In a first in the post-9\/11 political era, Muslim leaders in Miami have responded to the furor over the recently apprehended bomb plotters against the Sears Towers<\/a> by arguing that\u00a0 the culprits are not Muslims.<\/a>\u00a0 (CAIR also refuted the link <\/a> and urged the media to refrain from referring to them as Muslims.)\u00a0 They\u2019d know, and I don\u2019t think this is something a community could get away with lying about.\u00a0 These leaders know very well that if these individuals really are\u00a0 Muslims in any meaningful sense, that information will get out.<\/p>\n There already were a number of good reasons to smell a rat in this story, though. The first thing that struck me as out of place was the name of the group, the \"Seas of David\".\u00a0 It has no obvious historical or religious resonance to a Muslim\u2019s ear and it makes no mention of the typical ideological talking points of jihadis (tawhid, crusaders, jihad, etc.).\u00a0 It sounds more like a New Age band than a terror group. <\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the much quoted declaration , \"We wanted to kill all the devils we can.\" <\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0It\u2019s simply not the way Muslim fundies speak, especially in English and to non-Muslims.\u00a0 Even the most hard-line and\/or radicalized of Muslims invariably refer to non-Muslims as \"the kuffar\" <\/em>(infidels) because of its powerful historical and theological resonances.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never seen or heard of even the most violent jihadi <\/em>Muslims categorizing non-Muslims generically as \"devils\".\u00a0 <\/p>\n This isn\u2019t because such benighted people are too enlightened or ecumenically minded to harbor such animosities, of course, but rather because the Arabic term already packs much more punch ideologically, as it implicitly justifies their excesses by invoking Quranic strictures against the idolaters of the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s time (peace be upon him), the greatest enemies of God in the Islamic narrative of history.<\/p>\n Sure, it\u2019s not unheard of\u00a0 among Muslims (or Christians for that matter) to refer to specific individuals or classes of people as \"devils\", but treating \"devils\" as interchangeable with such a broad category of people as non-Muslims or Americans is undeniably alien to contemporary Islamic discourse.\u00a0 It\u2019s just not the way Muslims talk.\u00a0 <\/p>\n However, such language is not at all alien to the political tradition of New Age cults and social movements inspired by the Nation of Islam and its slogans about \"blue-eyed devils\" and their attendent conspiracy theories.\u00a0 (The Seas of David group appears to be\u00a0 entirely of African-American or from the Caribbean descent.)\u00a0 While undoubtedly a very marginal phenomenon in the African American community, some strange (and probably mostly harmless) groups exist in inner cities that preach bizarre ideologies where Afrocentrism, New Age religious eclecticism (in some cases to the extent of believing in aliens), Rastafarian-style Replacement Theology<\/a>, and severely dumbed-down Black Pride merge to form a simultaneously comical and noxious miasma of reverse racism and conspiracy theories.\u00a0 (Just down the street from my home in Washington DC, I\u2019ve seen members of a \"Black Israelite\" splinter group denounce the \"devils\" for keeping the Black Man down over megaphones in a CVS parking lot. With their Egyptian ankhs and scorn for belief in God, they\u2019re about as Muslim as L. Ron Hubbard.)<\/p>\n The next detail that I found highly suspicious were the nicknames the media reported being used inside the group:\n<\/p>\n In addition to Batiste, the defendants were identified as Patrick Abraham, or \"Brother Pat\"; Burson Augustin, or \"Brother B\"; Stanley Grant Phanor, or \"Brother Sunni\"; Naudimar Herrera or \"Brother Naudy\"; Lyglenson Lemorin, also known as \"Brother Levi\" or \"Brother Levi-El\"; and Rotschild Augustine, or \"Brother Rot.\"\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Generally, when Muslims call each other \"brother\" or \"sister\" they are being formal.\u00a0 It is not unusual in the Muslim community to address a man with whom you are not on a first name basis (or to whom you wish to give extra deference) as \"Brother Mike\" or \"Brother Akbar\".\u00a0 However, these \"Reservoir Dogs<\/a>\"-style monikers (\"Mr. Pink\", \"Mr. Blond\", \u2026) seem the kind of informal nicknames you see in clubs or small groups of friends, not a fundamentalist terror cell.\u00a0 \u00a0 Moreover, they bear no resemblance whatsoever to the way American Muslims (regardless of cultural background) talk when they being self-consciously religious.\u00a0 \u00a0(And please don\u2019t tell me these\u00a0 were\u00a0 codenames to preserve anonymity, as these kooks obviously weren\u2019t that competent.) <\/p>\n Did I mention that they live together in a warehouse?\u00a0 Rather atypical behavior sleeper cells or Islamic extremists.\u00a0 But a pretty familiar pattern for a religious cult. <\/p>\n
\nWhen news broke a few days ago, I remember finding some of the details really odd.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n