network of agents in Britain to combat al-Qaeda, unprecedented in size within the borders of such a close ally, according to intelligence sources in both London and Washington.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama, told The Sunday Telegraph: "The British Pakistani community is recognised as probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against North America.

"The American security establishment believes that danger continues and there's very intimate cooperation between our security services to monitor that." Mr Riedel, who served three presidents as a Middle East expert on the White House National Security Council, added: "President Obama's national security team are well aware that this is a serious threat."

The British official said: "The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources.

"Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented."

Explaining the increase in CIA activity over the past month, Mr Riedel added: "In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack the US and the UK intelligence services now have to regard Lashkar-e-Taiba as just as serious a threat to both of our countries as al-Qaeda. They have a much more extensive base among Pakistani Diaspora communities in the UK than al–Qaeda."

Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK and was instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, a British-born al-Qaeda operative implicated in a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic, who was tracked down and killed in a US missile strike in November.

But some US intelligence officers are irritated that valuable manpower and resources have been diverted to the UK. One former intelligence officer who does contract work for the CIA dismissed Britain as a "swamp" of jihadis.

Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, admitted in January that the Security Service alone does not have the resources to maintain surveillance on all its targets. "We don't have anything approaching comprehensive coverage," he said.

The dramatic escalation in CIA activity in the UK followed the exposure in August 2006 of Operation Overt, the alleged airline bomb plot.

The British intelligence official revealed that CIA chiefs sent more resources to the UK because they were not prepared to see American citizens die as a result of MI5's inability to keep tabs on all suspects, even though the Security Service successfully uncovered the plot.

Meanwhile, what does Britain do about this cancer within? How does it deal with the threat? Last Friday's Friday's Daily Mail reported:

Pupils as young as 11 are being encouraged to imagine the July 7 bombings from the perspective of the terrorists as part of citizenship lessons promoted by the Government.

Secondary schools are urged to set the exercise by a lesson pack showcased on an official website for teachers.

However after being alerted to the material last night, ministers admitted it was ‘misguided and inappropriate’ and said it would be withdrawn immediately from the Government’s Teachernet website.

Schools in areas including Calderdale in West Yorkshire, Birmingham, Sandwell and Lancashire are said to be using the material.

Several police forces are also said to have adopted it as part of programmes to promote community cohesion.

A section in the lesson pack deals directly with the July 7 bombings of 2005 in which 52 London commuters were killed and 700 people injured.

A suggested group exercise requires pupils to ‘prepare a brief presentation on the 7/7 bombings from the perspective of the bombers’. They are also asked to summarise the ‘reasons ... for the actions of the London bombers’.

The suggestion that children should be asked to empathise with the bombers caused concern among heads last night.

Chris McGovern, a headmaster and director of History Curriculum Association, said: ‘In my view, this is extremely dangerous. Asking pupils to empathise with terrorists may lead to sympathy, and sympathy begins to lead to justification.

‘You begin to glamorise it – it’s disastrous.

‘This shows how out of touch the education establishment is with the rest of society.’

The teaching pack, for pupils aged 11 to 19, was developed by the council in Calderdale. Three of the 7/7 bombers came from the West Yorkshire area.

It is used in West Yorkshire madrassas and mosques, the Times Educational Supplement reported.

It had also been adopted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families as part of an online ‘toolkit’ to help teachers tackle extremism.

Last night a spokesman for the DCSF said ministers had decided to withdraw the material from the Teachernet site ‘as they believe it to be misguided and inappropriate’.

He said: ‘It’s important young people discuss these difficult and controversial issues in a controlled environment but, in this case, ministers apologise for any offence caused.’

Don Rowe, of the Citizenship Foundation, said he doubted if many teachers would wish to broach the ‘complicated’ issue.

‘I certainly wouldn’t expect anyone who wasn’t confident in this area to barge in with this sort of material,’ he said.

Explaining the materials, Sail Suleman, Calderdale’s hate crime co-ordinator and author of the pack, said: ‘Why do young people go out and do what the bombers did? Was it pressure from individuals they were hanging out with?

‘Hopefully, we’ll encourage pupils to stay away from those individuals.’

‘Hopefully, we’ll encourage pupils to stay away from those individuals.’ Riiiight! Mr Suleman sounds very convincing, don't you think so, gentle reader?!?!? Perhaps his attitude will explain this:

Some Islamic schools are promoting fundamentalist views and encouraging children to despise Western society, a report warns.

An investigation by the Civitas social policy think-tank found websites of some of the UK’s 166 Muslim schools are spreading extreme teachings, while a handful had links to sites promoting jihad, or holy war.

Examples include web forums forbidding Muslims from reading Harry Potter books, playing chess or cricket and listening to Western music.

The Civitas report, entitled Music, Chess and Other Sins, claims Ofsted inspectors are incapable of scrutinising Muslim faith schools properly, and demands an inquiry by MPs.

Many of the websites featured in the report were shut down or edited in the hours before it was published.

Islamic schools educate thousands of Muslim children. Most operate in the private sector although increasing numbers are seeking state funding.

Some Islamic schools are promoting fundamentalist views and encouraging children to despise Western society... Most operate in the private sector although increasing numbers are seeking state funding. I am not in any way, shape, or form, opposed to private religious schooling. I raised five kids who attended private Jewish religious schools and grew up to be successful professionals with families of their own. While I would not have minded some property tax relief , it never occurred to me or any parents I knew, or to any member of the schools' administrations to seek government funding. It would have been unfair, to say the least, and against separation of Church and state. None of the schools ever taught my kids and now their kids to despise Western society either. They are well integrated, and while proudly Jewish, they are are first and foremost Americans! By the way, you can believe when I tell that more than once my wife and I had to forego or at least compromise on some vacation and many other plans or paying for the schools would have been very hard, if not impossible. So why did we do it? We felt it was important for our children! Do these Muslim parents not feel it is important enough to sacrifice for their children? Or are their children to be raised as sacrifices to Allah, at taxpayers expense?!?!?!?

In a clear signal of their true spirit of dhimmitude, the European Court of Human Rights has awarded £2,500 to al-Qaeda’s European envoy:

HATE preacher Abu Qatada was today awarded £2,500 compensation after judges ruled his detention without trial in the UK breached his human rights.

Yesterday Qatada— dubbed al-Qaeda’s European envoy — lost the latest round of his UK legal battle to stay in Britain.

But 24 hours later he won a separate case in the European Court of Human Rights that his detention violated the Human Rights Convention.

Attacks
He was held under anti-terror laws introduced by the Government after the 2001 attacks on America.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said today of the ruling: “This decision will horrify most reasonable people in the UK. TheSun
“It shows just how incompetent the Government has been at managing the problem of preachers of hate and, frankly, it makes a mockery of the concept of human rights if we can’t protect ourselves against people who are out to destroy our society.”

Do you remember, gentle reader, when a couple of weeks ago the UK's Jacqui Smith refused to allow Geert Wilders into Britain to speak before the House of Lords? It seems that in the interest of multiculturism she's been contemplating allowing a known anti western Muslim extremist into the UK:

Jacqui Smith was tonight warned against exercising 'double standards' as an Islamic extremist prepared to travel to the UK.

Ibrahim Moussawi, a known hardliner with links to Hezbollah, has been invited to speak at a London university.

But the Home Secretary is under pressure to refuse an entry visa to Moussawi, who has allegedly described Jews as 'a lesion on the forehead of history'.

Earlier this month, she banned the far-Right Dutch MP Geert Wilders from coming to Britain to show his film about Islam as it would threaten 'community harmony'.

But the Conservatives warned that to ban those who threaten community harmony, while letting in those who glorify terrorism or are part of terrorist groups, would send out the 'wrong message'.

There must be 'no double standards on extremists', warned Tory security spokesman Baroness Neville-Jones.

Moussawi, who has already made at least two trips to the UK, has been invited to speak on political Islam at the School of Oriental and African Studies next month.

Editor for the newspaper of Lebanon-based terrorist organisation Hezbollah, he is a former political editor of the Iranian-backed group's TV station, which is banned in many countries including France, Spain and the U.S, as its output is seen as anti-Semitic.

Despite his background he has twice been allowed to speak publicly in Britain by the Home Office, once in December 2007 and again in February 2008.

Yesterday, in a letter to Miss Smith, Baroness Neville-Jones said: 'You will be aware that Mr Moussawi has links to Hezbollah, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation in many countries.

'Mr Moussawi has also, over the years, made a number of remarks that are extremist, anti-Semitic and inflammatory. In October last year you introduced what you described as "tough new measures" to deny entry to extremists.

'These measures included "creating a presumption in favour of exclusion in respect of all those who have engaged in fostering, encouraging or spreading extremism and hatred". Mr Moussawi has so engaged.

'In line with your "tough new measures", I trust that if Mr Moussawi applies for entry, you will use your powers to exclude him.'

Home Office sources said Moussawi's visa application had not yet been received, but would be studied closely.

A spokesman said: 'The Government opposes extremism in all its forms. We are determined to prevent individuals coming to the UK who want to spread extremism or hatred in our communities.

'Exclusion decisions are based on hard evidence not hearsay, and are targeted at those who seek to stir up tension and provoke others to violence regardless of their origins and beliefs.'

The problem of children's indoctrination, however, is not merely a British problem, such practices to some degree or another are slowly being introduced throughout Europe and in the US, (aside from that .pdf document in the last link, you can also see a different report here) in the interest of multiculturalism Islamic indoctrination. Over at Islam in Europe, you can watch a BBC show on Islamic extremists in Britain, other videos give a far, far, worse picture of the stark new reality...

Lest you think that whatever may be happening over in the UK and elsewhere in Europe is merely a European problem perhaps much smaller over here on our shores, let me disabuse you of such mistaken notions. It's happening right here, among us, in some city near you!

The question, therefore, remains... shall we sit quietly by and acquiesce? Shall we occasionally throw a piece or two to this crocodile hoping we'll be the last to be swallowed up?!?!?

Chaim

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Crossposted at: Freedom's Cost