Inside Threat by Jason Elam, Steve Yohn

others, not so much.
    When Saifullah had pronounced the punishments, all three men submitted willingly. And Alavi, second in command to Saifullah and one of three members trained outside of the US, took his place as an enforcer.
    â€œWhat say you now?” Saifullah asked the three men.
    The first two dropped to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground. “We throw ourselves upon the mercy of Allah,” they said in unison, as they had been taught.
    However, the third man—Quraishi, Alavi thought his name was—dropped only to one knee and mouthed the formulaic words. I wish he had been mine. There would not be that much defiance left in him still. He is a man who bears watching.
    Saifullah accepted the men’s apologies with a nod, and then continued while Alavi and the others joined the rest of the group cross-legged on the floor. “We must keep a sharp edge to this team. We must shed the last vestiges of this decadent culture from our souls. We must separate ourselves out, so that we can do what our weak sisters cannot.
    â€œThere is no denying that many of our fellow Muslims have softened. They feel guilt at our successes, shame at what Allah has accomplished through the glorious actions of the shahid who have gone before us. They forget that if anyone is ashamed of Allah in this life, Allah will be ashamed of them in the next!”
    Again, a murmur of approval swept through Saifullah’s audience. Alavi nodded. Sweat trickled in beads down his neck, and he could feel the moisture spreading on his back, giving him a little relief from the wet heat of the musty building.
    â€œWe are doing the work of Allah, and we must remember that he will accept nothing from us except our best! We live to serve! We live to die!”
    With that, Saifullah turned and left the stage. Around him, the men stood to go. However, Alavi remained seated processing the cleric’s words. There was something about them that seemed different—a little off. Maybe it was just that the way Saifullah spoke was so different from what he had heard among the mullahs during his six-month training in Somalia.
    His message has been Americanized, Alavi thought. That’s what it is! Phrases like “sharp edge” and “team” and “nothing but our best”—you don’t hear those in the Middle East. The brilliance of Saifullah is that he is coming at us as both a coach and a spiritual leader. He knows who we are. He knows what will motivate a squadron of warriors who happened to have had the misfortune of growing up in America.
    Alavi looked around at the men of his team. They had arrived last night and early this morning, coming from places as diverse as Dearborn and Dallas, San Diego and Seattle, Memphis and Miami. All ready to fight. All ready to die.
    No two stories were exactly the same as to how these men had metamorphosed from American boys to jihadists. Yet each probably had similar elements: some level of poverty, experiences of discrimination, a lack of hope for bettering their circumstances, and a radical mentor to piece everything together.
    The beginning of Alavi’s turn toward radicalism occurred quite unexpectedly. He was a fairly happy eleven-year-old, living in a moderate Muslim family in Mishawaka, Indiana. He played third base on his little league team and was two-year school spelling bee champion for his grade.
    Then, on this very day all those years ago, the planes crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and Alavi’s life changed. He was on the school bus when the first plane hit. After arriving at school, his class followed the events throughout the morning, everyone stunned, including Alavi.
    Then came lunch break. Alavi was throwing the baseball with his best friend, just as he did every day at lunch. They were trying to distract themselves the best they could from the events on the East Coast. Suddenly, he was surrounded by six other