March 06, 2009

Video: MN Mosque Probed for Terror Ties

The leaders and members of the Abubakar Islamic Center in Minneapolis deny they are recruiting people for jihad. But what to make of the fact that at least one American worshipper at the mosque killed himself in a suicide bombing in Somalia last year, and that 20 other young mosque members have gone missing. The Somali community and the FBI are working under the assumption that these young Somali immigrants are now fighting with the al Qaeda linked Shabaab movement which now effectively controls much of the country. The big fear is that some of them will then come back to the US to hurt us at home.

Let me say that I have no idea whether the mosque itself was being used to recruit for jihad. The denial by mosque officials actually seems plausible. Especially given that it was the Somali community that warned the FBI of the missing young men. That is, they appeared to have volunteered the information worried about their own children joining with the Islamist thugs in Somalia.

What role, then, might the mosque play if not directly in spreading the Salaafi jihad ideology at the root of Shabaab and al Qaeda? This mosque may only have served as a social nexus where like minded young people met in physical space. It seems entirely likely to me that this physical space involvement also may have led to the sharing of cyberspace information.

In other words, the fact that they all went to mosque together really had less to do with their recruitment into a terror organization than the likelihood that they probably shared forum urls, jihad videos, nasheeds, statements, and other propaganda with each other online.

The physical space is where they may have first met, but it was in cyberspace that they egged each other on to join the "caravan of martyrs" to the homeland -- Somalia.

As Ed Morrisey notes:

it looks like a lot more than coincidence that these radicalized American citizens all worshiped at the same place just before they left.

Many immigrant specific mosques are more like community centers than they are like a formal house of worship. It is at mosques like these that Somalis meet other Somalis, and there may be very diverse views within the community about Shabaab and the ICU.

Think of this as something akin to meeting someone at school, but getting to know them through Facebook.

Why do I present this theory? To warn against the kind of harassing calls presented in the video above. I have no idea if my theory is true. I offer it only as a plausible counter-story to the narrative being constructed in the video and in the popular mind.

Neither do I have any problems with the FBI monitoring this or any other mosque. Terrorists are largely Muslims, and many Muslims go to mosque, ergo that's one place to look for terrorists. And we do know that some mosques are used for spreading jihad ideology, fundraising, and even recruiting. This mosque? Maybe, but maybe not.

What I do have a problem with are those who paint a whole community guilty based only on associative connections. Like you mindless readers who continue to agitate for the expulsion -- and worse -- of Muslims. You are fascists.

See for instance The Terror Free Somalia Foundation which is also run by Somalian ex-pats and adamantly against the introduction of Sharia by either the Shabaab or the Islamic Courts Union. There are many in the Somali community who fled to this country to escape groups like the Shabaab and it causes them no small amount of angst to know that a rising generation -- fed by jihadi propaganda on the internet and a leftwing worldview which essentially bolsters the Salaafist argument that America is the cause of the world's misery-- is actually sympathetic to the very thing which caused them to flee.