Author: Robert Riggs
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: December 11, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11267
It's Ramadan, the holiest Islamic
month, and the call to prayer rings out daily to the prison system's more
than 7,500 Muslim inmates.
Their burgeoning numbers are a testament
to the fast pace of Islamic converts sweeping through the nation's prisons.
But CBS-11 has uncovered a disturbing half-hour videotape apparently used
as a recruitment tool in the Beto One Prison Unit in East Texas.
The confiscated video is titled
"A Message to the Oppressed" and carried a militant Islamic sermon in praise
of terrorists to inmates before authorities seized it during Islamic services.
The tape features the anti-Semitic
exhortations by the California-based Imam Muhammad Abdullah who claims
that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually carried out by the Israeli
and U.S. governments.
"Are we to believe that some person
that some people walked in airports and hijacked airplanes and then just
went and blew up buildings blew up the Pentagon? This is ignorance to the
max."
The Imam's tape ends by giving credit
to Hamas, al-Jihad and Hizballah. All three groups are listed as terror
organizations by the State Department.
Repeated efforts to reach Muhammad
Abdullah were unsuccessful. Public records indicate that Abdullah has been
an Imam in the California Youth Authority.
Inmate David Swanson, Assistant
Imam at the Ramsey One Unit, says his brothers there would never have allowed
such a tape to be shown.
"We don't condone that and we don't
try to promote that but at the same time we want Americans, our families,
our loved ones to understand that we are in this relationship with God,
not any ideologies or any ideas that may be contradictory to what God want
us to live," he said.
But the Anti-Defamation League,
also a target of the tape, says the message is part of a dangerous anti-Semitic
conspiracy theory gathering force around the world.
"These are the people who are trying
to create the image that war in Iraqand the war in Afghanistan is really
not a war against terrorists and terrorism, but rather a war against Islam,"
said the Dallas Anti-Defamation League's Mark Briskman.
Some terrorism experts say the videotape
is new evidence of militant Islamic groups infiltrating prisons through
religious programs. The Senate judiciary subcommittee on terrorism concluded
recently that U.S. prisons and jails are a key area of recruitment for
al-Qaeda and other terror organizations. In the wake of 9/11, the Texas
prison system's office of inspector general increased monitoring inmate
mail under state law.
"There have been cases domestically
here in the and some of the training we have received indicates that there
is a possibility that there is a recruiting effort going on inside prisons,"
said John Moriarty, Inspector General of the Texas Department of Criminal
Justice. "As a matter of fact, in other states, other than there has been
confirmation of that."
Inspector General John Moriarty
said inmates provide fertile recruiting ground for radical causes. Moriarty
said convicted criminals often blame the government for their problems
instead of taking personal responsibility for their behavior.
That's what has Mark Briskman of
the Anti-Defamation League so concerned.
"You have a potential in this prison
system, as these people begin to get out, in terms of recruiting them into
whether it's al-Qaeda or Hamas or Islamic Jihad, and possibly be recruited
to fight overseas or possibly be recruited to perform terrorist acts in
the United States," he said.
Some prison chaplains say the discovery
of the tape raises convern that religious freedoms in jail appear to have
been abused to help spread a militant message that encourages terrorism.
The government is concerned enough
about jailhouse recruitment to militant causes that it has begun checking
hundreds of pieces of mail.
Criminal investigator Robert Pittmon,
runs a new computerized Homeland Security program underwritten by the Texas
governor. Investigators scan all letters addressed to inmates who were
born in southwest Asian countries.
The prison system sends the electronic
copies of foreign language correspondence to FBI translators in Washington,
D.C. More than 2,000 pieces of mail have been checked so far.
For the past 14 years, Omar Rakeeb
carried an Islamic outreach from his mosque in Midland as a Muslim chaplain
to federal and state prisons.
Rakeeb found himself under scrutiny
for a controversial videotape shown to Muslim inmates in Texas under his
watch. State prison authorities seized the tape at East Texas' Beto One
Unit after learning that it features a militant California imam trying
to incite prisoners against the U.S. government. The tape gives support
to three terrorist organizations in its closing credits.
Rakeeb, speaking for the first time,
disavows any connection to the tape.
"I didn't have anything to do with
showing the tape," Rakeeb said.
He said an inmate ordered the tape
to the chaplain's office.
"He came in and said I had ordered
this tape and had it sent through this office, can we look it? Not right
now maybe later."
On the tape, California Imam Muhammad
Abdullah blames the 9-11 terrorist attacks on Israel and the Jews.
"Are we to believe that some person
that some people walked in airports and hijacked airplanes and then just
went and blew up buildings, blew up the Pentagon. This is ignorance to
the max."
Rakeeb was unable to explain who
removed the tape from Rakeeb's office and who else, besides him, had access
to a VCR to show it to inmates.
The prison system is investigating
a tape that the Anti-Defamation League says spreads an anti-Semitic conspiracy
theory.
The 55-year-old Chaplain said when
asked about the message that he's not familiar with what 'anti-Semitic'
means.
He declined to disavow the theory
that Israel and Jews orchestrated the attacks that killed more than 3,000
innocent American office workers.
"Well, I heard that. I saw it in
different.I heard it, I believe on TV and I read it somewhere on the internet
and heard people talking like that," Rakeeb said. Usually, I just treat
it as news, whether it is true or not, I have no way of knowning."
The FBI warns that militant Muslim
prison chaplains sympathetic to terrorists are trying to recruit inmates
as future operatives.
Rakeeb, however, says that he preaches
that Islam is a religion of peace. He boasts proudly that his son is on
the front line in the war against terrorism, serving as a sergeant in the
82nd Airborne.
"He loves the Army. He loves serving.
He reenlisted."
That's proof, he says, that the
first loyalty of his family of six children is to America - and to the
state where they settled more than 20 years ago.
"Texas is my home," he said. "I
love this state."
