Islam prison ministries are a problem in the United States also, as shown by the case of Alton Nolen, the loser convict who converted to Islam in prison and went on to behead a 54-year-old woman in the Oklahoma business that had fired him. He had been pestering co-workers to convert to Islam, and according to the Koran, Muslims are entitled to kill infidels if they refuse the invitation. That was Osama bin Laden’s excuse: he had invited America to come to allah, and when we refused, he felt authorized to murder thousands on 9/11.
Alton Nolen, below, beheaded Colleen Hufford as a result of his prison conversion to Islam.
The UK has learned that jihad recruiters need to be isolated from the general population in prisons — has the US figured that out that simple trick to prevent Islamization?
DOUG McKELWAY: Officials in England are joining counterparts in other European countries and taking radical Islamic prisoners out of the ranks of the general prison population in many facilities. It all has to do with radicalization, and it is a problem in this country as well. Correspondent Benjamin Hall explains tonight from London.BENJAMIN HALL: Prisons in the UK have been called jihadi training camps as new government research shows the extent of Islamic radicalization. In terror attack after terror attack across Europe, one thing has been constant: many of the attackers were radicalized behind bars. They went in as petty criminals they came out as terrorists. One reformed jihadi explain why prison is such a target for radical Muslims.
ADAM DEEN: What makes a good recruit is someone that is already disenfranchised, someone who is anti-establishment, who holds holds some kind of resentment.
HALL: Easy pickings for radical Muslim preachers like Anjem Choudary, one of the most notorious hate preachers in Britain, who was recently sentenced to 10 years for supporting ISIS. Now the UK government is introducing new laws which will keep people like Choudary away from other inmates.
JUSTICE MINISTER LIZ TRUSS: We cannot have a situation where we have extremist prisoners influencing others who are vulnerable to these messages.
HALL: The US prison system is also facing this problem with Muslim groups acting like gangs, recruiting people and protecting their own, according to a former al Qaeda recruiter now working at a think tank at George Washington University.
JESSE MORTON, (also known as Younus Abdullah Muhammad): The individual charismatic preacher that radicalized me while I was incarcerated became like a father.
HALL: The recruiter turned scholar says he saw 30 to 40 prisoners radicalize around him in the three years he was in US jail, and said that many radical preachers had not been identified by the authorities.
MORTON: It goes on very frequently in general mainstream or what you call medium- or a high-security prisons as well.
HALL: And this point will resonate strongly with those who are against Guantanamo detainees being transferred to US prisons where they might also be seen as celebrities, able to influence other prisoners. Here in the UK the government learned the hard way, due to numerous terror attacks carried out by people radicalized in prison. It just remains to be seen if these new measures are enough, or too little too late.
