Backgrounder: Revolution Muslim
Activity
Posted: June 1, 2009
Revolution Muslim (RM) activity ranges from distributing CDs and printed materials outside mosques during Friday services and participating in anti-Israel rallies to distributing propaganda online.
Its distributions often take place in front of mosques that RM perceives as being too moderate. For example, on January 16, 2009, the group set up an information table outside a mosque on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and criticized its Imam, who gave a sermon at the mosque that day. Pointing to the mosque, RM's spokesperson Younes Abdullah Muhammad asked: "How dare you tell someone to integrate into society?" RM also uses these occasions to collect contributions.
RM has organized and participated in several anti-Israel demonstrations, including several rallies held to protest Israeli military actions against Hamas in Gaza in the winter of 2008-2009. At a January 3 protest in New York, members and supporters congregated in front of the Israeli Consulate where they handed out the group's literature, waved flags with the Islamic declaration of faith, and held signs that read: "Palestine is Muslim land," and "The Holocaust was a hoax." Another sign denounced Shia Islam as influenced by Judaism. At the end of the protest, Abdullah Muhammad called on bystanders to "support the Mujahedeen."
RM often cooperates with representatives of the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS), an offshoot of a British group by the name Al Muhajiroun. Like RM, ITS supports violence in order to create a global Islamic state. During one rally near the Israeli consulate in New York, an ITS speaker said, "We tell you Jews…Allah will wipe you, along with Israel off the map." The speaker then pointed to al-Khattab as an example of a person who gave up the "Jewy tactics" and "accepted Islam and saved himself from the punishment of Allah."
RM runs online forums, a Web site and uses social networking sites to extend its reach. It regularly posts videos of its rallies and actions. Its Internet forum has several hundred registered members, including North Carolina blogger Samir Khan, a significant distributor of Jihadist propaganda in the U.S. The forums are used by members to communicate and share information and announcements.
Some of RM's online activity seems to go beyond merely sharing of information and includes implicit, if not explicit, threats. In one thread on an RM forum during the war in Gaza, the forum administrator commented: "These war crimes are sponsored by Zionists in many of the lands we live in," and recommended, "Don't discuss it here in this forum, go to the source and discuss it with them where ever they may be."
Around that time, RM also posted a picture on its Web site of Chabad's world headquarters in Brooklyn with a message encouraging readers to "make EVERY attempt to reach these people and teach them the message of Islam or leave them a message from Islam." Al-Khattab reported that he and another RM member were questioned by the police about the post.
In a subsequent online video, al-Khattab recommended that Muslims protest at the home of the head of the Jewish Federation and said that the Chabad center and the Yeshiva University in New York were two of the "sources" for the attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza.
Another posting in March 20, 2009, encouraged Muslims to attack members of a Hindu group in India who reportedly prevented Muslim women from wearing a veil inside a local college. The post read: "Where are the Muslims? They should storm these filthy rabid-sub-monkeys and stomp on their jaws until they hear the sweet *crack* sound, and then some." The person posting the comment identifies himself as affiliated with the London-based Web site Islam4UK.com, which is used by former members of Al-Muhajiroun.
In March 2009, RM posted a link to an audio message by Osama bin Laden in which the Al Qaeda leader berated the Arab governments for not supporting the Palestinians in Gaza. In a short statement introducing bin Laden's speech, RM wrote "Let the Demonstrations be followed by Blasts!!!," most likely referencing protests in the Arab world against the local government.
Abdullah Muhammad also contributes to Jihad Recollections, an English language online publication put out by Al-Fursan Media, an apparent collaboration of online terrorist sympathizers. In the inaugural issue, released in April 2009 and purporting to be "the first English Jihad magazine," Abdullah Muhammad expresses support for Al Qaeda, writing that the September 11 terrorist attacks "…were, for the most part, positive and the results even better than expected." He also calls on like-minded Muslims to "exploit these results and advance the jihad... It is time to begin to think about the necessary next steps that must predicate the conquering of Rome."
|