Pakistani jihadi recruits terrorists in American prisons

American prisons become political, religious battleground over Islam

Across the United States, tens of thousands of Muslims are practicing their faith behind bars. Islam is most likely to win American converts there, according to U.S. Muslim leaders, and the religion has for decades been a regular part of prison culture.

But the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks have brought new scrutiny to Muslim inmates, many of whom are black men focused on surviving incarceration. While prison chaplains of various denominations argue that Islam offers a spiritual path to rehabilitation, others say it has the potential to turn felons into terrorists. The FBI calls prisons "fertile ground for extremists."

"Prisons continue to be fertile ground for extremists who exploit both a prisoner's conversion to Islam while still in prison, as well as their socio-economic status and placement in the community upon their release," FBI director Robert Mueller said Feb. 16 to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
Prison chaplains and others, however, say such warnings are dangerously ignorant.

The Institute of Islamic Information & Education, based in Chicago, was one example cited at a 2003 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on terrorist recruitment in prisons and the military.
The traditionalist institute sends books on Islam to prison chaplains and says it responds to more than 3,000 letters from inmates annually, inquiring about Muslim dietary laws and teachings.

But its founder, Amir Ali, also runs another Web site.

In those postings, he calls al-Qaeda leader bin Laden a "true Muslim" who wouldn't hurt anyone and contends Hollywood producers fabricated the videotapes that have been broadcast over the last few years of bin Laden threatening more violence.

Ali, who left Pakistan for the United States four decades ago to earn a doctorate, says Israel committed the Sept. 11 attacks to force changes in U.S. immigration laws so that fewer Muslims would be admitted. He has posted the names of Jews with links to the Bush administration as evidence of Israeli manipulation and referred readers to the Web site of David Duke, who has led several white supremacist groups, to back up Ali's argument that Jews control the media.