I was a jihadist who saw 9/11 as justified
IFifteen years on, – a former al-Qaeda activist who now works in homeland security – reveals why young people turn to terror can recall exactly where deaths of 2,996 people, I saw that those young people to become jihadists; I I was on 9/11. I was a prophecies would come true. I had see it differently. 21-year-old prisoner in been radicalised to such an extent that For me, these youngsters are instead Richmond, Virginia, my sympathy would be with al-Qaeda. articulating a pre-existing anger and convicted on drugs In the Koran and the Hadith (the animosity, whether it is to do with child charges. I was asleep compiled sayings of the Prophet abuse or trauma, a lack of integration when the first plane hit Muhammad), I found an abundance and assimilation, or socio-economic the World Trade Center. of verses that I believed justified grievances. The foreign policy Someone woke me and heinous violence in support of the grievance is simply something that said: “Come here, you have to look at establishment of an Islamic state allows them to release tensions held this on the TV.” for the whole world. Yet for my deep within them. My immediate reaction on seeing entire life before I became a Muslim, When I was released from Richmond what was happening was to think, I had completely rejected and prison a few years later, I moved to the “America is going to war with the opposed violence. next level of involvement with Islamist Muslims” – after which I went straight With hindsight, I can see that my extremists. Through the Islamic off to sleep again. It shocks me, looking dysfunctional family background back, how little I cared about the had made me vulnerable and a prime people being killed that day. candidate for radicalisation. I was born
What had caused me to be so in Pennsylvania and raised between desensitised to the unfolding tragedy there and New York. After my father was that, at that time, I was under left us for the woman he had been the influence of a charismatic radical having an affair with, my mother took preacher. Through him, I was finding her rage out on me. But no matter how a new Islamic identity that would much she attacked me, I still yearned eventually bring me, as Younus for her attention. Abdullah Muhammed, into contact By the time I was 16, however, I had with Anjem Choudary, who was jailed ended up as a runaway on the streets, last week in Britain for inviting others doing and selling drugs, which is how to support Islamic State of Iraq and the I came to be in Richmond prison in Levant (Isil). 2001. I was angry, and the radical imam
It was a radical imam in Richmond provided me with an outlet, through jail who had first told me about Islamic Islamicism, to express my rage. prophecies of the end of the world. Many “experts” today believe that So on 9/11, as the planes smashed into it is anger at the West’s foreign policy the Twin Towers, resulting in the towards the Muslim world that drives Thinkers’ Society in New York, I came into contact with Anjem Choudary, who was beamed into our meetings from the UK to give us instruction.
By then, I was so committed to the ideology that al-Qaeda and others were promoting, I believed their view, which divided the world into an “in” group of Muslims and an “out” group of everyone else, to justify acts of violence and atrocities such as 9/11.
I never actually met Choudary face to face, but after I had established the Revolution Muslim website in the US in 2007, he and I would present lectures together via Skype on an online forum. I remember once talking to him about how we should advertise a forthcoming joint lecture for jihadists, and Anjem told me not to start too soon. “I need to alert the media first,” he said. He was seeking notoriety for himself.
Islam gave me the structure I craved. My high IQ won me scholarships and, from 2007, I studied for a Masters degree in International Studies at Columbia University. But I was living a double life – as Jesse Morton in the classroom, and Younus Abdullah Muhammed elsewhere. My radical views could have been recognised by I was realising that my deeds had consequences, whereas previously I had assumed I had divine protection.
Effectively, I self-deradicalised. I cut myself off from anything that would pull me back towards jihadists, but it was my decision to co-operate with the law enforcement community, providing them with intelligence, which stopped me being locked up with other terrorists and gave me the space I needed to reflect. As a result of that co-operation, I was released after four and half years and now work as a research fellow at George Washington University, as part of the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security (CCHS), looking into the causes of extremism.
After 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld, the secretary of defence under George W Bush, told America that, as long as we were capturing and killing the terrorists who were being produced in the mosques and madrassas, then we were winning the war. He failed to understand that killing one terrorist produces seven more, because the fight is with an ideology. We have been slow to learn that lesson.
Fifteen years on from 9/11, we now live in an age of free-for-all jihad – what, in my radicalised days, we called “open-source jihad”. Using social media platforms and the internet, jihadists are committed to making their ideology go viral.
Today, I work on developing strategies to counter violent extremism, but terrorist organisations still have the fluidity to shape discourse on the ground. Instead of making our counter-message a reaction to their narrative, we need to start making our message the narrative that the jihadists are reacting to. Be proactive, not reactive.
The “War on Terror” will not be won unless much more work is done promoting deradicalisation of vulnerable youngsters. We must develop more mechanisms so that people who are in the process of being radicalised have avenues where they can seek assistance.
In the early stages of my radicalisation, had there been intervention programmes, had someone reached out to me, I probably could have been moderated. I wasn’t cemented at that point.
But it didn’t happen and so, on this anniversary, I look back on the past 15 years of my life as a kind of self-induced trauma that caused a lot of pain to other people, particularly the families of those who adopted the ideology I promoted, and who went on to commit heinous acts, or attempt to do so.
That is something that is never going to leave me.