Homegrown Muslim Extremism Growing in U.S., Say Officials

December 7, 2009

Anti-terrorism experts in the Obama administration believe 2009 may have been the most dangerous year since 9/11. The United States is facing a rising threat of homegrown extremism, anti-terrorism officials say.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims, driven by a wave of English-language online propaganda and reflected in aspiring fighters’ trips to hot spots such as Pakistan and Somalia.Europe had been the frontline, the target of successive attacks and major plots, while the U.S. remained relatively calm. But the number, variety and scale of recent U.S. cases suggest 2009 has been the most dangerous year domestically since 2001, anti-terrorism experts said.

Those recent cases in the U.S. include:

There were major arrests of Americans accused of plotting with al Qaeda and its allies, including an Afghan American charged in a New York bomb plot described as the most serious threat in this country since the September 11 attacks.

Authorities tracked other extremism suspects joining foreign networks, including Somali Americans going to the battlegrounds of their ancestral homeland and an Albanian American from Brooklyn who was arrested in Kosovo.

The fbi rounded up homegrown terrorism suspects in Dallas, Detroit and Raleigh, N.C., saying that it had broken up plots targeting a synagogue, government buildings and military facilities.

Then, of course, there was the case of Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who gunned down 42 people, killing 13, last month at Fort Hood in what was clearly a jihad-motivated attack.

“Radicalization is clearly happening in the U.S.,” said Mitchell Silber, director of analysis for the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department.

“A larger trend has emerged that is not surprising, but is disturbing,” former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said. “You are beginning to see the fruits of the pipeline that al Qaeda built to train Westerners and send them back to their homelands.”

America’s so-called tolerance and politically correct methods of law enforcement have only helped to facilitate the growing danger of Muslim extremism within the country. President Barack Obama’s initiatives to reach out to the Muslim world and the U.S. government’s ongoing defense of Islam have just encouraged Muslims to push for further concessions.

The situation is even worse in Britain. The Bible prophesies of great social disruption and violence in these nations in the near future. Extremists in our midst—in addition to enemies from without and other factors—may play a part in what the Prophet Ezekiel describes as the “pestilence” (or destruction, as the original Hebrew can mean) that will come upon these nations. “Terrorist attacks, rioting and burning are the main thrust of the pestilence mentioned in Ezekiel 5,” Gerald Flurry explains. Read the fourth chapter of our booklet Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet for more.