"Islamic State Sets Up An English Speaking..." Topic

… Battalion To Launch Attacks Against The West.

"Islamic State has formed a new fighting battalion composed entirely of English-speaking militants with orders to carry out attacks in the West.

The 'Anwar al-Awlaki Battalion' has been created to focus solely on carrying out attacks abroad and is working to export its fighters after they've attended training camps, it has been claimed.

Anti-ISIS group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently said its informants in the organisation's self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa notified it of the development…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

However, that ISIS have English-speaking fighters is hardly news. So far the intelligence agencies seem capable of handling the situation – thanks in part to a lot of co-operation from our own Muslim community (which would surprise a lot of posters here).

The problem seems to be not from mosque-going Muslims, but from those either lapsed or new to the faith who get their instruction from videos on the internet rather than an iman.

Such people are difficult for anyone to keep tabs on…

What a lord of horse crap.

Most of the terrorists in the US regularly attended local mosques, as did the European Islamic Terrorists.

Trying to deny the terror link to modern Radical Islam is so dishonest I don't know where to beegin.

And they were masterminded by lifelong Muslim Imams.

Can't speak for the 9/11 bombers, but a alrge number of the problem people are converts.

Still, I guess you know far more about the issue than the intelligence services and indeed the Muslim community here in the UK.

While there is no-one more aggressive than a convert, the 9-11 attackers and planners were life-long Muslims.

Converts are frequently the focus of social anxieties, particularly in terms of drawing clear boundaries between communities in the public sphere. For example, morescos or conversos in late Medieval and early modern Spain. They are "thinkable" as the problem because they represent both the distinction (literally, the border case) and the ambiguous breakdown of distinctions between groups, which are understood ideally as pure Good and conversely pure Evil (WASP culture and Brown/immigrant/Muslim culture, in this case).

I'm in the US military security engineering business. As Bangorstu says, the unknown freak is always the concern. The obvious known radical candidates Warlock commented about are already watched closely.

I always love the "blame the freak individual" exceptionalism of modern 21st century Westerners.

It's like the Nazis or Communists – only a few evil freak individuals and everyone else never brought into any of it.

I'm always amazed at how people like Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung and Stalin managed to kill millions with just a handful of individuals. They were very efficient individuals or they had massive overtime bills.

If only they bothered with more constructive tasks, those few extremely efficient individuals could've cured cancer, created world peace, develop all countries to first world standards before Christmas.

Deadzone – sometimes I wonder if you've ever met a Muslim.

The UK has millions of them. We're talking about problems with a few hundred.

And those few hundred are somewhat hindered by community co-operation with our security services.

Deadone
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I don't think anyone is arguing evil freak indviduals – rather a hard core of radicals supported emotionally by a larger group of passive supporters – like we had with the IRA and its supporters in both the UK, Eire and the USA. But most of us never said 'don't trust the Irish they're all potential terrorists/why didn't the RC Church stand up and be counted'

If Homeland Security and the FBI are doing their jobs, the lifelong muslims who attend mosques, including imans, are being watched closely. New 'converts' may be harder to detect.

Hollywood isn't helping either. A recent episode of NBC's soon-to-be-canceled CIA procedural drama 'State of Affairs' tried to have us believe that a pretty, all American blonde hair blue-eyed sorority girl a la Alicia Silverstone in 'Clueless' can be a radical Islamic suicide bomber. She evaded the crack team of CIA analysts led by…. Katherine Heigl and managed to blow herself up and take a senator along with her. She failed in her mission though since her true target, the CIA director at the safehouse, survived. As if!

So according to Hollywood, your next door WASP-y neighbors can be radical muslim sleeper agents.

If the FBI etc are actually doing their jobs, their talking to the imans and trying to get some help given 99.9% of Muslims aren't keen on people joining ISIS either.

Though one complication we've had here is that not everyone who goes to Syria joins ISIS. Quite a few, especially early on, motivated by wanting to hurt Assad, joined the FSA and left when the fundies took over. All tend to get tarred with the same brush.

Hopefully people know the difference ebtween reality and Hollywood – though I guess Americans don't generally meet as many Muslims as we British people do and hence can't make a judgement…

If Homeland Security and the FBI are doing their jobs, the lifelong muslims who attend mosques, including imans, are being watched closely.
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not quite sure how they do that (in terms of watching lifelong Muslims who are Mosque goers) as the resource implications (average surveillance team at least 10 people) would be enormous if they tried to watch all Mosque goers in terms of physical surveillance – you only have to look at what happened with the CH attackers in Paris who in effect were not rated highly enough to merit constant surveillance. Electronic is a different matter but it still needs someone to review it.

I think there are both born Muslims who become radicalized as well as recent converts. Both can become fanatics willing to pull off Lone Wolf assaults anytime and anywhere. That's the problem with modern terrorism, you can watch the loud, vocal groups, but the quiet guy in the corner may be the one who pulls a gun or explodes a bomb.