CEP Calls for Serious Online Purge of all Awlaki Lectures and Sermons
(New York, NY)—Yesterday, a shooting at Old Dominion University left one person dead and two injured after a gunman opened fire inside a campus building. The suspect, who was subdued by students and died at the scene, has been identified as Mohammed Bailor Jalloh. A former member of the National Guard from 2009-2015 who was convicted in 2016 of attempting to provide material support to ISIS, Jalloh quit the Guard after he began listening to lectures by deceased al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Historically, Awlaki has been the most influential online proponent of terrorism.
Jalloh reportedly asked if the class was an ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) class and yelled “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire. The incident is being investigated by the FBI as a terrorist attack.
This follows a spate of other terrorist and violent attacks especially targeting Jews and Jewish institutions over the past fortnight, in separate incidents in West Bloomfield, MI, in San Jose, CA, as well as in Canada, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway.
CEP CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace said:
“Jalloh was radicalized by former AQAP leader Anwar al-Awlaki, someone who was deemed so dangerous to U.S. interests that President Obama ordered his death by special forces drone strike in Yemen in 2011. At that time, the Counter Extremism Project launched a successful campaign including U.S. congressional testimony to have his lectures and sermons taken offline. As a result of CEP’s campaign, YouTube - the world’s largest and most influential platform - did so. However, it is regrettably evident that Awlaki remains a pervasive influence. We call for renewed efforts to scrub the vast archive of his radicalizing material once and for all.
“The attack is shocking but hardly unexpected. As well as the Old Dominion attack, in this first half of the month of March alone, we have witnessed bombing, car-ramming, and gunfire attacks against synagogues and U.S. embassies and broad daylight vicious assaults against Jews. This kind of violence will continue to engulf our schools, our streets, and our houses of worship until we address the larger problem: what happens when extremism and antisemitism are allowed to run rampant—online, on our campuses, in our classrooms, and even in the mainstream media.”
Click here for CEP’s report on Mohammed Bailor Jalloh.
Click here for CEP’s report on Anwar al-Awlaki.
Click here to listen to Ambassador Wallace’s comments on CEP’s role in deplatforming Awlaki from YouTube.