One of the more
jaw-dropping excuses that the news media have concocted in defense of the Boston Marathon
bombers’ murderous evil is that America herself failed the two immigrant
brothers. “Expecting hospitality,” sympathized an American University professor, “they felt alienated and
disillusioned, even with all of the opportunities and privileges available to
them as citizens of this country.” This is reminiscent of a parallel tale of opportunities
and privileges made available to another jihadist immigrant –Aafia Siddiqui, who
attended the same Boston mosque as the Tsarnaev brothers, benefited from the same welcome embrace of our
society, and like them, still repaid it by plotting terror.
The Pakistani Siddiqui
immigrated to the United States in
1990, graduated from MIT on a full scholarship and obtained a Ph.D. in 2001
from Brandeis. A full scholarship to MIT – quite an opportunity and a privilege. Described by her
fellow students as “religious,” she joined the Muslim Students'
Association, a creation of the subversive Muslim Brotherhood, and solicited money
for Brooklyn’s Al Kifah Refugee Center, an early nerve center for al Qaeda in America.
When Pakistan asked the U.S. for help in 1995 to combat religious
extremism, Siddiqui circulated an email deriding Pakistan for joining “the
typical gang of our contemporary Muslim governments,” and closing with a quote
from the Quran warning Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends. She
wrote three guides for teaching Islam, expressing the hope in one that “America
becomes a Muslim land.” Meanwhile she took a 12-hour pistol training course.
In May 2002, the
FBI questioned Siddiqui and her husband regarding their internet purchase of
$10,000 worth of night vision gear, body armor, and military manuals including The
Anarchist's Arsenal, Fugitive, Advanced Fugitive, and How
to Make C-4. The husband claimed that these were for use in hunting and
camping trips – because who doesn’t fish with C-4? They divorced in 2002, and
in 2003 she returned to her native Pakistan and disappeared.
She was soon thereafter
fingered as a courier and financier for al
Qaeda by no less an authority than its mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, whose nephew (also an al Qaeda member) Siddiqui
had married in 2003. In 2004, the FBI named her one of its seven Most Wanted
Terrorists. She was finally caught in 2008 in Afghanistan.
At the time of
her arrest, she was carrying in her purse handwritten notes and a computer
drive containing recipes for bombs and weapons of mass destruction,
instructions on how to make machines to shoot down U.S. drones, descriptions of
New York City landmarks with references to a mass casualty attack, and two
pounds of cyanide. While being questioned by U.S. authorities in Afghanistan, she
grabbed a rifle and shot at Army personnel while shouting “Allahu Akbar” and
yelling that she wanted to kill Americans.
Siddiqui tried to
fire her lawyers due to their Jewish background, claimed that her case was orchestrated
by unspecified Jews, and demanded that there be no Jews among her jurors. The
jury, which was not allowed to hear about the chemical weapons or her al Qaeda involvement,
convicted her in early 2010 of two counts of attempted murder, armed assault,
using and carrying a firearm, and three counts of assault on U.S. officers and
employees. She was sentenced to 86 years in prison. [see her Wikipedia entry for all relevant links to the above summary]
Aafia Siddiqui
was someone who benefited enormously from the opportunities and privileges she received as an American immigrant. Was
she “alienated” by them, as the American University professor claims about the
Boston bombers? “Disillusioned”? Does that explain her Jew-hatred, her hunger
to assist in carrying out terror attacks against Americans?
Instead of blaming
America, we should be looking at the hate being spread in mosques like the ones
attended by Siddiqui and the Boston bombers. As USA
Today reports, the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in
Cambridge and the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, separated by the
Charles River, are owned by the same entity, their leadership is intertwined, and they are
affiliated with the Muslim American Society, a Muslim Brotherhood legacy group. The
Tsarnaev brothers apparently attended the mosque only rarely, but Siddiqui and the
following have been more closely associated with it in the past:
- Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque’s president, was sentenced to 23 years in prison in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in a Libyan assassination plot against then-crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
- Tarek Mehanna, who also worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced last year to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda in a plot to shoot up a Boston mall.
- Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna's co-conspirator and is wanted on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.
- Yusuf al Qaradawi, the former spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, was listed as a trustee on the Cambridge mosque’s website until 2003.
- Yasir Qadhi, who lectured at the Boston mosque in April 2009 and advocated replacing U.S. democracy with Islamic rule, called Christians “filthy” polytheists whose “life and prosperity … holds no value in the state of jihad,” according to a video obtained by Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group that has investigated the two mosques.
- In another video obtained by Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, sometimes a spokesman for the Boston mosque, who used Siddiqui’s case to criticize the Patriot Act, said, “After they're done with [Siddiqui], they are going to come to your door if they feel like it.”
- Jamal Badawi, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial.
When politically
correct apologists theorize that jihadist immigrants to America feel “alienated
and disillusioned, even with all of the opportunities and privileges available
to them as citizens of this country,” they are blind to the contradiction inherent
in that statement. They refuse to grasp that jihadists are driven by a
supremacist ideology to seek our destruction regardless of what we do or don’t do. With one hand those
immigrants took advantage of everything our free, open society had to offer, and
with the other they waged jihad against us.
How many more innocent Americans will be maimed or die, like eight-year-old Martin Richard waiting excitedly
for his dad at the Boston Marathon finish line, because our government
refuses to allow that ideology to be named, much less combatted? How many more, because our leftist elites want
to absolve terrorists and shift the blame for their atrocities to America
herself? How many more, because we will not clamp down on mosques linked
to terrorism?
We cannot win a war that we pretend does not exist.
(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 4/30/13)
