Surely not what MLK Jr had in mind.
via Americans rise in rank inside Somalia jihadi group – World News – bellinghamherald.com.
NAIROBI, Kenya – The October al-Qaida video shows a light-skinned man handing out food to families displaced by famine in Somalia. But the masked man is not Somali, or even African – he’s a Wisconsin native who grew up in San Diego.
A handful of young Muslims from the U.S. are taking high-visibility propaganda and operational roles inside an al-Qaida-linked insurgent force in Somalia known as al-Shabab. While most are from Minnesota, which has the largest Somali population in the nation, al-Shabab members include a Californian and an Alabaman with no ancestral ties to Somalia.
“They are being deployed in roles that appear to be shrewdly calculated to raise al-Shabab’s international profile and to recruit others, especially those from the United States and other English-speaking countries,” said Anders Folk, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted suspected al-Shabab supporters in Minnesota.
Officials fear another terrorist attack in East Africa. Kenya announced on Jan. 7 that it had thwarted attempted al-Shabab attacks over the holidays. The same day, Britain’s Foreign Office urged Britons in Kenya to be extra vigilant, warning that terrorists there may be “in the final stages of planning attacks.”
More than 40 people have traveled from the U.S. to Somalia to join al-Shabab since 2007, and 15 of them have died, according to a report from the House Homeland Security Committee. Federal investigations into al-Shabab recruitment in the U.S. have centered on Minnesota, which has more than 32,000 Somalis.
At least 21 men have left Minnesota to join al-Shabab in that same time. The FBI has confirmed that at least two of them died in Somalia as suicide bombers. A U.S. citizen is suspected in a third suicide bombing, and another is under investigation in connection with a fourth bombing on Oct. 29 that killed 15 people.
The star of the al-Qaida video was Jehad Mostafa, 30, a Californian who handed out food using the name Abu Abdullah al-Muhajir, according to the SITE Monitoring Service. The Washington Post reported last year that Mostafa served as top lieutenant to Saleh Nabhan, a senior al-Qaida operative killed by Navy SEALs in a helicopter attack inside Somalia in 2010.
Mostafa and the Alabaman, Omar Hammami, 27, are among about a dozen men who have been charged in federal court in the U.S. and are believed to be in Somalia.
E.K. Wilson, the agent overseeing the FBI’s investigation in Minneapolis, said he cannot comment on whether there is an outstanding order to capture or kill Americans fighting for al-Shabab. The FBI has publicly said the Americans should return to the U.S.
It’s a mystery what caused Mostafa, a young man whom many remember as mild and friendly, to join an extremist group.
Mostafa grew up in San Diego and graduated from the University of California San Diego. Imam Abdeljalil Mezgouri of the Islamic Center of San Diego, the city’s largest mosque, said Mostafa was a respectful teen and good student.
“He was a very quiet, very loving boy. He didn’t talk too much but when he did talk, people liked him,” said Mezgouri.
Mezgouri said Mostafa got married in his early 20s to a woman he believed was from Somalia.
Public records show Mostafa was the president of the now-defunct Muslim Youth Council of San Diego, or MYCSD. The former organization’s Web site says the group was “dedicated to showing the world that Islam is a religion of peace and Muslims are a peaceful and productive part of society.”
Mostafa’s father, Halim Mostafa, a Kurdish Syrian, is a prominent figure in San Diego’s Muslim community who has tried to build bridges with non-Muslims. He made a low-budget film released in 2008 called “Mozlym” to show how the true meaning of Islam is often lost amid the misconceptions of non-Muslims in America, according to the film’s Web site.
Mostafa’s father declined to talk.
“I just don’t want to get involved. I’m really sorry I cannot say anything. God bless you,” he said.
Edgar Hopida, a spokesman for the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Halim Mostafa believes in the most liberal interpretation of Islam and noted that “it’s ironic if his son is involved with al-Shabab.”
In other words, the more fundamentalist Hamas-linked CAIR aligns much more closely to al Shabaab and considers Mostafa less of a Muslim (more or less an apostate). They defend people like Mostafa’s son and paint targets on Somali Muslims who speak out against jihad. Sadly, wherever you find a Muslim claiming Islam is a religion of peace there’s never even a degree of separation between them and Muslims waging jihad. Dad may tell naive non-Muslims that Islam is peaceful while his son is waging jihad. CAIR is no different as many of its executives are in prison on terror charges.
Al-Shabab does not just recruit from the U.S. Three suspects accused of having ties to al-Shabab are now in prison in Australia and awaiting sentencing for allegedly planning an attack on an Australian military base.
Dozens of U.K. residents have also traveled to Somalia to join al-Shabab, and the British government is concerned that Somalia shows many of the characteristics that made Afghanistan “a seedbed for terrorism.”
Rick Nelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in even the possiblity of military reprisal might not deter al-Shabab from carrying out an attack inside the United States.
“All the elements are there for it to happen,” Nelson said.
AP could not reach Mostafa or Hammami for comment. A spokesman for al-Shabab said that the questions AP emailed were “of a personal nature relating to the roles and activities of certain individuals and for that reason they were left unanswered.”
The spokesman also said al-Shabab and al-Qaida were “brothers in Islam.” He did not provide a name but emailed from an address used by al-Shabab’s media outreach wing, which also recently launched a Twitter feed.
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There WILL come a time when we MUST flush this toilet America, to clear the water of islam.
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