Investor's Business Daily, March 7th, 2007
Homeland Security: New reports say Islam is "flourishing" among African-Americans since 9/11, as imams tap into anger over slavery. The trend plays right into Osama bin Laden's hands.
Black converts say Islam has more in common with their African heritage than Christianity. "Islam reconnects you with Africa," an Atlanta imam told Reuters recently.
In fact, they often refer to such conversions as "reversions," claiming black "reverts" are merely returning to the Islamic faith prominent among their African forebears who were forced into slavery.
"You have African-American men seeking liberation," explains black Muslim leader Eric Erfan Vickers, "and many see Christianity as a white man's religion that continues to oppress."
Mark King, a new convert from Atlanta, said he and other young blacks are attracted to Islam because it calls for "resistance to European imperialism."
But African-Americans, especially young black men, should know some imams may have ulterior motives in converting them. They may be helping bin Laden and al-Qaida recruit them for jihad. Take Warith-Deen Umar.
The Muslim chaplain was caught preaching to New York inmates -- mostly black converts like himself -- that the 9/11 attacks were a miracle of faith and that the hijackers should be celebrated as "martyrs." He predicted (hoped?) the next wave of attacks will be carried out not by Arab Muslims, but black Americans converted to Islam.
The FBI believes African-Americans have become al-Qaida's top recruiting target since 9/11, as it seeks to lower its Arab profile for future attacks. Savvy about U.S. politics, the terror group knows law enforcement wouldn't dare profile African-Americans. And recently, al-Qaida has tailored its recruiting directly to blacks living here.
In a videotaped message aired last year, for example, an al-Qaida operative known as Azzam the American invited blacks to convert to Islam and take revenge against a nation that enslaved their ancestors.
In his history lesson, he conveniently left out the part about all the Muslim slave traders who sold Africans into bondage. Still, such appeals resonate.
Since 9-11, authorities have uncovered black terrorist cells in Miami and Los Angeles. Most recently, a black convert in Illinois plotted to blow up a shopping mall.
Before these cases, two black converts terrorized D.C. with random sniper attacks. And just before the Iraq War, a black Muslim sergeant fragged and killed fellow soldiers in Kuwait.
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in U.S. prisons and military brigs, and the ranks of Muslim inmates at state and federal facilities have swelled to an estimated 200,000. Most happen to be black.
Saudi-backed "outreach" groups are helping parolees make the transition back into American society. But investigators fear they're really helping them transition from prison cell to terror cell.
Growth isn't limited to prisons. There are an estimated 2 million black Muslims in America, and that segment of the Muslim population is growing fastest -- outstripping Muslim immigration from the Mideast and Pakistan.
Recent arrests and disruptions of homegrown terror plots reveal a fertile new recruiting ground for al-Qaida and a potential new face of terror that authorities can't afford to ignore.
Yet Rep. John Conyers, Democrat chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants to make sure they do ignore such trends by criminalizing any kind of police profiling of suspects, no matter how data specific.
"Imams in Atlanta, a U.S. center for black Muslims, said they were subjected to less scrutiny than Muslims from the Middle East," the Reuters report observed.
This is music to bin Laden's ears.
Let's hope black leaders, from Conyers to Sen. Barack Obama, help law enforcement make sure Umar's prediction never comes true.
Copyright 2007 Investor's Business Daily, Inc.
