The Terrorist Next Door (14 page)

In the case of Muslims of America, any lessons the feds learned during the height of the group's terrorist activities in the '80s and '90s have apparently been forgotten. As we walked up the gravel road and entered the Red House compound, I braced myself for physical confrontation and, frankly, almost expected it. Since there were just three of us without so much as a butter knife on our persons, I didn't like our odds. We parked our van strategically near the entrance to enable a quick getaway. But as we moved closer to the columns of run-down trailers, we saw no one. All the women and children we had seen earlier had apparently disappeared inside the trailers. Was this some sort of ruse to draw us in?

As a slender black man in his mid-40's emerged from one of the trailers and began to walk toward us, I knew we were about to get our answer. He wore a skullcap and loose fitting Islamic clothes, and did not look like someone preparing for conflict. He stopped about three feet in front of us and asked, a bit warily, “Can I help you?” Introducing myself and my two colleagues, I told the man we were from CBN News and would love to interview someone from the compound concerning reports of MOA's ties to terrorism. His response was simple but firm. “We're not doing any more media, because we're always misrepresented,” he replied. “Sorry you came all the way down here, but we can't help you. Have a good day.” His look told me the matter was not open for debate, and as
I gazed around at the trailers that surrounded us on all sides, I was in no mood to push my luck.

We thanked him and headed back to the van as he watched our every step. Breathing a collective sigh of relief, we pulled away and began chatting about the footage we had captured. And just like that, our muchanticipated visit to the MOA compound was over—but not without a final, unnerving incident. As we drove away, I noticed in the rearview mirror that a car we had seen parked at the compound was behind us, creeping ever closer to our van. I alerted Mike, who was driving, and he stepped on the gas. The car, which was driven by two black men in Islamic garb—obviously MOA members—followed on our heels for another half mile before abruptly turning around and heading back toward the compound. Message received: we shouldn't think about coming back.

My investigative report about Muslims of America, featuring footage of our trip to the Red House compound, aired in September 2007. My goal was to raise awareness about the group and the threat posed by its thousands of radical, well-armed members scattered across multiple rural compounds nationwide. MOA's history of violence and its open allegiance to a jihadist Pakistani sheikh should be enough to warrant steady surveillance and the occasional raid by federal authorities, not to mention the fact that ex-cons are likely bearing firearms at its compounds, violating state and federal law. But it's unclear how closely these compounds are being monitored. Some federal law enforcement officials have assured me MOA is on their radar screen, but others tell me MOA compounds are a potentially lethal powder keg—possible mini-Wacos—that the feds have all but ignored.

Which is it? It's tough to say, although a video I found on MOA's website was certainly not encouraging. It featured the former head of
South Carolina's FBI branch—yes, the state's top federal law enforcement official—speaking at a Muslims of America-sponsored event in 2004 honoring “diversity.” It was an ironic topic, given that the audience was almost exclusively Muslim.

That event, it must be noted, occurred under the Bush administration. Today, with the Obama administration and its relentless push to charm Islamists here and abroad, MOA is no doubt riding even higher. The group's website is much more comprehensive than it was just a few years ago, and I've picked up copies of its official newspaper,
The Islamic Post
, at Muslim stores around Washington, D.C; predictably, it's filled with anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. At the end of the day, MOA has a good thing going in rural America—particularly in the South—and its leaders know it.

Other Islamic jihadist groups, however, have had once-successful southern operations thwarted in recent years. One of the most notable cases was a cigarette smuggling ring masterminded by the terrorist group Hezbollah out of Charlotte, North Carolina, that raised millions for terrorism overseas.
¹⁸
Another example was a Hamas fundraising operation outside of Dallas, Texas, that turned into the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history: the now infamous Holy Land Foundation case, which saw several U.S.-based Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to prison terms.
¹⁹
So a sliver of hope remains that MOA will one day receive its comeuppance, although under the Obama administration it is more likely to receive encouragement as a “moderating force” in American Islam, with perhaps some million-dollar grants to build new madrassahs on MOA compounds.

As for the good people of the South? Well, they'll just have to learn to stop worrying and start loving Islam.

CHAPTER FOUR

W
e were on the lookout for Somalis.

Not Somali pirates or AK-47-toting, feudal warlords. And not on the dusty, chaotic streets of Mogadishu. No, my cameraman and I were looking for Somali chicken pluckers. And we were doing it in the heart of the Bible Belt.

Government bureaucrats and social engineers: delight in what you have wrought.

We had traveled to Shelbyville, Tennessee, to investigate a large influx of Somali Muslims into what had been your typical, sleepy southern hamlet—that is, until a few years ago, when waves of Somalis began arriving in Shelbyville from other U.S. cities (a so-called “secondary migration”) to take jobs at the local Tyson Chicken processing plant. It wasn't long before the Somali population there had gone from zero to as many as 1,100. For a small, agricultural town of only 17,000, where the walking horse industry is king, that is a very sizable—and noticeable—occurrence.

The Somalis arrived faster and in greater numbers than Shelbyville—economically depressed and with limited resources—could adequately handle. The assimilation process, to no one's great surprise, has not been smooth, and the problems extend far beyond the usual language and communication barriers that most immigrants experience. Shelbyville is also home to a sizable Hispanic population that, after some initial problems, has blended into the fabric of the town relatively well over the past two decades. The Somalis, however, have proven quite a different story.

Back home, the Somalis lived in near Stone Age conditions; many had never even used a toilet or running water. If getting used to their American amenities was difficult for them, the sight of women covered in allconcealing Islamic garb had an even more jarring effect on their new, Christian neighbors. This was middle Tennessee, in the shadow of the country music capital of the world, Nashville, and just a stone's throw from that decidedly un-Islamic landmark, the Jack Daniels distillery. It doesn't get more southern or more traditional Americana. So the culture shock, needless to say, was mutual.

Yet as I stood on Main Street on a sunny Friday afternoon, watching a steady stream of residents shuffle in and out of a local bank, I realized there was one thing everyone in Shelbyville could get behind, regardless of their background: payday. Locals had told us a crowd of Somalis begins arriving at the bank at around 3:00 p.m. on Fridays, looking to cash their checks from the nearby Tyson plant. I intended to secure a few on-the-fly interviews with them, first to ask how they were adjusting to life in Shelbyville, and second, to gauge how seriously they took their Islam. I had heard concerns that Islamic radicalism could take root in Shelbyville's Somali community, and based on rumblings out of other U.S. cities like Minneapolis—where a number of Somalis had recently been arrested on terrorism charges—I was alarmed. I saw Shelbyville as a perfect place to lay low and plot in secret, much like I saw in Willow
Spring, North Carolina, and other rural, southern areas that have been used as bases for Islamic jihadists.

As the Somalis began arriving at the bank, I saw that the majority were women covered from head to toe in burqas, with only their eyes visible. They became angry at the sight of my cameraman and shouted at us in a Somali dialect as they rushed into the bank, small children in tow. Several carloads of Somali men arrived soon after and eyed us suspiciously. They, too, wanted no part of us and rushed in and out of the bank, despite my friendly invitations to chat.

One guy in his early twenties did stop and linger, intrigued by the TV camera that was trained on him. While he declined to appear on camera, he briefly shared his thoughts with me on life in Shelbyville. “The people seem very nice,” he said in halting English. “But I am lonely. I miss Somalia.” He added that he didn't associate with anyone in town aside from his fellow Somalis. He then shot a few nervous glances back at his friends, who were waiting for him in a car parked by the curb, and announced he had to leave. I gave him my business card and told him to call so we could talk further. He never called, and I never did get to have any kind of meaningful interaction with Shelbyville's extremely insular Somali community, despite repeated efforts. Neither, I soon found out, had most Shelbyvillians.

“They've had an impact here. Unfortunately, it's not been a good impact,” said Brian Mosely, a reporter for the
Shelbyville Times-Gazette
newspaper.

Shortly after my arrival in Shelbyville, I spent an afternoon getting the lay of the land from Mosely, who won an award from the Associated Press in 2008 for a series of articles he wrote about the town's Somali population. He said that other than going to work at the Tyson plant or using local stores, the Somalis rarely emerged from the apartment complex where a majority of them lived in a run-down section of town. Their self-segregation and indifference to the norms of their new community had not endeared them to locals.

“I found that there was just an enormous culture clash going on here,” Mosely said as we sat in at the local courthouse, an old building that felt straight out of Mayberry. “The Somalis were—according to a lot of the people I talked to here—being very, very rude, inconsiderate, very demanding. They would go into stores and haggle over prices. They would also demand to see a male salesperson, [they] would not deal with women in stores.”

Sounds like a unique brand of southern etiquette—as in southern Somalia.

Mosely, who was born and raised near Shelbyville, said the problems extend to local schools, where male Somali students refuse to speak to female administrators. Perhaps they learned this demeaning attitude toward women at the local Somali mosque, which has become a central gathering place for the refugees, with about 100 of them converging there each day for prayer, according to Mosely. Since it's human nature to cling to the familiar when in unfamiliar surroundings, many Somalis in Shelbyville, unsurprisingly, have decided to stick with what they know—and that's Islam. It's not a comforting thought for Shelbyvillians, given that Muslims in the West who become “more religious” have recently shown a nasty tendency to drift into jihad.

“We're talking about people who have not had any experience with Western civilization,” Mosely explained. “They don't know the language. Things like running water are a miracle to some of these folks. ... You don't take people from a totally alien culture, put them into a community, and then say, ‘Alright, you must get along.'”

Of course you don't. Nevertheless, it's becoming the norm in communities across the United States. As I continued watching the surreal scene of faceless, shapeless, burqa-clad women walking into the bank in downtown Shelbyville alongside good ol' boys in American flag t-shirts—neither side looking particularly comfortable with the arrangement—I couldn't help but wonder how all this had happened. I soon learned that the growing Somali population in Shelbyville and other
U.S. cities could be traced back to a deeply misguided U.S. State Department program that has increased the Islamic terrorist threat to the United States incalculably.