A few days ago, an Ohio man was sentenced to 16 years in the federal pen.
But this is different.
This prisoner is going to be recruiting for ISIS.
That’s right. A man named Amir Said Rahman Al-Ghazi, who was formerly named Robert McCollum, pled guilty in 2016 to attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. He also pled guilty to two counts of felony possession of firearms.
Al-Ghazi first pledged his support to ISIS in 2014. He also made references to staging terrorist attacks in the US in conversations with undercover FBI agents. He told confidential sources he was “trying to put a squad of believers together” and that he believed the US could be “the land of jihad.”
He continued by saying that he had a strong interest in carrying out terrorist attacks in the US. Al-Ghazi said: “Have to do jihad here.”
Al-Ghazi/McCollum also reportedly told his neighbor, Nick Carte, a Marine who did three tours in Iraq, that “Osama Bin Laden is my brother.”
Al-Ghazi was finally arrested in 2015 while trying to buy an AK-47 from an undercover FBI agent.
Now, he’ll be able to recruit plenty of supporters for his heinous radical agenda from inside prison.
Black Americans turning to Islam has become a real problem. It’s been a problem, in a way, since the days of Malcolm X. But it’s a different problem, now.
The Nation of Islam as a concept was once a way for Black Americans, sickened by the persecution they experienced in America, to identify with what they believed were their roots. Black Islam was a way to defy the status quo, to prove yourself unique, to prove you were more than the white-man’s plaything.
Now, it’s become something more sinister than a silly expression of identity politics. People like Rob McCollum, now Amir Al-Ghazi, are not converting to the counter-cultural but largely harmless variety of Black Islam preached by blowhards like Louis Farrakhan or Muhammad Ali. They are converting to a kind of real, radical Islam which preaches the importance of violent jihad.
Did Louis Farrakhan love to run his mouth about how white people are “devils”? Did he say that “white people deserve to die” and make all kinds of anti-Semitic comments? Did he threaten violence, and encourage a stupid cult of violence to grow among his people? Sure.
But Louis Farrakhan never rounded up all the Jews and Christians in his city and cut off their heads.
ISIS, on the other hand, has done that a few times.
And that marks the real difference between the goofy, almost comical Black Islam of the past, with its loud-but-meaningless posturing and its nonsensical, Scientology-esque beliefs, and the Black Islam of the present. Black Muslims today are no longer fake Muslims just trying to make a point about civil rights. Increasingly, they are really Muslims, in more than name only.
There are now “real” Muslims, and indeed real “radical Muslims” in black communities across America. And soon, men like Once-Rob-McCollum will be recruiting for ISIS within America’s prisons.
And our prisons are already hotbeds of desperate men who are at a high risk for radicalization. (And Islamic gangs are already growing in size and strength within American prisons. About 10% of the American prison population now claims Islam as their religion.)
How should we as Americans handle this threat to our nation? A man is arrested for trying to recruit warriors for a hostile army from an enemy nation, a nation sworn to seek our destruction at all costs. That’s literally treason.
So, how do we handle that man? How do we handle a traitor? Placing him into the perfect environment he’s looking for, with plenty of ready converts who have already shown a disregard for the nation they live in, seems like the wrong way to do it.
When the man who once was Rob McCollum gets out of the Federal pen in 16 years, do you think he will be any less radical than when he went in? Do you think a decade-and-a-half spent learning new techniques from other prisoners will make him any less of a threat to our country?
No.
So how should we deal with traitors like Rob McCollum? Give them 16 years of free meals, education, and housing on the taxpayer’s dime?
Hell no.
We should put a bullet between their eyes and dump their bodies in the sea. If that treatment was good enough for Osama Bin Laden, it’s good enough for Bin Laden’s wannabe brother.