Alleged Metro Plotter Was Married to a 'Hip Muslim Mom'
The wife of Farooque Ahmed, the 34-year-old American citizen of Pakistani descent accused today of plotting to set off bombs on Washington, D.C., Metro trains, was involved in a decidedly non-jihadi-sounding social group called "Hip Muslim Moms."
Farooque, according to the Washington Post, was born in Pakistan but became a naturalized citizen. He graduated from the City University of New York in 2003 and, at least according to public databases, appears to have lived on Staten Island before moving to Ashburn, Va., where he works as a network engineer for Ericsson.
According to the New York Times, he told "associates" in April that he was ready to kill a bunch of Americans in the name of jihad. The associates passed that on to the FBI, which concocted a sting operation involving undercover agents posing as Al-Qaeda operatives. Ahmed never had any actual contact with overseas terror organizations; he's accused of conducting surveillance of the D.C. Metro system at the direction of undercover agents.
Ahmed's wife Sahar Mirza-Ahmed is a "co-organizer" of a Northern Virginia group called "Hip Muslim Moms," a gathering of "today's mom's nurturing tomorrow's ummah," according to it's web site. (If jihad is hip now, Brooklyn is doomed.) Mirza-Ahmed is from Birmingham, England, according to her Meetup profile.
According to the Post, Mirza-Ahmed covered herself in a "full hijab," and Ahmed wore a beard. As is the custom among would-be terrorists, they "kept to themselves and were quiet neighbors." A call to Hip Muslim Mom's founder was not immediately returned.
