• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

For most of his career, Chesser’s ruminations on jihad were strictly “inside baseball,” of interest primarily to a handful of terrorism and jihadism researchers whose attention he virtually demanded. For instance, a series of blog postings on “Counter-Counter-Terrorism” proposed luring terrorism researchers (including the author of this book) into political arguments with each other in order to create divisions. Other entries in the series focused on law enforcement, suggesting that jihadist sympathizers should create a flood of false reports of suspicious packages so that authorities would be lulled when a real bomb was left on a street corner.41

Yet in April 2010, he managed to stumble into the big time with a post on Revolution Muslim about the Comedy Central animated TV show South Park, which was scheduled to air an episode satirizing the controversy over depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

Beneath a picture of the dead body of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch film director who was killed after producing a film critical of Islam, Chesser posted address information for South Park producers Matt Stone and Trey Parker, writing,

We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.42

Of course, it was a threat, no matter how finely Chesser tried to parse his definitions in the interests of staying out of jail. A follow-up posting featured audio of Anwar Awlaki explaining that mockery of Mohammed was punishable by death. The threats garnered an avalanche of national attention, putting scrutiny on Revolution Muslim, sparking general outrage, and ultimately resulting in the episode being censored by its distributor Comedy Central.43 Chesser and his family received death threats, and his parents stopped speaking to him.44

Overwhelmed by the attention, Chesser went silent after the South Park incident, but he was not idle. He started to make preparations to travel to Somalia and join the al Qaeda–linked Al Shabab militia, which had already hosted a number of American fighters (see chapter 10).

Or rather, he put on a show of making preparations. Although Chesser went through the motions of trying to get to Somalia, something always seemed to get in the way. His first effort failed when he lost his very first battle in the jihad— convincing his mother-in-law to return his wife’s passport, which she had hidden to keep her daughter from leaving the country. Chesser tried again in July 2010, with his infant son in his arms. He figured that U.S. authorities wouldn’t believe he was taking his baby into a war zone. It wasn’t clear what he planned to do with the child once he arrived in Somalia.

He was turned away by airport security because his name had been added to a no-fly list. Rather than keep trying, he called the FBI and said he wanted to provide information on Al Shabab. News of a Shabab suicide bombing in Uganda had prompted another one of his now-famous changes of heart, he explained, to the growing exasperation of the FBI.45 Perhaps simply to shut him up, FBI agents arrested Chesser in July and charged him with material support for terrorism in relation to his efforts to join Al Shabab.46

When a Western jihadist is arrested, the jihobbyists tend to circle the wagons, lining up to show support on the forums and “make dua” (pray) for the person arrested. It is a sign of Chesser’s polarizing character that very few stepped up to post on his behalf. Revolution Muslim never even bothered to acknowledge the arrest. On the forums, some noted that “the brother [had] loose lips.”

Yousef Al Khattab, the Revolution Muslim founder who by this point claimed to have abandoned his commitment to al Qaeda and violent jihad, offered a particularly harsh critique.

Just because we are Muslim or their [sic] is no [Islamic caliphate] does not give us a carte blanche