The recent arrest in Boston of Rezwan Ferdaus for planning a terror attack on the Pentagon adds to the growing list of Muslim students who have been radicalized in New England. Rezwan joins four other New England Muslim college graduates were charged with or convicted of terrorist acts:
- Ahmad Abousamra (Northeastern University) and Tarek Mehanna (UMass, Boston) who according to federal authorities planned to shoot shoppers at the Emerald Square Mall in Attleboro with automatic weapons. (Mehanna goes on trial this month.)
- Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT graduate, known as Lady Al Qaeda, who was sentenced to 86 years for attempting to shoot FBI agents in Afghanistan.
- Abdulrahman Alamoudi, an MIT graduate sentenced to 23 years for his involvement in a Libyan plot to assassinate the Saudi crown prince in 2004.
Muslim leaders here in Boston have failed to address the growing presence of extremist Imams and speakers at local mosques and universities, and radical Islamists seem to be penetrating American campuses. There may well be reason for special concern at Northeastern University.
The university’s Muslim chaplain Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, is a leader of a movement demanding that Tarek Mehanna and Aafia Siddiqui be freed. Faaruuq has been recorded on video telling Boston Muslims that Mehanna and Siddiqui are innocent victims of the war on terror, which he describes as an effort to target Muslims. In response, Faaruuq told Boston Muslims to “pick up the gun and the sword, go out and do your job.”
Rezwan now is the fourth young person charged with or convicted of terrorist acts who have links to Northeastern University or its Muslim chaplain.
(1) Ahmad Abousamra, a fugitive in Syria and Tarek Mehanna’s co-conspirator, is a Northeastern graduate.
(2) Before his arrest on terror charges, Tarek Mehanna would give sermons to Northeastern students. (Mehanna’s trial is scheduled for October 24th.) Mehanna’s connections in New England are delineated on our video below.
(3) Rezwan Ferdaus himself became radicalized about halfway through his studies at Northeastern.
(4) “Abdullah Faaruuq was Afia Siddiqui’s Imam when she lived in Boston.”
The largest mosque on the Eastern seaboard, the Islamic Society of Boston’s Cultural Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury, Mass, supports radicals who have been charged and/or convicted. On Saturday September 24th the mosque hosted an event in support of Tarek Mehanna, at which Northeastern University Chaplain Abdullah Faaruuq spoke. The event featured the families of three convicted terrorists from Georgia, North Carolina, and New York (Ehsanul Sadequee, Syed Fahad Hashmi, Ziyad Yaghi), and was held to “shed light on the conditions of families and communities suffering under the war on terror.”
Well-intentioned political and religious leaders have embraced and legitimized radical Muslim leaders in the Boston area. On May 22, 2010 at an event hosted by the ISBCC mosque, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick embraced Imam Faaruuq and the office of MA Attorney General Martha Coakley received a $50,000 check from the Imam to fund Muslim sensitivity training for law enforcement.” These events are shown in an APT video below.
Sadly, our media, civic and academic leaders refuse to connect the dots regarding what is surely a growing social and cultural problem. American for Peace and Tolerance has for three years been raising concerns about the threat of extremist Muslim leaders radicalizing the historically moderate American Muslim community here in New England — and around the country. American elites seem paralyzed by political correctness, a disease that blinds them to dangers in plain sight.