Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia, Part 3

 
A reader in Charlotte County — one who has more guts than I have, plus a better camera — sent some photos of Red House and the entrance to the Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound, supplying us with much better images than the ones I produced back in October.

First we have a panoramic view of the bustling metropolis of Red House:

Red House, Va.

Here is the big sign at the entrance to the compound on Route 615:

The Muslims of America

Sometimes the group appears as “Muslims of the Americas,” but here it is “The Muslims of America.” Knowlegeable readers are invited to supply a translation of the Arabic script. (Update: Commenter shoshanna has translated the Arabic on the sign as “in the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate.”)

And this is the signpost for the road that leads into the compound:

Sheikh Gilani Lane

Just to remind our readers: Sheikh Gilani is not necessarily a peaceful and beloved religious figure who happens to lead a group of devoted followers. He heads a violent terrorist organization. In a 2002 Weekly Standard article, Mira L. Boland wrote:

     Fuqra’s founder and chief, the man Pearl sought to interview, is a rotund Kashmiri of Sufi background with long-standing ties to Pakistan’s Interservice Intelligence Agency (ISI), Sheikh Mubarik Ali Hasmi Shah Gilani. At least until President Musharraf’s decision last fall to support the American war on terrorism, the ISI sponsored terrorist training camps in Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Sheikh Gilani has rubbed shoulders at international terrorist confabs with gunslingers from Hamas and Hezbollah, their mullah backers, and Osama bin Laden. And he has trained fighters for the battlefields of Kashmir, Chechnya, and Bosnia.
Gilani launched his U.S. operations in 1980. Within ten years, Fuqra’s communes were billing themselves as havens where Muslim converts–many of them inner-city blacks, sometimes recruited in prison–could build new lives. At least seven such communities are active today, in Hancock, N.Y.; Red House, Va.; Tulare County, Calif.; Commerce, Ga.; York, S.C.; Dover, Tenn.; and Combermere, Canada. While some of these enclaves contain only rudimentary buildings and trailers, the California compound has 300 residents on a 440-acre spread, according to a recent report by a local ABC station. Residents deny any involvement with terror, but Fuqra has a history of getting into trouble with the law.
Over the years, at least a dozen Fuqra members have been convicted of crimes including conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, and workers’ compensation fraud in the United States or Canada. And Fuqra members are suspects in at least 10 unsolved assassinations and 17 firebombings between 1979 and 1990. Nor is Fuqra’s criminal activity all in the past. In the last year alone, a resident of the California compound was charged with first degree murder in the shooting of a sheriff’s deputy; another was charged with gun smuggling; the state of California launched an investigation into the fate of more than a million dollars in public funds given to a charter school run by Fuqra leaders; and two residents of the Red House community were convicted of firearms violations, while a third awaits trial.

We’d all like to believe that here, in the land tolerance and freedom, Jamaat ul-Fuqra is just another group of devout believers who want to live in peace with their neighbors. But the evidence argues against that interpretation.

We’ll have to be alert, maintain an open mind, and keep our powder dry.

18 thoughts on “Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia, Part 3

  1. Baron,

    This is some good stuff you’ve been laying on us today. We (America) has a lot of work to do. Unfortunately, too many sheeple just don’t get it.

    Thanks, my friend, for all you are doing to bring the truth to the people.

  2. antifraud — thanks for your support. There’s more to come; I’ve just printed out about 80 pages of new material on these topics that I dug up on various internet sites.

    The Indian sites are the best sources of information, because they have compelling reasons to watch the Islamists in Pakistan very closely.

  3. I hope the FBI has a few plants in these places. I don’t mind religious communities having their own enclaves, but I am wary of these people.

  4. The Feebs do not have any “plants” in these groups. I would be surprised if they had any “informants” also called “sources”. The sheer amount of paperwork and justification needed to mount souch an operation mitigates against active measures. It just doesn’t work that way.

    If anybody is interested I could bloviate on how one does set up both a passive and active information collection effort with regard to “targets of interest”. It fully illustrates Clausewitz’s dictum that the easy things are hard and the hard things are easy.

    Really, it is up to us citizen soldiers to gain the experience, and even take the risks sometimes, in developing information against these internal threats. The Web is the best tool I’ve every seen for this kind of Open Source Intelligence. Running actual active collection efforts using HUMINT is easy at one level; talking to convience store clerks; and hard; developing sources in the groups. The relational database is the single most powerful intelligence tool ever developed.

    Always Out Front

  5. andrew scota, please do post what you know about passive and active collection on targets of interest.

    This type of information will become more and more valuable in the times to come.

  6. Wow, Baron, you’ve been busy this weekend with all the posts! Very interesting stuff! You’re keeping the thread hot.

    FYI – I have a new post citing a couple of articles that indicate the Feds have been investigating JF. You can read it here.

  7. The Arabic “bismallah al rahman al rahim” translated by shoshanna is in most every Islamic correspondence, letterheads, speeches, etc, from moderate to radical. It’s the opening to the Quran, also known as “Al-Fatiha.” Just thought I’d give a little context…thanks for the post.

  8. Taken Questions
    Office of the Spokesman
    Washington, DC
    January 31, 2002
    Question Taken at Daily Press Briefing of January 31

    Jamaat ul-Fuqra Designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization?

    Question: The group headed by Shaykh Gilani used to be designated by the State Department as a terrorist group but it was taken off the list. Why?

    Answer: Jamaat ul-Fuqra has never been designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. It was included in several recent annual terrorism reports under “other terrorist groups,” i.e., groups that had carried out acts of terrorism but that were not formally designated by the Secretary of State. However, because of the group’s inactivity during 2000, it was not included in the most recent terrorism report covering that calendar year.

    Released on January 31, 2002

    Does this make any sense?

  9. I am from the “bustling metropolis” of Red House, Va, and I only have this to say about the compound there. Those people have lived there all these years minding their own business. They are seldom seen out in the community. They live in poverty, they do not beg, borrow or steal as far as I can tell from anyone. Seems as though they want to be left alone, as they leave everyone else alone. We may not like the idea of them here, but, they have given us no direct reason to hate them.

  10. sallysot —

    The people in the MOA compound have indeed been “minding their own business”. The question for law-enforcement and domestic counterterrorism is, “What kind of business? Should we be concerned about it?”

    They send their boys to school, but not their girls. Isn’t that a little worrisome?

    People in Jamaat ul-Fuqra have been convicted of murder, conspiracy, gun-running, money-laundering, welfare fraud, and other offenses. According to the blog “Exposing the Fuqra”, people in the Meherrin compound (just down the road from you) were routinely flogged for religious offenses. They were indeed just minding their own business when they did that; it was part of their business.

    I suggest that you read the blogs The Politics of CP and Exposing the Fuqra for more information on JF. They have some hair-raising things to report.

  11. Sallysot–

    Ain’t gonna happen unless you can find Janet Reno. Our current Attorney General does not have her room temp IQ or bizarre temperament. Amazing that she wasn’t fired for that malfesance.

    And if you don’t want to know anymore about that compound than what you can see, help yourself. I’d probably do the same thing in your place simply so I wouldn’t have to lie awake worrying about the children.

    The guy who writes “Exposing the Fuqra” lived in that compound for years and has moved very far away.

    You wouldn’t want to even visit.

    I’m sorry they picked Red House.

  12. One other thing: this is an old post and an old thread. The only ones who would see it are the Baron and I because we get an email prompt if someone comments and thus I noticed your latest remark.

    However, no one else sees it since people tend to read the top few posts.

    One caveat on that: we do get searches from Pakistan on Jamaat al-Fuqra and they read it.

  13. Jamaat: bunch of people
    Fuqra: who think

    you guys: speculating
    what you need to do: pick up yellowpages, call those Muslims up and ask whats up.

    Federal Authorities have enormous powers and they regularly storm Muslim houses, arrest Muslim men and women, and detain them on NO CHARGES! Don’t be scared of talking to a Muslim. The law is not on our side. We are getting butt kicked for practicing our religion, and you are getting amused by making assumptions about our mysterious nature. We are not mysterious people! Our women are much as happier as your women, if not more. Don’t hesitate asking Muslim women that.

    And Mr. Gates of Vienna, I don’t see an Ottoman Army near Redwood. What I see is American youth dying in Iraq for no reason. American youth living without medical care… the list can go on forever.

  14. Response to Moderationist: You think we are parasites?

    1.9 Billion parasites.
    Connectors of civilizations = parasites
    Legal theorists (inspired many in renaissance) = parasites
    Developers of Chemistry, Physics, Math, Architecture, WOMEN’s RIGHTS = Parasites

    Did we steal from you? Did we bug you for money? Are we on welfare? What makes us parasites. You on the other hand sir are not a moderationalist, you are a reckless bigot. I hope the remark doesn’t hurt as much as being called a parasite.

  15. muhammad,

    Thanks for the laugh. What women’s rights are you referring to? Do your women want the right to: be stoned to death in public, cover their bodies from head to toe, have clitorectoies, remain uneducated, be beaten by their husbands, not be allowed to drive, et al? If so, then congratulations, your third world system has worked. Pat yourself on the back.

    Contributions to science and math, sure, but not for hundreds of years. Now all you export is terrorism, terrorism and some oil.

    I don’t call muslims parasites, I call them vectors and the disease they spread is islam.

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