5 US jihadis looking for holy war in Pakistan

Reuters:

Five young Americans detained in Pakistan, which is fighting an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency, wanted to join a jihad, or holy war, a police official said on Thursday.

The five men, students in their 20s from northern Virginia, were detained this week in the city of Sargodha in Punjab province, 190 km (120 miles) southeast of Islamabad, security officials said.

"Our police came to know that some foreigners are staying here and their arrival here is suspicious. We watched them for one and a half days and then arrested them," Usman Anwar, police chief of Sargodha, told reporters.

"We seized laptops and other things from their possession. Later we came to know that they have come here with the intention of 'jihad'."

The case will fan fears in the United States and other Western countries that the sons of immigrants from Muslim countries are being drawn to violent Islamist militancy.

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Pakistan news reports said the suspects were being investigated for links with the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group. The Jaish-e-Mohammad, or Army of the Prophet Mohammad, has links with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

It is one of several factions with roots in Punjab province that have been battling Indian forces in disputed Kashmir.

The group was suspected of involvement in several high-profile attacks including the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 and an assassination attempt on former president Pervez Musharraf.

Rashid Rauf, a British militant suspected of being ringleader of a 2006 plot to blow up airliners over the Atlantic, was also a Jaish member.

Officials said one of the Americans was of Egyptian origin, one of Yemeni origin and another of Eritrean origin.

A U.S. Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said it brought the case to the attention of U.S. law-enforcement authorities this month after family members informed CAIR of the men's disappearance.

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CAIR has been an apologist for radical Islamist in the past and has been associated with the Hamas death cult. It is possible they are trying to rehabilitate their credibility with law enforcement by disclosing this journey to jihad, but for now we should consider they have done a good thing by alerting authorities to these men.

However, while the standard MO of Muslims is to say that Islamic terrorist are not real Muslims, we should assume that these guys were real Muslims before they embraced the Islamic dark side. Like Hasan, there is something about this religion that makes a few of its believers believe in mass murder for Allah operations. In that regard it is a unique religion in the modern world.