The Terrorist Next Door (18 page)

In recent years, social outcasts have increasingly found appeal in Islamism. They might be lonely nerds, love-starved women, ex-cons, or people who grew up in abusive families. Some are white converts to Islam, others are African-American or Hispanic. All have one thing in common: they find a meaning and purpose in the jihadist cause that they previously lacked in life. In the old days, they may have joined a cult, hooked up with a street gang, or listened to the darkest form of heavy metal music. But with the advent of the Internet came a sudden host of causes and interests that an angry, disturbed, or alienated person could latch on to simply by clicking a mouse. Some have gone out searching for answers and acceptance on the Web and found Islam's rigid system of absolutes to be anchors in what had previously been chaotic, aimless lives.

A more fundamental transformation occurs when they learn about the Koran-mandated duty to wage jihad against all non-Muslims and to completely subjugate the world to Islam. For the first time in what they themselves often view as their wretched lives, these misfits become part of something bigger, something that matters—a powerful, worldchanging movement. Overnight, one can go from being a friendless sad sack or a directionless street thug to being a member of the ummah, or global Islamic community, simply by entering a jihadi chat room or
sharing an al-Qaeda video on YouTube. For an ex-con or a lonely, tormented soul who blames his failures and unhappiness on a U.S. system and society that has done them wrong, aiding and abetting America's enemies in a jihad against that very power structure is a perfect way to gain revenge.

Furthermore, for many young, radicalized converts, Islamism is the new rebellion—dangerous, scary, dark, and forbidden. Some have referred to this appeal as “Jihadi Cool.”
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You want to upset your parents and rebel against authority? Forget drugs, graffiti, stealing a car, or shaving your hair into a spiked orange mohawk. These days, it doesn't get much edgier than hooking up online with a hip-hop loving British kid who's secretly communicating with al-Qaeda leaders—and who just happens to be planning to blow up some subway cars in London. Forget the Bloods and Crips—it doesn't get more “gangsta” than al-Qaeda. And unlike most gangs, the jihadist movement has a clear, well-defined goal: the reestablishment of a global Islamic caliphate and the imposition of Islamic sharia law on one and all. The global jihad also has no shortage of inflammatory rallying cries: Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia, Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo Bay, just to name a few.

You can almost hear the seductive whispers of the Islamo-pimps and martyrdom-pushers as they beckon to a lost, angry American over the Web:

The narrative of Muslims as
oppressed underdogs standing up to the evil American hegemon
resonates with outcasts who've been left in the dust while the “cool kids” have all the fun and get the girls.

This is un fair,
they say to themselves.
The whole system is rigged against me. Why not turn it upside down and actively work to destroy it? Then I'll finally end up on top as an integral part of a new order, a triumphant Islamic wave. Or in the very least, I'll blow myself up and go to heaven, away from all these miserable fools for good. Hopefully, I'll take a few of them with me.

Yes, the scary quiet kid with the distant stare, bad acne, and
Ozzfest
t-shirt that sat next to you in biology class is now a prime candidate to carry the banner of Islamic jihad. Ditto the thuggish troublemaker who was in and out of juvenile hall throughout high school. Thanks to the Internet, they can now reach out and touch an Islamic terrorist halfway across the world. And once they're in the jihadist fold, most Americans will never see them coming. The following are some real-life examples of this threat, which will become increasingly familiar in the near future.

Your failure to heed our demands and the demands of reason means that you and your people will—Allah willing—experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th.

—Adam Pearlman Gadahn
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The date was May 29, 2007, and the bespectacled, bearded terrorist in the white turban was on a roll. Pointing at the video camera for emphasis and speaking in strangely accented English, he was clearly relishing his status as al-Qaeda's chief spokesman to the West. Only twelve years prior, Adam Pearlman Gadahn—grandson of a Jewish Zionist—had been living on a goat farm in rural California and writing reviews for
death metal publications.
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But by the time his threat of new “horrors” was broadcast worldwide, Gadahn was known as “Azzam the American” and had risen to become a senior operative for al-Qaeda as well as its media advisor and chief English-language propagandist. Since 2004, Gadahn has regularly appeared in the group's video releases to threaten mass bloodshed against the country in which he was born and raised. In 2006, he became the first U.S. citizen to be charged with treason in half a century. Most likely based in Pakistan's tribal regions along with the rest of al-Qaeda's hierarchy, he is now one of the most wanted men in the world. In short, he's a long way removed from his days as a chubby, homeschooled headbanger. So what on earth happened here?

Gadahn was raised a Christian by ex-hippie parents on a goat farm in rural California. His father, ironically, made a living as a
halal
butcher, slaughtering farm animals in an Islamically correct manner and supplying them to a Muslim food market in downtown Los Angeles.
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The young Gadahn was homeschooled by his parents and took part in Christian homeschooling support groups. He's written that he eventually grew to loathe “fundamentalist Christianity” and became deeply immersed in death metal, an extreme subculture of heavy metal music that features violent, overtly Satanic lyrics sung through guttural growling. Gadahn was hooked, even contributing music reviews and artwork to a death metal publication called
Xenocide
.
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Gadahn, a self-described “revolting geek” whom friends in the death metal scene recall as highly literate and intelligent,
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later wrote of his musical fixation:

Gadahn eventually moved into his grandparents' home, where he had ready access to the Internet. While surfing the Web and looking to fill what he described as a “void,” he discovered Islam.
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Soon it was out with his long, heavy metal hair and in with a flowing Islamic beard—from one extreme to another. After his conversion to Islam in 1995, Gadahn fell under the sway of a group of hardcore jihadists at the southern California mosque where he worshipped. He was an apt pupil, and before long was assaulting a mosque leader whom his radical circle considered too moderate. Gadahn was arrested and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and battery.
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By 1998, with the sponsorship of two of his jihadi friends from the mosque, he left for Pakistan. Other then one brief trip back to California a few months later, he has remained in Pakistan ever since, working his way through the ranks of al-Qaeda to become one of the organization's most recognizable figures. Adam Gadahn, described by one former friend as socially inexperienced, withdrawn, and lonely in his headbanger days, has found his voice as “Azzam the American,” one of al-Qaeda's public faces.
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“He seemed like such a nice young man.”

I was standing outside a run-down apartment building in run-down Decatur, Illinois, speaking with a neighbor of accused terrorist Michael Finton, also known as “Talib Islam.” That neighbor and others expressed shock that their fellow tenant, a tall, lanky redhead with polite manners, stood accused of plotting to blow up a federal building and the offices of a Republican congressman in nearby Springfield, Illinois.

Others were more evasive. When I popped into the nearby fish-andchicken takeout joint where Finton had worked as a 29-year-old fry cook prior to his arrest, I was told that the store was “under new management” and that they didn't know Finton. I got the message. After all, what business would want to be associated with a man like Finton, who authorities say parked a truck filled with what he believed to be a large quantity of
explosives outside a crowded federal building and tried to detonate it remotely with a cell phone? Unfortunately for Finton—and fortunately for federal workers—the explosives were fakes supplied by a federal agent posing as an al-Qaeda operative. Finton was arrested at the scene and now sits in a prison cell awaiting trial.

Where did it all go wrong for Finton, and how did a fry cook in a decaying mill town in rural Illinois end up on the fast track to jihad? Searching for answers, I travelled to Decatur in November 2009, shortly after Finton's arrest made national headlines. I discovered that warning signs of a budding jihadist were evident in the pale-skinned redhead who, according to his acquaintances, was prone to denouncing America for ostensibly victimizing Muslims.
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As for the small mosque he attended in town, it was locked, with the lights off, when I tried to enter on a Tuesday afternoon. Similarly, my phone calls went unanswered, although leaders of the mosque, which primarily caters to immigrants from Pakistan and India, did issue a statement condemning Finton's actions.
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The best clues concerning Finton's conversion to Islam and subsequent radicalization derive from his own statements and from federal documents. Finton described himself to co-workers at the fish-andchicken shop as a troubled youth who ran away from foster care.
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After being expelled from high school in Warren, Michigan, for fighting with a teacher, he eventually moved to Illinois, where he was sentenced to twelve years in prison in 1999 for aggravated robbery and aggravated battery.
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Like a growing number of jihadists in the United States and Europe, Finton converted to Islam in prison. He was released early in 2006, and later described his pre-Muslim days on his MySpace page: “There was a time when looking inside of myself only brought forth darkness. Everybody liked me, yet I hated myself. People thought I was smart, and reasonably good-looking, but to me, I was a moron, and a freak.”
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Finton's self-loathing seems to have quickly been cured by his turn to Islam. Suddenly, he was part of a global jihadist movement in which he had the power, in his mind, to change world dynamics. He told undercover
FBI agents that he hoped his acts of terror in Springfield “would cause American troops to be pulled back out of Afghanistan and Iraq,”
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and that he would rather die as a martyr for Islam than live in the United States.

Even before taking matters into his own hands in Springfield, however, Finton clearly longed to join the jihadist cause. He had sent letters to imprisoned American Taliban John Walker Lindh; although authorities have never revealed the contents, the subject probably wasn't prison food. Still more alarming, in March 2008 Finton received $1,375 from a man in Saudi Arabia, later sending that same amount to a travel agency and making his way to Saudi Arabia for a one-month stay.
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The nature of Finton's conversation with his Saudi contact, named “Asala Hussain Abiba” in court documents, and who they met with in Saudi Arabia have yet to be disclosed.
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It's clear, however, that Finton was so taken with the desert kingdom that he talked of moving there and starting a business.
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But ultimately, he decided on a different course—he struck a blow for jihad by trying to massacre his countrymen here in the United States.

Twenty-four-year-old Carlos Almonte and 20-year-old Mohamed Mahmood Alessa had made up their minds: they were going to Somalia to join the al-Qaeda-linked terror group al-Shabaab and kill as many infidels as possible. One of their heroes, al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, had recommended Somalia in his sermons as an ideal spot to wage jihad. Like so many homegrown American terrorists do when Awlaki speaks, Almonte and Alessa listened—intently.
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Then they took action. Heading to Somalia, the two were arrested in June 2010 while boarding a flight at New York's Kennedy Airport. They now await trial on terrorism charges .
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