Palestinian Child Soldiers form Phila. Boy Scout Troops

Most Muslim extremists first radicalize their youth via sermon and brainwashing. One group, however, is skipping those steps and is taking the youngest of children right to the paramilitary route. But this group is not in Afghanistan or Iraq. No, it’s in Philadelphia, the so-called ‘City of Brotherly Love.’

The United Muslim Movement (UMM) was incorporated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in June 1994, with the goal of creating a central mosque in the city along with an organization that would be able to “respond to the social, economical, political, educational, and religious needs facing our [UMM’s] communities.” Less than four months later, in October 1994, its first mosque, the United Muslim Masjid, was opened.

The owner of the mosque property and the face behind UMM is music and real estate magnate Kenneth Gamble, a.k.a. Luqman Abdul Haqq.

In the mid-1970s, following a nervous breakdown over personal and professional troubles, Gamble began to turn to the Islamic religion, getting involved with such groups as the Nation of Islam (NOI). At the time, NOI was moving towards the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, a combative personality most known for his anti-white and anti-Jewish statements.

Today, Gamble is a member of the Board of Directors (Majlis ash-Shura) of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), a Muslim Brotherhood-related group headed by Siraj Wahhaj, an “unindicted co-conspirator” of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Gamble has been involved with MANA’s leadership since the group was initially established as a national organization in April 2001, at the UMM mosque.

UMM has interests beyond the building of mosques. One of them deals with children’s activities – violence-based children’s activities.

Jawala Scouts or the Jawala Scout Youth Leadership Program, an Islamic paramilitary boys group, was incorporated in Philadelphia in August 2005. It was founded a short time before that.

The children joining Jawala Scouts are as young as seven years of age. This is disconcerting, when considering some of the activities of the group, which include hand-to-hand combat, firearms training and survival tactics. Photographs from the group’s official website show the kids dressed in military fatigues, hiking through the woods, and engaged in wrestling.

What makes things worse are the type of individuals linked to Jawala Scouts. One is Carlin Saafir, the Legal Officer and 1st Lieutenant of the scouts. Saafir is also the President of UMM, a member of the UMM Masjid’s Board of Directors (General Council), and the Joint Community Outreach Chair of the Philadelphia office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an entity affiliated with the terrorist organization Hamas.

The Registrant, Administrator and Technical Contact of Jawala’s site is Curtis De Veaux. In February 2005, De Veaux was suspended without pay from his job as a Philadelphia firefighter for refusing to shave his beard – deemed a security hazard – arguing that it was part of his being a devout Muslim.

The e-mail contact associated with the Jawala site, haqqone@hotmail.com, appears to be that of Kenneth Gamble. That would make sense, as the group registered its corporation using the same physical address as UMM, 800 S. 15th Street.

Another organization associated with Jawala Scouts is the Sankore’ Institute of Islamic-African Studies International (SIIASI), an anti-Western preservation society for rare African Muslim manuscripts. According to the Pittsburgh City Paper, SIIASI “started” the scout program.

SIIASI has been the subject of investigations by the FBI, which included a June 2006 raid on the institute’s premises. There may be a number of reasons for the government’s interest in the group.

One is the fact that the membership of SIIASI primarily consists of ex-felons. Pictures on the group’s official website display SIIASI associates brandishing guns and swords. In one photo, which appears to have been taken in the U.S., an individual is seen holding a rifle on his lap, while a young boy kneels close to him.

Another reason for the FBI’s concern over SIIASI is the extreme rhetoric that is spread by the organization’s leader.

Muhammad Shareef is the Director of SIIASI. He established the group in the Republic of Sudan in December 1985, along with a small group of others, which included the Sultan of Maiurno, Sudan, al-Hajj Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad.

Shareef, a co-founder and former board member of MANA, left his Pennsylvania home to live in China, where he resides today. He has been outspoken in his hatred of the United States, frequently referring to the U.S. as “Amerikkka.”

FrontPageMagazaine

Where the Perfection Begins

The End of the Obama Speech Yesterday

The speech is very good, but you may have missed the ending.

“There is one story in particularly that I’d like to leave you with today – a story I told when I had the great honor of speaking on Dr. King’s birthday at his home church, Ebenezer Baptist, in Atlanta.

There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.

And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.

She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.

She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.

Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.

Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”

“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.”