Perspectives on Homegrown Jihadists

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In the last decade, when radical extremism among Muslims in the United Kingdom and other European countries spread and resulted in terrorist violence in Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, many observers assumed that American Muslims were not susceptible to be infected by the virus of extremism and to calls for joining the jihad.

After all, there were and are significant differences between Muslim minorities here and there and their host countries. Contrary to North America’s tradition of immigration from around the globe, the influx of people of different races and different cultural and religious backgrounds is a fairly new phenomenon in Europe with their homogenous societies. And whereas American Muslims are better educated and part of a higher economic strata than the American populace collectively, Muslim newcomers in Europe are well behind native majorities in terms of education and socio-economic background. As a result, American Muslims tend to be part of the mainstream of society whereas European Muslims tend to be alienated from the mainstream of their respective societies.

Lost in such comparisons and assumptions are important lessons to be learned from the history of modern terrorism: Those who establish or join terrorist movements, groups or cells and those who are inspired by radical extremist demagoguery to act as lone wolves tend to come from the middle- or upper middle-class—not from the under-class; they tend to be very well educated—not dropouts. Finally, they may or may not have experienced discrimination because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or any other marker. There are differences in terms of background in that, for example, left-extremists tend to be significantly higher educated and better off than right-extremists. Based on research about the background of suicide bombers and other terrorists in the Middle East, the 9/11 Commission’s findings about the 9/11 hijackers, and open source information about the background of various jihadis, it seems that the latter fit the well-educated, not poor category.

Army Major Nidal Hasan who killed 13 and injured 30 fellow-soldiers at Fort Hood in early November, is a good example: A very well educated man with a middle-class background who moved up the Army’s promotional ladder.

Similarly, the five young Muslim men, who disappeared recently from their homes in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. and were arrested in Pakistan before they could realize their alleged plan to join Al Qaeda’s fight against U.S. troops, are well educated off-springs of middle class families.   

So, perhaps nobody should have been shocked that more than 7 years after 9/11, there was the first terrorist attack on American soil carried out by an American Muslim.

That incident should not fuel stereotypes that link American Muslims and Islam to violence just as no linkage should be made between fanatic Christian anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder who went into a church to kill Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, and Christians and Christianity.  

But the Fort Hood incident should also be a wake up call for those who carry the notion of American exceptionalism in this context too far. Whether it was the conviction that unlike Muslims in Europe, every American Muslim is immune to the jihadi contagion or political correctness that prevented Major Hasan’s colleagues and those who knew about his Internet contacts with Muslim extremists from intervening, they should have known better. They could have prevented his lethal act. 

In sharp contrast, parents of the missing young men in the D.C. area were alarmed by the video messages left by one of them to alarm officials at the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that in turn informed the FBI. These quick actions led to the arrest of the young Americans in Pakistan and their return to the U.S. Similarly, parents of second generation Somali Americans in Minnesota contacted the FBI last year when they feared that their sons had been recruited to join the jihad in Somalia.

Unfortunately, such community cooperation with law enforcement does not get the credit it deserves.

If this year signals a new trend, such support will be very much needed. For there has been a significant increase of discovered and foiled terrorist activities by American Muslims in the current year. Based on open sources, there were a total of 15 such cases in the more than seven years after 9/11 through 2008. Since the beginning of this year, there were 11 such cases, including the only “successful” one at Fort Hood. 

While the fact that in 25 of 26 cases law enforcement prevented terrorist actions here or abroad is a welcome testimony to the effectiveness of the law enforcement and intelligence communities, it is also a grim reminder that there is no total security against terrorist violence.

Comments

[Eric Chen]

Oops. I meant, some number of our fellow Americans are SUSCEPTIBLE to radical indoctrination, not "... suspectible to radical indoctrination".

[Eric Chen]

Professor Nacos,

Famous case in point: John Walker Lindh.

Your point about American Muslims as a critical resource for our country in the War on Terror reminds of a column I wrote for the Columbia Spectator in Nov 01: The Power of Diversity.

http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2001/11/09/power-diversity

In my column, I spoke about American Muslims representing us to Muslims world-wide and educating non-Muslims at home. But it makes sense for American Muslims also to serve as front-line guardians of America from dangerous Islamic radicals at home.

Mainstream American culture doesn't prevent radicalization, Islamic or otherwise. Just in the recent media age, we've been shown enough revolution-minded, dangerous extremist groups, cults, and 'lone wolves' of different types to know that some number of our fellow Americans are suspectible to radical indoctrination. That's more true now in the digital age where someone can radicalize in the privacy of their home.

If we choose not to indoctrinate our children with strong beliefs from a heritage of our choosing, when our children ask fundamental life questions and we don't answer them satisfactorily, someone else will.

After Lindh was caught in Afghanistan, I asked one of my best friends, who had converted from Catholicism to Islam in HS, about it. He described to me the routes to different strains of Islam available for Americans choosing to convert, including radical Islam with finishing schools found in places like Yemen. Apparently, it's not hard for a disaffected personality, already shopping for a consuming ideology, to follow the path to radical islam.

As you've taught, we're in a war in which a critical component is a global contest of ideology and ideas played out within communities and the minds of individuals. As chosen by President Bush, the American creed in the ideological component of the war is a progressive liberalism incompatible with revolutionary radical Islam. Unfortunately, the self-described liberals who relentlessly attacked our definitively liberal strategy sabotaged progressive liberalism and empowered the enemy's ideology in a zero-sum contest. We can only hope that it's not too late for President Obama, wielding the same liberal strategy and message as President Bush, to recover the losses inflicted on our side by short-sighted partisan betrayers of liberalism.