"Pfc Nasser Abdo is an unmitigated traitor to the United States"

Discussion in 'Current Events' started by Talon, May 25, 2012.

  1. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Police booking photo of Naser Jason Abdo

    I received an interesting e-mail from the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) last night following the conviction of Pfc. Nasser Abdo on 6 charges (attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, attempted murder of U.S. officers or employees, and four counts of possessing a weapon) in connection with a failed plot to bomb a Texas restaurant full of soldiers from Fort Hood. Abdo is facing life in prison. In his first court appearance, Abdo shouted "Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009!" and was later accused of biting through his lip and spitting blood on a U.S. marshal and sheriff's deputy who escorted him to a hearing last month.

    While Abdo's antics and conviction have captured the public's attention, particularly because this is the second plot targeting soldiers at/from Fort Hood, what I found truly interesting was the response by M. Zuhdi Jasser of the AIFD, who served 11 years as a medical officer in the US Navy and received the Meritorious Service Medal. In response to the Nadal and Abdo cases, Jasser charged that "the Pentagon's 2010 after-action report, "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood," revealed a blind spot by failing to address the warning signs of Islamist radicalism that were abundantly clear prior to the massacre. Pvt. Abdo's history has shown again that our military leadership is not equipped to deal with the challenges political Islam presents to national security and the protection of our armed forces."

    I'll start the post with the news reports regarding Abdo's failed plot and conviction and then move on to Jasser's responses, which raise many interesting and troubling points. I welcome your responses.

    First the news reports, beginning with the articles concerning his plot, trial and conviction:




     
  2. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Now, M. Zuhdi Jasser's responses. The first is an article that ran in the Walls Street Journal last August, and the second is his reaction to Abdo's conviction yesterday. I post them in their entirety to highlight Jasser's points:

    The Islamist Threat Inside Our Military
    August 19, 2011
    M. Zuhdi Jasser
    Wall Street Journal

    There should be a moratorium on granting conscientious objector status to Muslims based on claims of religious faith.

    By M. ZUHDI JASSER
    OPINION
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904006104576500593598420746.html

    Our armed forces are becoming ground zero for American Muslims in the ideological struggle between Americanism and Islamism. U.S. Army Pvt. Naser Abdo points to that serious conflict.

    Pvt. Abdo was arrested recently in possession of weapons and explosive materials. Investigators say he told them he planned to attack the military. The private has publicly complained that he faced discrimination because he is Muslim.

    How many Islamists gone militant do we need to attack us before our military addresses radicalization among its Muslim members? Political correctness and denial are not working.

    The vast majority of Muslims serve with honor and distinction. They are not the problem. The problem is the subset of Muslims who are Islamists.

    Naser Abdo was arrested on July 27, 2011, in Killeen, Texas, in a motel near Fort Hood, site of the massacre in November 2009. As he was led out of a federal courtroom, he shouted "Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009!" And like Maj. Hasan, the shooter in that massacre, he did not become a militant overnight. Radicalization is a natural evolution for an individual consumed by the narrative of anti-American, theo-political Islamism.

    There is an irreconcilable conflict between allegiance to the United States, with its secular Constitution, and fealty to the consciousness of an Islamist state that centers on the Quran as its constitution and the ummah (Muslim nation) as its global citizenry. The crucial question a Muslim soldier needs to be asked is this: "Do you have any sense of loyalty to the ummah and its Islamic state?" Those who answer in the affirmative pose a problem.

    The Pentagon's 2010 after-action report, "Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood," revealed a blind spot by failing to address the warning signs of Islamist radicalism that were abundantly clear prior to the massacre. Pvt. Abdo's history has shown again that our military leadership is not equipped to deal with the challenges political Islam presents to national security and the protection of our armed forces.

    Naser Abdo joined the U.S. Army infantry in August 2009, only to demand in June 2010 that he be granted conscientious objector (CO) status and be discharged before he deployed to Afghanistan. Claiming the Army was delaying his CO application, he hired a civilian attorney and established a grievance mill for Islamists on the Web.

    His public pleas that his faith and military service were incompatible vacillated between alleged obstacles to his religious practices, unsubstantiated claims of harassment, and a refusal to go to Afghanistan. He claimed that an abundance of religious sources told him to abandon a non-Muslim army. He told ABC News that he wanted out so he could spend his time combating Islamophobia. In my own 11 years of service, not once did I feel a conflict between my orthodox practice of Islam and my service as a Naval officer.

    The assistant deputy secretary of the Army granted Pvt. Abdo his CO status this year and recommended dismissal from the service. But in the meantime he was charged by the military for possession of child pornography on his government computer and went AWOL from Fort Campbell, Ky. He was apprehended when a gun store owner in Killeen, Texas, reported his suspicious purchases and behavior to the police.

    Pvt. Abdo has been indicted by a federal grand jury on weapons charges, is being held without bond, and has yet to enter a plea. He was set to appear Thursday in federal magistrate court but chose to waive his arraignment and will not appear.

    Pvt. Abdo's arrest removes any threat he may have posed to the military. But the Army's approval of his status as a conscientious objector will damage perception of Muslims in the military, because it implicitly validates Islamism as a belief system.

    Muslims have fought many wars against other Muslims.
    Certainly, for the vast majority our allegiance is first and only to the U.S. and never to any Islamist constructs of the Islamic state, the ummah, or jihad.

    Faisal Shahzad, the confessed Times Square bomber, stated to the judge at his arraignment, "We Muslims are one community. We are not divided." He proclaimed that he was a "mujahid" or a "Muslim soldier." Nidal Hasan similarly called himself a "Soldier of Allah." This self-identification is central to the Islamist threat.

    Yet the theological underpinnings of Islamist radicalization remain ignored by military officials, who fear appearing to discriminate against Muslim soldiers. That fear has been bolstered by leading Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups in America. Their platform of political Islam teaches Islamic revivalism and an aversion to the separation of mosque and state.

    Salah Al-Sawy of the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AMJA) concluded in a 2008 online fatwa, "As for optionally obtaining citizenship of a non-Muslim country it is definitely prohibited without a doubt, moreover it could be a form of apostasy." An AMJA paper in 2009 stated that, "the basic conflict between the declaration of faith and testimony that there is no God except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah and the declaration and pledge of Allegiance of the USA is irreconcilable."

    These ideas need to be confronted. There are many Muslim leaders who can lead that defense of liberty and of the need to separate mosque and state. We must take their side over that of the Islamists.

    Muslim servicemen and women need to speak up about the ideological struggle between Islamism and Americanism. For its part, our armed services should declare a moratorium on all Muslim requests for conscientious objector status claimed on the basis of their Islamic faith. And anti-Islamist American Muslims must develop reform-minded strategies to inoculate Muslims against Islamism.

    Finally, the country needs to send a clear message that the Hasans and Abdos of the world will be prosecuted with the full force of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. America's national security hangs in the balance.

    Dr. Jasser is president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Ariz., and a former U.S. Navy Lt. Commander.
    http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=7020
     
  3. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Finally, Jasser's response to Abdo's conviction yesterday:

    Pfc Nasser Abdo is an unmitigated traitor to the United States
    May 24, 2012
    Abdo's conviction should result in the harshest punishment and a moratorium on CO status for Muslims


    PHOENIX (May 24, 2012) - The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) released the following statement from its founder and president Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser regarding the verdict at Pfc. Nasser Abdo's trial:


    "The American Islamic Forum for Democracy is pleased at the jury's decision to convict Pfc Nasser Abdo on all counts. Abdo is simply a traitor to the United States of America, and his actions are a direct insult both to the uniform of the U.S. Army and in particular to all American Muslim service members. The decision to convict needs to be followed by a sentence that levels the harshest punishment possible, including the military immediately rescinding his Conscientious Objector status. American Muslim soldiers deserve that courtesy.

    AIFD would like to take this opportunity to make it explicitly clear that Abdo has departed from mainstream non-Islamist interpretations of Islam and our duties to the United States of America. In fact his interpretation is dangerous and part of a radical Islamist ideology. His statement that "religion is the reason" for his planned attack on Fort Hood is a twisted view of the Islamic faith that should be refuted by all American Muslim organizations. However, it is also a view that should not be ignored and should be confronted in its many manifestations along the path of radicalization. At the time of his arrest in 2011 Dr. Jasser wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "Our armed forces are becoming ground zero for American Muslims in the ideological struggle between Americanism and Islamism. U.S. Army Pvt. Naser Abdo points to that serious conflict."

    Abdo disgraces the pride of being an American which we instill in our American Muslim children. His use of CO (conscientious objector) status is not only false it is un-Islamic. Abdo's obsession with "Islamophobia" is the same logic that drove the murderous rampage of Maj Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood which he tried to emulate. Abdo's adherence to the global Islamist ideology above his American loyalty runs to the core of what we Muslims need to fight in real counterterrorism. Abdo's actions are an affront to every American Muslim who has proudly donned a US military uniform. His assertions are not built on modern Islamic teachings but on a feeble adherence to the global political ideology of Islamism that threatens our security and radicalizes our Muslim youth. His comment to his mother on video played during the trial that, "the reason is religion, mom" speaks volumes, yet again, to the deep need for the Abdo case to spark a move by leading American Muslims to dissect and defeat the theo-political movement (political Islam) that can often end in a militant version of Islamism. American security hangs in the balance."

    http://www.aifdemocracy.org/news.php?id=7716
     
  4. Talon

    Talon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    More details on the Abdo case, including a different plot in Kentucky where he planned to kidnap and capture the execution of a US soldier on video (presumably for jihadist propaganda purposes):


    HIV positive soldier accused of military base plot wears surgical mask in trial
    2:01PM BST 23 May 2012

    ...Abdo was arrested July 27 in the nearby Texas town of Killeen. Police and federal agents have previously testified that they found a handgun and enough gunpowder to make at least one bomb.

    They also discovered directions from an al-Qaeda magazine on how to build an explosive device.

    Prosecutors mounted a detailed case, mixing a trail of receipts and time-stamped videos of Abdo with testimony from a number of workers who encountered him.
    They said he planned to detonate a bomb in a crowded Chinese restaurant not far from Fort Hood, and then gun down soldiers, their families and civilians as they fled.
    "He referred to civilians as collateral damage," Mr Owens said.

    Defence attorney Zachary Boyd countered that prosecutors could not prove that his client intended to kill anyone, and that no explosive device was ever built.
    "I want the jury to focus not just on the evidence, but the law," Boyd said in his opening statement.

    Prosecutor Gregg Sofer told jurors that Abdo had intended to kidnap a soldier and execute him on video when he was still in Kentucky.
    "He had already acquired a body bag, a stun gun, a cattle prong," Sofer told the jury.

    But the plan fell apart and Abdo fled, leaving his Cadillac, body bags, a green body bag carrier and bleach to clean up the crime scene.
    A hood, three handcuff boxes, batteries for the prong, his car keys and identification papers were also found.


    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...y-base-plot-wears-surgical-mask-in-trial.html
     

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