While the jihadis are threatening the Pope's earthly shell overseas, we are not without hide-threatening Muslims of our own stateside.
Today, the FBI raided an Islamic charity in Michigan, so who knows what that's about:
Federal counterterrorism agents raided a Muslim charity in Southfield on Monday morning, according to the FBI.
Agents with the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force executed search warrants at the headquarters for Life for Relief and Development, a Southfield-based charity that works in Arab and Muslim countries around the world.
The warrants were based on a criminal predicate, said William Kowalski, assistant special agent in charge for the Detroit office of the FBI. The affidavits in support of the warrants are sealed, he said.
At about 9 a.m., agents raided the Southfield office, hauling away documents, letters and ledgers, said Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Agents told officials with the charity that the raid was related to some sort of criminal activity, Walid said.
The charity has worked in Iraq, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories, among other countries.
I recognize that suggesting this might mean anything to our security constitutes the dreaded "backlash" the P.C. among us have feared for so long, but it's not as if this kinda thing is without precedent.
All right, moving on with the Monday Fear-Mongering, this delightful character is on the loose, perhaps in the U.S., just waiting around for the al Qaeda command to detonate some dirty bombs. The FBI calls him the "next Mohammad Atta."
Beth at My VRWC has been all over him. She has a timeline of the threat threat, video of mini-Atta, and a vault full of previous posts on him for playing catch-up.
The FBI's been after him since 2003. The last MSM report I could find on him is from Sept. 3, but it provides a good overview of the threat he poses:
...the FBI put out an urgent all-points bulletin for Shukrijumah, depicting him as one of Al Qaeda's most well-trained, intelligent and deadly operatives. He was described as the ultimate "sleeper agent," intent on attacking the U.S., possibly with weapons of mass destruction.
Law enforcement officials and terrorism experts now believe Shukrijumah is one of several young, street-smart leaders of Al Qaeda handpicked by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, to keep the terrorist network alive and humming in the face of U.S.-led efforts to unravel it...Terrorism authorities both inside and outside the government say they believe Shukrijumah is a major Al Qaeda figure, and the hunt for him is intense, with an FBI team tracking him virtually full time. So far, their quarry has remained elusive.
Blog coverage of Shukrijumah, however, has been extensive this month.
Someone in Ace's comments said she thought he had tried to rent from her in Texas.
Allah noted that ABC's The Blotter picked up covereage of Shukrijumah at the beginning of September, despite the fact that there was no new news:
Why would they run two stories when there’s no actual news to report?
The Blotter has good sources inside the intelligence community and likes to be ahead of the curve with terrorism scoops. Last month, they ran a piece on alleged UK terror plot mastermind Matiur Rehman the day before arrests were made and the plot was publicly revealed. Clearly they’d been tipped to the impending raids and wanted to get in on the ground floor of the story. The fact that they’re putting Shukrijumah’s name out there when there is, to all appearances, no new information about him makes me think their sources are very concerned about him right now, and Brian Ross and co. either don’t know why or they do know and are sitting on sensitive details while the feds try to break up the plot.
Keep your eye on this one. It’s still probably a false alarm, but I’d raise the worry meter from blue to yellow.
Then there was a report from a Pakistani journalist with a Rolodex full of al Qaeda contacts, who said there's nuke attack coming to the States at the end of September, to coincide with Ramadan:
A man called Adnan Al-Shukri Jumaa (Juma, Jumah) is presently in the U.S. and has been assigned the task of detonating the nuclear material. The report does not say whether an actual nuclear bomb was smuggled in or only material to be used for a 'dirty bomb'.
Reports about Jumaa have been circulating for years. His real name is Adnan G. El Shukrijumah and he is wanted by the FBI. Shukrijumah has long been rumored to be inside the U.S. awaiting orders to detonate a dirty bomb.
Last month, rumors began circulating that Shukrijumah had been seen in Honduras.
The nuke materials are supposedly in the U.S., smuggled over our Southern border. Here's a Michelle Malkin piece on Shukrijumah from 2004, which puts him hanging out on that self-same Southern border.
Now we hear that al Qaeda's warning Muslims to leave NYC and Washington. Allah reminds us that it's not as if there's not a precedent for that, also.
Luckily, unlike the Arab street, we have more than one level on the graphic representation of our collective emotions, so I think we can keep skepticism high and freakin' out low right now, but no reason we shouldn't look for mini-Atta like crazy. More pics:
And, just as a snort-worthy sidenote, I think I outweigh this tiny little terrorist, and that's without the added heft of a hijab or a burka. So, if I meet up with him, he'll meet up with my scandalously unclad infidel elbow.
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