21 per cent of respondents told a study they had detected "a great deal" or "a fair deal" of support for Islamic extremism.
Muslim Americans: Islamism on the Rise
The most dangerous Muslims in America may be black converts to Islam.
Fully 28 percent of U.S.-born black Muslim respondents said "suicide bombings and other violence against civilians" can be justified sometimes or at least in rare cases. That compares with 9 percent of foreign-born Muslims who hold the same view.
Pew also found that 11 percent of black Muslims living in the U.S. have a favorable opinion of al-Qaida – more than double the share of U.S. Muslims overall who hold that view. Another 21 percent of black Muslims hold only mildly unfavorable views of the terrorist organization responsible for attacking America 10 years ago; while 56 percent of that segment of the Muslim population hold very unfavorable views.
As former head of the New York State prisons' Muslim chaplains program, Warith Deen Umar preached that Muslims should "be prepared to fight, be prepared to die, be prepared to kill." The black convert to Islam also called the 9/11 hijackers martyrs and heroes.
Umar reportedly inspired at least two of the four Muslim men who recently plotted to bomb a New York synagogue and fire missiles at U.S. military aircraft. The pair converted to Islam while in prison. After their release, they met each other in a mosque tied to Umar. All four men were convicted last year on charges related to the terror plot.
Carlos Bledsoe
In July, black convert Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, was sentenced to life in prison for gunning down two U.S. Army soldiers outside a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting station.
Bledsoe said he didn't commit any crime when he shot Army Pvt. William Long to death and wounded Army Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula as they took a smoke break on the morning of June 1, 2009.
During an interrogation session, Bledsoe told Little Rock police and the FBI that the shooting was a holy war and that he was not guilty of murder.
"It's an act of retaliation," he said. "There's a war going on."
In 2007, Bledsoe traveled to Yemen, ostensibly to teach English. Yemen is a hotbed of al-Qaida activity and the hideout for one of al-Qaida's top American recruiters, Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who aided the 9/11 hijackers.
Court records reveal that while in Yemen, Bledsoe planned to carry out jihad on American soil.
U.S. officials believe at least three dozen black American converts have traveled to Yemen in recent years and may have fallen under the spell of Awlaki.
Evidence on Bledsoe's computer showed that he scouted other possible U.S. targets, including a child-care center, a Baptist church and Jewish organizations before attacking the recruiting center. He told police that he would have killed more soldiers had he seen them outside the recruiting station.
A popular African-American imam has preached that Islamic law permits Muslims to attack U.S. military targets – including C-130 military transport planes carrying the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, N.C., according to the best-selling book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America."
The Muslim cleric, Zaid Shakir, a frequent guest speaker at Council on American-Islamic Relations events, tells his Muslim audiences: "Jihad is physically fighting the enemies of Islam to protect and advance the religion of Islam. This is jihad."
Acceptable targets of jihad, he says, include U.S. military aircraft.
"Islam doesn't permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people," Shakir once told a Muslim audience. However, "If you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that's something else."
The recording of the lecture, which Shakir gave last decade to a Muslim audience in the San Francisco Bay area, was obtained by the authors of "Muslim Mafia."
Imam Shakir also gives his blessing to the use of bombs as a weapon of jihad, as long as the explosives hit "select" targets and are not indiscriminate in their destruction. Civilians can be a legitimate target, he says, if "there's a benefit in that."
Even "old elderly men" and "women who are conscripted" – including Israeli and American women in uniform – are eligible enemy combatants in jihad.
"This is Shariah," or acts sanctioned by Quranic law, Shakir asserts in a CD recording of one of his lectures delivered in 2001, which the authors obtained from a mosque bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Shakir, a black convert, has been portrayed as a moderate in the mainstream media, including the New York Times, which recently ran a positive profile of him. His pro-jihad statements revealed in "Muslim Mafia" have not been previously reported.
Another popular black Muslim cleric, Siraj Wahhaj, echoes his friend Shakir's interpretation of jihad.
"If we go to war, brothers and sisters – and one day we will, believe me – that's why you're commanded [to fight in] jihad," the imam has told his flock in Brooklyn, according to a videotape also obtained by the "Muslim Mafia" authors. "When Allah demands us to fight, we're not stopping and nobody's stopping us."
Wahhaj is a top CAIR fundraiser and longtime advisory board member.
CAIR has invited Shakir back to speak at its events even after the FBI questioned him about a copy of one of his incendiary pamphlets found in the apartment of a suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing. The pro-jihad pamphlet lauded the "armed struggle" that brought about the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Shakir, who recently confided to the New York Times that he would like to see the U.S. "become a Muslim country" ruled by Islamic law, is a regular speaker at CAIR as well as Islamic Society of North America events.
Federal prosecutors say CAIR and ISNA are fronts for the terrorist group Hamas and its parent the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Both these sister organizations were recently listed by the U.S. Justice Department as unindicted terrorist co-conspirators in the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history.
Recently, Shakir helped host workshops and delivered keynote speeches at banquets held at CAIR chapters in Chicago, Orlando and San Diego, among others.
"Imam Zaid's speeches are very practical and bring the best out of his listeners," said former CAIR official Ibrahim Moiz, a close personal friend who invited Shakir to speak to Muslims in Maryland, according to "Muslim Mafia."
The cleric has not tempered his jihadist views.
"I don't regret anything I've done or said," Shakir has insisted.
Shakir holds little, if any, respect for law enforcement, particularly the FBI, according to "Muslim Mafia." He constantly belittles the bureau in speeches to Muslims, even warning them that the FBI frames Muslims for terrorism – terrorist acts that he contends the FBI secretly commits.
"The World Trade Center bombing of course was aided and abetted by our good friends at the FBI," the imam has claimed, in one of many conspiracy theories he peddles.
The American Muslim cleric also preaches treason against the United States, according to the book, which hit No. 5 on Amazon.com's non-fiction best-seller list the day after it was released last fall.
Shakir advises the Muslim community in America to wage a cultural jihad now and a violent jihad later – once the proper "infrastructure" is in place.
He says Muslims should respect American democracy insofar as it can be exploited to help the Muslim Brotherhood one day assume power here.
And the only thing that could stop the Islamization of America, he notes, is if its people rose up and denied the subversive movement the unbridled freedom it's heretofore enjoyed.
However, if Americans were to do that, Muslims would then be obligated, he says, to exercise their supposedly "divine legal right" to rise up and wage violent jihad.
"What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold and ranks of the Muslims," sermonized Shakir, who continues to be a marquee speaker at CAIR functions.
For now, he said, following the radical Muslim Brotherhood playbook, Muslims must continue to "create a state within a state."
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