Some Reminders of the Enemies Within
For a few reasons, the American public is often in a state of complacency when it comes to the threat from Jihad.
For a few reasons, the American public is often in a state of complacency when it comes to the threat from Jihad.
One reason is simply that Americans are busy, hard-working people who focus on their own lives and don’t obsess over threats and bad news on a daily basis.
But the other reason is that our national news media often fails to report on terrorism-related news stories because they are too obsessed with the fantasy of Russian collusion and American pop culture.
But the threat of Jihadist terrorism is still with us and local media around the country still report the threat. Here are some examples that you may not be aware of from just the past couple of weeks…
- On 29 January, Abdullah Ali Yusef, aka Damon Joseph, was indicted on federal terrorism charges in Ohio after being arrested in December in a plot to attack a synagogue:
- On 30 January, Islamic State supporter Charlton LaChase of Fort Pierce, Florida, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervision, for making terroristic threats. (Just an aside: 18 months seems to be a ridiculously light sentence for an Islamic State supporter who made terroristic threats.) Fort Pierce clearly has a problem; the Orlando Pulse Nightclub Jihadi shooter, Omar Mateen, was from Fort Pierce and attended a mosque in Fort Pierce where his father, an avowed Taliban supporter, was a prominent congregant.
- On 8 February, Wesley Dallas Ayers of Anderson, South Carolina, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for building and placing improvised explosive devices in South Carolina and making threats to wage Jihad. Ayers is a convert to Islam who has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State…
- Also on 8 February in Arlington, Texas, Michael Kyle Sewell was charged with conspiracy to provide material support for a terrorist organization after recruiting on behalf of Lashkar e Taiba (LeT), the Jihadist terrorist organization responsible for the horrific attack on Mumbai, India in 2008.
- On the same day, Jesus Wilfredo Encarnacion, of New York City, was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he was preparing to board a flight bound for Pakistan so that he could join LeT and join the Jihad. He was also a convert to Islam who expressed a desire to behead people…
If you were not aware of these stories it’s not your fault. None of them received significant national news coverage here in the U.S. Only media in the localities where these men were arrested and sentenced covered the stories, with the exception of the story involving the LeT recruit in New York—that one was covered by news organizations in India, but you wouldn’t have seen much about it on CNN.
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