The challenge of the Fort Dix six

"I believe in Allah and in peace," said the man who may well have been the most famous resident ever of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. "Islam is not a murderous religion," explained Muhammad Ali after the September 11 attacks. The former boxer, a Muslim by choice, and an American icon, had trouble hiding the shock and insult he felt from the label that threatened his religion. In the early 1970s he built a house in Cherry Hill; in the mid-1970s he sold it. Two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, the house was again put up for sale, with no connection to the attacks. Ali is no longer there, but Cherry Hill is again in the headlines. This time because of Muslims whose approach, so it seems, is very different from his.

Six people were arrested last week in this town, three of them brothers. In a nearby mosque, the Islamic Center of South Jersey, they prayed each Friday and there they enlisted at least one member for a small gang they formed. This is a gang to which the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation now attributes a plot to launch a large attack on a nearby army base, Fort Dix: an assault backed by RPGs in order to "kill American soldiers." The conspirators hoped to get away safely after the attack. In their amateurism, they were negligent in one detail: The owner of a local video store peeked at a clip they had asked him to copy and immediately reported it to the authorities. The clip shows the six men as well as another four training with live weapons while crying out "Allahu Akbar."

Most of the suspects are of Albanian origin, one is Turkish and one is Jordanian-Palestinian. But they have lived most of their lives in America. Some of them as legal residents, some illegal and some as citizens, but they are all considered homegrown terrorists. This is the growing concern of the authorities overseeing the war against terrorism. Concern over Americans who decide to act along similar lines to the perpetrators of the attacks in Britain. Muslim Americans play a double role in this drama: They are both the suspects and the enforcers.

The Muslim community in the U.S. is small but growing rapidly. It is very diverse, stemming from different cultures, and its members speak many languages and therefore can strike roots. It's not easy to be a Muslim in America, say the community leaders, and rightly so. And nevertheless, apparently it's easier in the U.S. than in the places they came from.

Most know to appreciate this. A veteran intelligence official says that Muslim Americans are the primary source of information on "problematic" organizations in the community. The desire of most of them to integrate is the most efficient weapon against the extremists. But this is a mixed blessing of sorts: On the one hand, it is risky to neglect suspicious movements in the community, but on the other, increased activity on the part of law-enforcement agencies heightens the feeling of being an outsider and endangers community members' desire to cooperate with the authorities.

This challenge is easy neither for the U.S., nor for the Muslims living there. For the time being, everyone is handling it well. The events of September 11 were followed by attacks on mosques and Muslims, but that phenomenon continues to exist on a very small scale. America's involvement in wars in Muslim countries increased the number of Muslim Americans who can find an excuse to plan a terrorist attack, but the gang now referred to as "the Fort Dix Six" is a worrisome exception, not yet part of a tsunami washing over America.

There were already events in the past that set off warning lights. For example, when the existence of a previous plot was disclosed five years ago, there were also six detainees, called "the Lackawanna Six," who were not Albanians from New Jersey, but rather Yemenis from New York. The administration made a few mistakes, for example in the sweeping "voluntary" interrogation of thousands of Muslims living in America, which undermined the community's faith in the country's intention to continue welcoming members of all religions.

So far not all the bridges have been burned. And even now there is still talk of "suspicions," "concerns" and "possible developments" - and not of a new reality. This is very thin ice to be treading on, and some people realize that it could crack in a moment: The day that one organized gang succeeds in carrying out the first large-scale homegrown Muslim attack will be the real test of America's tolerance.

This blog was published last week as an op-ed piece in the print edition.