Mark Steyn - America Alone

So we have a global terrorist movement insulated within a global political project insulated within a severely self-segregating religion whose adherents are the fastest-growing demographic in the developed world. The jihad thus has a very potent brand inside a highly dispersed and very decentralized network much more efficient than anything the CIA can muster. And these fellows can hide in plain sight. As the Times of London reported in 2006: An American al Qaeda operative who was a close associate of the leader of the July 7 bombers was recruited at a New York mosque that British militants helped to run. British radicals regularly travelled to the Masjid Fatima Islamic Centre, in Queens, to organise sending American volunteers to jihadi training camps in Pakistan. Investigators reportedly found that Mohammad Sidique Khan had made calls to the mosque last year in the months before he led the terrorist attack on London that killed 52 innocent people.

Mohammad Junaid Babar, one recruit from the Masjid Fatima Islamic Centre, has told US intelligence officials that he met Khan in a jihadi training camp in Pakistan in July 2003. He claims that the pair became friends as they studied how to assemble explosive devices. Babar, 31, a computer programmer, says that it was at the Masjid Fatima centre that he became a radical.

And so it goes. The mosques are recruiters for the jihad and play an important role in ideological subordination and cell discipline. In globalization terms, that’s a perfect model. Unlike the Soviets, it’s a franchise business rather than owner-operated; the Commies had “deep sleepers” who had to be “controlled” in a very hierarchical chain. But who needs that with Islam? Not long after September 11, I said, just as an aside, that these days whenever something goofy turns up on the news chances are it involves some fellow called Mohammed. It was a throwaway line, but if you want to compile chapter and verse, you can add to the list every week.

A plane flies into the World Trade Center? Mohammed Atta.

A sniper starts killing gas station customers around Washington, D.C.? John Allen Muhammed.

A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri.

A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet.

A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed.

A British subject self-detonates in a Tel Aviv bar? Asif Mohammed Hanif. A terrorist cell bombs the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania? Ali Mohamed. A gang rapist preys on the women of Sydney? Mohammed Skaf.

A group of Dearborn, Michigan, men charged with cigarette racketeering in order to fund Hezbollah? Fadi Mohamad-Musbah Hammoud, Mohammed Fawzi Zeidan, and Imad Mohamad-Musbah Hammoud.

A Canadian terror cell is arrested for plotting to bomb Ottawa and behead the prime minister? Mohammed Dirie, Amin Mohamed Durrani, and Yasim Abdi Mohamed.

These last three represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society, according to Mike McDonnell, assistant commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and a man who must have aced Sensitivity Training class. To the casual observer, the broad strata would seem to be a very singular stratum: in their first appearance in court, all twelve men arrested in that Ontario plot requested the Koran.

When I made my observation about multiple Mohammeds in the news, Merle Ricklefs, a professor at the National University of Singapore and South-East Asian editor of the sixteen-volume Encyclopedia of Islam, remarked sarcastically, “Deep thinking, indeed.” Well, gosh, maybe it’s not terribly sophisticated. But then again, when you’re dealing with fellows who decapitate female aid workers in Iraq and engage in mass slaughter of Russian schoolchildren, maybe sophistication isn’t always helpful. Particularly when sophistication seems mostly to be a form of obfuscation by experts wedded to the notion that Islam is something that simply can’t be understood unless you’ve read all sixteen volumes of their Encyclopedia, or, better yet, written them. For those of us who aren’t professors of Islamic studies, the obvious course is to step back and try to work from first principles: What’s happening? Who’s doing it? The five-thousand-guysnamed-Mo routine meets the “reasonable man” test: it’s the first thing an averagely well-informed person who’s not a multiculti apologist notices — here’s the evening news and here comes another Mohammed. Sophisticates object that very few of the Mohammeds on the list above are formal agents of al Qaeda. But so what? There are no “card-carrying members” of this enemy: that’s what makes them an ever bigger threat. You don’t need to plant sleepers. The September 11 fellows were an official al Qaeda cell, Richard Reid the shoe-bomber had some loose al Qaeda connections, the Washington snipers and the LAX murderer were just ideological sympathizers who woke up one morning and decided to take a crack at freelance jihadism. If you’ve got a big pool of manpower and a big idea that’s just out there all the time — 24/7, flickering away invitingly like a neon sign in the Western darkness — that’s enough to cause a big heap of trouble. As I mentioned earlier, Mohammed is the most popular boy’s name in Brussels and Amsterdam and many other places, so evidently only a tiny proportion of Mohammeds kill and bomb and fly planes into skyscrapers. Nonetheless, as a point of fact, Mohammed is:

(a) the most popular baby boy’s name in much of the Western world

(b) the most common name for terrorists and murderers

(c) the name of the revered Prophet of the West’s fastest-growing religion It’s at the intersection of these statistics — religious, demographic, terrorist — that a dark future awaits.

One further point: there are minimal degrees of separation between all these Mohammeds and the most eminent figures in the Muslim world and the critical institutions at the heart of the West. For example, in 2003, Abdurahman Alamoudi was jailed for attempting to launder money from a Libyan terror-front “charity” into Syria via London. Who’s Abdurahman Alamoudi? He’s the guy who until 1998 certified Muslim chaplains for the United States military, under the aegis of his Saudi-funded American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. In 1993, at an American military base, at a ceremony to install the first imam in the nation’s armed forces, it was Mr. Alamoudi who presented him with his new insignia of a silver crescent star.

He’s also the fellow who helped devise the three-week Islamic awareness course in California public schools, in the course of which students adopt Muslim names, wear Islamic garb, give up candy and TV for Ramadan, memorize suras from the Koran, learn that “jihad” means “internal personal struggle,” profess the Muslim faith, and recite prayers that begin

“In the name of Allah,” etc. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — the same court that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of the words “under God” — decided in this case that making seventh graders play Muslim for two weeks was perfectly fine, just an interesting exposure to a fascinating “culture” from which every pupil can benefit. Separation of church and state? That may be, but nobody said nuthin’ about separation of mosque and state.

Oh, and, aside from his sterling efforts on behalf of multicultural education, Mr. Alamoudi was also an adviser on Islamic matters to Hillary Rodham Clinton. And it turns out he’s a bagman for terrorists.

Infiltration-wise, I would say that’s pretty good. The arthritic desk jockeys at the CIA insist, oh no, it would be impossible for them to get any of their boys inside al Qaeda. Can’t be done. But the other side has no difficulty setting their chaps up in the heart of the U.S. military, and the U.S. education system, and the U.S. political establishment, and the offices of U.S. senators and former First Ladies.