The most dangerous Muslims in America may be black converts to Islam, according to a shocking new poll by the Pew Research Center.
African-American Muslims tend to hold the most violent views among U.S. Muslims surveyed by Pew in a poll released this week.
Fully 28 percent of U.S.-born black Muslim respondents said "suicide bombings and other violence against civilians" can be justified sometimes or at least in rare cases. That compares with 9 percent of foreign-born Muslims who hold the same view.
Pew also found that 11 percent of black Muslims living in the U.S. have a favorable opinion of al-Qaida – more than double the share of U.S. Muslims overall who hold that view. Another 21 percent of black Muslims hold only mildly unfavorable views of the terrorist organization responsible for attacking America 10 years ago; while 56 percent of that segment of the Muslim population hold very unfavorable views.
The survey results are troubling, because U.S. officials say al-Qaida in recent years has stepped up its efforts to recruit African-Americans to target the homeland for terrorist attacks. English-speaking blacks do not fit the prevailing Middle Eastern terrorist profile, officials say, and al-Qaida recruiters believe they have a better chance of slipping through security checkpoints.
A growing number of black converts have been radicalized in prison or by jihadist websites, officials say.
As former head of the New York State prisons' Muslim chaplains program, Warith Deen Umar preached that Muslims should "be prepared to fight, be prepared to die, be prepared to kill." The black convert to Islam also called the 9/11 hijackers martyrs and heroes.
Umar reportedly inspired at least two of the four Muslim men who recently plotted to bomb a New York synagogue and fire missiles at U.S. military aircraft. The pair converted to Islam while in prison. After their release, they met each other in a mosque tied to Umar. All four men were convicted last year on charges related to the terror plot.
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