Islam in America Series: Part III | Homegrown Training and Islamic Training Camps

(First published in 2009)

Rumors of Islamic terrorist training camps operating within the United States and Canada have been making the rounds ever since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A new film is re-focusing attention on the subject, but authoritative proof of their existence – at least in the numbers being claimed – can be difficult to acquire.

The documentary, called “Homegrown Jihad: Terrorist Camps Around the U.S,” was produced by the Christian Action Network (CAN). The filmmakers claim that dozens of radical Muslim terrorist compounds currently exist across America, basing that claim upon a mysterious, untitled 2006 Regional Organized Crime Information Center report prepared for the Department of Justice marked “Dissemination Restricted to Law Enforcement.”

RightSideNews attempted to acquire a copy of this document, through both the Department of Justice and the Christian Action Network, without success (at press time.)

Ryan Mauro, the founder of WorldThreats.com, is also a national security researcher for the Christian Action Network; he explained to RightSideNews that the document “is not publicly available” and that CAN’s “copy is kept in a lockbox.”

CAN also acquired a copy of a confiscated terrorist training video called “Soldiers of Allah,” which features prominently in the new documentary. In the training video, Sheik Muburak Gilani, the founder of Jamaat ul-Fuqra (aka Muslims of America) declares, “We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.” The video, according to the  CAN press release, “teaches American students how to operate AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers, and machine guns; how to kidnap Americans and then kill them; how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations; and how to use mortars and explosives.”

The office of the Colorado Attorney General has been investigating Jamaat ul-Fuqra since 1989, after discovering that members of the community had defrauded the State of Colorado of approximately $350,000 in workers compensation and other benefits.

The investigation concluded that, at the time, there were approximately 30 different Jamaat communities in the United States, mostly in rural areas. Some of these communities have been designated “covert paramilitary training compounds.”

According to the Colorado Attorney General’s office:

“FUQRA or its members have been investigated for alleged terrorist acts including murder and arson in New York, Detroit, Philadelphia, Toronto, Denver, Los Angeles and Tucson. UL FUQRA is suspected of more than thirteen fire bombings and, at least, as many murders within the United States.”

Ryan Mauro provided RightSideNews with a list of Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s criminal activities dating back to 1979, when the group bombed a Hare Krishna temple in San Diego. Many of their crimes have targeted Hindus, and even other Muslims, presumably those not considered “orthodox” enough. In the 1990s, Jamaat ul-Fuqra turned its attention to American law enforcement and infrastructure, plotting to bomb sites such as New York FBI headquarters, and the Holland and Lincoln tunnels.

Significantly, the Federal Emergency Management Agency even linked Jamaat ul-Fuqra to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Despite this, says Ryan Mauro, Jamaat ul-Fuqra is still not listed as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization” by the State Department.

In an interview with RightSideNews, Mauro explained that “the authorities simply do not have the power to shut down the compounds. They are forced to prosecute each individual engaged in criminal and/or terrorist activity separately, rather than tackling the organization as a whole. The individual members living on these compounds are protected by the Constitution, and the compounds are privately owned, so there is no consistent police presence.”

Mauro says that Christian Action has developed model legislation designed to make it easier for authorities to search these compounds, but so far, not a single state legislature has passed such a bill.

“Such legislation wouldn’t permit the police to search your home if your neighbor is found guilty of terrorist activity,” says Mauro, “because this only applies to closed communities owned by one group. This would not permit the authorities to search different pieces of private property; just the entire amount of one individual piece of private property. After all, Sheikh Gilani and his Muslims of America’ front own the entire land so it isn’t a license to violate the rights of those unconnected.”

Yet civil libertarians’ concerns about unwarranted searches aren’t the biggest problem facing those who are trying to raise awareness of these compounds. Much of the evidence of their very existence has been discovered by independent investigators, published on websites rather than in the mainstream media, and is shadowed in secrecy. Unfortunately, this leaves the impression that these compounds may be no more real than Bigfoot, and can be dismissed as just another alarmist conspiracy theory.

Even when the evidence is irrefutable, the media and the American public seem reluctant to respond as one would expect. In recent years, for example, the “Fort Dix Six“ were convicted of conducting paramilitary training in the Pennsylvania Pocono Mountains; meanwhile, seven Muslim “extremists” were arrested in 2006 for planning attacks on the Sears Tower in Chicago and other targets.

It’s regrettable that it may take a successful “homegrown” terrorist attack of catastrophic proportions to force the authorities, the media and the general public to reveal the truth about these compounds.

Below are various links from Hezbollah cells in NC to Muslim Compounds in the USA

The next installment of this series of articles will explore the phenomenon of ‘lawfare’, in which radical Muslims use lawsuits, frivilous ‘human rights’ complaints and other tools to undermine America.
——————————

——————————————————————-

——————————————————————–

Link to the trailer for Homegrown Jihad

—————————
———————————————–
Kathy Shaidle blogs at FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new book, The Tyranny of Nice: How Canada crushes freedom in the name of human rights – and why it matters to Americans, features an introduction by Mark Steyn. Shaidle is also an advisor for the International Free Press Society.