Guantanamo is no threat; the prison in your own community is. Have I got your attention?

Four men were arrested this past week for allegedly plotting a terror attack on two Bronx synagogues and an Air National Guard flight. They possessed a car load of explosives and a Stinger missile they believed to be real (fortunately, it was not).

What do the four men have in common? More than you would ever guess.

Laguerre Payen, Onta Williams, David Williams, and James Cromitie all had violent pasts. All had recently served time in an American prison or jail. Most significantly, all four men exited their prison time as Muslims.

None appears to have been born Muslim; however, the time in an American prison resulted in their embracing the supposed religion of peace, Islam.

How can this be? Very simple. For decades, Islamic groups have strategically targeted American prison populations as a fertile field for growth and as a seedbed for homegrown terrorists. What we are seeing now is merely the fruit of that missionary effort by groups like the National Islamic Prison Foundation, formerly run by a top Al-Qaeda fund-raiser who himself is now behind bars, the Islamic Assembly of North America, and the Islamic Society of North America. Much of these groups' funding comes from Saudi Arabian proponents of Wahhabism, the most violent segment within Islam. A little-noted editorial in Investors' Business Daily clearly articulated this threat back in 2007. This week's arrests made that warning all the more real.

These groups' strategy is brilliant – find the most disenchanted American residents, who already speak English and understand American culture; attract them to Islam and its most violent expressions; and then turn them loose on their own homeland. In other words, target those Americans most likely to be anti-American and then give them the philosophy and tools to live out those hostile convictions.

Shortly after the events of September 11, in the Wall Street Journal, Charles Colson noted the danger when he wrote, “Two million people occupy America's prisons and jails today--two-thirds of whom are nonwhite. Many feel oppressed by the white power structure and sentencing disparities, which too often fall most harshly on minorities.”

So what do you get when you have terrorist groups targeting the most angry, resentful, and angry members of American society? Homegrown terrorists like Jose Padilla, the four men suspected in the Bronx plot, not to mention prison convert Richard Reid in Great Britain. The chickens have come home to roost.

The danger in our own prisons far exceeds that of the terror detainees presently living a much-debated lifestyle in Guantanamo cells. American terror suspects, like those arrested this week, represent our own citizens whom we have intentionally chosen to expose to the worst element of international society by allowing radical Islamic groups access to our own prisons.

Much of the blame rests with our continuing to live in the make-believe world where Islam is considered compatible with Western ideals. As if freedom of speech, tolerance, and freedom of religion were values common in Islamic lands. Can anyone name one Muslim-governed land where a Christian would feel comfortable in expressing her faith with fullness? Or a Muslim nation where a homosexual man would feel safe in making his lifestyle choice? Islam continues to struggle internally to find a way to transition into the modern world. That solution must come from within Islam itself. In fact, it cannot come from anywhere else.

In living this politically correct fantasy, we have allowed those who desire to destroy us to recruit, train, and deploy their own anti-American army from within our own prison system. How sick is that? And we have done so in the name of tolerance. A politically correct tolerance that our own President foolishly believes can lead us to peace and harmony with the Islamic world. Continued...