The Paris attacks and other violence by the Islamic State will most likely create copycat terrorism in the United States, ex-jihadist Mubin Shaikh told
Newsmax TV on Thursday.
"There's a whole American narrative about protecting America from enemies, foreign and domestic," Shaikh told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner. "And, of course, the ISIS-type attackers, they're the ones that have the most media coverage right now.
"It's going to create even copycat attacks, people wanting to plug into what's happening," he added. "It's a very, very volatile time — that's putting it mildly."
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Shaikh is a former Western jihadist who renounced radical Islam after 9/11 and went undercover as a counterterror operative for Canadian authorities.
And because so many Syrians are fleeing their lands because of ISIS, "the best that can be done really is for human intelligence operations to find out exactly who's who in the zoo, so to speak," Shaikh said.
"It's not an easy process to be a refugee — and then moving through places is not very easy at all. To get on a plane, to get a work visa, to get a student visa, even that requires a level of vetting — and still you'll get these kinds of operators from in that midst.
"The refugees, it's more difficult for them to do that than it is the good old-fashioned way."
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