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one child named Osama. Abdalay traveled to Iraq and Jordan and moved his fam-
ily from Luton to Leagrave, another enclave that is home to known jihadists in
the U.K.
His radical views grew stronger around this period after an undisclosed event
happened to him in England. At one time, a beer-drinking womanizer, Al-Abdaly
grew a beard and repeatedly talked about Afghanistan and Islam and cut all con-
tact with his friends. Qadeer Baksh, chairman of the Luton Islamic center where
al-Abdaly worshipped, stated that al-Abdaly stormed out of the mosque after his
views on jihad were challenged. Baksh said, “He was just supporting and propagat-
ing these incorrect foundations of Islam, so I stepped in and I left feeling he had
changed.... He believed that the scholars of Islam were unreliable because they were
in the pocket of the government. He proposed a physical jihad.” That said, nobody
from the mosque reported him to police. Baksh said, “You can't just inform on any
Muslim having extreme views.”
In an audio message recorded just before the bombing, Abdaly said, “So will
your children, daughters, brothers and sisters die, like our brothers, sisters and chil-
dren die. Now the Islamic state has been created. We now exist here in Europe and
in Sweden. We are a reality.” The audio message was joined by an email warning of
an attack and talked about the Swedish cartoon controversy, in which a number of
cartoonists drew cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
The preceding examples are just small snapshots of individuals who have con-
ducted jihadist acts, but as mentioned earlier, there is no set blueprint of radical-
ization or what type of individual who will even go down that path. The cited
individuals were lone actors, who pose an even greater threat for law enforcement.
Although the focus has been put on large groups such as Al-Qaeda, the interaction
between individuals, who support the Al-Qaeda ideology, and the group itself has
grown closer due to technology. Online chat rooms espousing Islamic rhetoric,
videotapes of radical clerics as well as webcastings of their sermons proliferate the
Internet. For every Najibullah Zazi, there is a Rashid Baz; for every Mohammed
Siddique Khan of the 7/7 cell, there is a Carlos Bledsoe, a follower of Al-Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula who shot and killed one soldier and wounded another at a
Little Rock, Arkansas, recruiting station.
In July 2010, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the first issue of
Inspire Magazine
. The magazine is aimed at British and American readers and pro-
vides instructions in topics such as bomb assembly, surveillance, and other topics
that would be taught in a training camp. The magazine is believed to have con-
nections to an American citizen now in Yemen alongside AQAP, Anwar Aulaqui.
Aulaqui, who was the former spiritual advisor for three of the 9/11 hijackers, has
become one of the most famous purveyors of Islamic rhetoric in the world today.
Although Aulaqui is not the only one, he is linked to a number of would-be jihad-
ists that include Mahmud Brent, who admitted attending a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp
in Pakistan; Hysen Sherafi, a member of a North Carolina cell that planned on
attacking the Marines at Quantico, Virginia; and Zachary Chesser, a Muslim
