The Roots of Radical Islam in America's Prisons

This is a phenomenal article here at The Investigative Project on Terrorism and I strongly suggest you read the entire article. I have excerpted some of the main sections of it that details just how the jihadis in America, under our noses, are recruiting the jihads of tomorrow - the home grown terrorists that will attack America. Note that this isn't some clandestine operation, that the radical islamic leaders inciting this jihad training are right here, right now, out in the open. Also, keep in mind ... the author of this piece came out of the New York State prison system - this man has first hand knowledge of what is really going on.

The Roots of Radical Islam in Prison
by Patrick Dunleavy
For IPT News

It is a message he preached in prisons and elsewhere for years. Umar's history of radicalism continues to be an issue for law enforcement today. The arrests this spring of four men who were picked up after planting what they thought were live bombs outside two synagogues in the Bronx rekindled focus on Islamic radicalism in prisons. Three of the suspects converted to Islam while serving time and were believed to be radicalized behind bars.
Since 9/11, the general focus on prison radicalism in the media and in government has been on the process of certifying imams and literature available to inmates. Fully understanding the impact of this phenomenon, however, requires a historical look back at Islam in prison. The seeds of jihad were planted in the prison soil by men like Warith Deen Umar long before we were attacked in 2001.
Having spent 26 years working in New York 's Department of Correctional Services, I have witnessed this process of radicalization first-hand. Sometimes it was monitored; sometimes a recruitment cell was infiltrated. As the Deputy Inspector General of the Criminal Intelligence Unit, I was a part of a special investigation called Operation Hades that probed the radical Islamic recruitment movement from both inside and outside prison walls. It was a startling revelation to me, working undercover, to see how the process works.

Yousef Saleh, a Jordanian national, was convicted in 1980 for the firebombing of a Jewish deli in New York City which killed two people. He was sent to Auburn State Prison in April of 1980. Operation Hades found that he remained there 16 years, attending the prison mosque and preaching an anti-Semitic jihad to all who would listen. The imam in Auburn at that time, hired by Warith Deen Umar, was Sami Aman Khalifah, who went on to serve as a Director of the Islamic Society of North America. Saleh was in the same prison cell as Rashid Baz & Abdel Zaben. He helped to facilitate the network of recruiters by sending monies back over to Hamas and also introducing friends of CAIR and radical leftist organizations to other foreign born Muslim inmates. He was deported in June 1996.

Ahmed was a member of the Talem Circle, which exhorted the U.S.-born inmates to train with Middle Eastern inmates in how to perform acts of jihad. In addition, he offered to help the civilian Chaplain Rashid travel to Yemen to teach English in the training camps after Rashid retired.
On March 1, 1994 after hearing a fiery sermon in the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge Mosque, Rashid Baz opened fire[xvii] on a van load of Hasidic students in New York City, killing 16-year-old Ari Halberstam and wounding several others.

A terrorist is not hatched overnight. Long years of sowing the seeds of Wahabbi/Salafist teachings in the fertile soil of prison are starting to produce a crop of home grown jihadists.