Monday, October 27, 2014
ISIS in America: Radicalized in the Heartland
MINNEAPOLIS -- Islamic State has engaged in a reign
of terror across the Middle East, raping, pillaging, and beheading its
way to a new caliphate.
Now a growing number of U.S. citizens are leaving
America to join the brutal ISIS army. These recruits are being
radicalized on U.S. soil and they may eventually return home.
It's hard to imagine America's heartland as a
breeding ground for terrorism. Yet when news emerged that two U.S.
citizens had been killed in Syria fighting alongside ISIS, the path led
back to, of all places, Minnesota.
The two men were part of a growing number of young
Muslims from Minneapolis and St. Paul who have answered the call of
jihad ("holy" war).
At least a dozen young Muslims from the Twin Cities
area have left their homes to travel to the Middle East and join ISIS.
Some of them worshipped at the al-Farooq Mosque in a quiet suburb of
Minneapolis.
An Egyptian-American man allegedly recruited young Somali Muslims from the mosque and helped send them to Syria.
Mosque officials say they banned Amir Meshal earlier
this year when they learned he was preaching jihad. The suspected
terror recruiter remains at large.
"There is an organization that makes this happen,"
former sheriff Bob Fletcher told CBN News. "But usually there is one
principal person that I call 'the Guide' that can take this person in
this ideological state and guide them to Syria or wherever it might be."
Fletcher is the former sheriff of Ramsey County,
which includes the city of St. Paul. He now works with Somali leaders to
battle radicalism in their Twin Cities community that's seen dozens of
young men travel overseas in recent years to join terrorist groups.
"They need to procure travel documents; they need to
raise money, usually somewhere in the area of $4,000-$5,000 to help
facilitate all the travel that takes place and plus, they want to have
money," Fletcher explained.
"And they need to make sure someone is purchasing
the tickets -- that requires a credit card of some sort. And they need a
driver and a facilitator to get them to the airport because they need
to make sure they get on the plane versus not getting on the plane," he
said.
The recent deadly attacks against Canadian soldiers
and the Canadian parliament by ISIS sympathizers were another reminder
of the chaos that just a handful of terrorists can cause on Western
soil.
It's estimated that as many as 3,000 Western
passport holders from places like Britain, France, Germany, and the
United States are fighting for the Islamic State.
FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Eric
Holder both said recently that 12 Americans are fighting alongside ISIS
in Iraq and Syria.
Other Obama administration officials have said that
at least 100 U.S. citizens overall have traveled to Syria to join terror
groups.
According to Rep. Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., up to 40 of those American jihadists have already come home.
"It is also believed that some 40 of those who left
this country to join up with ISIS have now returned to our country.
Those 40 are under FBI attention and surveillance. So they are known and
they are being tracked by the FBI," Bishop reportedly said.
One suspected American jihadist the FBI is tracking
starred in a recent propaganda video entitled "Flames of War," in which
he executed British troops.
"We're here in the 17th division military base, just
outside of al-Raqqa," the American jihadist says in the video. "And
we're here with the soldiers of Bashar. You can see them now digging
their own graves in the very place where they were stationed."
A major concern is that ISIS recruits will return to the United States and carry out attacks here.
Fletcher said ISIS sympathizers on U.S. soil who
have never traveled overseas but were self-radicalized at home may be
the more immediate threat.
"I think it is a far greater concern that people
that are here and radicalized [and] that haven't gone back might strike
out against America. And the numbers of people that are here and haven't
gone back that ideologically feel the same is significantly large,"
Fletcher said.
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