Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [35]
As the crisis dragged on, Alamoudi rallied a diverse, media-friendly collection of religious leaders to join his “American Task Force on Bosnia.” Despite his support for radicals such as the blind sheikh, Alamoudi won strong backing from American Jews, in part thanks to frequent comparisons between the actions of Bosnian Serbs and the Holocaust:
Our children and their children will not forgive this generation, will not forgive us, all of mankind, for allowing this genocide—and if I may respectfully call it the second Holocaust of this century. The mass rape, the destruction that went on for more than a year must not be forgiven. We have allowed the destruction not only of life, of property, but of cherished principles of international law, the bedrock of the United Nations itself.23
The comparison was profoundly ironic, given that Izetbegovic reportedly collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.24
In American mosques, Friday khutbas (sermons) increasingly concerned the slaughter of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, and speakers recounted lurid reports of atrocities—especially allegations about the rape of Muslim women, a frequent theme in jihadist propaganda.
Under the influence of the “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, the Al Kifah operations in Brooklyn and Boston had also started to focus heavily on Bosnia. Al Kifah’s newsletter, which was personally supervised by Rahman, exhorted readers to provide both “money and men,” ruling that jihad in Bosnia was obligatory for all Muslims:
We help the mujahideen in Bosnia so the [infidels] won’t spread in the region. [ … ] We help the mujahideen in Bosnia just to protect this Ummah [the community of Muslims] and to return the torturing of the enemy after the backing off of many of the Muslim leaders and their begging the United States to lift the weapon embargo.25
Rahman himself echoed these sentiments in extravagant speeches around the New York area.
Where’s virtue? Where is loyalty which remained with the Muslims? … They find the women as their honors were violated, and the Bosnian women ask in some conferences what do we do with our pregnancies what do we do? And what should we do? They ask while they are crying…. Have the eyes cried? Have the tears shed? Have the hearts been broken? For what is happening to our sisters there? While their honors are violated and they became pregnant out of wedlock, no one lifts a finger.26
Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, a bespectacled Sudanese immigrant who worked as Omar Abdel Rahman’s translator in New York, echoed his spiritual leader’s outrage in speeches around New York.
We cannot announce and pronounce [Koranic verses about] Jihad, even when we come to America here, because we are still afraid that the CIA or the FBI or the authorities of countries are going to be behind us. Therefore, we still have to stay in our shells, and not come out and confront the idea or confront the disease, confront the humiliation, confront the oppression, and confront the [infidels] who has taken our own sisters, our brothers, as slaves in Bosnia.27
Siddig should have taken the threat of FBI surveillance more seriously, as will become clear.
THE A-TEAM
Thanks to these public sympathies and his excellent social network, Bilal Philips was making rapid strides in his program to recruit U.S. soldiers who could help train Bosnia’s besieged fighters in their efforts against the Serbs. The first step was to secure financing and support for the plan, so Philips flew to Switzerland to meet with a representative of the Bosnian government.
Hasan Cengic was an imam, an official in the Bosnian army, and a notorious gunrunner. Cengic and Izetbegovic had served time in prison together under