Free Republic

Amid all the shocking details in the disrupted plot to bomb Bronx synagogues and fire missiles at American military aircraft, one component of the case should come as no surprise - three of the alleged culprits converted to radical Islam in prison. Radical Islamists have targeted prison populations for recruitment for years. That's where Jose Padilla, suspected of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb and convicted of conspiracy to murder people overseas and of providing material support to terrorists, converted and was radicalized. That's where a California man, Kevin James, created his own cell, called the Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (JIS),...

... [L]ast week, Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad found himself an accidental actor of sorts in the latest case of what the authorities call a homegrown terror plot, one in which four ex-convicts were accused of trying to blow up two Bronx synagogues and attack military aircraft. The plot, the authorities say, began when one of the men met a government informant at Mr. Muhammad’s mosque roughly a year ago. With at least two of the men appearing to be prison converts to Islam, the case has in certain circles evoked an old debate about the role prison might play as an...

CITY OF NEWBURGH — Half a dozen religious leaders of various denominations gathered at a Newburgh mosque Friday to pledge support for the city's Muslim community after federal agents on Wednesday revealed a homegrown terror plot. "We deplore the whole thing," Rabbi Larry Freedman said of the alleged plot, "but we're here as friends, and we're here as neighbors." For two days, the phone had rung at Masjid al-Ikhlas. People all over the world had begun to hear the name of the mosque on Washington Street in Newburgh. A complaint filed by the FBI claimed one of the four men...

The possibility that the alleged New York bomb plotters converted to Islam in prison and adopted radical views could provide evidence of how the criminal-justice system can be fertile ground for terrorist recruitment. Authorities said they believed all four men charged in the attack were Muslim and that some may have converted in prison. It isn't clear whether these conversions were linked to the radical views officials say they espoused while plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down U.S. military planes... According to New York state corrections records, alleged ringleader James Cromitie and David Williams gave...

As I noted yesterday and many times in the past, the four Muslims caught trying to blow up New York synagogues and U.S. planes converted to Islam in prison, where the Muslim chaplaincy is controlled by CAIR, ISNA, and an alphabet soup of extremists and jihadists. Today, Bill Warner points out that the men met at Masjid Al-Ikhlas, a Newburgh, New York mosque, whose imam is Salahuddin Muhammad, a New York prison chaplain. Hello . . .? Yet, authorities refuse to do anything to this guy. And they continue to refuse to overhaul the Muslim prison chaplain system and who...