American Jihad: Homegrown Terrorists

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Living in America, we are given the freedom to practice the faith of our choice, but at the same time it does not give us the right to violate our laws or to organize, finance or develop a group whose motives are to attack and destroy the country they claim to be a citizen of, while practicing that faith or religion. We are now in the midst of a movement where homegrown American jihad will be the destruction of the United States.

In the United States, we have Americans that are waiting and wanting to destroy anything that has to do with our country and our western way of life, all in the name of “jihad” or holy war. Just in the past year and almost 10 years after September 11, 2001, there has been upsurge in jihadist recruitment and incidents within the United States. This seems to be a call out to all the homegrown jihadist sympathizers that were waiting to come into action. According a RAND Corporation report, “there were 46 reported cases of radicalization and recruitment to jihadist terrorism in the United States between 9/11 and the end of 2009” (Jenkins). Young men and women are being charged with the intention to harm innocent American citizens, and destroy the United States, all of them with the proclamation of being an Islamic soldier and dying for Islam as a martyr. Faisal Shahzad, the unsuccessful Times Square bomber from Connecticut who pleaded guilty June 21, said in front of a judge, “I am part of the answer to the US terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people, and on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attacks" (Scherer).

The United States is still Al Qaeda’s primary target and is under pressure to demonstrate that it is capable of assaulting the U.S. again in order to keep its credentials as the foreru...

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...ls/story?id=11699198>.

Scherer, Ron. "Terrorism Cases Force More Muslim Americans to Grapple with Homegrown Jihad - CSMonitor.com." 7 July 2010. Web. 4 October 2010. .

Sageman, Marc. "The Journal of International Security Affairs The Normality of Global Jihadi Terrorism 2005th ser. Spring.9 (2005). .

United States vs. Colleen R. LaRose, Grand Jury Indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, filed Mar. 4, 2010, Web

White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11."Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Cryptome.org. 7 July 2008. Web..

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