Gawaher.com

According to the Washington Post, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (aka "Farouk1986") "turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was 'lonely; and had 'never found a true Muslim friend.'"

The Washington Post reviewed 300 online postings under the name "farouk1986" (a combination of Abdulmutallab's middle name and birth year). The postings mused openly about love and marriage, his college ambitions and angst over standardized testing, as well as his inner struggle as a devout Muslim between liberalism and extremism. In often-intimate writings, posted between 2005 and 2007, he sought friends online, through Facebook and in Islamic chat rooms: "My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk." He often invited readers to "have your say" and once wrote, "May Allah reward you for reading and reward you more for helping."

A U.S. government official said late Monday that federal intelligence officials were reviewing the online postings but had not independently confirmed their authenticity.

Many of the biographical details in the writings, however, match up with facts already known about Abdulmutallab.

Farouk1986 wrote of being born in 1986 and having attended an elite British boarding school in Togo, where many of his classmates were British expatriates and students from around West Africa.

The forum Abdulmutallab turned to for "counseling and companionship" was gawaher.com.

Here's the site's description and invitation to potential users:

Welcome to the Islamic Forum

This forum is ranked #1 by Google, thanks to its friendly community, quality posts and rich info. We always welcome new members, regardless of their religion or race. We'll happily answer all your questions about Islam and why its the perfect way of life. Our sections cover a vast variety of topics. So, what do you want to discuss today?

What a perfect forum for a "good" Muslim to alleviate loneliness!



More from the Washington Post:

All of the postings are on the Islamic Forum Web site (http://www.gawaher.com), which uses a commercially available chat-forum software called IP.Board that automatically assigns dates to users' posts as they are created. Many of Farouk1986's postings drew comments from other forum members on the day they were written.

...In a June 2005 posting, Farouk1986 wrote that he was in Yemen for a three-month Arabic course, saying that "it is just great." He described how many British people and Americans were in Sanaa, gushing about the capital's shopping and global cuisine (including, he noted, Pizza Hut and KFC).

...On Facebook, Abdulmutallab's profile features a photo of him smiling, standing alongside two friends and wearing a sharp-looking pink polo shirt and sunglasses. He has 287 friends.

Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, 22, who studied with Abdulmutallab at University College London, said Abdulmutallab graduated in May 2008 and showed no signs of radicalization or of links to al-Qaeda. "He always did the bare minimum of work," Marincola said of his classmate, who he said was nicknamed "Biggie."

"When we were studying, he always would go off to pray," Marincola continued. "He was pretty quiet and didn't socialize much or have a girlfriend that I knew of."

Terrorists on Facebook -- That's creepy.