October 1, 2009 | Op-ed

Abdullah al-Faisal: Extremist Ideologue with Influence in the West

By Madeleine Gruen

In 2009, Americans have seen an increase in terrorism-related arrests of U.S. citizens who traveled abroad for training and battlefield experience. In January, Long Island, New York native Bryant Neal Vinas pled guilty to attempting to kill American servicemen in an Al-Qaida rocket attack on a military base in Afghanistan.1 In July, North Carolina convert Daniel Patrick Boyd and a group of his associates were arrested for conspiring to wage violent jihad, and prosecutors alleged that Boyd and a co-conspirator plotted an assault on the U.S. Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia. Throughout the year, Somali-American men have been coming and going from the Minneapolis area to join forces with Shabaab al-Mujahideen in Somalia.2 In each of these cases, the conspirators were incited by ideological influences they had encountered on the Internet or in U.S. religious centers.

 

Read the full report here.