When terrorists Syed Farook and his wife Tshfeen Malik were linked to Dar al Uloom al Islamiyyah mosque in San Bernardino, mosque spokesman Roshan Abbassi did everything in his power to distance himself from the two, even lying about their association. Abbassi even attempted to channeled Obama when he blame the terrorist attack on “workplace” violence. Of course now it is clearer why he tried to desperately disassociate the mosque from the terrorist attacks.
Whistleblower and former Department of Homeland Security official Philip Haney pointed to the Tablighi Jamaat sect, a group known in Britain as the “Army of Darkness” that has been linked to a number of high-profile terrorist incidents, a group that even frightens moderate Muslim sects.
According to the Middle East Quarterly, the Tablighi Jamaat sect remains largely unknown outside the Muslim community, even to many scholars of Islam. While portraying themselves as a peaceful, they have adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam. In the last two decades, they have radicalized to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide. For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80% of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the “antechamber of fundamentalism.” U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly adopting the same attitude.
Within the U.S. the American Taliban John Lindh, the “Lackawanna Six,” and the Oregon cell that conspired to bomb a synagogue, all involve Tablighi missionaries. Other indicted terrorists, such as “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, and Lyman Harris, who sought to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge, were all members of Tablighi Jamaat at one time or another.
Tablighi headquarters in the U.S. for the past decade appears to be in the Al-Falah mosque in Queens, New York, whose missionaries, predominantly from South Asia, regularly visit Sunni mosques and Islamic centers across the country, The willingness of Saudi controlled front groups and charities such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the Haramain Foundation, the Int’l Islamic Reflief Organizaiton, and others, to spend large amounts of money to co-opt the religious establishment has helped catalyze recruitment and, as a result, Wahhabi and Deobandi influence dominate Islam in America.
This trend is apparent in the activities of Tanzeem-e Islami founded by Tablighi member and Taliban supporter, Israr Ahmed, a frequent speaker at Islamic conferences and events in the U.S. who uses incendiary rhetoric to incite violence between Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, which he claims is controlled by the Jews. Unfortunately his conspiracy theories have begun to take hold among a growing segment of the Muslim community.
The Nation of Islam was founded as essentially a charismatic African-American separatist organization which had little to do with normative Islam until targeted by Tablighi Jamaat’s anti-state separatist message and their description of American society as racist, decadent and oppressive. Winning over the black Muslim became a religious obligation and as one Tablighi sympathizer explained, “a selfish necessity” as the black votes could give Muslims the political “clout” they needed. The president of the Islamic Research Foundation in Kentucky, a strong advocate of Tablighi missionary work, insists that “if all the Afro-American brothers and sisters become Muslims, we can change the political landscape of America and make U.S. foreign policy pro-Islamic and Muslim friendly.”
The estimated 15,000 Tablighi missionaries reportedly active in the U.S. presents a serious national security problem. At best, they and their proxy groups form a powerful proselytizing movement that preaches extremism and disdain for religious tolerance and our Republic. At worst, they represent an Islamist fifth column that aids and abets terrorism. Contrary to their benign treatment by scholars, academics, and some political leaders in high places, Tablighi Jamaat has more to do with political sedition than with religion.
While Obama turns a blind eye to the problem of radical Islam, the war on terrorism cannot be won and the Tablighi involvement in future terrorists activities at home and abroad is not a matter of conjecture — it is a certainly.
