“After converting, he frequented the Islamic Society of Mobile, one of the most popular mosques in the Mobile area. A call to the mosque was not returned.”
What a shock! But really, they could have returned the call and simply read from the familiar playbook: Nobody here knows him, we hardly ever saw him. He had strange views, inconsistent with those of the people here. He was always at odds with everyone. We hardly ever saw him. He never came around here and when he did, he said things that were not Islamic. We hardly ever saw him. We hardly ever saw him. Nobody around here knows him.
Etc.
Abu Mansour al-Amriki Update. “Al Qaeda-Linked American Terrorist Unveiled, as Charges Await Him in U.S.,” by Mike Levine for FoxNews, September 4 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A week after the 9/11 attacks, a young Muslim at the University of South Alabama told the school’s newspaper it was “difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this.”
Now, eight years later, he is professing to launch attacks himself and calling on others to join the fight, as terror-related charges await him at home in Alabama, FOX News has learned exclusively.
Abu Mansour al-Amriki — or “The American” — has become one of the most recognizable and outspoken voices of terrorist propaganda….
Al-Amriki first surfaced in October 2007, when Al-Jazeera TV aired a report about the “common goal” of Al Qaeda and hard-line militants in Somalia. The report described al-Amriki as “a fighter” and “military instructor,” but he concealed his face with a cloth wrap throughout the report.
In April, he showed his face for the first time, during a highly-polished, 30-minute recruitment video posted online. It featured anti-American hip-hop and sporadic images of Usama bin Laden.
In the video, he purportedly led a group of al-Shabaab militants in an ambush of pro-government forces in Somalia. Speaking about one man killed in the fight, he said, “We need more like him, so if you can encourage more of your children and more of your neighbors, anyone around, to send people like him to this jihad, it would be a great asset for us.”
The violent world that 25-year-old al-Amriki now inhabits is a stark contrast to the sleepy, suburban life he left behind.
He was born Omar Hammami in May 1984, and he grew up outside Mobile, Ala., in the city of Daphne….
Hammami attended Daphne High School. He was raised Baptist like his mother, but his father is Muslim, and “some time in high school” Hammami converted to Islam, a woman who went to high school with Hammami told FOX News.
The woman, Shellie Brooks, said she is not sure what led Hammami to convert. But the father of a student who went to school with Hammami said Hammami would tell others “he was not fulfilled by his Baptist experience.”
Brooks said Hammami would take time out from classes throughout the day to pray.
“It was kind of odd just because it had never been done before,” Brooks said. “There weren’t many Muslims that went to Daphne High School. He basically just went outside, and you’d see him kneeling and praying as Muslims do.”
She said, “Everybody was really accepting of it.”
After converting, he frequented the Islamic Society of Mobile, one of the most popular mosques in the Mobile area. A call to the mosque was not returned….
Shortly after he started classes at the University of South Alabama, Al Qaeda launched the 9/11 attacks. A week later, the school newspaper The Vanguard ran a story about the impact the attacks might have on Muslim communities. It quoted the new president of the school’s Muslim Student Association: Omar Hammami.
“Everyone was really shocked,” Hammami told The Vanguard at the time. “Even now it’s difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this.”
Hammami told The Vanguard he was worried there could be misguided acts of retribution against Muslims.
“The only way to diffuse this is to get the word out,” said Hammami, who would later drop out of college and travel to several countries before landing in Somalia. “With ignorance comes fear and with fear comes violence.”
Violence is what Hammami, as al-Amriki, now says is necessary in Somalia — even as he remembers the life he left behind in Alabama.
“The only reason we’re staying here away from our families, away from the cities, away from, you know, ice, candy bars, all these other things is because we are waiting to meet with the enemy,” he said in the April video posted online.
Blanchard expressed surprise that the person he once knew could now be in Somalia.
“I guess you never know what’s going to happen the next day, or what somebody, what influences they may have or come across that leads them on a path other than what it appeared that they might be on,” Blanchard said.
Al-Amriki’s most recent message came out in July, a month after President Barack Obama promised “a new beginning” with the Muslim world during a speech in Cairo.
“Despite the fact that you have been … forced [by Muslim fighters] to at least pretend to extend your hand in peace to the Muslims, we cannot and shall not extend our hands,” al-Amriki said in an audiotape. “Rather, we shall extend to you our swords, until you leave our lands.”