If the Problem Is Muslim Terror, Then What?

Victor Davis Hanson:

In September, federal prosecutors charged illegal alien Mahmoud Maawad, 29, with wire fraud and fraudulent use of a Social Security number. But their real worry was that the Egyptian student had just ordered $3,000 in aviation materials, including DVDs entitled “Ups and Downs of Takeoffs and Landings,” “Mental Math for Pilots,” and “Mastering GPS Flying.” Shortly after this July’s London bombings, U.S. antiterrorism authorities arrested five Egyptian men—four of them illegal immigrants—in a Newark, New Jersey, apartment, which contained maps of the New York City subway system, train schedules, videos of city landmarks, and $8,000 in twenties and fifties. A few weeks earlier, in the sleepy town of Lodi, California, about two hours north of where I live, the FBI arrested Umer and Hamid Hayat (father and son) on immigration charges and for lying to federal agents about ties with Islamic terrorist groups in Pakistan. Officials allege that Hamid visited an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan during 2003 and 2004 for training in weapons, explosives, and hand-to-hand combat. Last autumn, authorities broke up a terrorist cell in Portland, Oregon, charging four with plotting to set up a terrorist training organization and with traveling to Afghanistan to aid al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Since September 11, the list of those arrested, and in a growing number of cases convicted, for Islamist terrorist activities in the U.S. has gotten longer and longer. Some arrestees have been U.S. citizens; more have been aliens, legal and illegal, living in out-of-the-way places on work or study visas. The list includes such abettors of evil as Mukhtar al-Bakri of Lackawanna, New York (ten years for providing support to al-Qaida), Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed of Brooklyn (45 years for providing support to al-Qaida and Hamas), and Ibrahim Admed Al-Hamdi of northern Virginia (15 years for firearm violations in connection with terrorist activities). The continued presence within our borders of so many who seek to destroy us suggests that we still haven’t squarely faced the problem that Islamic radicalism poses to our domestic security.

Importing Terrorism, Again

The Suicide Bombers Among Us