Category: Africa

Al Shabab: Tapping into a wave of Islamic extremism

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you have been following our extensive coverage of the Minneapolis missing Somali youths closely, this story, reported by the Christian Science Monitor today, about the life and death of Tawakal Ahmed, a Somali boy from Kenya, is going to sound terribly (tragically) familiar.   Ahmed is dead in Somalia and his family has no idea who killed him—possibly Al-Shabab Islamists themselves.

The boys family and friends blame his radicalization on the local mosque.  Experts are quoted as saying that they don’t think the recruitment is coming directly from some organized effort within Al-Shabab (sometimes spelled Al-Shabaab)  in Somalia, but from a worldwide trend toward radicalization—-radicalization that is happening at mosques!

“Sometimes Al Shabab’s work is done for them by others, unwittingly,” says Rashid Abdi, a Kenyan-Somali analyst at the Nairobi field office of the International Crisis Group. “Al Shabab is basically tapping into a wave, a radicalization phenomenon which is happening in the Muslim world.”

I could make a joke here and suggest this will soon be ending because Obama gave his Cairo speech, but I won’t because it won’t.  The American Al-Shabab has already laughed at Obama, here.

Lots of money in this effort:

The relative wealth displayed by those who control the mosques also leaves some residents suspicious. “Whether it’s coming from the Middle East or Mars, I don’t know,” says Milgo Ahmed, Tawakal’s older cousin. “But money is there. Money is being poured all over the place. That is how our children are being used and taken away.”

Let’s see, who has money in the Middle East?  Oh, yeh, Saudi Arabia.  Funny, isn’t it Saudi Arabia that is pouring money into US mosques too?

Lots of intimidation going on too.  In the US you probably won’t get shot, just CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) will be sicced on you!

Anyone who preaches against these people will be shot.

[….]

Despite their fear, Tawakal’s friends and family say the only way to fight this perceived encroachment on their town and their vision of Islam is to speak out. “After losing him, we started to understand the magnitude of this thing – of a young man being poached to do bad things in the name of helping his family,” Metro says.

Are you seeing the parallels to Minneapolis?  Family in Kenya says people must speak up; families in US say the same thing.   Or else:

Ms. Ahmed, Tawakal’s cousin, worries for the five recent graduates in her home who seem to have no opportunity for the future: “Tawakal is dead. He will no longer come [back]. But many, many other Tawakals are going to have the same fate if the international community does not take action,” she says.

Her family feels helpless, she says, with no protection from extremists and nowhere to turn. Complaints to Kenyan authorities fall on deaf ears.

“We are in big trouble,” Ahmed says. “We have nowhere to go…. Our children are not safe.”

Ditto for Minneapolis and possibly other American cities.

 

Comment worth noting: we hear from Maruf’s sister

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For new readers this may be getting a little complicated, but we have been following the case of the Somali missing youths since it first became public knowledge back in November and this is a very important turn of events in the story.

Yesterday we learned that the 4th Somali to leave Minneapolis and join al-Shabaab, Zakaria Maruf, is reportedly dead in Somalia.   It looks like the second and third young men to die may have been killed by their Jihadi handlers possibly to keep them quiet, and I will report as soon as I see news about how Maruf may have died.

Who are the recruiters in the US and who paid the boys’ airfares back to Africa?  That is the crucial question, the question the FBI is trying to answer.  Family and friends of the dead men are pointing a finger at the local mosque and are accusing CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) of trying to sidetrack the investigation.  See my post here on how the families need help!

On Sunday, the New York Times feature story fingered Zakaria Maruf as the “recruiter.”  I suggested here that it sounded like he was being made the “fall guy.”   Well, if it is true that he is now dead, possibly killed by Al-Shabaab, I guess that would throw the NYT theory out the window.  Here MPR yesterday also suggests he was recruiting.   He might have been a talker and a bragger but he sure doesn’t sound like the mastermind.  So who told the NYT reporter that he was the “recruiter?”

Last night we had a comment from Maruf’s sister, Nabila Maruf, who confirms that her brother had no money and no real knowledge of Somalia before leaving for Africa.  She appears to be saying there is no way he was any sort of key figure in this, so again, who told the NYT that he was?

My brother did’t know anything about back home. When we left home, he was very little at the time. so what would he be fighting for? He knew the struggle and what my family went through when we came from somalia. and he never told anyone one, “Let’s go fight in the war.” he didn’t even have enough money to buy a ticket to go back because he couldn’t keep a job. so whoever told him thoughs things probably gave him the money to go back. because my family didn’t even know that he was gping back home.

Come on mainstream reporters:  Dig!   Go around CAIR!  Go around the Imams!  This is a huge story, go to the families.

To reporters:    In case you missed it , most of the mainstream media did, it is an American (a white man) in Somalia, a leader of Al-Shabaab, who recently mocked Obama’s speech to the Muslim world, here, and promised more violence in the name of Allah.   He would definitely know how to appeal to Americans to join the international Jihad.

Why were the Somali boys so receptive to the call of Allah?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Adding to Ann’s post, NYT feature article on Somalis today—it is about the call of Allah, the Times story shows, perhaps inadvertently, why these boys were so receptive to the call of Allah. Jerry Gordon talks about their recruitment at a radical mosque in his commentary on the NYT story, and as he says that’s something that has to be looked into further by the government, and not shoved under the rug.

But why did they become susceptible to the call of Allah? Some clues are provided by the descriptions of the boys as teenagers. For example:

If the adults kept their distance from American culture, their children had little choice but to dive in.

At Roosevelt, Mr. Ahmed was a quick study. He memorized Ice Cube’s lyrics. He practiced for hours on neighborhood basketball courts. He took note of the clothing and vernacular of his African-American classmates, emulating what he could.

His pants sagged, but never too much. He spoke of “homeboys” and used the “n” word, but gave careful regard to the school’s rules. When a classmate’s purse was stolen, it was Mr. Ahmed who dutifully turned in the thief.

Much as he tried, he failed to fit in.

You’re not black, his peers taunted. Go back to Africa.

The boys were not interested in Somali politics. They wanted to fit in with the other kids, as most teenagers do. But what was there to fit in with? A toxic culture of rap music and alienation, ignorance and criminality. And an insular culture, that didn’t accept outsiders no matter what their skin color.

At the root of the problem was a “crisis of belonging,” said Mohamud Galony, a science tutor who was friends with Mr. Ahmed and is the uncle of another boy who left. Young Somalis had been raised to honor their families’ tribes, yet felt disconnected from them. “They want to belong, but who do they belong to?” said Mr. Galony, 23.

In the kind of schools these kids had to attend, I am certain there was nothing taught about American culture and history. In days past, immigrants were assimilated through their children, who learned English, American customs (which were far more uniform), standards of behavior, the greatness of America, national heroes and holidays, and so on. That’s what my father and his siblings learned, coming from a poverty-stricken Yiddish-speaking home and all ending up professionals.

But after decades of work by the left in the schools, kids learn to see America as a collection of groups, ethnic, racial, economic, sexual, and whatever other divisions they can come up with. There is nothing there for them, no higher vision than their own group and their own pleasures, as stunted as these are. If they don’t come from homes who can give them something more, then they have nothing, no culture worthy of the name.

When Ethiopa invaded and occupied Somalia,

These events triggered a political awakening among young Somalis in Minneapolis. They had long viewed their homeland’s problems as hopelessly clan-based, but the Ethiopian campaign simplified things. Here was an external enemy against which young Somalis could unite.

Spurred by a newfound sense of nationalism, college students distributed T-shirts emblazoned with the Somali flag and held demonstrations during a frigid Minnesota winter.

The protests took on a religious dimension as well. While the United States had defended the Ethiopian invasion as a front in the global war on terrorism, many Somalis saw it as a Christian crusade into a Muslim land. They were outraged at reports of Ethiopian troops raping Somali women, looting mosques and killing civilians.

The NYT story doesn’t put nearly enough emphasis on the role of the mosque, which all along was trying to radicalize the young people. But what is clear is that the kids were looking for an idealistic cause, something larger than their unsatisfactory daily lives, in the mold of young people everywhere. And here was a cause that was sanctioned, indeed encouraged, by their religion, and called for all the sacrifice that an idealistic young person could want.

As we’ve seen, many of the older Somalis are not in favor of what the kids did, and some are absolutely outraged by it. What a good sign that is. Although they lead difficult lives, and many have little more idea about American history and ideals than their children do, the adults understand that here they have a chance to build a life, and in signing up with the jihad they would have no such chance.  What a terrible thing it is that there is so little to help immigrants assimilate, and that poor immigrants have to live in such a toxic culture that their only hope for a decent life is to cling to their own community and their old ways.

For new readers, we have followed the Somali missing youths story since last November, see links here to all of our posts on the topic.

4th Somali-American dead in Somalia, called the “recruiter” in yesterday’s NYT article

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update July 14th:  Note that Mr. Maruf’s sister has left a comment, I write about it here.

Oh my gosh, unbelievable!  The 4th Somali-American missing from Minneapolis is dead in Somalia.   Zakaria Maruf died Saturday according to the Star Tribune this morning.  Hat tip: a friend from Tennessee.

I just wrote about Maruf last night, here, in response to the lengthy discussion about him by Andrea Elliot at the New York Times also yesterday.

From the Star Tribune:

For the second time in two days, a Somali man from Minneapolis has been reported killed in his war-torn homeland, a relative confirmed Sunday.

Zakaria Maruf, 30, who is believed to have been among the first wave of young Somali men to leave Minnesota for Somalia over the past two years, was killed Saturday in Mogadishu, the relative said.

Maruf is the fourth Somali man from the Twin Cities to have died in Somalia since October.

The NYT story called Maruf the “recruiter.”   Here is a bio of him and several others of the missing youths from the NYT yesterday.  This is what I reported last night that he said in an interview some months ago:

In the interview, Maruf implies that his participation in the fighting was motivated by religion, not patriotism. Maruf said he and his friends heard the call of Allah, and they accepted it.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, did Mr. Maruf talk too much?  I guess his “recruiting” days are over (if he ever really was the recruiter)!

For new readers, we have followed the Somali missing youths story since last November, see links here to all of our posts on the topic.

NYT feature article on Somalis today—it is about the call of Allah

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ll probably have more to say later on the New York Times front page story today on the missing Somali (former refugee) youths, but tonight just one point I want to  make clear to readers.  First, see Judy’s earlier post,  here.

There is much discussion in the article about the patriotic motive that might have helped inspire American-raised boys to return to Somalia for terrorist training.  The NYT tells us that the boys were told that Ethiopian troops, backed by America, were to blame for attrocities such as the rape of Somali women. 

Indeed that whole line of discussion ran through the Senate Homeland Security hearings that I attended last spring in Washington. Just checking my post on the March hearing, I note that both the FBI witness and the witness from the National Counterterrorism Center told the Senators that the boys were not fighting the international jihad just fighting for their homeland!  It was as if the US recruitment by al-Shabaab could be glossed over, made less threatening,  if it was for patriotic reasons, for love of their ancestral homeland, that the boys had gone to Africa.

Ms. Elliot, the NYT reporter, in her lengthy analysis tells us much about the man she calls the “recruiter”, Zakaria Maruf.  Please go read the discussion about this former Minneapolis resident.    I thought the name sounded familiar and sure enough I wrote about Mr. Maruf here just a couple of days ago.

Let me be clear—-Maruf is!  He says that their fighting is NOT about patriotism.

From Minnesota Public Radio:

In an interview with a Somali radio station several months ago, one of the Minnesota fighters suggested that he and his friends traveled to Somalia on their own volition. Friends have identified the speaker as 30-year-old Zakaria Maruf, a graduate of Edison High School in Minneapolis. 

“Brother, someone who is a grown man with any sense cannot be misled, Maruf said in the interview.”The place where we’ve come from is not a place where you can be coerced.”

In the interview, Maruf implies that his participation in the fighting was motivated by religion, not patriotism. Maruf said he and his friends heard the call of Allah, and they accepted it.

I believe that is the point that we must all get through our heads!

Just a hunch, but I think this ordinary street thug, Maruf, with his “little man” complex is being set up as the fall guy.  Yeh, he might have done his share of  encouraging and recruiting, but as Abdirizak Bihi (a family member of one of the dead youths) pointed out in that Minnesota Public Radio story I linked above—-it took years and years of indoctrination.

Bihi still blames a handful of religious leaders in Minnesota for radicalizing the young men with extremist ideology.

“It’s not the work that was done by one speech,” he said. “It’s not the work that was done in a couple days or months. It’s the work of years and years and years.”

For new readers, we have followed the Somali missing youths story since last November, see links here to all of our posts on the topic.