Christopher Brown of the Center for Security Policy emails noting the perhaps overlooked implications of this passage of the AP report:
"Hammoud, who claimed to be 31 and a resident of Beirut, said he had been ordered to live a life of fun and indulgence in Lebanon to hide his Islamic militancy, an official statement from the Lebanese government said, adding that he was instructed not to show any religious tendencies."
Brown writes: "This is SOP for Al-Qaeda however there is an aspect of this that many seem to miss and that is the Al-Takfir W’al Hijra which Zawahiri is a leader in and most of the major leaders in Al-Qaeda are also members of prior to joining Al-Qaeda."
After 9/11 Takfiri networks were found to be far more extensive in Europe than previously imagined. Organized into small self-organized ad hoc groups that choose their own goals, they are perhaps the ultimate "distributed network" of terrorism. The Takfiris operate on a "sinless sin" ticket --in other words, they freely engage in any crime or indulgence to both raise money, and to be viewed as operating outside of religion. Thus the terrorist-in-waiting can be a boozing womanizer, a drug dealer, forger, or hashish smoker. They engage in "jihad without limits" including mutilating corpses. For more on these 'ultimate sleepers' --read this Jamestown Foundation report. Al Qaeda is known to have cooperated with Takfiris.
