I keep saying that the first "rough cut" of prison Imams is to bar all the ones from SA and Yemen. This gets rid of the Wahhabbis
Radical Indoctrination in the U.S. Prisons
The investigation of a recent alleged terrorism plot that law enforcement officials say was hatched in a California prison has raised fears about radical Islamic indoctrination in the country's prison system. Law enforcement officials told ABC News that former Oakland gang member Peter Martinez and cellmate Kevin James, both held in the New Folsom State Prison, organized a plot to attack military and Jewish targets in the Los Angeles area this coming September 11. The plot was discovered when former Folsom Prison inmate Levar Washington (who converted to Islam while in prison) and an accomplice were arrested for a string of gas station robberies.
The San Diego Union Tribune explains the concerns that this incident raises about radical Islamic recruiting in the prison system:
The allegations seem to support comments that FBI Director Robert Mueller made to the Senate Intelligence Committee: "Prisons continue to be fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socio-economic status and placement in the community upon their release." Fears that Islamic prison groups could foster terrorism have grown since the arrest in 2002 of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago street gang member and former convict who converted to Islam and a few years later allegedly attended an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Padilla is in jail, accused of plotting to create a crude radioactive device, or "dirty bomb." Similar concerns were raised after a Muslim chaplain for New York's state prison system was dismissed for allegedly using his position to promote Islamic radicalism. Richard Reid, the British citizen convicted in a failed shoe-bomb attack aboard an American Airlines flight in 2001, reportedly converted to Islam in prison. At least one of the suspects arrested in the July 21 attempted suicide attacks in London reportedly converted to Islam while behind bars.
However, not everybody is convinced that fears of prison-bred terrorism are warranted. Maher Hathout, a senior adviser to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, commented, "The prisons are a breeding ground for drugs, for violence, for rape, for gangs, for everything. There should not be hysteria or fear because we're dealing with that ghost named Islam." And scholar Robert Dannin claimed that the cases that officials and experts cite as proof of Islamic proselytizing in prison are often incorrect. "People have taken this (tale) of Malcolm X, the one famous example (of a prison conversion to Islam), and built it into a powerful myth," he said.
counterterror.typepad.com |
