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The Twin Cities have an ISIS problem

Sep 14, 2015 9:15 am By Robert Spencer

“Since Al Shabaab began recruiting Minnesota’s youth in 2006, the Twin Cities have been a focus of overseas terror recruiting by organizations like the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This cycle of terror recruiting has exclusively targeted Minnesota’s Somali community.” And now, even after this jihad recruitment has been going on for nearly ten years, all government and law enforcement efforts to stop it are doomed to fail, because they do not and will not address the belief system that leads young Somalis from Minneapolis to join the jihad. They don’t go because they don’t have jobs. They go because they believe in the righteousness of waging jihad for the sake of Allah. But authorities refuse to consider that, and as they keep misdiagnosing the problem, their remedies will keep on failing.

Minneapolis Muslims

“The Twin Cities have an ISIS problem,” by Colin Campbell, Business Insider, September 13, 2015:

Members of the Minneapolis Somali community wait May 12, 2015, to enter the US courthouse in Minneapolis where a federal judge ordered four Minnesota men accused of trying to travel to Syria to join the Islamic State group held pending trial.

The US Department of Justice on Wednesday announced that a young man from Minneapolis, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to charges related to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL

But the man, who prosecutors identified as 19-year-old Hanad Musse, was hardly the only Twin Cities resident to face charges in recent months for allegedly supporting the extremist group.

There have been a string of Islamic State-related arrests over roughly the last year.

Why Minneapolis? Authorities say it’s linked to Minneapolis-St. Paul’s large Somali community.

According to The New York Times, estimates peg the local Somali population, which Minneapolis touts as the largest in the US, at roughly 30,000 people.

Reports have described violent extremism as bubbling up within the local Somali community going back years, especially as a result of the 2006 conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia. At the time, much of the terrorism-recruitment issue centered on al-Shabab, the Somali-based group that would later become an Al Qaeda affiliate.

The office of Minnesota’s US attorney, Andrew Luger, said Wednesday that groups “like the Islamic State” have since exclusively targeted the local Somali community.

“Since Al Shabaab began recruiting Minnesota’s youth in 2006, the Twin Cities have been a focus of overseas terror recruiting by organizations like the Islamic State for Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This cycle of terror recruiting has exclusively targeted Minnesota’s Somali community,” Luger’s office said in a press release.

Indeed, Musse was one of six men from the region who were charged last April for their alleged ties to the extremist group. At the time, Luger directly said that Minnesota has a “problem” with terror recruiting, which he described as decentralized and widespread.

“To be clear: We have a terror-recruiting problem in Minnesota. And this case demonstrates how difficult it is to put an end to recruiting here,” he said at news conference the Minnesota US attorney’s office. “Parents and loved ones should know that there is not one master recruiter organizing in the Somali community locally. What this case shows is that the person radicalizing your son, your brother, your friend, may not be a stranger. It may be their best friend right here in town.

And the federal government announced in February that it had indicted another 19-year-old, Hamza Naj Ahmed, for trying to support the Islamic State. After Ahmed was detained, the Justice Department said Ahmed was “at least the fourth person from the Twin Cities charged as a result of an ongoing investigation into individuals who have traveled or are attempting to travel to Syria in order to join a foreign terrorist organization.”

Local officials are trying to turn around their terror-recruitment problem.

In September of last year, then US Attorney General Eric Holder announced a pilot program “in cities across the country to bring together community representatives, public safety officials and religious leaders to counter violent extremism.”

Minneapolis and St. Paul were among the cities that participated, according to the Minnesota US attorney’s office, and their “Building Community Resilience Plan” to build bridges to the local Somali community was unveiled in February of this year.

“Since 2013, a large number of Somali Minnesotans have traveled, attempted to travel, or taken steps in preparation to travel to join ISIL,” the plan stated. “The Somali Minnesotan community wants this cycle of recruitment to stop and have partnered with the US Attorney’s office to built a plan to stop this cycle.”

The wide-ranging proposal included outreach to Somali youth, after-school and mentorship programs, community engagement by local police officers, increasing the number of Somali officers, and jobs and education programs, among other things.

“What my community, the Somali-American community, needs today is no less than a ‘Marshall Plan’ tailor-made to the community’s employment challenges,” Minneapolis City Council member Abdi Warsame, who was born in Somalia, said when the plan was presented at the White House.

In other words, give us money. The idea that poverty causes terrorism is taken for granted, no matter how many times it has been disproven.

The success of that plan was touted on Wednesday of this week, about the same time of Musse’s guilty plea.

“Minneapolis’ Somali community is a tremendous asset to our city. We must all support this community and their ability to contribute to our prosperity, or we will not be the city we need to be,” Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges said in a statement touting the pilot program’s one-year benchmark….

What kind of an asset? What do they bring?

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Filed Under: Al-Shabaab, American jihadis, Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: Hanad Musse, Minneapolis, minnesota, St. Paul


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Comments

  1. Jaladhi says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 9:24 am

    The question to skis why Twin Cities have an ISIS problem? The answer is Muslim population!1 If USA had not given any asylum to these jihadi Somalis years ago(and still continuing) this problem would not have come to pass. And now we are planning to import 10,000 Syrians – in reality more than a million will enter and years from now we will be talking about ISIS problem in whole of USA!!

    • Jay Boo says

      Sep 14, 2015 at 11:10 am

      Two vultures are still circling over the Twin cities. They are riding on the hot air of political correctness.
      One is named Hillary and another is Obama.

  2. somehistory says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 9:49 am

    The photo looks like some foreign country, not anyplace where kids play freely and women could wear bathing suits in summer.
    Maybe the contribution…”asset”… is to the mills for all that material.

    • Madame Bafungo says

      Sep 14, 2015 at 8:22 pm

      Is this Minneapolis or Mogadishu? I guess the real problem is the people who are importing the refugee and being shy about telling them to integrate. I am sure they been there since the early 90’s. Even in Europe the authorities are shy to tell them to integrate. Places like the UK I heard they give them state funded faith schools and Sharia Law. I hope they don’t make the same mistake with the Syrian refugee.

      • Shmooviyet says

        Sep 15, 2015 at 2:18 pm

        Even if the authorities were encouraging assimilation– which they are NOT, quite the opposite in fact– few Somalis seem interested in American culture.They live together, shop and eat together, travel together, in their own, mainly family groups. You don’t see them at city lakes, parks or other recreation spots unless they’re the dominant population. Not so among other immigrant groups.
        The early 90s may have seen a trickle of immigration of obvious, burka-wrapped muslims, but it was barely noticeable before around 2005. Just within approximately the last ten years have whole areas been swallowed up by Somali-dominated housing, surrounded by halal markets and bazaars bearing Arabic and Somali signs. And always a Western Union sign amongst them!
        Un-PC but true.

        • Barg says

          Sep 15, 2015 at 4:47 pm

          They like making ghettos. If they don’t like America they should go back to their country and mend it.

  3. Angemon says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 10:15 am

    Minneapolis’ Somali community is a tremendous asset to our city.

    Yes, I’m sure that being able to pat yourself on the back and telling everyone how much of a good person you are for “helping” the “needed” outweighs rational discourse into the need, effectiveness and unintended consequences of the measures you’re taking…

  4. Jay Boo says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 10:39 am

    Case in point.
    Kenya took in Somali Muslim refuges.

  5. mortimer says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 11:28 am

    Islamic TERRORIST-JIHADIST CHIC is prevalent among Muslim youth.

  6. ich says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 12:07 pm

    the politicians everwhere should be ashamed

    there are no churchill’s left

    perhaps the american new president will make a difference ?

  7. Shmooviyet says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 12:44 pm

    Apparently Mayor Betsy “wear-a-burka-to-work” didn’t see the Warner video posted here some months ago. The Somali man-on-the-street complains of how terribly he misses his home country and turns his nose up at life in America ( while he sports Western clothing and his wrapped wife a loud designer handbag, and the ever-present cell phone ).
    Many would like Mr. Spencer’s question answered: what kind of asset, indeed? The above photo is an everyday sight but it’s still a head-turner, at least among us knuckle-draggin’ intolerant types. I will NEVER become accustomed to seeing a gaggle of Hefty-clad women, no matter how hard the leftists, CAIR and the administrations work to fundamentally transform this and so many other Western cities.
    If a larger percentage of these immigrants showed a slight interest in assimilation, perhaps I wouldn’t feel this way. But we’ve had so many negative or downright violent run-ins with Somalis, it seems doubtful.

  8. Joseph says

    Sep 14, 2015 at 6:33 pm

    Soon…..real soon we won’t have to worry about these so called refugees trying to get to the M.E. to perform their violent jihad, they will be doing it right here on U.S. soil much more often than they are now.
    They just need more time to plan and organize. Meanwhile the United States and the rest of the free world wants to import more of this garbage while Saudi Arabia will not accept a single one.

    Am I missing something here? Why are these politicians so hell-bent on the death and destruction of their countries and the common man. Money, power and greed?

  9. medaber_emet says

    Sep 15, 2015 at 3:33 am

    Hi Americans
    based on the situation you got in america
    i am sorry to tell you that by the existing legistlation and governmet
    you will not be able to save america from islamization.
    america is reluctant to ban islam and to take drastic measures in order to remove this cancer.
    the way i see it
    the only way to remove this evil cult will only be possible during a civil war
    and since the people are too scared too spoiled and are not willing to risk their bott america will slowly descent into islamic state by means of creaping sharia and islamic terror that will crush any resistance to islamic domination

  10. DiMu says

    Sep 15, 2015 at 11:24 am

    Minnesota is EUPHORIC LA-LA LAND – it’s called ‘Minnesota nice’, which means ‘pretend that the real world does not exist’. The blame for the Somalis and the Hmongs, who were previously brought there in droves and who also had difficulties integrating, can be attributed directly to the Churches. It is a great source of income for them. They are paid to bring in the refugees and ‘settle’ them. They are all screaming out for Syrians now.

    Minneapolis is known as JIHAD CENTRAL. ISIS has already targeted the Mall of America as a Mumbai-Nairobi West-gate Mall destination of rape, beheading and torture. Just a matter of time I suppose.

  11. Jerry says

    Sep 15, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    Well, they have already successfully recruited in the Offal Office of the Sh..ite House

  12. FredvanH says

    Sep 16, 2015 at 12:09 am

    What do these parasites bring? Well they cost you a shitload of money, and what you get in return is violence, criminality, and sedition, and societal regress. Seems like a fair exchange.

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