Monday, May 28, 2007
They're getting the funding as though they were: WND: Mosques awarded Homeland Security grants - CAIR urges Muslim clerics to cash in on federal funds
Most recently, the Islamic Society of Baltimore landed a $15,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to upgrade security at its Maryland mosque.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations since April has been urging leaders of mosques and Islamic schools across the nation to apply for the DHS grants, even though the agency's program was set up to help protect nonprofit facilities that are at high risk for attacks by Islamic terrorists.
In a recent "Action Alert" posted on its website, CAIR encouraged its Muslim members to take advantage of $24 million in federal funds DHS has made available – specifically, DHS says, for nonprofit organizations "deemed high-risk for a potential international terrorist attack."...
...U.S. officials who spoke to WND on condition of anonymity expressed dismay that CAIR would drain limited federal funds away from higher risk targets for terrorism. They argue mosques are among the lowest risk for such attacks.
In fact, a number of mosques across the nation actually have promoted Islamic terrorism and have been tied to Islamic terrorists, including the large Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Washington, where some of the 9/11 hijackers received spiritual guidance, as well as help obtaining housing and IDs.
Terrorism experts note some 80 percent of U.S. mosques are funded and controlled through the Saudi Arabian government.
"Mosques have tended to serve as safe havens and meeting points for Islamic terrorist groups," said terror expert Steve Emerson. "Of course, we are not referring to all mosques, but there are at least 40 episodes of extremists and terrorists being connected to mosques in the past decade." ...
[h/t: Daniel in Brookline]
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: American Mosques a Target of International Terrism?.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.solomonia.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-renamedtb.cgi/7702
I'm not sure common sense is the right parameter to the question of whether "mosques are among the lowest risk for such attacks". I think it has been more or less established that Islamist terroists are not averse to killing other Muslims if it serves a bigger purpose. The inoocent Muslims who die in such terrorist attacks are then upgraded to "Martyrs" and get an entry ticket to the Islamic paradise. Case closed. I believe mosques must be aware of this danger which is why they feel vulnerable.
When you deal with religious fanatics, it is always better to play it safe and imagine the worst-case scenarios.
You make a point, although I sincerely doubt that the majority of American mosques are truly concerned with the danger of Islamist radicals toward them.
I think that it is appropriate at this point in interject some recent words put forth by a Muslim that will make more sense to the general public as to how/why our federal government is giving our Christian tax dollars to Muslim’s to build Mosques and religious schools to spread more terrorism among the US.
American laws will protect us.
Democrats and Leftist will support us.
UNO will legitimize us. (United Nations Organization)
CAIR will incubate us. (Council on American-Islamic Relations)
ACLU will empower us. (American Civil Liberties Union)
Western Universities will educate us.
Mosques will shelter us.
OPEC will finance us.
Hollywood will love us.
Koffi Annan will pass politically correct sympathetic statement for Jihadists.â€
While Koffi Annan is no longer the UN secretary, clearly, the above Muslim tactics have successfully been utilized around the world in numerous European countries so it is clear to me that America hasn’t learned any lessons yet from 14 hundred years of aggressions by the Muslims against the ‘other’ world of non-Muslims. With 8 out of 10 Mosques fully funded by the Saud family (connected at the hip to Wahhabism) is it any wonder that soon we will have more Mosques and Muslim PAC groups than actual Muslims living in America.
Solomon:
You may well be right but the idea is prevention based on anxiety, not hard core evidence. It is enough that one mosque is attacked (and I daresay most mosques are moderate and thereby an attractive target for fanatics). No one wants that to happen. It is also possible that a mosque will be attacked by fanatics from other religions, who can't distinguish between a mosque as a place of worship and a place of incitement. The two designations are not always compatible but even in these comments you see people have a hard time distinguishing between them.
My fear is that the objection to security grants to mosques will all too quickly lurch into the sort of argument that bapakgila makes: "giving our Christian tax dollars to Muslim’s to build Mosques and religious schools to spread more terrorism among the US.".
If he/she means it as a real point, then of course the grant should be given, and probably is, subject to detailed account of how the money is spent.
Noga:
A big part of the problem, in my opinion, is that we're doing very little, if anything, to shut down the virulent antisemitic and anti-American propaganda disseminated routinely in mosques. (In some mosques, to be sure. I have no idea what percentage of American mosques are purely houses of worship, and not Saudi fronts for Wahabbi indoctrination. And that's part of the problem: we just don't know.)
If we were making a concerted effort to eliminate the poison, I'd be all in favor of protecting mosques from terror. But so far as I know, we're not.
So we wind up with heightened security at mosques, perhaps especially including those with something to hide. No doubt this will make it more difficult to spot terror-supporting activities.
I don't see this as particularly dangerous; counter-terror experts routinely have to gather intelligence about places that guard their gates carefully. But it is incongruous, at best.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline