Turning on the Light

 
A reader I’ll call Stefanie contacted me after my initial post on Jamaat ul-Fuqra. She has been researching JF for a long time, and was glad to see someone else working on it. She has sent me a wealth of information, with numerous links. I am reproducing a series of her emails below, in the hope that readers will follow the links and start researching this evil group on their own.

Stefanie has not only researched Jamaat ul-Fuqra, she has talked to the FBI and Homeland Security and apprised them of what she has learned. This woman deserves a medal.

I’ve redacted her information to protect her identity. She lives in “Big State” which has a JF compound near “Small Town.” These disguises are not, however, a cover for Virginia; the same thing is happening in other states.

	10/9/05
	I’m excited to read your post on the Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia as I’ve researched the Muslims of the Americas compound here in Big State near Small Town (and Large Military Base). Sheik Gilani and his Al Fuqra jihadis are a shadowy, elusive and horrifying group who seem to operate under the radar. Big State Homeland Security and the FBI know about their compound and are keeping an eye on them. It was interesting to read in Who Killed Daniel Pearl? by Bernard-Henri Levy that Danny Pearl was looking for the sheik in Pakistan.
	10/10/05 5:36 PM
	Baron: Here’s a good link for Al Fuqra below. The Muslims of the Americas used to have a website with pictures of their shrine to Sheik Gilani and a few articles by him. I had captured it with Internet Researcher but it’s on my old hard-drive. I’ll try to find the harddrive or the link to the website for you. I also had electronic files captured on Al Fuqra but that hard drive crashed and I hadn’t backed it up. (Big Lesson!)
	Anyway tonight I’ll research as much as I can for other links. I’m afraid many of them have disappeared from the web. I’ll send you the information by e-mail as I don’t want to identify myself and these links in the comments section. I have presented information about this group and the Al-Qaeda connection in middle Big State to the FBI and Homeland Security and they knew most of what I knew and by the time the meeting was over, they knew everything.
	Thanks for your visit to enemy territory and reporting. I’ve been tempted to visit Small Town and snoop myself.
	Fact Bites on Al-Fuqra.
	10/10/05 8:33 PM
	I found my paper files! Now how much is still up on the web, I don’t know but will find out and pass on to you. Gilani/Jilani, etc. is the imam to watch. He’s always under the radar, but hanging with tyrants, greedy despots, barbarian psychopaths and just plain evil beings who seek to control us by fear, intimidation and death.
	From the horse’s mouth: Holy Islamville.
	10/10/05 9:20 PM
	I’m sure you’ve read 60 Minutes on Gilani but just in case: Sheik Gilani.
	The link for the Big State Newspaper article on the Small Town compound is gone but it was one of those post-9/11-naïve-but-informative pieces and mentioned Daniel Pearl, crimes of arson, racketeering, murder, then interviewed the locals: “they seem warm and compassionate” “We’ve had no trouble with them whatsoever.” Pleasant,” blah, blah. But the MOA turned away the reporter when he questioned them about their crimes.
	[…]
	From a Pakistani paper with a title I can’t type. “Gillani was in the jihadi business for money” by Mubasher Bukhari.
	The Islamic Center here is tied directly to Al Farouq mosque in Brooklyn, or Jihadi Central East. Al Farouq sent an imam (American born, schooled in Yemen and Saudi Arabia) down to set up a school for the kids… and teach them the real Islam, and he’s doing it. His running partner from the Muslim Brotherhood is a Ph.D. in Animal Toxicology and has trained in religious studies and is the point man for all the media, he’s the dawa coordinator, who runs around to all the mainstream churches saying they’re wrong, he and his religion are right, the Koran says so and calls us to Islam. Barf. But he has been bested many times. Did they tell him he was going to the buckle on the Bible belt to do his missionary work? I don’t think so.
	Ties Al Fuqra and Al Qaeda into a neat package: Strange Bedfellows.
	10/11/05
	Interesting tie-in, Al-Fuqra and the Brits. Do you know the status of Al-Fuqra in the United States?
	I’ve been interested in this group for years since they’re down the street, so to speak, from us. Seems like Al-Fuqra via Sheik Gilani has always been around the edges of nasty jihadi activity in the U.S. This group is the sheik’s very own army of criminals living among us. No wonder the crime rate has risen.
	From the Anti-Defamation League. Sorry I can’t get the link to work. “Muslims of the Americas: In Their Own Words” “Al-Fuqra Holy Warriors of Terrorism” (pdf) [Note: the links seem to work now – ed.]
	10/12/05
	By the way we’ve just had a new Homeland Security chief appointed who is retired from the FBI, terrorism expert, etc. and I hope he will be better than the last one. Gen. [Redacted] told our State legislators at a committee meeting that there was no sign of Al Qaeda in our state and things were just hunky dory. After seeing a blurb in our newspaper about this, I e-mailed the smartest of our state senators who happened to be head of the of the committee and told him that was a crock and I could prove it. Showed him my paper files and led through the Big State connections right to our city’s doorstep and he asked me to take my files to Homeland Security. HLS agreed with my conclusions and I asked them why they told the public a lie. They didn’t want to worry anyone or stir anything up they said. I told them they had insulted the intelligence and character of our citizens and they ought to be ashamed. So we’ll see what this new guy does.

They didn’t want to worry anyone or stir anything up.

Yes indeed. The regular folks, the poor stupid sheep who comprise the citizenry of the United States of America, are such frail hothouse flowers that they can’t bear to hear disturbing news about murderous thugs in their midst. Best let them go about their business in happy ignorance.

And when their children are taken hostage at school, when their spouses are blown up at work, when their neighbors are beheaded to make jihad videos — why, we’ll call the police and the FBI and Homeland Security, and they’ll find those bad people who did those terrible things, and then we’ll… bring them to justice.

Yeah, right.

The layers of bureaucratic officialdom that smother this country want us all to be good sheep, to stay in the pen and eat the grass and be content, and do what we’re told.

The sheep, though… Every once and a while the sheep stop going “Baa” and start yelling “Bah!” Annie Jacobsen stopped being a sheep when terrorists made a practice run during her airplane flight. She was told to sit down and shut up and let her betters take care of the situation, but she didn’t. Now she’s watching out, just like the rest of us should be.

And what about the Joel Hinrichs incident in Norman, Oklahoma? The FBI says, “Go back to sleep. Nothing going on here. No connection to terrorism. Guy just blew himself up, that’s all.” Baa.

But the sheepdogs look at the same thing and say, “If that’s the case, how did you manage to raid the gathering of Hinrichs’ Muslim friends within minutes after the bomb went off?” Bah!

The sad fact is this: no matter what they’re doing to prevent terrorist attacks, the authorities don’t want us to know what’s going on. For whatever reasons, for sinister conspiratorial reasons (if you’re the paranoid type) or for the normal bureaucratic let’s-screw-everything-up-as-much-as-we-can-and-then-cover-our-asses reasons, they don’t want us to have the information.

But I say: Let the light in. Turn over all the rocks. Expose as much as you can of what’s really going on. The more information we have, the better. And if you’re not happy with what you learn, do what Stefanie did.

To repeat her most important words: “I told them they had insulted the intelligence and character of our citizens and they ought to be ashamed.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Bah!


Update: Papa Bear has sent a correction on the Hinrichs information above:

Regarding the “within minutes”: according to an article posted to freerepublic.com, Hinrichs’ roommate went to a gathering of fellow Muslims around midnight, and he and the others were arrested within minutes of him leaving the apartment, not within minutes of the blast.