Category: Africa

Comment worth noting: Canadian Somali Conference more significant than its billing suggests?

~ Ann Corcoran

Update: Be sure to read the comments to this post because ‘Somali woman’ confirms it was the Rhama Conference and she tells us more about it.

Reader ‘Somali woman’ is back with another warning.  Regular readers may remember we had an interesting exchange with her  here almost two weeks ago.   Last night ‘Somali woman’ was back with more concerning information in response to my post on May 26th about the US terror warning to border states about Somalis illegally entering the US.

This is what she says (emphasis is mine):

This isn’t surprising at all and it is too little too late. The Somalis are unwilling to assimilate, but they are willing to make everything their own: schools, malls, stores, mosques, and even districts. There are two kinds of these Islamists: 1. The one who has brought his ideologies overseas, and 2. The young ones who were brainwashed that live in the U.S.A. When one goes down the drain the other raises up its a continuous cycle.

3 weeks ago I attended (I had to) the First Annual Somali Islamic Conference which brought over 3,000 Somalis across the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] in Canada. Surprisingly the main point of this conference was: to build Islamic schools across Toronto and for Somalis to be able to have control over their children (as they say they don’t like or trust public schools and their children to attend them), to start Somali language and Arabic classes, to merge the biggest Somali mosques in Toronto: Abu Hurairah and Khalid bin Walid into one big mosque, the establishment of the MBA (Muslim Basketball Association, already established, trying to be as high and famous as the NBA), to form the Islamic Somali Imam’s Council of North America, etc.

This shows that the Somalis are coming to the move of where they want to establish a Shariah based laws in the West and its already heading in that direction. The conference was the first of its kind to gather all Somalis living in Canada and might extend to the United States.

All the preachers and Shiekhs of the conference were not surprisingly of either Somali, Arab, and or Pakistani descend. They came from all over the world: Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, USA, Canada, Australia, the UK, etc. for this conference and they had a great impact on the people because I have witnessed people literally in religious hypnosis mode (chanting prayers in Arabic or Somali) and some were even crying in agreement to the Shiekhs. So you see and know where this is heading.

Thanks to a trio of bloggers (Gates of Vienna, Vlad Tepes, and Blazing Cat Fur) who did some quick digging, below is a description of the conference Khadra likely attended in Canada.  The Rhama Conference was held at the International Centre in Toronto on May 22 and 23 and was benignly described as follows:

Islam is a natural perfection of balance, far from any extremes and in total agreement with our fitra. Our Muslim Ummah is in dire need to return to the long lost middle path of wasatiyyah. Only through our return to this path can the Ummah regain its legacies and fulfill our duty rightfully to our creator.

“Thus We have appointed you a middle nation, that ye may be witnesses over mankind, and that the messenger may be a witness over yourselves ..” Quran 2:143

Abu Huraira Centre and Khalid bin walid mosque, two distinguished masjids have joined together to address these issues and many alike. On May 22nd and 23rd at the renown International Centre in Toronto, we are pleased to invite you to a one of a kind convention where two conferences will be occurring simultaneously under one roof!

The Rahma Conference will host one of the largest Somali oriented conferences in North America, hosting some of the most renown Somali Masha’ekh globally. In addition we will also be hosting English speaking Shiekhs most of which are known for their heartfelt approach and motivational speeches. This year Rahma Conference is pleased to announce we will have guest Sheikh Adil Kalbani (Imam Masjid Haram) apart of the program prepared for our attendees.

Do not miss out!

Special Guests
Sheikh Mohamed Ahmed Nur (Garyare)
Mohamed Ibrahim Warsame ( Hadraawi)

List of Somali Speakers:
Sh. Mohamed Dirir (Hargeisa)
Sh. Mustafa Haruun (Oslo)
Sh. Abdirahman Sh. Omar (MN)
Sh. Osman Madad (Vancouver)
Dr. Abdirisaq Takar (UK)
Sh. Mohamed D. Roble (UK)
Sh. Abdulqadir Ali Camba (UK)
Sh. Bashir Shiil (Toronto)
Sh. Said Rageah (Toronto)

List of English speakers:
Sh. Abdulqadir Ali – Camba (UK)
Sh. Abu Taubah
Sh. Kamal El-Mekki
Sh. Navaid Aziz
Sh. Said

We are so naive (as ‘Somali woman’ has reminded us previously).  Was there any Canadian press coverage of a meeting that brought together 3000 Somalis from all over North America?  Does anyone know?  Is anyone paying attention?

Alleged Al Shabaab recruiter may soon be extradicted to the US

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

This is an update of the story we first reported in November 2009.   Mohamud Said Omar, who US authorities believe is the financier of the Somali American (former refugee) youths who left their good lives in Minneapolis to return to Africa for jihad training, now faces extradition to the US from the Netherlands.  Lawyers say he will fight the order in the High Court.

From Dutch News (Hat tip:  Baron at Gates of Vienna):

Judges in Rotterdam have given the green light to the extradition of a 44-year-old Somali man to the US to face terrorism charges, the Telegraaf reports on Monday.

Mohamud Said Omar, 44, is alleged to have helped extremists travel to Somalia to train with the radical Islamic movement Al Shabaab.

He was arrested at a refugee centre in Dronten, Flevoland in November 2009.

The man has also lived in Minneapolis where he is said to have recruited college students – up to 20 according to some reports.

Here is one of our posts last November where Omar is identified as a former resident of Rochester, MN.   All of our reporting on Omar may be found by searching ‘Somali recruiter Netherlands.’

Utah case indicates Somali family reunification is moving forward

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Despite claims that the federal government has not re-opened the controversial and fraud ridden family reunification (P-3) program, obviously this family was reunited this week in Salt Lake City.   According to the Salt Lake Tribune (reprinted in a Somali publication) the family of Yusuf Shaali has been coming to the US “like links in a chain” since 2000.  This week, 6 of Shaali’s children arrived.  So it seems to me that the program is open.

We are told that one of Shaali’s daughters and her family came first in 2000, followed by Shaali five years later.

Five years after painfully leaving his children behind in Kenya, believing they would soon follow him to America, refugee Yusuf Shaali sat at the Salt Lake City International Airport and learned their plane was late. Six of his children were traveling more than 9,000 miles for a much-belated reunion that had required lawyers and DNA samples, patience and faith.

Not every family is so fortunate. In 2008, the United States froze its family reunification program for refugees amid allegations of fraud, particularly from Africa, the source of nearly all requests to join relatives in America.

Confusion over three wives initially stalled Shaali’s application. By the way, I’m guessing the confusion is that these were not 3 wives one after the other, but 3 at the same time.  Polygamy is common in some Muslim countries.

Hoping to start over in America, the family began to arrive like links in a chain [chain migration!].  In Utah they were joining hundreds of other Somali refugees, the state’s largest refugee resettlement group over the past decade. More than 1,400 Somalis have resettled here since 2000.

First in 2000 came Fatima’s husband, Said Mohamed. Three years later, Fatima arrived with her three boys and petitioned for her parents and siblings to follow. In 2005, Shaali interviewed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Confusion over his three marriages and an error in his children’s names led officials to offer only him and his current wife the chance to come to Utah.

They balked, but were persuaded the separation from the 10 living children from two marriages would be short.

Volags (10 major federal contractors) and their refugee agency subcontractors (like Catholic Charities) process the paperwork for additional family members once they have planted the original family seed.  The agency is paid by the head and in the case of reuniting families the cost is not as great for the agency as the so-called “free cases” where there is no family member already in the city to help with the cost burden of resettlement.

More than once, this day had seemed impossible. Staff at Catholic Community Services of Utah, which helps resettle refugees, helped the parents apply for the children a few months after they arrived in Salt Lake City. Federal officials asked for more evidence and the case inched forward. Nearly a year later, nine of the children were interviewed at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. One daughter had died of malaria while waiting.

More questions arose about inconsistencies in the children’s stories regarding mosques and madrasas, or schools. More than two years passed.

After DNA kits were sent to Kenya and tests confirmed that the 6 children ranging in age from 10 to 22 were the children of Shaali they were granted permission to join their father.  By the way, the article is not clear about how the number of children approved was whittled to six from an original ten.  It appears two died, but what happened to two others?

The fraud that closed the program mostly in Africa in 2008 was the shocking (LOL!) discovery that only about 20 % of the applicants for family reunification were really family!   Indeed the State Department admitted last year that as many as 36,000 Somali refugees may have arrived here illegally.

Thousands of families are lined up to bring relatives to the US once the program is re-opened.

Years ago, family reunifications made up 20 to 30 percent of the refugees who came to Utah each year through CCS, estimated Aden Batar, refugee resettlement director. That number has dropped to about 5 percent or less.

“We have thousands and thousands of families [in the U.S.] who are here and are waiting to hear when the family reunification program will reopen,” he said.

The program, which had been able to confirm a biological link to claimed relatives in fewer than 20 percent of cases, remains under review by federal officials.

Doesn’t the arrival of Shaali’s family indicate the program is open?  Is the US State Dept. just going to slip in “relatives” without a formal re-opening?

Feds issue terror watch for Somalis coming across the border—too little too late

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Blulitespecial spotted this story today.   Fox News is reporting that Somalis suspected of being linked to Al-Shabaab are coming across America’s porous borders and possibly forming sleeper cells—gee no kidding!    We have been writing about this since 2008 because they are likely blending into the large Somali refugee populations in major cities.   Only recently reader Khadra, who says she is a Somali born in the US, warned us too (be sure to read comments).

From Fox News:

The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.

The warning follows an indictment unsealed this month in Texas federal court that accuses a Somali man in Texas of running a “large-scale smuggling enterprise” responsible for bringing hundreds of Somalis from Brazil through South America and eventually across the Mexican border. Many of the illegal immigrants, who court records say were given fake IDs, are alleged to have ties to other now-defunct Somalian terror organizations that have merged with active organizations like Al Shabaab, al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad Al-Islami.

In 2008, the U.S. government designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab has said its priority is to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on Somalia; the group has aligned itself with Al Qaeda and has made statements about its intent to harm the United States.

[….]

J. Peter Pham, senior fellow and director of the Africa Project at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, said that for the past ten years there’s been suspicion by U.S. law enforcement that drug cartels could align with international terrorist organizations to bring would-be-jihadists into the U.S.

That kind of collaboration is already being seen in Africa, said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Too little too late—they are already here.  See also the news about the Somali smuggler trial in Virginia last week.

Pham says the DHS alert comes too late. “They’re just covering themselves for the fact that DHS has been failing to date to deal effectively with this,” he said. “They’re already here.”

Michael Weinstein, a political science professor at Purdue University and an expert on Somalia, said, “In the past year, it’s become obvious that there’s a spillover into the United States of the transnational revolutionaries in Somalia.”

“It’s something that certainly has to be watched, but I don’t think it’s an imminent threat,” he said. “This has to be put in context with people smuggling — everybody and their brother is getting into the United States through Mexico; I read last week that some Chinese were crossing, it’s just a big market.”

Pham disagrees. “The real danger is ‘something along the lines of jihadist version of ‘find a classmate,’ he said, referring to Al Shabaab’s potential to set up sleeper cells in the U.S. “Most of them rely on personal referral and association. That type of social networking is not beyond their capabilities.”

Pham says the DHS alert is too little, too late.

Read it all.

If the Somali issue explodes, the Open Borders movement is dead.

For new readers, more Somalis are already on the way (in addition to the illegal ones cited above):

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US (this linked post continues to be one of the most widely read posts we have ever written) in the last 25 years and then in 2008 had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.  That specific program has not yet been reopened (that we know of), but will be soon.

Nevertheless, thousands of Somali Muslims continue to be resettled by the State Department as I write this. We recently learned that we will be taking 6000 Somalis this year from one camp in Uganda and as many as 11,000-13,000 total from around the world.

Through the Refugee Resettlement program alone 2141 legal Somalis have already arrived in this fiscal year (2010) as of April 30th with an unknown number arriving through other legal programs and  illegally across both our borders.

Reminder! The Feds have set up a crime tips hotline for Somalis, here.   Any newly arrived men from Africa in your town or city, maybe you should let the authorities know.

Somaliland Press: A Canadian and an American are involved in planning attacks in Somaliland

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Somaliland is an autonomous region of Somalia that has been relatively stable (as I write that I don’t want to give readers the impression that everything is peachy there).  Late last week the Somaliland Press reported that Somalis who are naturalized Americans and Canadians are involved in planning attacks to disrupt elections in Somaliland.  This is a really complicated story and I have no intention of wading into the morass of East African political turmoil, but I found this of interest when the author charges Americans (and Canadians) of being involved.

From Somaliland Press:

A Canadian and an American of Somali nationals, among other nationalities, with al-Shabab terrorists plan a massive violent campaign against Somaliland polling stations in June 2010. A Canadian and an American! Hard to belief, isn’t it? Not only is it hard to swallow that some of the individuals gearing up for a showdown with Somaliland security forces live in the heart of Canada and U.S., but also these warmongers would slip back to Canada and U.S. without any problems. What is more upsetting is that both Canada and U.S. hypocritically scream about terrorist threats against their nations while they remain oblivious of their citizens fomenting a destructive campaign in Somaliland and elsewhere.

[….]

How unfair and cruel is it for the people of Somaliland in general and for the victims of Buhodle town in particular that these American and Canadian individuals to inflict destruction in a region that is already destitute and then slip back to their comfort zones: U.S. and Canada?

I hope our Homeland Security officials have enough sense to stop them as they enter the US.  As a matter of fact, they should stop any American Somali who travels back and forth to Somaliland.  If they are here because they have escaped persecution, then they shouldn’t be zipping back and forth to East Africa!