Like his friends, Taher began attending regular get-togethers at the Wilkes Barre apartment of Kamal Derwish, who had also grown up in the area, but had traveled overseas and spoke of fighting with the insurgency in Palestine and encouraged the friends to consider a Muslim's duty to defend the weak and innocent. At one point, he disagreed with Derwish, noting that although jihad may be the correct path in Muslim nations attacked by outsiders, he could not support something like the USS Cole bombing which took place in Yemen, a country that had not been invaded.