First, I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this opinion piece at the Huffington Post this morning that readily admits terrorist recruitment and indoctrination is occurring in the US Somali community. The writer, Faisal Roble (of Wardheernews) begins with a summary of the Minneapolis missing youths that I’m repeating here in case we have new readers unfamiliar with the ever-expanding story.
It is believed that as many as 20 naturalized Somali Americans have recently vanished without any prior knowledge of their parents and joined the more radical Al-Shabab, “the youth” – an Islamist firebrand aligned to al-Qaeda. Al-shabab is an extremist group whose political objective is to establish a non-secular Sharia-based government in Somalia. So far, at least one naturalized American citizen had committed suicide in this past October, killing 30 people in northern Somalia. Most available evidence points at the Al-Shabab group who either train or commit the vanished youth to suicidal acts.
Then he goes on to blame the FBI (and the Somali families) for not spotting or reporting what is going on. My first instinct is to defend the FBI, but I can’t. I have heard first hand that people have attempted since 9/11 to alert the FBI to strange things going on in the Somali community and have been rebuffed by the agency.
It is disconcerting to learn that both the FBI and the Somali community did little to stop the anguish of boys disappearing from their homes. This is so because there is no meaningful cooperation between FBI and the Somali community either in Minnesota or elsewhere in the country. If any cooperation existed, protecting young Somali-American boys from exploitation by “terror networks” amongst us could have been a lot easier.
Both the FBI and the Somali community are at fault here and deserve serious criticism. For one, the FBI could be blamed for sleeping at the wheel in that it had failed to unveil a “network of terror” that has been transporting high school kids from North American cities to Somalia. It should have taken a little effort on the part of FBI to find out the adults who assist 17-year-old kids from our own American inner cities get their US passports, collect transport allowance amounting $3,000 each, a well arranged rout to Mogadishu, Somalia. But the FBI has royally failed in making any dent on a “network of terror” in our midst.
At one point Roble especially points a finger at the Bush Administration for not keeping a better eye on mosques. No doubt, they didn’t do their job, but in defense of Bush, the minute he would have suggested any sort of surveillance of Muslims the Leftwing crazies and CAIR* would have been on him like a big bird! And, if Roble, a big fan of Obama’s, thinks Obama will be any better, forget it!
Without witch-hunt, the FBI must seriously investigate the role of local mosques ran by extremist-leaning Islamist activists, if any, and the role they play in organizing infrastructural network for this particular operation. Unveiling these networks is a key component of national security as well as helping our vanishing Somali-American youths.
There is a lot of fascinating information in Roble’s article, so please read the whole thing. But, to me this is one of the most astounding revelations Roble makes:
Horrendous stories, where boys as young as 12-years-old are temporarily removed from the protection of their families to commit them to a religious obligation program called “Da’wa,” are abundant in Minnesota and elsewhere. For a child to complete his religious obligations, the presiding mosque would assign a local priest as a caretaker for a bunch of boys during the entire period of the “Da’aw,” sometimes an entire summer vacation with no communication with their parents. The only information availed to the parents during this period is occasional but limited status report on the kids and the progress of their religious obligation, most often provided by the Mosque-assigned caretaker.
Maybe now that a Somali writer (I presume Roble to be a Somali American) is saying what Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch and others have been saying for years, the leftwing loonies reading the Huffington Post might start to take notice.
Endnote: The FBI is on the alert now for terror recruitment among refugees, but this account from Atlanta suggests that they are not going about it very effectively.
*The FBI severed its ties and cooperation with CAIR just this week. Hat tip: Blulitespecial. I’m wondering if CAIR had actually kept the FBI from gaining more contacts in the Somali community.