- Tracy Press

LODI -- Federal authorities have arrested two men and detained two others who they believe are linked to an al-Qaida terror cell in Lodi, The Sacramento Bee reported on its Web site Tuesday night.            

Hamid Hayat, 22, and his father, Umer Hayat, 47, were arrested over the weekend on charges of lying to federal agents, and both made a brief appearance in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on Tuesday, FBI special agent John Cauthen confirmed to The Associated Press. The two men, who are both U.S. citizens, are being held in Sacramento County Jail.            

Hamid Hayat is accused in a federal complaint of training in an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan to learn "how to kill Americans," and then lying to FBI agents about it.            

His training included explosives and weapons instruction and using photographs of President Bush as targets, court documents indicate.            

Umer Hayat, a Lodi ice cream truck driver, is charged in the complaint with lying about his son's involvement and his own financing of the terror camp.

Both men made brief initial appearances in U.S. District Court in Sacramento on Tuesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski. Both are being held in Sacramento County Jail pending further court proceedings.            

Two other men were detained over the weekend for questioning, area residents said Tuesday. The men were identified by one source as Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed, and are being held on immigration violations.

The two were believed to be working to open a religious school in Lodi to teach young Muslims. Both were detained after they met separately with Umer Hayat in the predawn hours Saturday.

Neither man was arrested on any criminal charges, according to Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Kice would not disclose where Ahmed and Khan are being jailed. Sacramento County Jail records indicated a Shabbir Ahmed was in custody. No record of Khan could be found.            

Khan represented the Lodi Muslim Mosque for three years as imam, equivalent to the Christian term "pastor." Khan's former role at the mosque is not clear. Mohammad Shoaib, who took over as mosque president in November 2003, said he fired Khan in January. Others at the mosque claim that Khan was never the imam in the first place.            

Khan is now the leader in the effort to build the Farooqia Islamic Center, including a school for children up to fourth grade, south of Lodi on Lower Sacramento Road.

Ahmed has been imam of the Lodi mosque since Khan left the mosque leadership.

FBI agents descended on a house next door to the Lodi Muslim Mosque about a day after two of Lodi's top Muslim leaders were arrested.            

"It's unfortunate," Nasim Khan, former mosque president, said after hearing about the arrests. "These are guys who've been doing good work in the community."            

On Tuesday, FBI agents searched Ahmed's house on Poplar Street, next door to the Lodi mosque, and another house on the 300 block of Acacia Street, about four blocks from the mosque.            

The house on Acacia, just east of Washington Street, has two residences. The family living in the portion of the house closest to the street was not involved in the FBI search. It is not clear if the searches were related to the arrests.

  Fox News (via Jawa Report)reports:

"According to an FBI affidavit, Hamid Hayat first denied any link to terror camps, but then told agents he attended an Al Qaeda camp in 2003 and 2004."  

"Hamid advised that he specifically requested to come to the United States to carry out his jihadi mission," according to the affidavit. "Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores."

California Conservative writes:

"In many ways, Lodi is the perfect location. It's a very small town and out-of-the-way, yet close enough to major airports and big cities like San Francisco and Sacramento, California's capitol.

On the other hand, it's the kind of place a terrorist would stick out. And, hopefully, that helped in uncovering the case here."

The Political Teen has a video of a live news conference by the leader of the Farooqia Islamic center. Rusty(Jawa Report) writes that "on the one hand he proclaims loyalty to America and its interests and then goes on to say how the two clerics could not be guilty of immigration violations. One interesting aspect of this story is that it seems that at least one of the suspects is being sued by the Lodi Muslim Mosque. Modesto attorney Gary Nelson, who is representing Mohammed Khan and others affiliated with Farooqia Islamic Center in a civil suit filed against them by the Lodi Muslim Mosque, said late Tuesday afternoon he was unaware of the arrests."

From Ed Morrissey via Michele Malkin:

This also shows the fallacy of the "they hate us because they don't know us" crowd. The Hayats and the other fanatics in Lodi had the freedom to practice their religion and earn a decent living in California -- certainly they made a higher standard of living there than they could have expected in Pakistan or Afghanistan, especially before the Taliban were ejected by American military action. They don't hate us because they misunderstand us. They hate us because all they know is hate, and outreach and kind words don't make a damned bit of difference to fanatics.

And on the very same day we hear about the California Jihadis, Robert Spencer writes about a New York jihadist group:

The video that I posted below of American Muslims stomping on and then ripping up an American flag comes from a New York-based Muslim group called the Islamic Thinkers Society. According to "Not just another Jihadi face: The Islamic Thinkers Society - Al Muhajiroun's identical twin in NYC" in Militant Islam Monitor, the Islamic Thinkers Society is an American offshoot of the now-disbanded British jihadist group Al-Muhajiroun:

The radical Islamist Al Muhajiroun, appears to have surfaced in Queens under the oxymoronic name of the Islamic Thinkers Society aka Intellectual Thinkers Society. The groups North American spokesman, Kamran Bokhari, is now working as a strategic analyst for Statfor - Strategic Forecasting Inc. run by George Friedman. Stratfor who also employs ex government counter terrorism analysts has dubbed Bokhari their "in house Jihadi"

A little background on Al-Muhajiroun:

British Muslim kids told: Be a suicide bomber

Britain: flag burnt as extremists cheer bin Laden

Muslim cleric says attack on London "inevitable"

Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam

The obligation of inciting religious hatred

So just what is the Islamic agenda?

Here is a "warm up" of what Danial Pipes has to say:

[...]

Islamists must prepare the United States for their own brand of ideology. This means doing everything possible toward creating an Islamist environment and applying Islamic law. Activities under this heading fall into various categories.

Promoting Islamic rituals and customs in the public square. Islamists want secular authorities to permit students in public institutions, for example, to recite the basmallah (the formula "In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate") in classroom exercises. They also want the right to broadcast over outdoor loudspeakers the five daily Islamic calls-to-prayer. Similarly, they have agitated for publicly maintained prayer facilities in such institutions as schools and airports.

Privileges for Islam. Islamists seek public financial support for Islamic schools, mosques, and other institutions. They also lobby for special quotas for Muslim immigrants, try to compel corporations to make special allowances for Muslim employees, and demand the formal inclusion of Muslims in affirmative-action plans.

Restricting or disallowing what others may do. Islamists want law-enforcement agencies to criminalize activities like drinking and gambling that are offensive to Islam. While seeking wide latitude for themselves, for instance when it comes to expressing disrespect for American national symbols, they would penalize expressions of disrespect for religious figures whom Islam deems holy, especially the prophet Muhammad; punish criticism of Islam, Islamism, or Islamists; and close down critical analysis of Islam.

Some of these aims have already been achieved. Others may seem relatively minor in and of themselves, implying no drastic alterations in existing American arrangements but rather only slight adjustments in our already expansive accommodation of social "diversity." Cumulatively, however, by whittling away at the existing order, they would change the country's whole way of life--making Islam a major public presence, ensuring that both the workplace and the educational system accommodate its dictates and strictures, adapting family customs to its code of conduct, winning it a privileged position in American life, and finally imposing its system of law. Steps along the way would include more radical and intrusive actions like prohibiting conversion out of Islam, criminalizing adultery, banning the consumption of pork, formalizing enhanced rights for Muslims at the expense of non-Muslims, and doing away with equality of the sexes.

A Muslim majority? Islamic law the law of the land? Even the most optimistic Islamists concede the task will not be easy. Just as Muhammad confronted die-hard opponents in pagan Mecca, writes Siddiqi, so pious Muslims in America will face opponents, led by the press cum media, the agents of capitalism, the champions of atheism (Godless creeds) and the [Christian] missionary zealots." Doing battle with them will demand focus, determination, and sacrifice.

And yet Siddiqi also thinks Muslims enjoy advantages undreamt of in Muhammad's day or in any other society than today's United States. For one thing, Americans are hungry for the Islamist message, which "pinpoints the shortcoming of capitalism, elaborates the fallacies of democracy, [and] exposes the devastating consequences of the liberal lifestyle." For another, the United States permits Islamists to pursue their political agenda in an entirely legal fashion and without ever challenging the existing order. Indeed, precisely because the Constitution guarantees complete government neutrality toward religion, the system can be used to further Islamist aims. Democratic means are at hand for developing an active and persistent lobby, cultivating politicians, and electing Muslim representatives. Nearly a million legal immigrants arrive in the country each year, plus many more through the long coastlines and porous land borders. The courts are an all-important resource, and have already proved their worth in winning concession after concession from American corporations and public authorities.

Even so, the road will not be completely smooth. A delicate point will be reached, in Siddiqi's mind, as society polarizes between Muslim and non-Muslim camps "in every walk of life." At that point, as the struggle between Truth and Error "acquires momentum and the tension increases along with it," the "Wrong Doers" are likely to take desperate steps to "eliminate the Islamic movement and its workers by force." But if Islamists tread cautiously to navigate this point, taking special care not to alienate the non-Muslim population, eventually there will follow what Siddiqi calls a general "Rush-to-Islam." It will then be only a matter of time before Muslims find themselves not just enfranchised but actually running the show.

How much time? Siddiqi sees Islamists in power in Washington before 2020. For Wahaj, implementation of the shari'a in the United States "appears to be approaching fast," and in contemplating what that means his language grows ecstatic:

I have a vision in America, Muslims owning property all over, Muslim businesses, factories, halal meat, supermarkets, all these buildings owned by Muslims. Can you see the vision, can you see the Newark International Airport and a John Kennedy Airport and LaGuardia having Muslim fleets of planes, Muslim pilots. Can you see our trucks rolling down the highways, Muslim names. Can you imagine walking down the streets of Teaneck, [New Jersey]: three Muslim high schools, five Muslim junior-high schools, fifteen public schools. Can you see the vision, can you see young women walking down the street of Newark, New Jersey, with long flowing hijab and long dresses. Can you see the vision of an area of no crime, controlled by the Muslims?

It hardly needs pointing out that this vision is, to say the least, farfetched, or that Islamists are deluding themselves if they think that today's newborns will be attending college in an Iranian-style United States. But neither is their effort altogether quixotic: their devotion, energy, and skill are not to be questioned, and the larger Muslim-American community for which they claim to speak is assuredly in a position, especially as its numbers grow, to affect our public life in decisive ways. Indeed, despite persistent complaints of bias against them--more voluminous than ever in the wake of the airplane hijackings on September 11--Muslim Americans have built an enviable record of socio-economic accomplishment in this country, have won wide public acceptance of their faith, and have managed to make it particularly difficult for anyone to criticize their religion or customs.

Whether and to what degree the community as a whole subscribes to the Islamist agenda are, of course, open questions. But what is not open to question is that, whatever the majority of Muslim Americans may believe, most of the organized Muslim community agrees with the Islamist goal--the goal, to say it once again, of building an Islamic state in America. To put it another way, the major Muslim organizations in this country are in the hands of extremists.

One who is not among them is Muhammad Hisham Kabbani of the relatively small Islamic Supreme Council of America. In Kabbani's reliable estimation, such "extremists" have "taken over 80 percent of the mosques" in the United States. And not just the mosques: schools, youth groups, community centers, political organizations, professional associations, and commercial enterprises also tend to share a militant outlook,  hostile to the prevailing order in the United States and advocating its replacement with an Islamic one.

Not all these organizations and spokesmen are open about their aspirations, though some are: for example, the International Institute of Islamic Thought in Herndon, Virginia, proclaims its academic purpose to be nothing less than "the Islamization of the humanities and the social sciences." But the best-known organizations--the ones whose members are invited to offer prayers and invocations before Congress or to attend White House functions, or whose representatives accompanied the President on his September 17 visit to a mosque--tend to hide their true colors behind arch-respectable goals. Thus, the American Muslim Council claims to work "toward the political empowerment of Muslims in America," the Council on American-Islamic Relations is "putting faith into action," and the Muslim Public Affairs Council  seeks only to make American Muslims "an influential component in U.S. public affairs."

But as I have documented at greater length on other occasions, ⁵ much if not everything about the conduct of these organizations points to their essential agreement with the "conquer America" agenda, and from time to time their leaders--including Al-Faruqi and Shakir--have even said as much. As for Siraj Wahaj, he is a top figure in the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Alliance in North America, and the Muslim Arab Youth Association, and his views contaminate every single one of them. It is not accurate to say, as President Bush said of the Islamist leaders with whom he met on September 17, that they "love America as much as I do."

That a significant movement in this country aspires to erode its bedrock social and legal arrangements, including the separation of church and state, and has even developed a roadmap toward that end, poses a unique dilemma, especially at this moment. Every responsible public official, and every American of good faith, is bent on drawing a broad distinction between terrorists operating in the name of Islam and ordinary Muslim "moms and dads." It is a true and valid distinction, but it goes much too far, and if adhered to as a guideline for policy it will cripple the effort that must be undertaken to preserve our institutions.

What such an effort would look like is a subject unto itself, but at a minimum it would have to entail the vigilant application of social and political pressure to ensure that Islam is not accorded special status of any kind in this country, the active recruitment of moderate Muslims in the fight against Islamic extremism, a keener monitoring of Muslim organizations with documented links to Islamist activity, including the support of terrorism, and the immediate reform of immigration procedures to prevent a further influx of visitors or residents with any hint of Islamist ideology. Wherever that seditious and totalitarian ideology has gained a foothold in the world, it has wrought havoc, and some societies it has brought to their knees. The preservation of our existing order can no longer be taken for granted; it needs to be fought for.

So America, and Europe, we had all better wake up to the fact that the Muslims in control of the mosques, the Muslim schools, and the Muslim political agenda, are Islamists.

And the Islamists have a determined agenda to destroy American and European freedoms as we now know them, and to make you Muslims or submit to the Islamic authority. Today's California and New York cases are just the tip of the iceberg, as are the problems we've already seen in Europe.

So we had all better realize what lies beneath what we are seeing while we still can do something about it. The Muslims are already busy at work trying to convert and Islamicize Europe. and America, THEY ARE ALREADY HERE AND ARE HARD AT WORK!

Update I From Michelle Malkin on the Lodi case: Just obtained the federal criminal complaint. Read the whole thing: Download file. Here's one highlight:

9. Hamid admitted that he attended a jihadist training camp in Pakistan for approximately 6 months in 2003- 2004. Hamid stated that Al-Qaeda supports the camp and provides instructors for the camp. Hamid later confirmed this camp was run by Al-Qaeda. Hamid described the camp as providing structured paramilitary training, including weapons training, explosives training, interior room tactics, hand to hand combat, and strenuous exercise. Classroom instruction included ideological rhetoric detailing opposition towards the United States and other non-Muslim countries. Hamid stated that during his weapons training, photos of various high ranking U.S. political figures, including President Bush, would be pasted onto their targets. Hamid further stated that he and others at the camp were being trained on how to kill Americans. Hamid stated that although he did not participate in all the available instruction, he was aware the other training was ongoing.

10. Hamid observed hundreds of attendees from various parts of the world at this camp. According to Hamid, these attendees rotated into the camp depending on their stage of training. Camp attendees were given the opportunity to choose the country in which to carry out their jihadi mission including the United States, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir and other countries.

Is this begining to sound familiar?

Update 2 (hat tip - California Conservative) - Read the FBI affadavit. (via S.F. Chronicle)

La Shawn Barber says SuckersRUS
California Conservative calls it "Al Qaeda's Camp Loci"

Other Coverage on the California story via Jawa Report:
Charles Johnson, Chad Evans, Robert Spencer,  Charles Johnson, Chad Evans, Robert Spencer, Captain Ed , The Pirate's Cove, Strata-Sphere,  Fraternitas Vitae (who says They Hate Us Because They Don't Know Us? Wrong.), Dread Pundit Bluto , Rantingprofs, Ian at The Political Teen, Huffington Post, Abu David, Take Back The News, Bloggeldygook, Roughstock Journal, Stained Glass Soul, Clarity and Resolve, National Terror Alert, Synthstuff, Mover Mike, Daily Polemic