The Other Pledge of Allegiance

Extracurricular chemistry

On October 23, the local sheriff's office and the FBI visited a family home near Gainesville, Florida. A 15-year-old pupil at Buchholz High School had been discussing online, with members and supporters of the Islamic State, how to build drones and explosives to attack people in "an indoor location that has not yet been determined". His parents let investigators search his phone, which held instructions for making bombs and chemical compounds, plus IS propaganda.

Three days later, his mother pointed investigators to two jars in his bedroom. The boy said they held chemicals for making TATP, the unstable explosive of the Paris and Brussels attacks, nicknamed "Mother of Satan". Once the bomb squad had secured the house, he was charged with making or attempting to make a destructive device. The school district, from which he has been withdrawn, says nothing suggests the school was targeted. Nor, at that stage, was anywhere else.

Somalia was over budget

In Minnesota, the 18-year-old accused of planning a shooting at the Mall of America (see our article) will stay behind bars: on October 19, a federal magistrate judge ruled him a danger to the community and a flight risk, and sent his case to a grand jury. He faces up to 15 years in prison.

According to the FBI agent who testified, the teenager first wanted to fight in Somalia, then settled for a target closer to home when he could not afford the trip. He hoped to kill 30 to 60 non-believers, chose October 24, the day of a Hmong arts celebration, and picked the mall because he believed Jews owned it. Several times, the informant told him he could back out. He replied that he was "100% committed".

"This was not just talk, this was action."— Benjamin Bejar, federal prosecutor, detention hearing, Minneapolis, October 19, 2026

His public defenders point out that he was 16 when the paid informant began talking to him, and that he had no record and no experience with firearms. Critics say such stings can amount to entrapment. In this one, the FBI provided the informant, the venue and the rifle, rendered inert beforehand. The wish to kill non-believers, its agent says, was his own.

Boom, emoji included

In California, Ammaad Akhtar, a 34-year-old U.S. citizen from Stockton, pleaded guilty on October 30 to attempting to provide material support to IS. From February to June 2025, he chatted online with an undercover officer he took for a jihadist, said he wanted to die fighting the infidels and sent money several times. Told that the group had bought guns with it, he promised to send more that very day.

"May Allah destroy our enemies."— Ammaad Akhtar, to an undercover officer he took for an IS member, April 2025

According to the criminal complaint, reported by the Jerusalem Post, he took a man he had seen at a synagogue on Saturdays for an Israeli soldier, followed him to find his home and considered killing him somewhere it would pass for a random attack. The FBI found nothing to suggest the man was a soldier. His only known offence was going to synagogue on Saturdays. Akhtar also asked for help to "make a boom" at a crowded event, adding an explosion emoji. On June 23, 2025, he handed an undercover agent clothing, binoculars, $400 in cash, two loaded guns and six magazines, then swore allegiance to IS. Arrested the next day, he faces up to 20 years, with sentencing set for February 26, 2027.

Forty years, plus fifty

Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, a 28-year-old Canadian, was arrested in May 2016 after coming to the New York area to prepare bombings and shootings in crowded places during Ramadan, a plot an undercover FBI agent had infiltrated. He was serving 40 years for it when, in December 2020, at the Allenwood federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, he stabbed a guard in the head and face with a blade cut from his steel desk, then stabbed in the hand a female officer who came to help. The first guard lost his right eye.

"This is a terrorist attack for the Islamic State."— Note found in Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy's sock, USP Allenwood, December 2020

A pledge of allegiance to IS was taped inside his locker door. On October 19, he was sentenced to 50 more years, to be served after the first 40. Such attacks, the FBI said, "cannot be tolerated by our society", a society he left in 2016.

Every morning, American pupils pledge allegiance to the flag. The Islamic State's recruits in America pledge theirs too, and it is usually the FBI that takes it down.