I am looking forward to the mainstream media giving the same attention to the motive behind these bloody and homicidal acts of jihad as they did to the Norway massacre. Will they clamor for days, as they did with the Norway shooter, to determine the motivation and ideology behind the supremacist and imperialistic actions of this devout Muslim group as it wages jihad?
House Panel: al-Shabaab Poses "Direct Threat" to U.S. IPT News
More than 40 Somalis living in America and 20 in Canada have traveled to Somalia to join the jihad waged there by the terrorist group al-Shabaab, a House Homeland Security Committee staff report finds. At least 15 of the Americans have died in al-Shabaab violence, but the whereabouts of 21 others remain unknown.
July 27, 2011Although that violence has been limited so far to Africa, two witnesses who appeared before the committee Wednesday said the United States should consider them, and al-Shabaab, as "a direct threat to the U.S. homeland."
Al-Shabaab's recruiting success in the West is unrivaled, said committee chairman Peter King, R-N.Y. "Not al-Qaeda, nor any of its other affiliates, have come close to drawing so many Muslim-Americans and Westerners to jihad," King said in opening remarks.
The bulk of those American recruits came from the Minneapolis area. But one of the most dangerous is Omar Hammami of Daphne, Ala., a Southern Baptist convert to Islam who has promised to avenge the killing of Osama bin Laden in May. "Hammami poses a direct threat to the U.S. homeland with his ability to assist Shabaab, core Al Qaeda or AQAP with plots, but he also has become a source of inspiration for jihadis," the report said. "Two terror defendants in New York, Betim Kaziu and Saujah Hadzovic, were inspired to travel to Egypt for violent Islamic jihad by watching Hammami tapes."
It was the third hearing held by the committee on radicalization within the American Muslim community.
As with the previous two hearings, committee Democrats protested King's emphasis on radicalization of Muslims, rather than extremism in general. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Tex., for example, requested a hearing on right wing extremists who advocate violence and submitted a list of active American hate groups into the hearing record.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Tex., said he was "mystified by the controversy" and asked the four witnesses present, including St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith, whether anyone doubted the security threat posed by efforts to radicalize Muslim youth. None did.
The ranking Democrat, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, used his opening remarks to say al-Shabaab is a relatively small terrorist group. While intelligence agencies need to pay attention to it, that focus should be kept in proportion to the likelihood of the threat posed.
Al-Shabaab "does not appear to present any threat to the homeland," Thompson said.
The witnesses disagreed. Before the failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009, few American policy leaders saw al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula as a threat to attack the United States, said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
In response to committee questions, Joscelyn noted that information found at Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound showed he was issuing directions to al-Shabaab. In addition, al-Shabaab members have been trained by al-Qaida operatives who were part of past attacks against American interests, including the 1998 attack on embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Read the rest. The media won't.
