On the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, Laura Mansfield has a very disturbing story--Jihad comes to Small Town, USA:

Khaled and three of his companions had gone to New York for several days in January. He told of how uncomfortable his trip up to NYC had been. He felt like he was being watched, and thought he was the victim of racial profiling.

Khaled and his friends were pretty unhappy about it, and while in New York, they came up with a plan to "teach a lesson" to the passengers and crew. You can imagine the story Khaled told. He described how he and his friends whispered to each other on the flight, made simultaneous visits to the restroom, and generally tried to "spook" the other passengers. He laughed when he described how several women were in tears, and one man sitting near him was praying.

The others in the room thought the story was quite amusing, judging from the laughter. The imam stood up and told the group that this was a kind of peaceful civil disobedience that should be encouraged, and commended Khaled and his friends for their efforts.

This part of the meeting was all spoken in Arabic.

In Israel, Yasser Arafat was well known (at least to the non-naive) for making conciliatory speeches in English and inflammatory ones in Arabic. Apparently, he's not alone in this practice.

Khaled and company will feel a lot more than uncomfortable if they get taken off the plane in zip cuffs next time.

No offense, but do we really know this happened? Laura Mansfield appears to make her money from selling security (ie, sells monitoring of Islamist propaganda to see if your company gets mentioned in a bad way) of a sort to companies. No names or places mentioned. No way to second guess it.

No offense, but do we really know this happened?

If you're asking if she's a reliable source, I've no idea. But I don't find the story incredible. Do you have some reason to doubt it? It seems much in line with documented behavior at many Saudi-funded mosques.

Do you have some reason to doubt it?

It seems geared to scaring rural regions. As I see it, terrorism is among other things an urban problem. That's where the targets and potential terrorist recruits are. So I get suspicious of any story that implies that every small town in the country is in danger from "Jihad". The title "Jihad comes to Small Town, USA" and the closing sentence "And if it's in this tiny little quiet southern town, it's probably in your hometown, too." are designed to scare people. Sometimes urban problems come to rural areas, but I find the lack of details in the story to be troublesome.

"Do you have some reason to doubt it?"

Yes. Notice the major facts missing from the story:

-What town? (She could not even name the state?!)
-What mosque?
-What "local university"?
-No names.
-No dates.

Sounds like fiction to me. The rest of the website is just as (non)-credible.

I guess I fail to understand why the specifics are necessary to lend credibility to it.

She's not a reporter, and this isn't a news story--she's a security analyst, providing a vivid example of what we confront. I guess she could be making it up, but again, this is perfectly in line with similar behavior in other mosques (for which dates, times and locations have been provided), and I see no reason to disbelieve her story, or accuse her of lying. She may have perfectly valid reasons for not being more specific (e.g., she has to live in whatever town it is).

"I guess I fail to understand why the specifics are necessary to lend credibility to it."

Dan Rather claimed that some unnamed source provided him with some documents that were "perfectly in line" with other things that had been said by other people. You didn't fall for that, did you? Why are you willing to accept vague, unsubstantiated claims here? Because they agree with your beliefs?

It is highly suspicious that she doesn't even mention the STATE that this supposedly happened in. Just because you want to believe it is true doesn't make it true.

Just because you want to believe it is true doesn't make it true.

I'm not claiming it is true. I'm reporting it as an interesting account, which you can believe or not.

There is no way for me to know whether or not it's true, but I also have no particular reason to believe it to be not true, despite spurious and bizarre comparisons with Dan Rather's faked documents and obvious political agenda. So she didn't name the state. Big whoop. She said it was somewhere in the south. How would naming a specific state give it more credibility? Once again, she's not a reporter, and not thinking like a reporter. If you want to know details, you can email her and ask her.

I would also say that just because you apparently don't want to believe it doesn't make it false. The question is, why don't you want to believe it, given that this kind of thing has been credibly reported in other mosques (and is in fact quite mild compared to some of those incidents)?