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April 26, 2013 0

ADL Terrorism Update Newsletter Focuses On Boston Marathon Bombing

The April edi­tion of Ter­ror­ism Update, ADL’s newslet­ter pro­vid­ing news and analy­sis on inter­na­tional ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions and their fol­low­ers in the U.S., is now available.

The fea­ture arti­cle high­lights the use of the Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula mag­a­zine Inspire by domes­tic extrem­ists moti­vated by rad­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tions of Islam. Author­i­ties report­edly con­firmed that Dzhokhar and Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, used bomb mak­ing instruc­tions found in the pages of Inspire.

The pro­file exam­ines the Tsar­naev broth­ers’ social media pro­files and online inter­ests, includ­ing their appar­ent fas­ci­na­tion with mil­i­tancy and Islam. Par­al­lels between Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, the dead Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect, and an Aus­tralian preacher named Feiz Moham­mad are also explored.

This edi­tion also includes infor­ma­tion on recent terror-related arrests in Illi­nois, Ore­gon, and Vir­ginia, as well updates to ter­ror pros­e­cu­tions in Wash­ing­ton, Florida and New Jer­sey. 

To sub­scribe to ADL’s Ter­ror­ism Update newslet­ter, click on the below image:

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April 25, 2013 3

Parallels Between Boston Bomber And Australian Preacher

The online activ­ity of Tamer­lan Tsar­naev, the dead Boston Marathon bomb­ing sus­pect, reveals a fas­ci­na­tion with mil­i­tancy and Islam, includ­ing an Aus­tralian preacher named Feiz Moham­mad whose life has some inter­est­ing par­al­lels to the bomber.tamerlan-tsarnaev-feiz-mohammad-youtube-boston-bomber

While it remains unclear to what degree Tsar­naev was influ­enced or rad­i­cal­ized by any of the mate­ri­als he was view­ing online, he appar­ently added at least two videos of Feiz Moham­mad, who is known for his extreme anti-West views, to his YouTube channel.

Moham­mad, who blames non-Muslims in the West for Mus­lim vic­tim­hood and has glo­ri­fied “mar­tyr­dom,” has a large col­lec­tion of English-language Islamic lec­tures avail­able online. In a video posted to YouTube in 2007, he claims that Mus­lims today are not suf­fi­ciently ded­i­cated to mar­tyr­dom and there­fore are “the most humil­i­ated nation on the face of this earth.” He adds, “It is not as appeal­ing as it was to those ances­tors — the great warriors.”

In a lec­ture posted on YouTube in Decem­ber 2010, he teaches his stu­dents that fol­low­ers of other sects of Islam, such as Sufi Mus­lims and Shite Mus­lims, are not true Mus­lims and accord­ing to Islamic law deserve execution.

In addi­tion to pro­mot­ing mil­i­tant themes, Moham­mad seeks to appeal to a younger gen­er­a­tion of Mus­lim immi­grants by shar­ing his per­sonal story as a lost young immi­grant who found an iden­tity by strictly adher­ing to Islam.

Sev­eral of his lec­tures focus on warn­ing Mus­lims liv­ing in the West of the dan­gers of adopt­ing the lifestyle of non-Muslim West­ern­ers. In a lec­ture posted on YouTube in April 2012, he warns Mus­lims against lov­ing non-Muslims or befriend­ing them: “Isn’t this why we are a slave by them [non-Muslims]? Because we are lov­ing their ways, we are mix­ing in their ways. We are being a Kafir [infi­del] our­selves by enjoy­ing their lifestyles.”

An inter­view with Tamer­lan Tsar­naev pub­lished while he was train­ing for the 2009 Golden Gloves box­ing com­pe­ti­tion revealed Tamerlan’s dif­fi­culty assim­i­lat­ing into Amer­i­can cul­ture. He is quoted in the inter­view say­ing, “I don’t have a sin­gle Amer­i­can friend, I don’t under­stand them.”

Like Tsar­naev, Mohammad’s fam­ily emi­grated from a war-torn coun­try. Mohammad’s fam­ily immi­grated to Aus­tralia from Tripoli in north­ern Lebanon. Also like Tsar­naev, Feiz Moham­mad spent his teenage years box­ing, which he later denounced. The names he acquired as a boxer included “Frank the Killer” and “The Beast.”

At the age of 19, Moham­mad report­edly decided to embrace a con­ser­v­a­tive form of reli­gious teach­ings known as Salafism and became pop­u­lar among the Salafist groups in Syd­ney. After pur­su­ing an Islamic edu­ca­tion in Med­ina, Saudi Ara­bia, he returned to Aus­tralia. He then founded the “Global Islamic Youth Cen­tre” (GIYC) and opened a Madras­sah, a tra­di­tional Islamic reli­gious school.

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April 25, 2013 0

Director of White Supremacist Organization Tied to Anti-immigrant Groups

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Roan Gar­cia Quintana

Roan Garcia-Quintana, a direc­tor of the white suprema­cist Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens (CofCC), is closely tied to anti-immigrant orga­ni­za­tions in the United States. Garcia-Quintana is a well-known leader in the CofCC, a group descended from the White Cit­i­zens Coun­cils, which opposed deseg­re­ga­tion of schools dur­ing the Civil Rights era.

He is a fre­quent speaker at CofCC regional events and national con­fer­ences. The CofCC has called mixed-race mar­riage “the mon­gre­liza­tion of the races” and is openly hos­tile to immi­gra­tion. The CofCC state­ment of prin­ci­ples says, “We there­fore oppose the mas­sive immi­gra­tion of non-European and non-Western peo­ples into the United States that threat­ens to trans­form our nation into a non-European major­ity in our lifetime.”

In a recent post on his Face­book wall, Garcia-Quintana wrote about attend­ing an event spon­sored by the extreme anti-immigrant group Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Immi­gra­tion Reform (FAIR).  The event, “Hold Their Feet to the Fire,” which took place April 17 and 18 in Wash­ing­ton, DC, brought together anti-immigrant activists, fig­ures, radio hosts and immi­gra­tion restric­tion­ist mem­bers of Con­gress in an effort to influ­ence the immi­gra­tion debate. This year’s event focused on try­ing to derail immi­gra­tion reform by dis­cussing what FAIR sees as prob­lems with the new immi­gra­tion reform bill pro­posed by a bipar­ti­san group of senators.

Par­tic­i­pants in the event pre­sented their views on con­ser­v­a­tive talk radio and lob­bied mem­bers of Con­gress to vote against the bill.  On his Face­book page Garcia-Quintana said, “Attended the Fed­er­a­tion for Amer­i­can Reform’s annual Hold Their Feet to the Fire to lobby our SC Con­gres­sional Del­e­ga­tion to stop the Rubio-McCain-Schumer Amnesty bill.” A photo on FAIR’s Face­book wall indi­cates that Garcia-Quintana also attended FAIR’s 2011 “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” event.

Garcia-Quintana’s rela­tion­ship with anti-immigrant orga­ni­za­tions dates back a num­ber of years. He is the founder of the South Carolina-based anti-immigrant group Amer­i­cans Have Had Enough Coali­tion. He also appeared in a 2009 video titled “Immi­gra­tion 103—American Trauma: Jobs and the Econ­omy,” pro­duced by the anti-immigrant group Num­ber­sUSA.

There are well-documented ties between the anti-immigrant move­ment and the CofCC beyond Garcia-Quintana. Roy Beck, the founder of Num­ber­sUSA and Rick Olt­man, a for­mer FAIR field orga­nizer, both addressed CofCC national con­fer­ences in the past. In addi­tion, other well-known fig­ures in the anti-immigrant move­ment, such as Wayne Lut­ton, the edi­tor of the anti-immigrant jour­nal The Social Con­tract, have also spo­ken at CofCC events.

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