This Minnesota Post article Abubakar As-Saddique Mosque in Minneapolis: draws attention to the domestic and international Arab Muslim media spotlight thrown on the Abubakar As-Saddique Mosque following the FBI investigations and recent Senate HSGAC hearing disclosures about the 'missing' Somali youths. Frankly it wreaks of taqiyya.
Note the sub-text headline: "Abubakar As-Saddique Mosque in Minneapolis: A victim of the politics of war in East Africa?" I wonder if this Mosque was included in the Mapping Sharia project findings and there is evidence of Sharia compliance extremism. If so, it would be interesting to see its 'rating'.
What should you make of the spin in this Minnesota Post piece? Should you blame the 'disappeared' Somali youths on Al Shabaab website internet chatter? Is it a reflection of intense Inter-clan rivalry in Minneapolis? Or should we blame it on the Ethiopian (read Christian), invasion that allegedly destabilized the failed Somali state giving rise to a new wave of 'humanitarian refugees' in 2007? Is it the alleged newly found 'nationalist' fervor among emigre Somali Muslims? Or can we attribute it to recruiting by a fundamentalist Imam at the Mosque, Sheik Abdirahman Ahmed, whom the FBI put on a no fly list? There is a whole lot to swallow here.
Note these excerpts:
U.S. authorities blocked the mosque's imam, Sheik Abdirahman Ahmed, from traveling to Saudi Arabia in November for the spiritual pilgrimage known as the hajj. Further, the FBI has questioned dozens of people who worship at the mosque, and some have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury.
But no one from the mosque's administration has been accused or even questioned by the FBI, Hurre said. Indeed, the mosque's leaders sent a letter to the Senate committee complaining that they had not been given a chance to testify and defend themselves.
The FBI would not comment on the details of its ongoing investigation into the missing Somali men. But E.K. Wilson, special agent with the Minneapolis office, did say that the investigation is "not directed against … any particular mosque."
The accusations
Osman Ahmed turned rumor into
sworn testimony (PDF) at a
U.S. Senate hearing this month when he accused Abubakar's leaders of brainwashing the men and trying to scare their families from talking about their disappearance.
Ahmed's nephew, Burhan Hassan, is one of the missing. The uncle was testifying on behalf of several families before the
U. S. Senate Committee on
Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
"We have been painted as bad people within the Somali community by the mosque management. We have been threatened for just speaking out," Ahmed said in prepared testimony.
"They tell parents that if they report their missing kid to the FBI, that FBI will send the parents to Guantanamo Jail," he continued. "Public threats were issued to us at Abu-Bakar Assidique for simply speaking with CNN and
Newsweek."
The response
I read Ahmed's accusations to Omar Hurre, executive director of the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center which includes the mosque.
"Lies...very clear lies," Hurre said.
He insisted leaders at the mosque never have preached radicalism or violence.
"The parents initially came to us when they missed their kids and asked us what was going on," he said. "But we never told any parent that you need to report your son to the government or you do not need to report. We never directed any parent what to do about those missing kids, let alone tell them you will end up in Guantanamo."
Why take such a neutral stance on a matter that urgent? He said that Abubaker has deliberately avoided incendiary Somali politics, especially since 2006 when U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia and fought Islamic groups for control.
Hurre sat down to talk with me in a wedding hall that was lavishly draped in white tulle and decorated with ornate sofas and chandeliers.
The mosque paid $1.7 million cash for the building and spent $500,000 setting up the wedding hall, prayer rooms and other renovations, he said. Now it has an $800,000 school under construction. With a staff of seven counting him, he said, it relies on "tons of volunteers."
Hurre laughed at claims that the mosque sends money to Al-Shabaab.
"This money is collected from the community here, and it serves the community here," he said. "It doesn't go anywhere else."
Omar Jamal, a leading critic of Abubakar, doesn't believe that.
"They were basically doing fundraising for Islamists in Somalia," said Jamal, who heads the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul.
Then there's Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) who blames it on inter-clan rivalry and former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) on the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia allegedly creating a flood of new Somali humanitarian refugees:
Politics and clan
U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., said he is surprised the mosque has been targeted: "I've met with the leadership there. They talked a message of inclusion, a message of peace, a message of community uplift ... how they want a better way for the young people in the community."
Ellison said he suspects some of the accusations are "informed by inter-clan rivalry."
Abdisalam Adam agrees.
"I see politics and clan playing a role in this," said Adam, who directs Dar Al-Hijrah, another Minneapolis mosque and community center. "We as a community could have done a lot better to handle this conflict. It is not at all fair to put the Abubakar mosque under this kind of blame."
As a reporter occasionally covering Somalis, I've seen the fiery politics, too.
You didn't have to go to a mosque to hear the uproar in the Twin Cities after Ethiopian troops marched into Somalia in 2006. I heard it in street rallies and in picket lines outside the office of then-senator Norm Coleman.
Coleman apparently heard it too. In April, 2007, he sent a letter to the State Department expressing concern over violence in Mogadishu that had driven more than 100,000 people from their homes to live "under trees with no food, water, or sanitary facilities."
As I said, this Minnesota Post article is only too PC and doesn't do enough to investigate the questionable nature of this largest Mosque in the Minneapolis Somali emigre community.
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