"The main motivation of the group in Germany is hatred against American citizens..."

The frightening reality. The overall climate of anti-American hatred produced by German media only feeds this.

UPDATE: The terrorists were supported by the German welfare state - via the German taxpayer. Does this deeply surprise anyone? Some of the 9/11 hijackers also took advantage of free education and other handouts from the German "social" system.

UPDATE #2: Intercepts of suspicious calls key to cracking terror case.

The LA Times also reports: "It is not a crime in Germany to attend a foreign terrorist training camp." How about we pass a new law in Germany tomorrow?

Congratulations to both the US and German counter-terrorism officials and law enforcement who worked hand-in-hand to stop these fanatics.   

Comments

[Carl Spackler]

The three had no steady work and were drawing unemployment benefits while their main occupation was the plot, officials said.

Hey, if you are a white, dolt German and actually want to act on anti-Americanism, Islam is the only game in town right now. So, what came fist? Anti-Americanism looking for an action outlet, or curious and young coverts to Islam? I kind of think its like sort of what Mao said about fish swimming in water.

Anyways, my sympathies to high taxed German workers. This bighting the hand that feeds, cloths, houses, tends and educates is everywhere.

[Pamela]

I can't get any info from this article about WHEN these assholes converted to Islam. Pre-9/11 or what?

Can someone help? (I'm looking for pre - or - post 9/11/2001)

In any case, I suspect it's a 'Big Swinging Dick' contest. I'm a complete failure but if I go after the biggest dick on the block, at least I can strut my stuff.

[Pamela]

And it looks like the German taxpayer has been supporting at least 10 more of these yahoos.

[commonsense]

@Pamela

It's not ten, it's not even hundreds, it's thousands.

If you open this page, The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other, of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, then scroll down to the graphic "Support for Suicide Bombing", you can see the percentage of Muslims who support suicide bombing. Germany has more than three million Muslims - you do the maths.

[Pamela]

commonsense, I saw that study when it came out.

The Financial Times has been running a series on Muslims in Europe that is a real puff piece - I suspect to counter studies like that - and to try to make Turkey's acceptance into the EU as no problem.

Guess this bomb plot won't help.

heh.

[Mir]

The reception of Turkey into the EU hasn't had support from the people before (not that it would matter much to the Eurocrats).

[commonsense]

Pamela - Oh, right. Sorry for being late :-) I followed a link from Michelle Malkin at that time.

What I find remarkable here in Germany is this: In recent weeks a study came out with the finding that Germans considered the threat to the climate and the threat to social justice more grave than the threat from international terrorists. This is without doubt due to the everlasting media indoctrination. German Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, who wants to introduce tougher laws against terrorists got belittled and ridiculed. All those bigmouths are quiet - for now. Gradually they will come up again with ever increasing noise levels until the next terror plot is foiled (or successful - hope not). But even Mr Schaeuble doesn't say it as clear as your Secretary of State does (via Tim Blair):

The terrorists have made their choice. They have shown that choice. They have shown it in bombing and murdering innocent people for their own ideological purposes. We have made a choice, the United States and Australia, which is to fight back. These are not people with whom one can compromise. These are not people with whom one can negotiate. They take advantage of the innocent. They prey on the weak. When you have an enemy that preys on the weak, takes the lives of innocents, you have but one choice and that is to fight.

[Pamela]

@commonsense
you have but one choice and that is to fight.

See the discussion on the thread below. Alex N. needs some bucking up.

I found the answer I posed above in today's issue of the Financial Times. One German converted at least 12, perhaps 15 years ago. The other converted 3 years ago.

[Pamela]

LGF just put up an interesting article on Slate.

Why are so many jihadis converts?

According to a German government study cited in Der Spiegel, between mid-2004 and mid-2005, 4,000 Germans converted to Islam—about 13 times the rate just three years earlier. A sociologist quoted in the article says some see conversion to Islam as a dramatic act that makes them "stand out from the crowd."

There's a link to the Der Speigel article there.

[americanbychoice]

pamela,
it would be interesting to see a breakdown how many spouses are included due to intermarriage?

[Pamela]

EXCELLENT point!

[Pamela]

Hey! Remember that German woman who converted to Islam and was taken hostage in Iraq? Suzanne something-or-other. Whatever happened to her?

[clarsonimus]

They were mad as hell before, but once Hartz IV came around and money REALLY started getting tight... That must have pushed them over the edge.

[Scout]

@Pamela: Susanne Osthoff was her name. Words fail me to describe my personal reaction to that episode. Can you imagine my disgust? Here I was paying taxes (and none too little, I might add) to a state that turned around and used that money to pay ransom to terrorists (and she was in collusion with them). The terrorists, in turn, were then free to use the money to buy weapons and materials to kill my countrymen along with more innocent Iraqis.
It was this incident that really made me start looking for an exit strategy with regards to my presence in Germany. It took some time to germinate, but it finally did.
After it came out that she had some of the ransom money on her after she was "released" I needed to go lick out urinals at the railway station for a few days just to get my self-respect back.
I could still just scream when I think about that brainwashed whore.
Next time, I won't sugar-coat it. I'll tell you what I really think.

[eliXelx]

These kooks said it was their intention to kill Americans, not Germans! I wonder if this means that they'll get lighter prison sentences!

[Doug]

@Pamela -

One more figure to put it into perspective, here -

The number is growing, according to the German Islam archive. In the past decade, only about 300 Germans each year converted to Islam. But in 2005, the number rose to 1,000, and it jumped to 4,000 in 2006.

[fuchur]

@Scout
Hmm - I just wonder... how do you think Jill Caroll got free? Don't think about it too hard though, or you might have to lick a few more urinals...

[Scout]

Fuchur, surely you aren't suggesting that the _US Government_ paid ransom for her release? If that's what you're suggesting, why don't you come right out and say it?

[commonsense]

My prediction about Germans converting to Islam is this: during the coming 10-15 years, tens of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s, of Germans will convert to Islam. I see a number of reasons for that:

1. After Socialism, Taoism, Buddhism, Nihilism and Ecologism, the intellectual elites' latest fashionable belief is Islam. They don't see the trap they are falling into.

2. More and more Germans learn more and more about Islam and they understand what Islamic rule in Germany would mean for them: submission, dhimmitude. However, they draw the wrong conclusions: they assume they will be able to get on with their lives the same way they do now if only they jump on the bandwagon early.

3. Opportunism: others believe the coming Islamic rule in Germany is inevitable and they are out to look after their career or some little jobs or the likes of it. These are those people who would even kick out their spouse if they could get some sort of promotion in return.

4. Then there are those, whose resentment against all things western, or capitalist, or American, etc., is reason enough for them to get involved with Islam.

5. Also there will be those who think with islam they have found the true faith. We'll see how long that one lasts.

We certainly can find more reasons or divide the reasons in another way. But what it comes down to is: these are people who were born in a free country, they lived their lives all in freedom but they still have no clue how important this freedom actually is.

[Pamela]

commonsense, there is another item to your list I would like to add. Islamofacism is a totalitarian, collectivist ('ummah'), master race kind of ideology. There is a cultural weakness in Germany for that kind of crap.

Here is the joker that I'm watching. The EU - which I've often characterized here as 'soft totalitarianism'. If the Islamofacists can influence Brussels to their favor - which in some ways they are beginning to do - it will servely undercut any resistance in Germany.

[Tropby]

A NATION CHALLENGED: AMERICAN MUSLIMS; Islam Attracts Converts By the Thousand, Drawn Before and After Attacks
By JODI WILGOREN
Source: The New York Times : October 22, 2001, Monday
Section: National Desk
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/22/national/22CONV.html

[Pamela]

yeah tropby we know - I remember that article, thinking (as I still do) gee, wish there were some hard numbers here, not just anecdotal stuff. Just as an FYI, coverage of this issue became a tad less credulous after John Walker Lind was picked up in Afghanistan.

Except in the NYT, of course, one of whose writers, Anastasia Stanley, speculated that the Iraqi bloggers who visited the USA and met Bush could possibly be CIA operatives.

[amiexpat]

geez tropbz that article is almost six years old.. got anything more current?
wait, I thought we Amis were CHRISTIAN fundamentalists who are WORSE than Muslim fundamentalists.. after all, according to German thinking a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist, right?

[Tropby]

http://judiciary.senate.gov/testimony.cfm?id=960&wit_id=2719

A senate hearing in 2003 sees between 30 and 40 k annual conversions in the US prison system as a "major contributor to the phenomenal growth of Islam in the U.S.” Now add conversions outside of the admittedly vast US prison system ...

Compare this with 4 k conversions in Germany (and the German numbers for 2003 were even lower).

The US with four times the population of Germany has at least ten times as many conversions as Germany. There must be a "cultural weakness" to this "totalitarian, collectivist ('ummah'), master race kind of ideology" in the US, I suppose.

[Pamela]

Tropby, I agree that one of the great appeals of Islam is that it appeals to a criminal class. The prison conversions to Islam to which you refer involve a particularly American strain known as the Nation of Islam, begun by a Walter Fard in Detroit prior to WWII (who mysteriously disappeared - you can google but they've had some sensational assinations, the most well known being that of Malcom X). It gained in popularity as a result of the militant black power movement in the '60s. This strain also despises Christians and Jews as does the Islam of Mohammed, but in addition, hates whites. As tradional Islam encourages separation of the infidel, the Nation of Islam encourages separation from whites. Just keep in mind that most 'traditional' Muslims do not consider Nation of Islam Muslims to be true Muslims because - as some of them have told me - the first loyalty of the Nation of Islam is to overthrowing the white power structure for the black man and not to Allah.

Pretty much as the Ku Klux Klan tried to use Christianity as a bulwark for their racist agenda, the Nation of Islam tries to use Islam for theirs. Just think of them as the black Ku Klux Klan.

But, of course, there is no guarantee that a relationship between the Nation of Islam and the Salafists would be anymore unthinkable than one between the Klan and the Nazis. They tend to agree about a few things.

[commonsense]

Pamela, I think you're dead right with this:

There is a cultural weakness in Germany for that kind of crap. [...] The EU ...

I'd go a bit further and say, there's an inherent tendency to endorse big-government and there's less concern with what sort of government that would be. One example: 95% of all the laws about taxation around the world are written in German language. Concerning the EU, I agree with Fjordman, the EU needs to be destroyed (the political structure, that is). Each and every year, German lawmakers pass more than 3500 laws, about 2700 of those are based on and passed in accordance with directions from Brussels.

[honorthefallen]

When is our President following through on his promise to fight the ones who support terrorism and bomb the shit out of Germany?? The planning of 9/11 has been done in Germany, today I've read that a young kid in Duisburg told his or her kindergarden teacher about 9/11 BEFORE it happened and going through readers comments on www.focus.de about anything that's going on in the world (everything is the U.S.'s fault...) I think we should strongly remind them that Germany has been playing a big part in supporting international terrorism! Bomb these spineless idiots! NOW!

[Mir]

@ honorthefallen

Do you think you're funny? Here some breaking news: You aren't. Or maybe you are a troll who wants to instigate Germans against Americans. Which you won't be successfull with either.

[exhelodrvr]

I (speaking as a Christian) think one of the attractions of Islam is that it does have a strong moral basis, which goes counter to the general trend of the west, including the trends in much of the traditional Christian churches. It does provide an anchor in a time when there isn't a lot of that in much of society.

[Pamela]

@exhelodrvr
I (speaking as a Christian) think one of the attractions of Islam is that it does have a strong moral basis

You're not funny either

[icarus]

I've read that about 75% of converts end up leaving Islam within a few years. I don't know, but I think this figure was only applicable to the US and not Europe.

I don't quite share Pamela's dim view of German conversion. Where is Deist these days? I'm sure he could provide some interesting insight.

[exhelodrvr]

Pamela,
I wasn't trying to be funny. Today's society doesn't give a lot of people the anchor that societies have in the past. Islam does provide that; I am extremely opposed to how they do it, but the fact is that it does provide an anchor.

[Pamela]

icarus, I don't have a view of German converts, dim or otherwise. I simply posted a link to an article with a position on the issue.

@exhelodryr
Today's society doesn't give a lot of people the anchor that societies have in the past.

Well, I disagree that societies in the past have given people anchors as you, I think, envision it. What is different now is the global accessibilty to competing ideas.

But I think I understand what you see. There is a an Episcopalian priest in Seattle who says she is also a Muslim. "It wasn't about intellect. All I know is the calling of my heart to Islam was very much about my identity and who I am supposed to be."

Not about intellect. Got it.

Ann Holmes Redding

You say you are a Christian, but don't identify the specific version. Well, hey, I'm NOT a Christian but there is a publication I read - how shall I say - religiously? You might like it.

First Things

Catholic. Great stuff.

[Hector07]

All I can say is Bravo to the German polizei for doing such a great job in stopping these crazy people. Their efforts deserve our gratitude.