Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [103]
U.S. intelligence services were looking for him. Vinas was arrested by Pakistani authorities and extradited to the United States.32 Like many captured jihadists, Vinas began to talk, giving rare and extensive intelligence on al Qaeda’s reconfiguration after the invasion of Afghanistan.
“For informing on the people that are fighting in Afghanistan, I call him a coward,” said Revolution Muslim’s cofounder Yousef Al Khattab.33 Unfortunately for Revolution Muslim, Vinas would not be the only collaborator.
ABU TALHA AL AMRIKI
Zach Chesser was born in Virginia in 1989. Much of his youth was unremarkable, at least on the surface. He played football and basketball and later signed up for crew.34 He was a joiner, jumping from obsession to obsession, whether it was Marilyn Manson or breakdancing.35
There were other Muslims at his high school, but he didn’t embrace Islam until his senior year.36 It didn’t take him long to discover the jihadist Web. With all the enthusiasm and arrogance of a new convert, he christened himself Abu Talha Al Amrikee and began to dispatch unsolicited advice to his fellow Muslims and to the seniors of the jihadist movement as a self-appointed expert in everything from economics to espionage.
In many ways, Abu Talha was the epitome of a jihobbyist. Armed with virtually no real knowledge of Islam, the history of the theological schools that he promoted, or the practical aspects of terrorism, Chesser became a ubiquitous Web presence, tirelessly aping the online propaganda he consumed voraciously while jumping from theme to theme and project to project in a manner suggestive of attention deficit disorder. Yousef Al Khattab described his output as “Tourette’s Dawa [preaching].”37
Chesser went through a series of platforms, including a YouTube account and a blog, along with an active membership on the Islamic Awakening forum. Then he joined Revolution Muslim, where he posted for a few months, spending time with the site’s cofounder Younus Abdullah Muhammad.38 Chesser next moved on to official jihadist forums such as Al Fallujah and Al Qimmah, a Somali jihadist site linked to the Al Shabab militia.
Abu Talha may have lacked focus and knowledge, but like many bloggers both inside and out of the jihad subculture, he tried to make up for these lapses with self-confidence, enthusiasm, and sheer volume. A typical post featured Chesser—who had been a Muslim for less than two years—hectoring other Muslims about their failure to do right by the mujahideen.
Are you doing your part to support your Brothers and Sisters in Somalia? Have you given d’ua [prayers] for brothers like Abu Mansour Al Amriki and other brothers lately? It may be time brothers and sisters to not only agree with the actions of The Lions of Tawheed [Monotheism], but also do something to support your brothers in Somalia and other places where Al Islam is being attacked. This is a call to action and a call to fulfill your obligation as a Muslim to defend your brothers and sisters. As your brothers and sister in Somalia are raped and killed by the Ethiopian Puppets from Addis Ababa and the Somalia slaves of the United States, will you be like Brother Mohamoud Hassan or Brother Abu Mansour [two Americans who fought in Somalia] and answer the call to Jihad? For Allah (SWT) knows best and will reward those who sacrificed on the Day of Judgment.39
Chesser described his motivations in a June 2010 interview with Aaron Y. Zelin, then a graduate student in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Brandeis University, who runs the Jihadology blog. Although Chesser wasn’t above playing the classic Muslim victimization card (as in the previous excerpt), his ideological bent and interest in jihad were mostly on the broadest level:
I hope to take part in the creation of an Islamic state where the shariah is applied inshallah [God willing] with no exceptions of general matters of which there is a consensus. That is the bare minimum.