Washington Times Notes Record Terror Levels

Islamic terror in the United States is at a height not seen since the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terror attacks that murdered 2,977, according to a report by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, highlighted by The Washington Times (“56 arrested this year for supporting Islamic State,” Dec. 3, 2015).

According to Times reporter Andrea Noble, the report notes that “fifty-six individuals have been arrested on suspicion of plotting or helping support the Islamic State [ISIS] in the U.S. this year, the largest number arrested in support of Islamist terrorism in any year since Sept.11 [2001].”

Those caught are a young and diverse group, “with many being converts to Islam.”

The report offers details about the 71 suspects arrested since March 2014: 86 percent of whom were men, 40 percent were converts to Islam and the average age was 26—although one-third were under 21.

Among those terror suspects were “a recently married couple from Missouri who secretly planned to travel to Syria on their honeymoon in order to join the Islamic State, a Cincinnati man who converted to Islam after falling in with a group of radicals online and was later arrested when he divulged plans to bomb the U.S. Capitol, and a 15-year-old boy arrested near Philadelphia for a purported ‘ISIS-inspired’ plot to attack Pope Francis during his visit to the U.S.”

USA Today has noted that FBI Director James Comey said his agency has 900 active investigations in the U.S. involving suspected Islamic State sympathizers and other potential terrorists residing in the country (“San Bernardino inquiry stretches across globe,” December 7).

The Washington Times reports that researchers identified 300 Americans or U.S.-based ISIS sympathizers who disseminate propaganda from the terror group. It concluded that online communications and social media play a “crucial” role in “radicalizing individuals.”

Noble says the Program on Extremism offered possible policy solutions to combating the rising influence of those sympathetic to or supportive of Islamic terrorism, including increasing its own publicity campaign highlight the stories of disillusioned terrorists.

The report says that 55 percent of suspects arrested were caught in operations that involved undercover law-enforcement work.

As CAMERA has previously noted (“The New York Times Doesn’t CAIR to Report,” Feb. 6, 2012), organizations like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and others have criticized the use of undercover operations to conduct surveillance of mosques and other Islamic infiltrations for intelligence gathering.

CAIR was an unindicated co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development retrial, which is the largest U.S. terrorism-funding trial to date. It led to the FBI and other federal agencies breaking formal contact with CAIR. The group was founded as a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off.

The same day the The Washington Times reported on record terror levels in the U.S., The Washington Post uncritically quoted CAIR leaders on the Dec. 3, 2015 terror attack in San Bernardino, California (“After Paris and California attacks, U.S. Muslims feel intense backlash,”)—while failing to inform readers about CAIR’s history.

CAIR, which frequently works to advance the narrative that many American Muslims are persecuted as a result of “Islamophobia”, spoke with news media shortly after it was revealed that the San Bernardino terrorists were Muslim. But since the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks, annual FBI hate crimes statists have not shown large, sustained numbers of anti-Muslim assaults.

Yet, many mainstream news outlets, including The Post, as in the article mentioned above, have failed to report CAIR’s dubious ties and its apologetics. This, despite the fact the CAMERA has provided its Special Report on CAIR, “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights or Extremism?” to various outlets, including, most recently—on Nov. 5, 2015—The Post.