Nabil el-Shukri’s terrorist family has been decimated. His father, who was the imam of what has been labeled one of the most dangerous mosques in America and the translator for the spiritual leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has long been gone. And now his older brother, a top-ranking al-Qaeda Commander, has been killed by the Pakistani military. With his two biggest influences dead, will el-Shukri choose to lead a similar path? The extremism he has exhibited and is exhibiting today leads one to believe that it is a foregone conclusion.
Nabil el-Shukri is the administrator and the acting imam at the Alazhar School for children, PK – 8th Grade, located in the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Tamarac, Florida. He has been with the school, since it was incorporated in September 2008. While he is married with a child, today he no doubt feels quite lonely, as he has lost yet another piece of his radical Muslim family.
On a raid in the tribal district of South Waziristan, which began Friday, December 5th and ended the following day, al-Qaeda Commander Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah was killed and confirmed dead by the Pakistani military. According to a resident from the area, he had been living there for two weeks, after having been forced out of North Waziristan during a military operation against militants there.
While with al-Qaeda, Adnan had quickly climbed ranks to reach the lofty position of head of external operations, a title once possessed by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In that capacity, he had been indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the 2009 terrorist plot to blow up New York City’s subway system. At the time of his death, he was 39 years old, born in 1975 to a mother who was merely 16 years of age and a father who was 47.
Adnan had been on the radar of the intelligence community, since he abruptly left town in May 2001. Two years later, his father told the Associated Press that the reason Adnan had left was because he disliked the American lifestyle and was offended by women who wore skimpy clothing.
The father, Gulshair Muhammad el-Shukrijumah, had spent much of his life as a missionary for the Saudi Arabian government. In 1986, he was sent to Brooklyn, New York to head a mosque, Masjid Nur al-Islam. He also had involvement with another mosque that was located only blocks away, Masjid al-Farooq, the home for many of those involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
Gulshair was a translator for the spiritual leader of the attack, the ‘Blind Sheikh’ Omar Abdel-Rahman. As well, during the federal trial concerning the attack, Gulshair was a chief/character witness for Clement Rodney Hampton-El, the individual who was believed to be the one who taught the terror cell how to build the bomb used in the attack. Hampton-El was one of the congregants at Gulshair’s mosque.
In a photo taken at Gulshair’s Brooklyn mosque, which was uploaded to the internet by his son Nabil, Gulshair is pictured reading with two young boys. Behind him, on the blackboard, it is written, “The human being is under the oppression of the kuffar [unbelievers, non-Muslims].”
In 1995, Gulshair moved himself and his family to Miramar in South Florida, where the Saudis once again set him up with a mosque to run. That mosque, Masjid al-Hijrah, has the dubious distinction of being named the No. 2 biggest “Sanctuary of Terror” by author Paul Sperry in his book Infiltration. At this mosque, Gulshair counseled the likes of convicted terrorist “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla, who also had dealings with Gulshair’s son, Adnan.
When the subject of his son’s terrorist activity became too hot, Gulshair was released from his duties as imam of al-Hijrah. He did not have to wait long to find a new job, though, as he was soon taken on as a director at the Shamsuddin Islamic Center, located in North Miami Beach. The mosque had recently moved across the street from its original location, at the same address as the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), a group run by Shukrijumah family friend Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, who was an advisor to the mosque.
Zakkout previously had been the Vice President of the Health Resource Center for Palestine (HRCP), a now defunct Hamas-related group run out of Deerfield Beach, Florida. Earlier this month, Zakkout posted on his Facebook page a photo of late PLO leader Yasser Arafat embracing late Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin.
In June 2004, Gulshair el-Shukrijumah died at the age of 74, following a series of strokes claimed to have been brought on by news related to his oldest son, Adnan.
With both his older brother and father gone, Nabil el-Shukri has been left as the elder male figure in the radical Shukrijumah household. The question is will things be different with him than were with his two predecessors. The answer is probably no.
El-Shukri’s MySpace page is currently locked and restricted from public view. No longer can anyone go on it to see graphics of jihadis brandishing rifles and al-Qaeda black flags or photos of killed U.S. troops. However, his Facebook and YouTube pages are entirely open for scrutiny, and what is found on them is also very disturbing.
On his Facebook site, el-Shukri posted different items associated with the Muslim American Society or MAS, including a MAS produced video, titled ‘Bassem is Trying.’
Last month, it was widely reported that MAS was named a terrorist organization by the UAE, on a list that included al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram. In the recent past, MAS has used its official websites to praise Hamas and to call for violence upon and/or denigrate Jews, Christians, homosexuals and women. The National Executive Director of MAS, Mazen Mokhtar, is a proponent of suicide bombings and has previously served as a web designer for what was then the main website raising funds and recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Qoqaz.net.
In January 2010, El-Shukri posted on his Facebook site a video, titled ‘The Arrivals pt.47 (The Free Human),’ which includes the following anti-Semitic rant from Islamic scholar Imran Hosein:
“What’s the new money that Israel will use to enslave mankind, the way the United States used the dollar? … It will be electronic money. And the strange thing – the dangerous thing – about electronic money is it is controlled by the banking system around the world, and the Jews control the banking system. That’s not an uncharitable statement… That’s the truth. We said that Israel is about to wage a big war. They prepared for this, when the Israeli Mossad and the CIA attacked America on September 11 and put the blame on us, us Muslims.”
In another video el-Shukri posted, titled ‘The Arrivals pt.26 (The Antichrist / Dajjal is Here),’ the same Imran Hosein describes a Satanic conspiracy between Britain, the United States and Israel. The video includes an image of the anti-Semitic fraud Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and states that “9/11 was an inside job.”
El-Shukri has not been shy about voicing his own fanatical views. He has a YouTube page, where he has uploaded a number of extreme speeches he has delivered in front of a mosque congregation. In one speech he posted in February 2010, titled ‘Al-Dajjal (Anti-Christ),’ he discusses his belief that, if Muslims try to become “moderate,” they are rejecting the Islamic religion and, instead, listening to the “Dajjal” or Devil.
He states: “We have to understand that we have to train ourselves – what is acceptable in this dunya [world]? Have we compromised our religion of Allah SWT? How much of our din [religion] has been compromised by this dunya? What is the definition of a moderate Muslim? … A moderate Muslim does not accept the Caliphate [Islamic rule]. A moderate Muslim wants to live under democracy – abolish the Caliphate. A moderate Muslim does not want the Sharia Law.”
Nabil’s radical views appear to be very much in line with that of his father and older brother. As well, his life seems to mimic Adnan’s. Both Nabil and Adnan had cell phone businesses. They both were involved in website design. They both attended classes at Broward College (Nabil is still attending classes there). And they both lectured in Islam, like their dad.
In December 2006, more than two years after the death of his father, Nabil el-Shukri wrote the following message on the MySpace page he created for Gulshair: “As Salaam Alaikum Dad, you’re still living among all of us, will see you later but not that much later.”
What does “not that much later” mean?
Given Nabil’s radical Islamic preoccupations and family history, these four words imply something very sinister which does not portend well for the future. His present, however, as administrator and acting imam of the Alazhar School is also cause for alarm, as he has been handed a forum to indoctrinate impressionable young minds with his toxic Islamist agenda and ideology.
In a June 2011 video interview with al-Hikmat, the media group run by the Darul Uloom mosque located near the home of the Shukrijumahs, where a number of al-Qaeda, including at least one of the 9/11 hijackers, had come to pray, el-Shukri called himself a “role model” for the Alazhar kids.
Question: What kind of parents would wish for their children to have a role model such as this? Those who keep their kids in this school are giving their tacit approval to the extremism that is represented by el-Shukri and his family’s lineage.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.
