To make America safe again, stop funding radical Islamists

Photo: AP Images

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will likely fail to achieve their part of the bargain in making America great again, as their goal to cut federal spending by $2 trillion is overly ambitious. However, if they want to help make America safe again, they could seek more modest cuts and conduct better due diligence on organizations tied to radical Islamists who receive millions of dollars annually in federal grants.

Some of these grant recipients belong to a shadowy ecosystem that fuels terrorists like Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who plowed his truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Eve, killing 14 people and wounding dozens of others, including two vacationing Israelis.

Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Watch Islamist project, has been tracking this funding for years online at USAspending.gov. In March, Westrop stated that the Biden administration allocated around $60 million in grants and contracts in the past three years to 150 domestic Islamic organizations. Many of these groups are entirely legitimate and peaceful, but Westrop pointed out that approximately $14 million of the total sum lined the pockets of 38 organizations categorized as Islamist-run or influenced.

This included a $330,000 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grant in 2023 to the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, a pro-Iranian institution whose Imam, Mohammad Ali Elahi, has demonized Israel as “warmongers and enemies of humanity.” After world leaders gathered this past June to celebrate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, he sermonized: “It’s a shame to see Western leaders in Normandy today celebrating victory over Nazi Germany 80 years ago while supporting the Israeli Nazi behavior and barbaric genocide in Gaza today.”

The Biden administration is not alone in dishing out taxpayer dollars to disreputable recipients.

The Obama administration allocated $37 million to domestic Islamic groups during its two terms, while the Trump administration provided $26 million during its four years. In 2017, the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson received a $31,000 federal grant. Its Imam, Mohammad Qatanani, was born in a Palestinian refugee camp near Shechem and stands accused by Israel of having ties to Hamas — a claim Qatanani has denied.

Another New Jersey institution, the Miftaahul Uloom Academy in Union City, received over $68,000. Westrop reports that the academy’s Islamic studies teacher, Wesley Lebron, has promoted videos asserting that “Jews did 9/11” and cautioning Muslims not to “become like the Jews.”

At press time, authorities were still analyzing cellular phones and laptops they confiscated from the Bourbon Street terrorist’s home to trace his “radicalization” process, which began when he declared his loyalty to ISIS. In the meantime, like many law enforcement organizations, the FBI employs misleading lingo, referring to Jabbar as a “lone wolf.”

Twenty Levels of Terror

Flustered law-enforcement officials feed the illusion of the lone-wolf terrorist, either because they lack understanding of the extent of the terrorist infrastructure or to excuse their failures to stop terror in its tracks. After all, who could predict when a single terrorist with a weapon will wield it or when a driver will veer off the road and ram his car into a group of pedestrians?

The politically correct media will also trot out the lone-wolf label. Instead of viewing the perpetrators through the prism of the religious belief or ideology that incites them, the lone wolf becomes a forlorn figure worthy of sympathy because society has alienated him or perhaps because he has mental health problems.

We’ve all been regaled with how Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the Bourbon Street terrorist, had three broken marriages, financial difficulties, and the stress of helping take care of his father, who had suffered a stroke. These are serious problems that many people can overcome with strength of character and the right support systems.

However, terrorists connect to the wrong type of support system. Jihadist internet sites are replete with incitement and instructions for those who feel the urge to commit an act that they believe will launch them heavenward. A raid of his mobile home in Houston showed Jabbar possessed chemicals and instructions on how to make explosives.

John McCreary, a CIA and Pentagon intelligence veteran who ran the KGS Nightwatch website until he died in 2019, developed the theory of terrorism as a living ecosystem consisting of as many as 20 subsystems of interacting components that support each other.

McCreary proved that even the so-called lone wolves link up to these subsystems to strike a target anywhere in the world. These include a worldwide lookout system, training camps and the institutions that finance them, communications equipment and computing devices, translators, planning cells, target analysts and planners, recruiters, guards, transporters, trainers, bomb makers, weapons storage, air travel, partisans and donors in friendly countries, and cooperative media. The operatives — the lone wolves — who carry out the executions are way down on the list — just the 19th link of this well-oiled chain.

Complacency Is Fatal

The US government should exit the business of being the donor in a friendly country to organizations who aid and abet committing murder and mayhem. To say that the incoming administration needs better oversight and vetting to disqualify organizations that preach radical doctrines alongside providing social services is an understatement. After all, even Hamas and Hezbollah also hand out charitable aid to buy people’s loyalty.

It’s not that Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden are directly to blame. They’re not in charge of small government grants, some used for COVID-19 relief or school lunch programs. But they must remember the sign on President Harry Truman’s desk, “The buck stops here,” and instruct their underlings accordingly.

Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy talk about draining the swamp in Washington. The swamp starts here with government handouts to anti-American, anti-Semitic, and anti-western radicals. Westrop contends that most US-based Islamist organizations are independently wealthy and self-supporting. They don’t need the money as much as the legitimization a federal grant provides.  “Federal contracts and grant agreements help Islamist movements impose control over American Muslim communities while sidelining underfunded, moderate Muslim competitors,” he writes.

Greg Roman, COO of the Middle East Forum, warns that time is running out and that “complacency is fatal.” He contends that the Bourbon Street attack highlights the Biden administration’s failure to prioritize the fight against jihadist extremism while reserving some critique for the Trump White House. He said the Trump administration’s first term was marked by strong rhetoric but lacked the cohesive strategy needed to dismantle these networks.

Roman recommends Trump turn the clock back to his early first-term pledges to establish a commission on radical Islam and work with reformist Muslims to develop support networks to root out the radical Islamists, one by one.

“He must not squander his second chance,” Roman said. “The online radicalization pipeline — enabled by platforms unwilling or unable to monitor extremist content — must be disrupted.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1044)