Poll stunner: These American blacks OK with violent attacks

The most dangerous Muslims in America may be black converts to Islam,
according to a shocking new poll by the Pew Research Center.

African-American Muslims tend to hold the most violent views among U.S.
Muslims surveyed by Pew in a poll released this week.

Fully 28 percent of U.S.-born black Muslim respondents said "suicide bombings and
other violence against civilians" can be justified sometimes or at least in
rare cases. That compares with 9 percent of foreign-born Muslims who hold the same
view.

Pew also found that 11 percent of black Muslims living in the U.S. have a favorable
opinion of al-Qaida – more than double the share of U.S. Muslims overall
who hold that view. Another 21 percent of black Muslims hold only mildly
unfavorable views of the terrorist organization responsible for attacking
America 10 years ago; while 56 percent of that segment of the Muslim population
hold very unfavorable views.

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The survey results are troubling, because U.S. officials say al-Qaida in
recent years has stepped up its efforts to recruit African-Americans to
target the homeland for terrorist attacks. English-speaking blacks do not
fit the prevailing Middle Eastern terrorist profile, officials say, and
al-Qaida recruiters believe they have a better chance of slipping through
security checkpoints.

A growing number of black converts have been radicalized in prison or by
jihadist websites, officials say.

As former head of the New York State prisons' Muslim chaplains program,
Warith Deen Umar preached that Muslims should "be prepared to fight, be
prepared to die, be prepared to kill." The black convert to Islam also
called the 9/11 hijackers martyrs and heroes.

Umar reportedly inspired at least two of the four Muslim men who recently
plotted to bomb a New York synagogue and fire missiles at U.S. military
aircraft. The pair converted to Islam while in prison. After their release,
they met each other in a mosque tied to Umar. All four men were convicted
last year on charges related to the terror plot.

Carlos Bledsoe

In July, black convert Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, was
sentenced to life in prison for gunning down two U.S. Army soldiers outside
a Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting station.

Bledsoe said he didn't commit any crime when he shot Army Pvt. William Long
to death and wounded Army Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula as they took a smoke break
on the morning of June 1, 2009.

During an interrogation session, Bledsoe told Little Rock police and the FBI
that the shooting was a holy war and that he was not guilty of murder.

"It's an act of retaliation," he said. "There's a war going on."

In 2007, Bledsoe traveled to Yemen, ostensibly to teach English. Yemen is a
hotbed of al-Qaida activity and the hideout for one of al-Qaida's top
American recruiters, Anwar Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who aided the 9/11
hijackers.

Court records reveal that while in Yemen, Bledsoe planned to carry out jihad
on American soil.

U.S. officials believe at least three dozen black American converts have
traveled to Yemen in recent years and may have fallen under the spell of
Awlaki.

Evidence on Bledsoe's computer showed that he scouted other possible U.S.
targets, including a child-care center, a Baptist church and Jewish
organizations before attacking the recruiting center. He told police that he
would have killed more soldiers had he seen them outside the recruiting
station.

A popular African-American imam has preached that Islamic law permits
Muslims to attack U.S. military targets – including C-130 military
transport planes carrying the 82nd Airborne out of Fort Bragg, N.C.,
according to the best-selling book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret
Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America."

The Muslim cleric, Zaid Shakir, a frequent guest speaker at Council on
American-Islamic Relations events, tells his Muslim audiences: "Jihad is
physically fighting the enemies of Islam to protect and advance the religion
of Islam. This is jihad."

Acceptable targets of jihad, he says, include U.S. military aircraft.

"Islam doesn't permit us to hijack airplanes filled with civilian people,"
Shakir once told a Muslim audience. However, "If you hijack an airplane
filled with the 82nd Airborne, that's something else."

The recording of the lecture, which Shakir gave last decade to a Muslim
audience in the San Francisco Bay area, was obtained by the authors of
"Muslim Mafia."

Imam Shakir also gives his blessing to the use of bombs as a weapon of
jihad, as long as the explosives hit "select" targets and are not
indiscriminate in their destruction. Civilians can be a legitimate target,
he says, if "there's a benefit in that."

Even "old elderly men" and "women who are conscripted" – including Israeli
and American women in uniform – are eligible enemy combatants in jihad.

"This is Shariah," or acts sanctioned by Quranic law, Shakir asserts in a CD
recording of one of his lectures delivered in 2001, which the authors
obtained from a mosque bookstore in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Shakir, a black convert, has been portrayed as a moderate in the mainstream
media, including the New York Times, which recently ran a positive profile
of him. His pro-jihad statements revealed in "Muslim Mafia" have not been
previously reported.

Another popular black Muslim cleric, Siraj Wahhaj, echoes his friend
Shakir's interpretation of jihad.

"If we go to war, brothers and sisters – and one day we will, believe me –
that's why you're commanded [to fight in] jihad," the imam has told his
flock in Brooklyn, according to a videotape also obtained by the "Muslim
Mafia" authors. "When Allah demands us to fight, we're not stopping and
nobody's stopping us."

Wahhaj is a top CAIR fundraiser and longtime advisory board member.

CAIR has invited Shakir back to speak at its events even after the FBI
questioned him about a copy of one of his incendiary pamphlets found in the
apartment of a suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing. The
pro-jihad pamphlet lauded the "armed struggle" that brought about the rule
of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Shakir, who recently confided to the New York Times that he would like to see
the U.S. "become a Muslim country" ruled by Islamic law, is a regular
speaker at CAIR as well as Islamic Society of North America events.

Federal prosecutors say CAIR and ISNA are fronts for the terrorist group
Hamas and its parent the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Both these sister
organizations were recently listed by the U.S. Justice Department as
unindicted terrorist co-conspirators in the largest terror-finance case in
U.S. history.

Recently, Shakir helped host workshops and delivered keynote speeches at
banquets held at CAIR chapters in Chicago, Orlando and San Diego, among
others.

"Imam Zaid's speeches are very practical and bring the best out of his
listeners," said former CAIR official Ibrahim Moiz, a close personal friend
who invited Shakir to speak to Muslims in Maryland, according to "Muslim
Mafia."

The cleric has not tempered his jihadist views.

"I don't regret anything I've done or said," Shakir has insisted.

Shakir holds little, if any, respect for law enforcement, particularly the
FBI, according to "Muslim Mafia." He constantly belittles the bureau in
speeches to Muslims, even warning them that the FBI frames Muslims for
terrorism – terrorist acts that he contends the FBI secretly commits.

"The World Trade Center bombing of course was aided and abetted by our good
friends at the FBI," the imam has claimed, in one of many conspiracy
theories he peddles.

The American Muslim cleric also preaches treason against the United States,
according to the book, which hit No. 5 on Amazon.com's non-fiction
best-seller list the day after it was released last fall.

Shakir advises the Muslim community in America to wage a cultural jihad now
and a violent jihad later – once the proper "infrastructure" is in place.

He says Muslims should respect American democracy insofar as it can be
exploited to help the Muslim Brotherhood one day assume power here.

And the only thing that could stop the Islamization of America, he notes, is
if its people rose up and denied the subversive movement the unbridled
freedom it's heretofore enjoyed.

However, if Americans were to do that, Muslims would then be obligated, he
says, to exercise their supposedly "divine legal right" to rise up and wage
violent jihad.

"What a great victory it will be for Islam to have this country in the fold
and ranks of the Muslims," sermonized Shakir, who continues to be a marquee
speaker at CAIR functions.

For now, he said, following the radical Muslim Brotherhood playbook, Muslims
must continue to "create a state within a state."