Tablighi Jamaat
excerpt:
I did a web search on “Jose Padilla”+“Jamaat ul-Fuqra” and found the following material in the Bharat Rakshak Monitor:
Stern also describes how Al Qaeda-affiliated groups may have sprung up in the US prison system, where converts to Islam offer a promising pool of recruits… The Pakistan-based Jamaat-ul-Fuqra, a “terrorist group committed to purifying Islam through violence”, is said to be active in US prisons. Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was abducted and killed while attempting to interview Jamaat leader Sheikh Gilani about his links to the alleged “shoe bomber” Richard Reid. Perhaps more disturbingly for Indians, Stern describes the strengthening connections between violent radicals and the Tablighi Jamaat. The Tablighi Jamaat, started out as a social revivalist organization like the Hindu Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Some of the better known Western jihadis such as Jose Padilla, Richard Reid and John Walker Lindh were indoctrinated by the Tablighi Jamaat before they moved on to military training organized by other groups in Afghanistan. The Jamaat is influential in Pakistan, and army officers affiliated with it were arrested in 1995 for plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. As many Indians know, the Tablighi Jamaat has also been involved in competitive mobilization with its Hindu counterparts in communally sensitive areas of India (such as Gujarat) which makes its apparent radicalization particularly worrisome for Indian social stability.
Adding this to my earlier research, we now have Richard Reid, Jose Padilla, John Walker Lindh, and John Allen Mohammad all swimming together in the same murky pond: Tablighi Jamaat.
Tablighi Jamaat was in the news recently when the plans were announced for the new mosque to be associated with the London Olympics:
An Islamic group is proposing to build Western Europe’s biggest mosque in East London in time for the 2012 Olympic Games...
Tablighi Jamaat - a worldwide Islamic missionary group - is proposing the mosque as its new UK headquarters.
The group envisions a futuristic design for the three-storey mosque, with wind turbines taking the place of minarets and an overall capacity of 70,000 when surrounding buildings are taken into account.
Link for the entire disturbing article:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/