March 4, 2009
Todd Stein, Esq.
Majority Counsel
U.S. Senate Homeland Security
& Government Affairs Committee
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Ref: Hearings on Violent Islamic Extremism: Al Shabaab Recruitment, March 11, 2009
Dear Todd:
We are pleased that the Committee has scheduled a Hearing on this important matter: Recruitment of Naturalized American Somali Youths for the Al Shabaab militia in Somali- a foreign terrorist group designated by the U.S. State Department. Doubtless the Committee is responding to reports in mainstream media such as
USA Today, the
Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Jerusalem Post involving possible recruitment by radical Imams in Somali émigré communities across the heartland of America, including your hometown of Atlanta.
Despite the shutdown of at least one Al Shabaab website in the US, several others continue in operations monitored by cyber sleuths like Joseph Shahda and others.
Patrick Poole has investigated radical Somali and Muslim Brotherhood control over charter schools in Columbus, Ohio and use of taxpayer funded facilities for indoctrination of Somali youths. Katherine Kersten, formerly with the
Minneapolis Star Tribune has investigated radical Imams control of a Somali charter school in the Inver Heights School District that
resulted in challenges by the Minnesota Chapter of the ACLU to the Minnesota Department of Education. AP Award winning journalist, Brian Mosely of the
Shelbyville Times-Gazette has run
a series of stories on the extreme culture clash with Somalis in a small Tennessee community.
David Gaubatz of the Mapping Sharia Project has recently conducted an investigation of radical mosques in Nashville documenting materials giving rise to incitement of jihad against America.
I have focused on the underlying problems of the US legal humanitarian refugee programs of the State Department and Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that led to the creation of Somali émigré communities in the American heartland. In a piece published in the New English Review, “Why is the U.N. determining who becomes a humanitarian refugee in the U.S? “January, 2008, I noted the following about the Somali immigration connection to Islamic extremism and Jihadism.
More concerning is that the UN control of humanitarian refugee processing has introduced Jihadis among the Somalis from the Horn of Africa, who now number in the tens of thousands throughout America. The Somalis have brought with them strict Islamic Sharia values that violate our Constitution and Civil Rights laws and mock our Judeo Christian values. Still worse, they, and some other refugee groups, have brought with them undetected contagious diseases like TB, Hepatitis and HIV that evaded health screening prior to their entry to America.
The Somali immigrants are a significant proportion of those included in the humanitarian refugee program for Africa. For the Federal Fiscal year ended, September 30, 2007, according to information from the ORR, 7,500 Somalis entered this country out of a total of 17,000 such refugees allotted to Africa. The aggregate total of Somali refugees as of 2005 was close to 70,000. Given figures for both 2006 and 2007, the current aggregate may approximate 90,000. Among those Somali legal humanitarian refugees are Imams indoctrinating naturalized American youths in extremist Islamic violence.
We saw in the tragedy in Mumbai, India, late last year, the devastation, death and destruction wrought by a ‘swarming attack’ by a limited number of Kashmiri and Pakistani extremists recruited by radical Islamist groups. Counter terrorism experts and the FBI consider that a high risk in America. Such attacks could be perpetrated by homegrown Jihadis like those among the several hundred naturalized Somali youths, alleged to have ‘disappeared’ to join Al Shabaab militia groups in Somalia Al Shabaab returnees could constitute cadres to train fellow American Somali youths to undertake swarming attacks against public facilities in this country. FBI and local counter terrorism authorities monitoring of the radical Somali émigré communities are a vital necessity to stifle swarming attack threats. Should your Committee find it useful you might consider inviting forming a panel to report on the lurking danger in the Somali émigré community that has fostered violent Islamic extremism and advocates Jihad against America.
Sincerely,
Jerome B. Gordon
