For author Arun Kundnani, the case of Jesse Curtis Morton represents a lot of what’s wrong with the West’s approach to countering “lone wolf” terrorism.
Morton, better known as Younes Abdullah Mohammed and the founder of the Revolution Muslim website, is serving a sentence of more than 10 years in federal prison for his role in threats made against the creators of the popular television series “South Park.” The reason for the threats: The show’s creators planned to include a visual depiction of the prophet Muhammad in an episode, which many Muslims find deeply offensive.
Kundnani, who talked to Morton in 2011 for his new book, “The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism and the Domestic War on Terror,” said he “embodies the threat that members of the national security establishment most fear” — a native-born American, alienated from his own society, who embraces Islam and becomes a supporter of al Qaeda.
He argues, however, that it’s a mistake to emphasize the role of Islamist ideology in the process that leads to violent acts.
“Having a belief in extremist Islam … does not in fact correlate with terrorism,” Kundnani said.
But with the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the connection between Islamist extremism and violence has become more evident, not less. The group has a slick Internet propaganda campaign that includes online magazines, recruiting videos featuring narration in American-accented English and even a jihadi version of the popular video game “Grand Theft Auto.” It is aimed directly at convincing Muslims in the West that the time has come for a global caliphate ruled by Islamic law.
And it is having an effect, inspiring like-minded people in the West to commit acts of terrorism and providing a steady stream of recruits to replace at least some of the hundreds of fighters killed in airstrikes by the U.S.-led international coalition.
“There’s no question that they still possess the ability to reconstitute their manpower and that’s … an indication of the strength of their ideology right now, which is why we’re working hard to counter that,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.
“This ideology is very attractive to some young men, and it’s going to take time to get after that.”
But critics say that, compared to the slick messages from the Islamic State, efforts such as the State Department’s “Think Again, Turn Away” campaign, which features videos and posts on social media that highlight the group’s brutality, fall flat.
Much of what the State Department’s campaign does may actually be encouraging the jihadis, Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi behavior online, wrote in a Sept. 16 piece for Time Magazine.
In particular, she notes a video released about two months ago that was meant to be a takedown of the Islamic State’s brutality but backfired in social media.
“Videos like this clearly illustrate that the U.S. government lacks the basic understanding of recruitment of young Westerners, that these ghastly scenes of executions and destruction are exactly what groups like [the Islamic State] have been using as recruitment propaganda,” she wrote.
Other critics note that the problem is made worse by the Obama administration’s continuous denial — based on the work of leftist thinkers such as Kundnani — of a connection between Islamist extremism and violent acts carried out by “lone wolf” terrorists over the past several years.
Take the case of Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, an incident the administration refuses to label a terrorist act. In August, Hasan wrote a letter asking to become a “citizen” of the Islamic State.
His attorney, John Galligan, told Fox News at the time that the letter “underscores how much of his life, actions and mental thought process are driven by religious zeal. And it also reinforces my belief that the military judge committed reversible error by prohibiting Major Hasan from both testifying and arguing … how his religious beliefs motivated his actions during the shooting.”
A February 2011 report by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee examining the Fort Hood shooting described Hasan as “a ticking time bomb” and faulted both the Army and the FBI for not noticing his growing extremism and taking action in time to prevent it. For example, the FBI knew Hasan was communicating by email with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but took no action.
“It took a radical group to call itself the Islamic State to point to why our group’s work is necessary,” Muslim reformer Zuhdi Jasser told the Washington Examiner.
Jasser, a doctor and Navy veteran from Phoenix, leads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, which works to counter politicization and radicalization of Muslims in American society.
He said cases such as Hasan’s and Morton’s are a good example of how extremist Islam is making terrorists out of some Muslim Americans by encouraging them to hate their own society out of a sense of what he calls “Islamopatriotism” — and how even moderate religious leaders encourage the trend by condemning only the violent acts and not the ideology that inspires them.
“This is a Muslim problem that needs a Muslim solution,” he said. “You can’t just say it’s about violence. You need sermons that call upon America as the leading force for goodness in the world.”
