It is a bucolic region of verdant meadows, rolling hills, and babbling brooks, a largely peaceful place where big city hustle and bustle and crime are very far away. Yet, like a pig in a beauty contest, within this pastoral setting lies something incongruent: a Jihadist training center. In this compound, women are taught to slit throats and mount assault-weapon attacks and, presumably, some brand of Islamic piety is the order of the day. But this place isn’t found in the Mideast’s Fertile Crescent or in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s name is Islamberg. It’s in the town of Hancock.
And it’s in upstate New York.
Part of a network of 35 such compounds in the United States associated with Muslims of the Americas (MOA) — which was founded by a radical Pakistani cleric commonly known as Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani — Islamberg has long been suspected of having terrorist aims. And now evidence for this has emerged in the form of a “chilling” video released by the Christian Action Network (CAN) — a video obtained by the organization from an “unnamed law enforcement source.”
Bob Unruh reports on the story at WorldNetDaily.com, writing:
There are episodes [in the video] of what appears to be automatic weapons fire at a target and incidents in which a handgun is held point-blank at a "victim’s" head….
The video shows women marching in military formation, scaling walls, [and] engaging in hand-to-hand combat.
The video also exposes the brazen propaganda used by MOA. It features an MOA representative claiming that the organization conducted a census and stating, “We are 100 percent sure that Muslims are the majority in America. Our Islamic political party has based its manifesto on this fact. Therefore, we want to declare once and for all that America is our country.”
And the implication is clear: MOA jihadists are willing to fight for “their country.”
Yet, while MOA’s members in the United States are mainly drawn from our country — comprising, largely, Black Muslim ex-convicts who were converted and radicalized in prison and who initially connected through Muslim inter-prison networks — its pedigree is far from American. It is said to be a front group for Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which is headed up by Gilani and listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization in their 1999 report Patterns of Global Terrorism.
And Gilani and Jamaat ul-Fuqra have certainly earned their jihadist stripes. Just consider, for example, the terrorist training video “Soldiers for Allah,” which was created by Gilani and later confiscated by law enforcement. Reporting on its content in February, WorldNetDaily.com, wrote:
"We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America," declares Giliani [sic].
The training video … teaches American students how to operate AK-47 rifles, rocket launchers, and machine guns; how to kidnap Americans and then kill them; how to conduct sabotage and subversive operations; and how to use mortars and explosives.
Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s attacks on American soil range from bombings to murder to plots to blow up U.S. landmarks.
"Act like you are his friend. Then kill him," says Gilani, explaining how to handle American "infidels."
One “infidel” thus handled was Wall Street Journal South Asia Bureau Chief Daniel Pearl, who was beheaded in 2002 by Islamists. In the fateful hour of his kidnapping, he was on his way to what he believed was an interview with Gilani.
But as eyebrow-raising as this is, it probably won’t come as a shock to many of Islamberg’s neighbors. As Fox News wrote in 2007, “according to some locals, the Islamberg community has given them plenty of reason to be wary. If you visit the compound’s entry gate, you will be stopped at a guard shack by men armed with guns. And some say that you sometimes can hear gunfire or even explosions coming from the area.”
It also won’t come as a shock to blogger and U.S. war veteran Scott Grayban. After posting a Canada Free Press Islamberg exposé on his website, blog.borgnet.us, he received a death threat via two phone calls. They were from a foreigner who was able to hide his location by hacking into a phone line.
Yet this story will come as a shock to most Americans, as the mainstream media has given Islamberg, its sister compounds and MOA precious little coverage. This is due to political correctness. And, tragically, according to CAN’s president Martin Mawyer, this force is handicapping authorities as well. Writes Bob Unruh, “The hands of law enforcement and investigators are tied at this point, he [Mawyer] said, because members of the organization are part of ‘a minority religion,’ ‘they are African-American’ ‘and in this particular case [Islamberg video], are women.’” This is no doubt true. It’s why, I suppose, we have to rely on unnamed sources for the truth.
The slogan after 9/11 was “Never forget.” But I’m not sure that we — except for the unnamed sources and unheard voices — ever knew what to remember.
