Author: Cal Thomas
Publication: Washington Times
Date: June 23, 2002
URL: http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20020623-10494056.htm
The mail brings a letter from a
self-identified African- American prison inmate (several of the same type
have arrived since September 11). He predicts Islam will take over the
world and America's days are numbered.
This man is one of many converts
to radical Islam under a program indirectly funded by Saudi Arabian money
through the National Islamic Prison Foundation, which underwrites a "prison
outreach" program. This program is likely to be discussed at the fifth
annual Islam in American Prisons Conference, scheduled for July 5-7 at
the Holiday Inn O'Hare International in Rosemont, Ill.
One of the co-sponsors of the gathering
is the Islamic Society of North America, which has ties to other Muslim
groups in the U.S., some of which are up to no good. Let us hope that under
the new Justice Department guidelines, the FBI will be attending and taking
notes.
Prison Fellowship Chairman Charles
Colson, who heads a Christian ministry to prisoners, believes radical Islamic
clerics, trained in Saudi Arabia, are converting large numbers of African-American
inmates not only to their religion, but to their political objectives,
including virulent anti-Americanism. Mr. Colson thinks such inmates could
serve the radicals as terrorists once they are released, murdering their
own countrymen in a kind of "payback" for perceived injustices done to
them by white America.
Last Oct. 20, the New York Times
quoted Faheem Shuaibe, imam at a large, predominately black mosque in Oakland,
Calif., as saying that more than 200 African- American imams have been
trained so far in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Shuaibe told the newspaper:
"There was a very deliberate recruitment
process by the Saudis, trying to find black Muslims who had a real potential
for Islamic learning and also for submission to their agenda. They taught
Islam with the intent to expand their influence. A principal target was
to stop the indigenous Muslim leadership in America from tinkering with
their religion."
According to the Times story, the
brand of Islam being taught and exported was the most extreme sect, known
as Wahhabism.
"These are bad guys," says Mr. Colson,
who contrasts his Christian ministry, which uses volunteers to visit inmates,
with the "extreme agenda" of the Wahhabbi Muslims, who do not utilize volunteers,
but rely on imams. Mr. Colson says he has been in 600 prisons (counting
the one in which he served time for Watergate crimes). He calls some of
the anger of black inmates "legitimate" because of sentence disparity and
the anger they feel at themselves. These angry men are being shaped by
radical clerics in a way that will threaten America's interests when they
get out.
There are 2 million people in American
prisons. Most are men and only 30 percent are white. "If only 5 percent
of the African-American population is disaffected," says Colson, "that
is an enormous pool from which the radicals can draw."
Inmates of whatever faith, or of
no faith, are entitled to visits by lay or professional ministers. But
Supreme Court rulings grant the prison system the right to determine who
might undermine order and who best preserves it. Wardens in state prisons
and officials in the Federal Bureau of Prisons should issue new guidelines
and bar radical Islamists.
While the government is at it, a
serious investigation should be conducted into the proliferation of Islamic
front groups in this country. Influential American political activists
are rumored to be taking money from Islamic states and seeking to shape
U.S. foreign and domestic policies that may not be in the best interests
of their own country. They should also be the focus of journalistic concern.
This is war, after all. German spies
were hunted down and exposed during the Second World War, as were spies
and other threats to American freedoms during the Cold War. We should be
doing the same with this greater contemporary threat.
(Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated
columnist)
