MUST READ: BEHIND THE INDOCTRINATION & TRAINING OF AMERICAN JIHADIS

Behind the Indoctrination and Training of American Jihadis

On July 26, a former Washington, DC cab driver and resident of Gwynn Oak, Maryland was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for providing material support to a terrorist group. Ohio-born Mahmud Faruq Brent, 32, admitted to attending training camps run by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, Army of the Pure) in 2002, a Pakistani-based jihadi group established during the 1980s campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan. After training at various locations in Pakistan, Brent returned to the United States, residing in Baltimore when he was arrested in August 2005. Brent told Tarik Shah—who pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda—that he had been up in the mountains training with the mujahideen [1]. Through Shah, Brent's training is linked to other cases of Americans who attended LeT-run camps in Pakistan. After Shah's arrest, he agreed to record conversations with Brent in cooperation with the FBI. In Shah's cell phone, along with Mahmud al-Mutazzim, another name Brent used, was the contact information for Seifullah Chapman, who also knew Brent (Dawn, July 26). Chapman, a former Marine, was part of the "Virginia Jihad Group," another informal network convicted of terrorism-related charges stemming from their training in Pakistan. He was sentenced in 2005 to a 65-year prison term. As disturbing as these cases are individually, collectively they demonstrate an even more troubling trend of radicalized American Muslims—bound by Salafi ideology—receiving training overseas and returning to the United States for potential future operations.

The Virginia Jihad Group

Based out of Falls Church, Virginia, the informal jihadi group was led by Ali al-Timimi. A U.S. citizen, al-Timimi was sentenced to life in prison for soliciting others to levy war against the United States. Eleven people were charged in total in the case, and the prosecutors successfully argued that the network was part of the jihadi threat akin to al-Qaeda. Al-Timimi was born in Washington, DC, his father a lawyer for the Iraqi Embassy. At age 15, he moved with his family to Saudi Arabia. While there, he grew interested in Islam, invariably the Salafi variety that is espoused by the Saudi religious establishment. After returning to the United States, he received a Ph.D in computational biology from George Mason University (The Atlantic Monthly, June 2006).

In addition to his academic pursuits, al-Timimi was an Islamic teacher in the northern Virginia area. Yet, he was also involved with the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), a group based in Ann Arbor, Michigan that receives funding from Saudis to promote Salafi Islam in the United States, especially in the prison system (http://www.iananet.org). Naturally, al-Timimi's scholarly ties, more than anything, reveal his ideological proclivities. Establishing a center for Islamic education, al-Timimi contacted the well-known Egyptian-born Salafi Abd al-Rahman Abd al-Khaliq and translated his works into English. Abd al-Khaliq openly promoted the Salafi Islam prominent in the Gulf, and privately encouraged more militant Salafism among his followers, telling them that "American troops were legitimate targets of the jihad."

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Pertinent Links:

1) Behind the Indoctrination and Training of American Jihadis