Prison Jihad?

It is what happened next that caught investigators' interest. All of the information--the inmates' names, their prisoner numbers, the facilities where they were held, their release date, the address they would be released to--was entered into a massive database that contained over 15,000 names.

The contours of the database are significant because of the potential for terrorist recruitment. Several individuals involved in past terrorist plots experienced critical religious development while imprisoned. The most dramatic example is the plot hatched in a California state prison by Kevin James, the inmate who founded the Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh, a secretive organization designed to promote his radical interpretation of Islam. On August 31, 2005, a six-count indictment charged Kevin James and his co-conspirators with plotting to attack military and Jewish targets in the Los Angeles area. Richard Reid, who was arrested in December 2001 after attempting to blow up an airplane with explosives hidden in his shoe, grew in his faith under the tutelage of a radical imam in a British prison.

So a database such as the one boasted by Al Haramain caught the

THE CORNERSTONE of Al Haramain's prison dawa program was the literature the group distributed to inmates. At the heart of any concerted Islamic literature program is distribution of the Koran. Al Haramain distributed a Wahhabi/Salafi translation, known as the Noble Koran, that was translated into English by Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali and Muhammad Muhsin Khan. This version was known for containing numerous interpolations not present in the original Arabic. Although ostensibly designed to explain the verses, these interpolations pushed the meaning in a radical direction suffused with contempt for non-Muslims, and which was dedicated to fostering the global jihad.

A representative example is found in an early footnote in the translation, which states:

Al-Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah's Cause (with full force of numbers and weaponry) is given the utmost importance in Islam and is one of its pillars (on which it stands). By Jihad Islam is established, Allah's Word is made superior, . . . and His Religion (Islam) is propagated. By abandoning Jihad (may Allah protect us from that) Islam is destroyed and the Muslims fall into an inferior position; their honour is lost, their lands are stolen, their rule and authority vanish. Jihad is an obligatory duty in Islam on every Muslim, and he who tries to escape from this duty, or does not in his innermost heart wish to fulfill this duty, dies with one of the qualities of a hypocrite.

This passage thus rules out nonmilitary interpretations of jihad by insisting on "full force of numbers and weaponry." It also endorses jihad as a means of propagating Islam, and specifies that it is required of "every Muslim."

Most chilling is a 22-page appendix that was included in the translation that Al Haramain distributed to prisons. This appendix, written by former Saudi Arabian chief justice Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Humaid, was entitled "The Call to Jihad (Holy Fighting in Allah's Cause) in the Koran." It is little more than an exhortation to violence.

Bin Humaid argues at length that Muslims are obligated to wage war against non-Muslims who have not submitted to Islamic rule. He explains,

Allah . . . commanded the Muslims to fight against all the Mushrikun as well as against the people of the Scriptures (Jews and Christians) if they do not embrace Islam, till they pay the Jizyah (a tax levied on the non-Muslims who do not embrace Islam and are under the protection of an Islamic government) with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.

The Wahhabi/Salafi translation of the Koran was not the only piece of radical literature Al Haramain distributed to prisons. Another widely-distributed volume was Muhammad bin Jamil Zino's Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform. Like the radical translation of the Koran, one of the themes in Zino's book was jihad. Zino instructs his readers that children should be indoctrinated in the glories of jihad from an early age:

Teach your children the love of justice and revenge from the unjust like the Jews and the tyrants. Consequently our youth would know that Palestine should be freed and Jerusalem must be of the Muslims. They have to learn about Islam and Jihad as per the Qur'an and that the holy fighting for justice is supported by Allah the Almighty.

Virulent anti-Semitism and hatred of non-Muslim governments are also recurring themes. On a page headed "Act upon these Ahadith," Zino's first injunction reads: "The Last Hour will not appear unless the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them."

Zino also denounces "belief in man-made destructive ideologies such as . . . secularism" as nullifying an individual's adherence to Islam. This is in keeping with the views of another writer whose works Al Haramain sent to prisons: Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips. In The Fundamentals of Tawheed (Islamic Monotheism), Philips describes acquiescence to non-Islamic rule as an act of idolatry and disbelief. "Un-Islamic government," he writes, "must be sincerely hated and despised for the pleasure of God."

Al Haramain's literature wasn't subjected to a significant degree of scrutiny. I know of only a few instances in which prisons rejected it--and that was never because of the content. In one instance, a chaplain refused to distribute a pamphlet that outlined the differences between the Nation of Islam and Sunni Islam because of its potential for causing conflict between Islamic sects in the prison. In another case, literature was rejected because it was sent in a large manila envelope with a metal clasp. The screeners wouldn't allow the package because they felt the clasp could be used as a weapon.

But little question was raised about the message in the literature. We were able to forge relationships with a number of Muslim prison chaplains who willingly distributed Al Haramain's literature and questionnaires. Of course, the fact that they did so doesn't necessarily mean they were radical. Some chaplains may just have been happy that there was a Muslim charity willing to send literature, and may not have screened its contents. But at least some chaplains were on the same page as Al Haramain ideologically and were supportive of the worldview that the group fostered.

FORTUNATELY, Al Haramain's database was never used for terrorist recruitment, although investigators are still puzzled as to the reasons why not. One was surely resource constraints. Although Al Haramain was a massive operation, the U.S. headquarters was fairly small. There were only three full-time employees during my time there, and all of us had other responsibilities beyond prison dawa. A second and more complex reason involves Al Haramain's motivations. While jihadist views are displayed in Al Haramain's literature, this was the pre-9/11 world. At that time, support for jihads in Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines, or Uzbekistan wouldn't necessarily translate into a desire to recruit terrorists from U.S. prisons.

But we no longer live in the pre-9/11 world. In 2006, the United States is undeniably the focal point of the global jihad. And this requires more vigilance than we have shown in the past. We may not be so fortunate next time around.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a senior consultant for Gerard Group International and author of the forthcoming book My Year Inside Radical Islam (Tarcher/Penguin). This essay is adapted from testimony that he delivered before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on September 19, 2006.