Gangs, prison: Al Qaeda breeding grounds?

America has plenty of prisons where inmates smolder. It has blighted neighborhoods ruled by Crips, Bloods, or some other thuggish gang. They're all breeding grounds for something. But are they places where Al Qaeda might find someone filled with enough despair or hatred to do its deadly work?

It's no longer just an academic question: The government is holding Jose Padilla, an ex-gang member who has served time behind bars, and charges that he plotted a terror strike on America with a radioactive dirty bomb. The revelation that a Brooklyn-born citizen may have been a foot soldier in Al Qaeda challenges easy assumptions about who the adversaries of the US war on terrorism really are. It is prompting a closer look at the how deep and dangerous the level of disaffection in some American prisons and inner cities might be.

Since Sept. 11, American counterterrorism efforts have mostly focused on threats from foreigners. But the arrest of Mr. Padilla, who now calls himself Abdullah al-Mujahir, is a reminder that "potentially a terrorist can be of any racial or ethnic makeup," says terrorism expert John Cohen of security firm PSComm LLC.

Some people may be attracted to Al Qaeda's extremist rhetoric to feel a sense of belonging, as well as to vent their rage. A similar phenomenon happens with America's home-grown terrorist groups, such as antigovernment militias. In most situations, though, experts say it's only the rare few – like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh – who actually act on it.

"In a lot of these groups, there's a lot of talk, but not a lot of action," says Cheryl Loeb of Monterey Institute of International Studies in Washington.

Padilla's arrest, however, may portend a need for the nation to tackle harder its inner-city problems. Indeed, Najee Ali, a Muslim minister, sees potential danger in the poverty that besets urban areas. "You can just recruit gang members, the disenfranchised in the inner cities," says Mr. Ali, who founded Project Islamic H.O.P.E., which works with youths in Los Angeles and Chicago. "Because most of the converts don't fully understand the different sects of Islam, it's easy to be misguided and misled by those misusing the religion of Islam for their own, evil purposes."

For many disaffected young people, their first contact with Islam comes in jail. Over the past 30 years, Islam has become a powerful force in America's correctional system. In New York State, it's estimated that between 17 and 20 percent of all inmates are Muslims – a number that experts say holds nationally.

It gained its first foothold during the Attica prison riots in upstate New York in 1971. Muslim inmates were credited with trying to protect the guards taken hostage. After that, prison officials relaxed many restrictions against practicing Islam, and Islam grew in rapidly.

"It plays a dual role," says Robert Dannin, author of "Black Pilgrimage to Islam." "It gives prisoners a total and complete way to restructure their lives down to the way they eat, the way they dress, the way they break up the day, the way they study and think." Mr. Dannin, who teaches at New York University, says that Islam's self-imposed discipline also gives prison authorities a "convenient force" to help them control the prisoners.

Dannin and others doubt that prisons could be used as an Al Qaeda recruiting ground. "What happens in prison to Muslims is that they are reformed," says Iman Saadiq Saafir of the ILM Foundation, which works with inner-city youths in Los Angeles. "So I would say just the opposite, that they would make less of a recruiting ground for terrorists."

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