The gripes of wrath

We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Somalis have been immigrating to Minnesota for more than twenty years now. They have taken advantage of all the services that our state and local institutions offer. They have been welcomed with open arms, in Minnesota’s characteristic style.

Yet Minnesota’s Somali community (“Minnesotans”) have proved the most fertile ground in the United States for the recruitment of terrorists by foreign terrorist organizations in Africa and the Middle East. We are concerned that they may choose to return “home” to Minnesota if they don’t get killed first. What is to be done?

The Somalis are Muslims and Islam is central to the threat that they pose. One somehow doubts that liberal bromides including after-school programs for Somali teen-agers is the ticket. Nevertheless, Somalis speaking on behalf of the Twin Cities Somali community have taken a show me the money approach to the issue of loyalty and terrorism (as I wrote last week here).

If Islam is the problem, after-school programs aren’t the solution.

Minneapolis school board member Mohamud Noor is a Somali who dreams of higher office. He turned up at the forum with a set of gripes that make up the alleged “root causes” loved by liberals: “When so many young people are looking for opportunities and they’re denied…because of their color, my dear friends, there is no simple solution,” Noor said. “When we’re trying to find simple solutions to a complex situation, we’re not going anywhere.” You can say that again!

Today’s Star Tribune takes another pass at the problem, this one previously market-tested by the president himself. That Islamic terrorism you’ve been hearing so much about — it’s not Islamic.

The linked article by Jean Hopfensperger is worse than one would reasonably expect unless one is familiar with Hopfensperger’s work. She used to be the Star Tribune’s welfare reporter. I say she was the world’s worst reporter on the beat, but that doesn’t do her justice because the competition was so slim. Her work is more in the nature of lazy public relations than journalism.

Prominently featured in today’s story by Hopfensperger is the Muslim American Society and Asad Zaman. The Muslim American Society is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood and is waging its own jihad against the United States. See this Discover the Networks post on the MAS. Hopfensperger treats MAS as a trusted source.

Zaman is the executive director of the local MAS chapter. He was the moving force behind the late Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy in suburban St. Paul, an Islamic school illegally run with public funds as a charter school. Our friend Kathy Kersten blew the whistle on Zaman and TiZA as a Star Tribune metro columnist.

In 2011 I took a look back at Zaman and his work at TiZA in “The lonesome death of TiZA.” In my opinion, Zaman should be reflecting on what he did at TiZA in lockdown somewhere.

Hopfensperger also turns to CAIR. Far be it from her to point out to readers that CAIR was founded as an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and is itself part of the jihad. Hopfensperger’s story continues her tradition of providing public relations for dummies.

Reporter John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times also takes up the story in “Somali American fights militant Islamist recruiters in U.S. heartland.” Glionna features Minneapolis’s own Abdirizak Bihi, who also turned up in the MinnPost story on the recent Minneapolis forum addressing terrorist recruitment. He’s an after-school program, show me the money guy. He has in his favor that he has previously been attacked by CAIR. That suggests he is on to something, but I doubt that he is even getting warm. Glionna reports:

[Bihi’s] homegrown mission against militant Islam centers on helping youths play sports as a way to resist savvy recruiters whose appeals have become sophisticated. They flood Twitter and special smartphone apps that take conversations offline. “The concept is to create a positive alternative to these extremists,” Bihi said. “I’m in competition with these recruiters. They want my kids.”

The task isn’t easy: The region’s 50,000-member Somali community faces high unemployment, with few after-school programs. Bihi says that his neighborhood center has one after-class program for a community of 7,500 Somalis — with more refugees arriving every day.

Federal officials are calling for new ways to fight this latest national security threat among growing concern that youths indoctrinated by extremists could return to plan terrorist acts on U.S. soil. The U.S. Justice Department recently unveiled a pilot program that enlists social and mental health workers, religious leaders and police to thwart Islamist group recruiters.

Democratic Sen. Al Franken has called for such efforts to focus on his home state of Minnesota, where foreign groups have drawn a large proportion of their recruits, so much so that the Twin Cities — along with Los Angeles and Boston — will host the program.

If Islam is the problem, after-school programs aren’t the solution, and if Al Franken is the answer, we’re asking the wrong question.

In today’s New York Times, Eric Schmitt gives us more of the gripes of wrath school of reporting on the problem presented by Somalis in the United States, this one with a focus on Dublin, Ohio. These Somalis we’re worried about — they’ve got their issues with us:

[W]hen Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson showed up recently at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center here to offer a sympathetic ear and federal assistance, he faced a litany of grievances from a group of mostly Muslim leaders and advocates.

They complained of humiliating border inspections by brusque federal agents, F.B.I. sting operations that wrongly targeted Muslim citizens as terrorists and a foreign policy that leaves President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in place as a magnet for extremists.

“Our relationship has to be built on trust, but the U.S. government hasn’t given us very many reasons to build up that trust,” said Omar Saqr, 25, the cultural center’s youth coordinator.

Here’s an idea. How about halting the admission of Somalis to the United States until we have a handle on this life-and-death issue of national security?

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