Battling the Homegrown Jihad Threat

Dec. 12, 2009— -- From the shootings at Fort Hood to the civil war battlegrounds of Somalia, 2009 revealed more jihadist activities involving Americans than almost any year since the 9/11 attacks, say experts.

There were at least 12 incidents in total, not including the recent arrests of five Virginia men in Pakistan on suspicion of trying to join jihadist militants.

With the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq fueling anger among some Muslim Americans, experts say jihadist propaganda is gaining a foothold in the United States, with hundreds of English-language Web sites.

Radical English-speaking clerics such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who corresponded with Major Nidal Hassan before he opened fire on soldiers at Fort Hood, are spreading their violent ideologies globally.

Many experts have long theorized that American Muslims tend to be better assimilated than Muslim immigrants in Europe and therefore less vulnerable to radicalization, but the number of recent homegrown terror incidents is raising concern.

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation said there has been a "significant increase" in incidents over previous years.

"Our greatest concern is that individuals will become radicalized here, will go abroad, will be able to make contact with some terrorist organization, which will then provide them with the training and assistance to come back here to carry out a far more effect terrorist plots than those we have seen so far," Jenkins said.