Lodi Imam Admits to Telling Pakistanis to Fight Americans

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

I've written about the early June arrests in Lodi, California here and here.  Along with Hamid and Umer Hayat (the father and son who were charged with lying to federal agents about the son's training at an al-Qaeda camp in Pakistan), authorities also detained two religious leaders in the Lodi Muslim community, Shabbir Ahmed and Mohammed Adil Khan.  In an immigration hearing on Friday, Ahmed admitted to urging Pakistanis to fight Americans in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks (story also picked up at Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch):

The spiritual leader of the Lodi mosque who was arrested in a sweep earlier this month admitted to the FBI that when he was in Pakistan he gave speeches to Muslims urging them to fight Americans in Afghanistan in the months following the September 11 attacks.

However, in his immigration hearing on Friday, Shabbir Ahmed told a judge that "it was a requirement of all imams.  If you don't people turn against you.  They sort of force you to say something." . . . .

While he admitted making the speeches against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he said that since he's been in this country he realized he was wrong.  "Having come here, there are true values and respect for human life," Ahmed said, speaking through an interpreter.  "When I saw such a picture, my mind changed.  Now I know what the truth is.  I think there is justice here, respect here."

Comments:  Some countries are dominated by particularly pernicious theological strains that are prone to producing terrorists.  For example, in April 2003 Joel Mowbray examined how Saudi money had touched virtually every stage of the religious development of Asan Akbar, the Army sergeant who killed two of his fellow soldiers and wounded fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait.  Hamid Hayat's religious development has not yet been explored in depth, but an important question is what kind of indoctrination led him to train at an al-Qaeda camp.

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