Over the next year and a half, I wrote 20 pieces in the series. The aim was to educate folks on the history of radical Islam, to comment on current Islamic terrorist attacks, and to keep Americans alert to the continuing threat.
As with other series that have resumed in recent days with the re-launch of this website, the "Islamism Series" returns as well. As with the others, it will continue into the future with periodic articles which will continue those original goals of education and commentary on what I believe to be that continuing threat.
Perhaps you've forgotten, or you haven't put the pieces together for yourself. With so much going on these days in the nation and world, who could blame you? But the fact is that radical Islamic attacks right here in America are continuing.
Since the historically devastating attacks of September 11, 2001 there have been at least 14 successful attacks by adherents to the tenets of radical Islam right here in the United States. There have been further countless planned attacks which have been thwarted by law enforcement.
Some would have you believe that this is a brand new phenomenon. Perhaps actual terror groups such as ISIS are just beginning to formally sanction attacks. However, individuals inspired by groups like ISIS have been committing terror attacks for some time.
Of the successful post-9/11 attacks, 13 have occurred since 2009. Nine have happened in just the last four and a half years. If anything, the pace seems to be picking up. This is a problem that is going to get worse, possibly much worse, before it ever gets better.
So in renewing this series, let's start by reviewing what has happened since the last piece was published in February 2010. Something to catch us up. A reminder that we need to continue to be vigilant.
That last piece in the "Islamism Series" came out in February 2010, just months after a pair of attacks on the United States military here in our homeland.
In June of 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (born Carlos Bledsoe) committed a drive-by shooting outside of a military recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas. In the shooting, U.S. Army Private William Long was killed and another soldier was wounded.
Five months later, U.S Army Major Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist, committed the largest mass shooting on a United States military base in our nation's history. Hasan killed 13 and wounded some three dozen others.
Since publication of that last piece in the series to this point, more blood has been shed on American soil by Islamic radicals. The first actually came on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
On September 11, 2011 in Waltham, Massachusetts, three men had their throats slashed and were nearly decapitated by Ibragim Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Both of these men had Chechen family backgrounds, and had come under the influence of radical Islam.
If the name of that second killer in Waltham sounds familiar to you, that's because it should. A year and a half later, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev committed the Boston Marathon bombing. The brothers killed three, caused 16 others to lose limbs, and injured hundreds more.
In September of 2014, Alton Nolen was suspended from his job at Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma, just outside of Oklahoma City. Nolen went home, got a knife, and made his way to the company's main offices. There he attacked one female employee, slashing her throat and completely beheading her. He then slashed another female employee as well.
As he attempted to behead that second woman, Nolen's attack was stopped when he was shot by the company C.O.O., who also happened to be a reserve sheriff deputy. An FBI investigation revealed that he had become radicalized, and used "Jah'Keem Yisrael" as his name on Facebook.
The following year, in July 2015, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez committed a pair of drive-by shootings at U.S. military facilities in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He killed four U.S. Marines and a Navy sailor in the attack, injuring a police officer and a military recruiter.
Just four months later, Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people on the campus of the University of California at Merced.
One month later, things turned deadly in California. A married couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, entered a Christmas party in a banquet room at the Inland Regional Center with assault rifles. The party was being attended by dozens of employees with the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health. The couple killed fourteen and injured two dozen. They fled and were killed hours later after a shootout with police that injured a pair of officers. It was the deadliest Islamic terror attack since 9/11.
If you thought that 2015 was bad, you hadn't seen anything yet. The next year opened with a February 2016 attack by Mohamed Barry at the Nazareth Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. There he slashed four patrons with a machete. He fled, and was later shot dead by police following a car chase. It would be the first of two radical Islamic attacks in the city last year.
Four months later, in June 2016, came the Orlando, Florida shooting at Pulse, a gay night club. Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured another 58. This remains the largest radical Islamist shooting attack in U.S. history, and is second only to this year's attack in Las Vegas as far as mass shooting casualties.
Five months later, in November 2016, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Ohio State University was the scene of the second attack in Columbus, Ohio during 2016. The Department received a phone call regarding a fluorine leak, and so students were evacuated.
As students and faculty congregated outside, Abdul Razak Ali Artan deliberately drove his car into the group. He then exited the vehicle with a butcher knife, and stabbed multiple people. He was shot and killed minutes later by responding police after injuring a dozen people.
An eerily quiet 2017 was ended on Halloween. That afternoon in Manhattan, Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov drove a rented truck onto the Hudson River Bike Path. He mowed down a number of bicyclists and runners over approximately one mile before crashing into a school bus. After fleeing the vehicle, Saipov was shot and arrested by police. Eight died and a dozen more were injured in the ISIL-inspired attack.
83 people dead. Hundreds injured, many left permanently disabled. All killed and wounded by individuals inspired by radical Islam and its jihadist ideology. All in the little more than seven and a half years since the last 'Islamism Series' piece was published.
Don't let anyone try to tell you that this is not a legitimate ongoing threat to America. Inspired terrorists are out there right now, considering soft targets of all types. From sporting venues to movie theatres to concert halls, citizens need to be alert.
There has been some version of a "See Something, Say Something" program happening in almost every community in our country over the last decade or so. More than that, Americans need to be prepared to respond, to act, if they find themselves and their family and friends facing a mortal threat.
As we move forward, I will continue to provide valuable information on radical Islam within this 'Islamism Series', and will cover major stories that inevitably occur involving these continuing jihadist attacks.
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