Local Muslim Group Speaks Out Against Attempted Federal Reserve Attack

A Muslim group is speaking out and condemning the attempted terrorist attack on the New York Federal Reserve building, where Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a 21-year-old Bangladeshi national, believed he was detonating a 1,000-pound bomb in lower Manhattan's financial district.

Naseem Mahdi is a leader of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA and lives in Silver Spring, Md. He says what happened in New York could have happened here.

"Through the internet, all these clerics sitting in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Somalia they are reaching out to our youth, so this is a serious threat," says Madhi.

Mahdi says the local Ahmadiyya community is working to quell that threat.

"We again and again in our sermons, in our speeches, in our talk, tell our youth, tell our members, we are promoting this forcefully that for God's sake come to the senses," says Madhi. "This is not Islam, this is not the Qu'ran."

The group says its also placed ads on the Metro and passed out fliers promoting peace.

"We have to stop them, and keep on working, and this is I think the real jihad is against these kinds of ideas," he says.

Mahdi says a large part of combating this extremism is reaching out to Muslim youth and continuing to teach them that Islam is a peaceful religion.