Security at Places of Worship: More Than a Matter of Faith

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In recent months, several high-profile incidents have raised awareness of the threat posed by individuals and small groups operating under the principles of leaderless resistance. These incidents have included lone wolf attacks against a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, an armed forces recruitment center in Arkansas and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Additionally, a grassroots jihadist cell was arrested for attempting to bomb Jewish targets in the Bronx and planning to shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

In addition to pointing out the threat posed by grassroots cells and lone wolf operatives, another common factor in all of these incidents is the threat of violence to houses of worship. The cell arrested in New York left what they thought to be active improvised explosive devices outside the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Community Center. Dr. George Tiller was shot and killed in the lobby of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita. Although Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad conducted his attacks against a Little Rock recruiting center, he had conducted preoperational surveillance and research on targets that included Jewish organizations and a Baptist church in places as far away as Atlanta and Philadelphia. And while James von Brunn attacked the Holocaust Museum, he had a list of other potential targets in his vehicle that included the National Cathedral. Read more

OBAMA’S policy on Kashmir can ratchet up anti-Americanism in India

If the Obama administration wants to know why anti-Americanism gets ratcheted up in different parts of the world, it need not look anywhere else, but look hard at the dangerous Af-Pak policy it is toying with at the expense of India and the inevitable fallouts that might result.

What kind of talks did Under Secretary Nicholas Burns have in mind when he allegedly carried the US message to India that dialogue with Pakistan should resume once again? Can India trust Pakistan to walk the talk after nothing serious has been done after the Mumbai attacks that was hatched and perpetrated from Pakistani soil?

And talk with whom in the wake of the release by Pakistani courts of Hafeez Mohammad Saeed, the leader of the banned terror outfit, the Lashkar e Taiba, now masquerading as an NGO by the name of Jama’at-ud-Da’wah? His organization has been responsible for numerous terror attacks in India involving loss of innocent lives including the latest carnage in Mumbai last year. Read more