Jihad: At A Prison Near You

February 6, 2003

State prison officials yesterday banned Warith Deen Umar from serving as a chaplain at any New York facility - just 24 hours after the U.S. Bureau of Prisons declared him persona non grata at all federal penitentiaries.

Not until a front-page story appeared in the Wall Street Journal, apparently, was either agency aware that Umar had spent decades spreading Islamic extremism among the nation's convicts, while recruiting a cadre of Muslim chaplains who preach support of terrorism.

That's particularly ominous news for New York - where for 20 years, until his retirement in 2000, Imam Umar was the most influential Muslim chaplain in the state. He ran the prison system's Islamic program, earning $70,000 a year. (Until yesterday, he continued to serve as a volunteer chaplain.)

Only now are officials learning what it is he's been preaching all these years.

The 9/11 hijackers were martyrs, he told the Journal, adding that America faces "warfare" unless it stops oppressing Muslims. Warfare, he maintains, that will be carried out by prison inmates who've converted to radical Islam.

Umar isn't bashful about any of this: Prison "is the perfect recruitment and training ground for radicalism and the Islamic religion," he told the paper.

A former black radical who served time for weapons possession, the Louis Farrakhan/Nation of Islam acolyte adds: "Prisons are a powder keg - the question is the ignition."

Muslim chaplains hired and trained by Umar began preaching to inmates, post-9/11, that Osama bin Laden "is a soldier of Allah, a hero of Allah." Officials, fearing riots, refused to intervene.

Umar and his colleagues are radical Sunni Muslims, reportedly preaching hatred not just of America but also of rival Shiite Muslims - and received training and funding from the Saudi Arabian government, which regularly brings prison chaplains to Saudi Arabia for weeks of "study" and training. Umar himself made at least four such "pilgrimages."

Amazingly, state Prison Commissioner Glenn Goord told the Journal that not only was he unaware of Umar's political diatribes, he didn't even know that he was still serving as a chaplain. "It sounds like he shouldn't," added Goord - a classic understatement if we ever heard one.

The feds, to their credit, moved swiftly after learning of Umar's preaching, saying that the Bureau of Prisons "does not tolerate chaplains, or other staff, condoning or endorsing violence in their communities with inmates."

Now, Umar is out - though he vows to fight the state-federal decisions. Even if his ouster is upheld, he's left a cadre of like-minded extremists behind who'll continue to preach their brand of hatred.

If that's the case, what will Goord & Co. do about it?

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/68557.htm