Your Home-Grown Moslem Terrorists

Despite the fact that, as Stratfor puts it, "fringe Muslim groups ... figure prominently on the watch lists of law enforcement and intelligence agencies[, and] often are shut down before they actually kill anyone," an editor of a Bay-Area newspaper was gunned down by just such a group in California recently.

When I first learned of the story, it was this weekend while I was perusing The Chicago Tribune. The headline was something like, "Bakery Linked to Killing of Newspaper Editor". You had to read at least a third of the article before you got to the following little detail: The "bakery" was a Black Moslem outfit called, "Your Black Muslim Bakery".

Well. I did read the article. After all, why would a bakery want someone murdered? I can't honestly say I was too surprised at what I read. Since I was curious today for more detail, I was glad to see that Christopher Hitchens has provided the low-down -- and asked a few pointed questions:

Here is the situation regarding the enterprise known as Your Black Muslim Bakery, located on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, Calif. Its founder, a man named Yusuf Bey, was arrested in 2002 and charged with forcing an underage girl to have sex. Subsequent investigation suggested that he had a long history of rape and abuse of his followers and had by this means fathered numerous children out of wedlock. Bey died in September 2003 before his case could come to trial. His son Yusuf Bey IV has since been arrested twice, first on suspicion of leading a gang that had trashed two Oakland liquor stores and intimidated their owners, and second (and perhaps less Islamically) for running over a San Francisco bouncer with his car. Nedir Bey, one of Yusuf Bey's "spiritually adopted" sons, is also alleged to have beaten a possible business rival with a flashlight, while another member of the gang tortured the victim with a heated knife.

These and several other crimes of violence were investigated by the East Bay Express, a local community weekly. Reporter Chris Thompson was subjected to threats and to aggressive stalking, and, for his own safety, worked in a different county for several months after his series about YBMB ran. The paper's editor, Stephen Buel, has been quoted as saying that his office and staff were deluged with threats and haunted by unpleasant characters and that the threats indicated that they originated with Your Black Muslim Bakery. "We have several threats left on voice mail that we obviously had a record of. One of the threats featured a taped quotation of a speech from Yusuf Bey the elder," said Buel. At a certain point, Buel admits, it became more trouble than it was worth to write about YBMB.

...

Now, I'm just asking, but: rape, polygamy, intimidation, torture, murder, all these actions emanating from one address and some of them performed in the name of a fanatical ideology. What does it take before the police decide to raid the premises? Should we wait until unveiled women are attacked on the street or until honor killings or female circumcision take hold? (There is no official connection between YBMB and Louis Farrakhan's racist and cultish Nation of Islam, though it seems that Yusuf Bey Sr. did convert to some form of Islam under that sinister organization's auspices.)

My question was answered last Friday, when the Oakland Police Department finally did storm the premises, along with three neighboring homes, and arrested seven people, including Yusuf Bey IV. This, however, was too late to save the life of Chauncey Bailey [pictured -- ed], the well-liked editor of the black-owned Oakland Post, who had decided to take up where the East Bay Express had left off and to investigate the finances of YBMB. He was shot dead last Thursday in broad daylight on an Oakland street. A young handyman from YBMB named Devaughndre Broussard has been charged in the Bailey case, and other members of the group are being investigated for involvement in the earlier crimes. The "bakery" itself owes more than $200,000 in back taxes and filed for bankruptcy protection last October. [bold added]

So is this murder an example of domestic terrorism? Hitchens doesn't go so far as to call it that, and it could be argued that it was committed merely for the purpose of this crime syndicate attempting to avoid prosecution.

However, Hitchens has also described how the "bakeries" generated an atmosphere of fear as they attempted to "cleanse" their neighborhoods of "ungodly" influences (i.e., impose Islamic law) -- and the reluctance of the police to be quoted about it. I would again fail to be surprised to eventually learn that this terroristic context is the one in which this murder occurred. If so, then this murder was an act of domestic terrorism. (Whether this is in fact why the murder occurred, and this is what the authorities pronounce as their official verdict are two separate matters.)

Plainly, there is at least a history of domestic terrorism here, and I commend Hitchens for noting how it has been enabled by both the "no-snitch" culture and multiculturalism. His warning must be heeded: "This has to stop, and it has to stop right now, before sharia baking comes to a place near you."

-- CAV