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The Nation
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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2010 Using social media to preach radical Islam path from A1
would have been a Scientologist.” Instead, Chesser faces up to 30
years in prison and a label that will haunt him for the rest of his life: terrorist. While much about what prompted Chesser’s transforma- tion remains a mystery, he illus- trates a growing phenomenon in theUnited States: young converts who embrace the most extreme interpretation of Islam. Of the nearly 200 U.S. citizens
arrested in the past nine years for terrorism-related activity, 20 to 25 percent have been converts, said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.More than a quar- ter have been arrested in the past 20 months. The center provided The Washington Post with saved copies ofChesser’s postings, most no longer available on theWeb. “Many of these converts are basically white kids from the sub- urbs” in search of a community, said Segal, whose group has pro- duced numerous papers on those arrested, including Chesser. They are overwhelmingly male, fre- quently in their 20s and eager to “become something more than they are, or be part of something greater,” he said. Their militancy is not a prod-
uct of the alienation that has sometimes prompted Muslim- born young people in the United States and elsewhere to embrace extremism, particularly in the years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the beginning of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Growing up, they were not the
target of anti-Muslim slurs or discrimination. Instead, extrem- ist converts often cultivate their sense of outrage online, where they have access to radical Eng- lish-language Web sites, videos and forums that didn’t exist 10 years ago. The ADL thinks that thou-
sands of Americans are consum- ing this material. While most do littlemorethan read blog posts or watch videos, some go further. In Chesser’s case, it is not
known how extremists respond- ed to his online postings or what the details were of his e-mail exchanges with radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi. But it is clear that the Internet played an important role in his radicaliza- tion. Chesser told federal agents in
2009 that he was “watching on- line videos, discussions and de- bates, and over-the-counter CDs almost obsessively,” according to an FBI affidavit. Hewasparticularly inspiredby
Aulaqi, the U.S.-born cleric who has used the Web to promote violent jihad in theWest and who has been linked to the Fort Hood massacre, the attempted Christ- mas Day bombing of a Detroit- bound airliner and other attacks. Chesser traded e-mails with
Aulaqi, cited him repeatedly and incorporated clips of the cleric’s fiery sermons into videos he made. Like Aulaqi, Chesser often
sounded angry, although the source of his indignation seemed more theoretical than personal. He railed againstU.S. support for Israel, “the U.S. military machine that is slaughtering Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq,” and those who slandered Allah. Posting under the nom de
guerre Abu Talhah al-Amrikee (“the American father of Talhah,” a reference to Chesser’s newborn son), Chesser started a blog, es- tablished Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts, and launched reams of prose, poetry, songs and videos into cyberspace. There was no shortage of plac-
es to express himself. The FBI says that there are approximately 15,000 Islamic extremist Web sites, andChesser—whohasnow renounced terrorism, according to his attorney — was just one voice among many. His words had little visible
impact, said Jarret Brachman, a counterterrorism analyst at North Dakota State University who began corresponding with Chesser in February, after he posted several comments on Brachman’s blog. But Chesser longed to do more
and be more. Going to Somalia would have
setChesser apartfromthe legions of “jihobbyists,” as Brachman calls them: armchair warriors who limit their participation to theWeb. What already set him apart
was his increasing recklessness. Chesser needed to have his
“head examined” for openly ad- vertising himself as a Muslim militant on Web sites clearly be- ing monitored by the FBI, said Evan F. Kohlmann, a senior part- ner at Flashpoint Global Part- ners, a New York-based security consulting firm. “The worst part is that he’s not alone,” Kohlmann said. “There
COURTESY OF FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Chesser’s senior class photo at OaktonHigh School in Vienna.
6
on
washingtonpost.com A jihadist’s journey
To see Zachary Chesser’s videos, Web site posts and
Twitter feeds on radical Islam, and to read excerpts from his manifesto, go to
postlocal.com.
are indeed others out there in various parts of America who are just as foolish and naive as Chess- er and determined to follow down this same path. ”
Hard-core convert Chesser was a freshman at
George Mason University when he posted a question on Aulaqi’s now-defunct blog. “Does anyone know of some
good English taughtMadrassas?” he asked inDecember2008. “Iam learning Arabic, but it will be a couple of years before I could take classes in it, and I don’t want to wait that long.” Chesser, who would soon drop
out of college, made the query using his George Mason e-mail address, according to the ADL, which saved a cached copy. He added that the school should be cheap, “because my parents are notMuslim, and I am pretty sure they would not pay for that.” Chesser and the woman he
would marry, Proscovia Nzabani- ta, a fellow convert and the daughter of a Ugandan diplomat, appear to have courted via Aul- aqi’s blog. In an exchange there in Janu-
ary 2009, Chesser wanted to know how much interest a poten- tial wife might have in a “fairly broke” future mujahed. Nzabanita, who has been
charged with making false state- ments to the FBI and faces depor- tation to Uganda, was encourag- ing. “I do know of some sisters . . . who would love to marry” a man like that, she replied. They wed two months later
and quickly produced a son. Chesser also asked Aulaqi to
interpret dreams that he had had, according to the FBI, which was tracking their e-mails. In one dream, he described praying to Allah to let him join al-Shabab. It was a very different Zac
Chesser from the boy who had been a CivilWar buff at age 9 and dreamedbeing aU.S.Army gener- al. Or the middle schooler who had developed a passion for the shock-rock music of Marilyn Manson and grown his hair long, friends said. Or the teenager who
COURTESY OF FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
At Oakton, Chesser showed a more playful side, participating in powder puff cheerleading and joining the breakdancing club.
had become so interested in an- ime and his Japanese-language classes that he traveled to Japan on a high school trip. Chesser’s yearbook photos
show a clean-shaven, pensive- looking young man, the child of divorced parents who lived in Northern Virginia. But Chesser was playful, too, dressing up as Buzz Lightyear for Halloween, participating in pow- der puff cheerleading, and join- ing Oakton’s breakdancing club. He told Aaron Zelin, a Brandeis University research assistantwho interviewed him by e-mail two weeks before his arrest, that there might still be videos on the Web of him breakdancing. He grew interested in Islam
while dating a Muslim girl his senior year, friends said, and his sudden devotion to the religion didn’t surprise them. “If he’d get interested in some-
thing, he’d really get into it,” said James Chung, who was in the Gifted and Talented program with Chesser at Kilmer Middle School in Vienna. Members of Oakton’s Muslim
Student Association initially found him relaxed and friendly. But after graduation, he became far more intense about his new- found faith, they said:He warned that they would be condemned to hell if they did not dress and behave conservatively enough. The increasing severity and
attention to tiny details are typi- cal of many converts, said Brach- man, who described Chesser as “obsessed with nuances: ‘Is my robe too long; is my beard not long enough?’ ” It is during this initial, fervent
period that impressionable young converts are most vulnera- ble to extremists, who easily find themonline, saidAdnanZulfiqar,
a former chaplain at theUniversi- ty of Pennsylvania who studies militancy and has encountered many young men like Chesser. “Jihadi recruiters are like
headhunters,” Zulfiqar said. “They roam around YouTube and Internet chats, looking for low- hanging fruit.” In Chesser’s case, the people
running Revolution Muslim, a NewYork-basedWeb site that has called for a global Islamic state, began linking to Chesser’s videos and said they would like to work with him, he told Zelin. Before long, Chesser had shift-
ed from a contributor to one of RevolutionMuslim’s more visible public faces.
Social-media Islam As his theology became more
rigid, Chesser stopped attending the mosque where he had been worshiping and working: the Is- lamic Center Northern Virginia in Fairfax. “He was becoming more and
more conservative, and more and more on the side of the Islam that we do not recommend,” saidMu- hammad Farooq, president of the mosque’s trust, after Chesser’s arrest. Mosque leaders were relieved
when he left in November 2009, Farooq said. After that, Chesser relied on
his keyboard for a sense of com- munity. TheWeb, he argued, was the new town square for extrem- ism. “The jihad movement has
moved from the mountains and caves to the bedrooms of every major city around the world,” he wrote on RevolutionMuslim. Chesser encouraged readers to
take advantage of Facebook, Pal- talk and, especially, Twitter, which he said was “the future of
“We should use terms like ‘5 Western pigs sent to Hellfire insha’a Allah,’ ” Chesser wrote on one extremist site. “There can be absolutely no sympathy shown for dead kuffar,” or non-Muslims.
Using the Web Te internet played a key role in Zachary Adam Chesser’s transformation from convert to Islam to radical. Te Web, he argued on his blog, was the new town square for extremism.
2008 Summer
Aſter graduating from Oakton High School, Chesser converts to Islam.
Fall
Chesser enrolls at George Mason University.
December
Chesser posts a question on radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi’s blog (now-defunct).
2009 January
Chesser corresponds with Proscovia Nzabanita on al-Aulaqi’s blog.
March
Chesser marries Nzabanita. May-June Te FBI interviews Chesser repeatedly. November
HO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
InMarch, Zachary Chesser joined other demonstrators by the WhiteHouse to protestU.S. foreign policy as it affectedMuslims.He also told President Obama to convert to Islam. Chesser, from Fairfax County, has pleaded guilty to providingmaterial support to a terrorist group.
social-media and we need to uti- lize it now in sha’a Allah.” Although it is unclear how
many Facebook friends or Twitter followers he had, his YouTube channel registered more than 11,000 views before it was sus- pended this year, according to the ADL.His wife,whojust turned 26 and wears a full-face veil, also shared his materials through her Facebook page and YouTube channel andonextremist forums. Among Chesser’s postings
were lengthy essays on jihadi propaganda strategies. “We should use terms like ‘5
Western pigs sent to Hellfire in- sha’a Allah,’” he wrote on one extremist site. “There can be ab- solutely no sympathy shown for dead kuffar,” or non-Muslims. Chesser eventually shared a
nearly 7,000-word manifesto en- titled “Raising Al-Qaa’ida:ALook into theLongTermObligations of the Global Jihaad Movement.” The treatise criticized Muslim men who wear only mustaches and not beards, and argued that Muslim mothers are crucial to the struggle. “The basics of jihaad should be
taught at the home from an early age,” he wrote, with mothers en- couraging war games, sewing “ji- haadii outfits,” and making alu- minum-foil swords for their chil- dren. InMarch of this year, wearing a
long beard and knit cap, Chesser appeared with Revolution Mus- lim members in front of the White House. With the strident air of a campus protester, he urged President Obama to em- brace Islam and excoriated U.S. foreign policy. “Rather than defeat the terror-
ists, as you call them, you are radicalizing a whole generation ofMuslim youth,” he said. “Appar- ently all the spending and the war on terror is only creating more of it.”
Videos of his speech appeared
on YouTube, as did his songs about jihad. In one, Chesser sang in a reedy
drone, switching between Eng- lish and a carefully articulated Arabic. It was accompanied by video footage of guerillas training in a desert, under the caption, “One Day America Will Be Under The Rule Of Allah.”
‘South Park’ provocateur In April, Chesser denounced a
“SouthPark” episode thatshowed the prophetMuhammadin a bear suit, predicting that the show’s creators would probably end up being killed for it. “This is not a threat,” he wrote
on his blog and on Revolution Muslim, “but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.” The national media jumped on
it. At first Chesser, who had been a “South Park” fan before his conversion, seemed to relish the attention. In a tweet captured by the
ADL, he reported, “The kuffar are really starting to pick up on the South Park story in sha’a Allah this can be the USA’s version of the Rushdie affair in UK.” But the postings,whichthe FBI
said prompted death threats to his mother and an estrangement from his parents, went even fur- ther than some in the online jihadi world liked. Chesser eventually came to re-
gret the “useless attention” the episode had generated, he told Zelin. Even so, he said, “I learned a lot abouthowto manipulate the media from it.”
A son is born to Nzabanita and Chesser. Chesser leaves the Islamic Center of Northern Virginia and attempts to travel to Somalia with Nzabanita.
December
Chesser begins his own blog,
themujahidblog.com.
2010 March
Chesser protests in front of the White House. He posts a video of himself telling the United States to pull out of the Middle East and urging President Obama to convert to Islam.
April
On Revolution Muslim’s Web site, Chesser issues a threat to “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, over an episode that portrayed the prophet Muhammad dressed in a bear costume.
May
An FBI wiretap records Chesser telling his wife that he is taking their son with him to Uganda as part of his cover.
July 10
Chesser is barred from boarding a flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport to Uganda.
July 21
Te FBI arrests Chesser. Oct. 20
Chesser pleads guilty to supporting Somali terrorists, threatening the creators of “South Park” and soliciting crimes of violence.
Manipulation was a central
part of his approach. In a posting cited by the FBI,
Chesser recommended “desensi- tizing” lawenforcement by plant- ing phony bombs: “A cop might walk up to a bag that someone thought might be a bomb, so he assumes it is not. Then he bends over to open it rolling his eyes at this waste of his time. Boom! No more kaafir,” or unbeliever. Over time, a sense of self-im-
portance pervaded his writings. “I might be mistaken,” he told
Zelin, “butmy impression is that I was at one point operating the #1 jihaadii youtube channel in terms of daily views, as well as [Revolu- tionMuslim] andmy blog, which were both fairly successful.” He also thought that Aulaqi
had gotten the idea for the term “open source jihad” from one of his postings, according to the FBI affidavit. But Chesser might have been
mistaken about his influence. “I have never seen any of his
work cited by others,” said Chris- topher Anzalone, a PhD student at McGill’s Institute of Islamic Affairs who conversed with Chesser on Zelin’s blog Jihadolo- gy.
Brachman agreed: “Not a lot of
people engaged him. I think he was hoping people would engage him.” Instead, it was the FBI who
seemed most interested in Chess- er’s ideas. By this summer, agents had
wiretapped his apartment, searched his home and car, and interviewed him repeatedly. Yet that did not stop him and
his wife from loading up the car and heading to New York in July with a video camera, which the FBI says Chesser intended to use for al-Shabab propaganda once he reached Somalia. They also brought along their baby son, who was supposed to provide “cover” for Chesser as he boarded his flight. When they arrived at John F.
Kennedy International Airport, the FBI was waiting.
bahrampourt@washpost.com
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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