Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [73]
“I hope Muslims didn’t do this,” he said.
Within hours of the hijackings, Royer had written and issued a press release condemning the attack and urging Muslims to report harassment. The phones were now ringing off the hooks, and it was his job to answer them. Many of the calls were reporting hate crimes and harassment.16
Yet after he left the office—near midnight—Ismail Royer’s mind was elsewhere. A message had been passed through his circle of friends, half a dozen men he had spent hours training with outside the office. Everyone in the group who owned a gun was to assemble for a meeting.17
That meeting took place four days after September 11, at the behest of an American-born cleric, Ali Al Timimi. Timimi told Royer and the other gathered jihadists that the Muslims of Afghanistan now needed their help, far more than the Kashmiri Muslims on whose plight the group had previously focused. The Muslims of Afghanistan had a new enemy, and that enemy was the United States.
Armageddon was at hand, Timimi told his rapt audience. September 11 was a sign of the impending apocalypse, and everyone in the room had a part to play.18
ALI MOHAMED
Al Qaeda’s most accomplished spy, the American citizen Ali Mohamed, had been living in the witness protection wing of a federal prison for the past few months. Mohamed had cut a plea deal and agreed to provide information about al Qaeda in the hope of winning a reduced sentence.
That hope went out the window on the morning of September 11, when he was abruptly hustled out of his cell and moved to solitary confinement. No contact with other prisoners and especially no news of the world—no television, radio, or newspapers.
A few days later, the questions began. “How did they do it?”
Calmly, Mohamed laid it all out. This is where you sit to hijack a plane; this is how you get a blade through security. He had taught these tricks to his fellows at al Qaeda. Mohamed had obtained a copy of the FAA’s security procedures manual and given it to al Qaeda. One of his trainees, Ihab Ali, had attended the Airman Flight School in Norman, Oklahoma, which Mohammad Atta had contacted to ask about flight training.19
Ali Mohamed may not have known that the September 11 attack specifically was in the works, but he knew an awful lot about how it could be done.
Mohamed must have known that day that he would not be receiving a reduced sentence. In fact, he would never be sentenced at all. While other prisoners would become hot topics among civil libertarians, Mohamed just faded away without a fuss. After September 11, his plea deal was little more than a joke. Ali Mohamed was too dangerous to ever walk the streets again.
9
The Descent of Anwar Awlaki
In the days after September 11, Anwar Awlaki spoke to the press over and over again, one of many Muslim leaders stepping forward to give the community’s response to the attacks.
Although his statements were mostly conciliatory, there was an unmistakable edge. Awlaki was eager to blame the United States for inciting the terrorist attack through its “anti-Muslim” foreign policy.
“Our hearts bleed for the attacks that targeted the World Trade Center as well as other institutions in the United States, despite our strong opposition to the American biased policy toward Israel,” Awlaki said during the first Friday khutba following the attacks.1
A week later he continued to drum the message home, using language that seemed to justify the attack. “We were told this was an attack on American civilization. We were told this was an attack on American freedom, on the American way of life. This wasn’t an attack on any of this. This was an attack on U.S. foreign policy.”2
Awlaki then turned the focus toward the alleged victimization of Muslims in the United States due to bigotries