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Thread ID: 18566 | Posts: 16 | Started: 2005-06-07
2005-06-07 15:04 | User Profile
Islam on march south of border Mexico agrees to monitor foreign groups as Muslim recruitment rate skyrockets
Posted: June 7, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Joseph Farah é 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – Islam is on the move in Mexico and throughout Latin America, making dramatic gains in converting the native population, increasing immigration, establishing businesses and charities and attracting attention from U.S. government officials who have asked their neighbors to the south to keep an eye on foreign Muslim groups.
The monitoring of foreign groups is intended to "avoid problems in Mexico that have an impact in the United States," said the head of the Attorney General Office's special terrorism investigation unit, Gen. Jorge Serrano.
"The ones who ... are being watched by migration (authorities) are foreigners," Serrano said, without revealing the number of people being monitored or their countries of origin.
Serrano said no Muslim terrorists have been found living in Mexico, though the office is investigating alleged terrorist activities being carried out by Mexicans.
The recruitment of new followers is especially active in southern Mexico and among the indigenous Mayans who are converting by the hundreds, according to a report in Der Spiegel. The Mexican government, the report says, is concerned about a culture clash in its own back yard.
About 300 Tzozil-Indians have converted to Islam in recent years and it's a development that is beginning to worry the Mexican government, said the Der Spiegel report. The government even suspects the new converts of subversive activity and has already set the secret service onto the track of the Mayan Muslims. Mexican President Vincente Fox has even gone so far as to say he fears the influence of the radical fundamentalists of al-Qaida.
Indeed, with Islamic "charities" under increasing international pressure and scrutiny to cut ties with terrorists, al-Qaida and other allied organizations are expanding operations throughout Latin America, establishing both legitimate and criminal enterprises to fund future operations.
According to U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Charles Shapiro, almost every extremist terror group is now represented in Latin America.
One tool of the Islamists in Latin America is the "small business loan."
Both newcomers to the movement and veterans of past operations are given loans to establish small businesses. These modest ventures involve food and clothing stores, transportation companies and other legitimate businesses stretching from minor real estate investments to funding of small airlines. In return these businesses repay the loans with cash accrued from their trading revenues. The money is collected by roving collectors who change from time to time to avoid being traced.
According to Islam, adding interest on loans is regarded as usury and is strictly forbidden. Instead the business owner is asked to add a donation based on the initial principal. This can range from a few to thousands of dollars in each case. Some businesses, identified as having been established by terror groups in the infamous Muslim triangle around the border region between Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, often are plain newspaper stands, corner stores or family-run tailor shops.
In the so-called Muslim triangle, where the borders of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, a growing number of Arab-owned businesses are being forced to identify with the Palestinian cause.
In the business town of Punte Arnes, the home of many Palestinians in touch with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, stores carry names of Palestinian communities and are decorated with the colors of the Palestinian flag.
Bus companies owned by Islamic militants are also painting vehicles with the colors of Palestine, giving the vehicles Arabic names, which leave no doubt as to their ownership.
It's all an indication of the growing power and spread of Islamist ideology in Latin America.
Pentagon officials have confirmed human smuggling rings in Latin America are attempting to sneak al-Qaida operatives into the U.S.
In a Defense Department briefing in February 2004 about National Guardsman Ryan Anderson, suspected of trying to give al-Qaida information about U.S. capabilities and weaponry, reporters were also told to expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to provide details on two other subjects: Guantanamo Bay prisoners freed only to rejoin al-Qaida and Taliban cells in Afghanistan and al-Qaida's Latin America connection.
No further announcements were ever forthcoming from the Pentagon, prompting some sources to wonder whether the administration was conflicted over this news – given President Bush's political problems with his illegal immigration across a porous Mexican border.
Before the U.S.-led coalition attacked Iraq, the U.S. State Department offered congressional testimony that both al-Qaida and the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah were taking firm hold in "America's backyard."
Mark F. Wong, the State Department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, told the House International Relations Committee about the threat posed by both groups in Latin America.
Anti-terrorism experts say extremist cells tied to Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaida network are operating in Argentina, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay. Although cooperation between al-Qaida and Hezbollah has been known for some time, the two groups have formed a much closer relationship since al-Qaida was evicted from its base in Afghanistan.
Both al-Qaida and Hezbollah were active in the common border area of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, according to an earlier statement of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in hearings before the Foreign Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, cited in a report from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
In March, FBI Director Robert Mueller told a congressional panel that illegal aliens from countries with ties to al-Qaida have crossed into the U.S. from Mexico using false identities.
Mueller said some of the aliens are people with Middle Eastern names who have adopted Hispanic last names before coming into the U.S.
"We are concerned, Homeland Security is concerned about special interest aliens entering the United States," Mueller said.
Mueller said one route takes Middle Easterners to Brazil, where they assume false identities before entering Mexico and then crossing into the U.S. Bush administration officials have previously said al-Qaida could try to infiltrate the United States through the Mexican border.
Mueller stopped short of confirming that terrorists had entered illegally via Mexico, but said it's believed people from countries where al-Qaida is active have done so.
Hezbollah and the terrorist Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) are operating in the tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The suspected activities of these groups include counterfeiting U.S. currency and drug smuggling, with the area in which they function described as a "haven for Islamic extremists" by the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchinson, in testimony before the House International Relations Committee.
Egyptian intelligence experts active in combating Muslim militancy in Egypt and aware of the role of Egyptian militants in the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban, said in 2003 that Islamic terrorists shifted their interest from training pilots in the U.S. to schools in South America, where they can study and train practically without any security agencies on their heels.
More recently, al-Qaida has become deeply involved in cocaine and heroine trafficking, arms and uranium smuggling, counterfeiting CDs and DVDs and money-laundering activities in the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. The tri-border region is known as the heart of Islamic activity in Latin America.
Of growing concern to some U.S. officials is the way the terrorists south of the border might use lax immigration standards to slip into the U.S.
Tens of millions of Muslims, mostly of Arabic descent, live in Latin America.
The terrorists even get some official support in Latin America, according to sources. As WorldNetDaily reported, a Venezuelan military defector claims President Hugo Chavez developed ties to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida – even providing it with $1 million in cash after Sept. 11, 2001.
Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez's pilot, told WorldNetDaily through an interpreter that "the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours' flight from the United States."
Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States.
Previous stories:
FBI chief warns of aliens from al-Qaida-tied nations
Al-Qaida runs own travel agency
Financial squeeze pushed al-Qaida south of the border
Al-Qaida south of the border?
Terrorist base south of the border
Terrorists active in U.S. 'backyard'
A Mexico cover-up of U.S. terrorist threats?
Defector: Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida
Joseph Farah is editor and chief executive officer of WorldNetDaily.com.
[url]http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=44636[/url]
2005-06-07 17:06 | User Profile
I think this is largely neocon scare-propaganda, much like WorldNetDaily's other kosher "Islam is coming! Islam is coming!" -material...
Petr
2005-06-07 17:06 | User Profile
Why worry about something that "could happen" or "could be" when "is happening" right now?
Everything (and more) for what the Muslims are being blamed for has already been done by the Jews (Zionits) right here in America.
What do you think would happen to five Mulims if they were seen dancing and celebrating on top of a white van on 9/11?
What do you think would happen to over 100 Muslims if they were arrested as spys while posing as art vendors?
What I wrote above is only the things that we know about and I know that there are a hell of a lot more that the government don't tell us about.
Did you know that the Zionists are recruiting non-Jews at this time? they are talking to those who are not Jews but sympathies with them.
PS: is "sympathies" being used the right way? or should it be sympathises or something like that?......I am intelligent but not smart.
2005-06-07 19:22 | User Profile
I'd like to see some numbers on the subject of Mexican conversion to Islam. I'm sure that there are some Mexican Muslims just as there are white Americans (like John Walker Lindh) who convert, but I doubt that it's more than an isolated curiosity.
On the other hand, fearmongering about an epidemic of Islamic converts in Mexico might be the only thing to motivate Fox News ovids to support controlling the border with Mexico and doing something about illegal immigration. So by all means let the hysteria continue - this is a rare case of neocon propaganda inadvertantly helping rather than hurting the right cause.
2005-06-07 22:49 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I'd like to see some numbers on the subject of Mexican conversion to Islam. I'm sure that there are some Mexican Muslims just as there are white Americans (like John Walker Lindh) who convert, but I doubt that it's more than an isolated curiosity.
On the other hand, fearmongering about an epidemic of Islamic converts in Mexico might be the only thing to motivate Fox News ovids to support controlling the border with Mexico and doing something about illegal immigration. So by all means let the hysteria continue - this is a rare case of neocon propaganda inadvertantly helping rather than hurting the right cause.[/QUOTE]
AY, The only way that will happen is if some of these Indians become suicide bombers, cross over the border, and blow up a bunch of shopping malls.
2005-06-08 00:30 | User Profile
Going Kaboooooooom is to inpersonal for the Mexicans, their style would be more personal, like the Moros, they would problably shave all the hair from their body then wrap themselves in tight bandages and then get into some white uniform grab a machete and go crazy among the gringos.
To me is foolish to blow myself up when I can just leave a package and walk away while eating popcorn.
The way the Palestinian should do it is to throw the package in the air and then hit the swich which would be attached to the bomb by means of a wire, the damage would be at least three times more affective.
2005-06-08 01:25 | User Profile
I tend to agree. I think the media are grossly exaggerating this phenomenon, most likely to stick it to the Christian Right. But, as you indicate, it could have the opposite desired effect in motivating US power elites to control the border. It could also provoke Mexican security officials to clamp down on Mexican Muslims, which according to reports is already happening.
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I'd like to see some numbers on the subject of Mexican conversion to Islam. I'm sure that there are some Mexican Muslims just as there are white Americans (like John Walker Lindh) who convert, but I doubt that it's more than an isolated curiosity.
On the other hand, fearmongering about an epidemic of Islamic converts in Mexico might be the only thing to motivate Fox News ovids to support controlling the border with Mexico and doing something about illegal immigration. So by all means let the hysteria continue - this is a rare case of neocon propaganda inadvertantly helping rather than hurting the right cause.[/QUOTE]
2005-06-08 02:39 | User Profile
Isn't Joe Farah of Arab ancestory himself? What's his story?
2005-06-08 05:53 | User Profile
I think Farah is a Christian Arab (possibly from Lebanon, where Maronite Falangists also sided with Israel in the civil war).
Christian minorities have emigrated out of Middle East in increasing numbers, mostly due to Islamist pressure, and most of them do not have any warm feelings towards Islam or even Arab nationalism - few Lebanese Christians consider themselves as Arabs, preferring to see themselves as Phoenicians instead.
Petr
2005-06-08 11:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I'd like to see some numbers on the subject of Mexican conversion to Islam. I'm sure that there are some Mexican Muslims just as there are white Americans (like John Walker Lindh) who convert, but I doubt that it's more than an isolated curiosity. That's my suspicion as well. If Mexican conversion to Islam is indeed as prevalent as this article makes it out to be, then no doubt we will be hearing a lot more about it in the future. Farah, however, has no credibility with me.
On the other hand, fearmongering about an epidemic of Islamic converts in Mexico might be the only thing to motivate Fox News ovids to support controlling the border with Mexico and doing something about illegal immigration. So by all means let the hysteria continue - this is a rare case of neocon propaganda inadvertantly helping rather than hurting the right cause.[/QUOTE]Good points (as usual), AY.
2005-06-09 05:31 | User Profile
Here's an article from Der Spiegel about Islam in Chiapas:
[url]http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,358223,00.html[/url]
2005-06-09 05:51 | User Profile
All this hype about Islam in Mexico overshadows a much more significant phenomenon, namely that Protestant churches are spreading like wildfire down there:
[COLOR=Blue][FONT=Arial][SIZE=4]Christian Churches Growing in Mexico[/SIZE]
7/88
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (FR) - [B]Despite claims by the government that Protestants are only 3.7 percent of the population, an investigative report by a prominent Mexico City newspaper recently revealed that the actual number of Protestants in the state of Mexico has multiplied six times between 1950 and 1980.[/B]
In the federal district where Mexico City is located, the Protestant population doubled in the same 30 year span, according to the report. The article was an expose' of Protestant sects conducted by El Universal, which featured four full-page installments on the trend over a four-day period in mid-April.
The state of Tabasco in the southern region of the country has the greatest "penetration of evangelical religions," with more than 280,000 believers out of a population of 1,250,000 - approximately 23 percent. The report also claimed that the state of Chiapas has a Protestant population between 11.5 and 30 percent, with at least seven communities claiming a Protestant majority.
The city of Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, as well as other border cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, each have between 13 to 15 percent Protestant populations.
Elizabeth Isais, a special correspondent with Open Doors News Service, stated that the El Universal report was a landmark in revealing the extent of church growth in Mexico - which up until now has been assumed to be small.[/FONT][/COLOR]
[url]http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0265_Mexicos_church.html[/url]
2005-06-09 06:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Petr]All this hype about Islam in Mexico overshadows a much more significant phenomenon, namely that Protestant churches are spreading like wildfire down there:[/QUOTE]
Based on my own observation of the little churches cropping up in the Mexican/Central American "communities" here in Texas, I would say this is right, but I would narrow Protestant down more specifically to Holiness/Pentecostal-type denominations. Although it seems that most all mid-size to mega-churches have some kind of active "Hispanic" ministry.
2005-06-10 05:03 | User Profile
I respect all men and women, but I do not respect Mohammedism. It is a secular, war cult. Mohammed was a drug addict, mega time, and killed thousands in his spree. This made him overlord of the tribes, and then he used a small understanding of the Torah and Christianity to write down his totally ethnic and idiotic Koran. The Koran is not of God. The Koran is , in truth, a murderer and rapists and child molestor's written word. I have no problem with US soldiers or anyone else pissing on it or spitting on it. It's a cult, and it's garbage.
2005-06-10 05:27 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Exelsis_Deo] I have no problem with US soldiers or anyone else pissing on it or spitting on it. It's a cult, and it's garbage.[/QUOTE]
The Saudi government desecrates hundreds of Bibles a year as a matter of state policy.
[url]http://209.197.233.93/content/view/269//[/url]
2005-06-10 08:35 | User Profile
[QUOTE=RowdyRoddyPiper]The Saudi government desecrates hundreds of Bibles a year as a matter of state policy.
[url]http://209.197.233.93/content/view/269//[/url][/QUOTE]
Perhaps you know more about than I do. ? As you align with me, we align in our Fellowship.