Banning Headwear on State IDs: Safety First

A Minnesota state legislature is considering introducing a bill that would prohibit headwear on state issued IDs on grounds of national security. A Muslim outcry erupted even before the bill got to the floor for a committee hearing simply because it is in opposition to “what God told us to do”, as a young Somali activist, Suban Khalif, puts it.

Ok, I don’t get it. As far as I’m concerned, safety is of a top priority. What is the harm for removing headgear for a quick 30-second photo ID shootout if it enhances our security? I’m not naïve. I understand the moral implications this issue presents for Muslim women, specifically. Muslims can and should adopt progressivism and compromise for the sake of national security, however.

I don’t get this line too: “The Muslim community points out that Jews, Christians and other religions would also be affected if the bill passed”.
Could someone, please, explain to me how this bill would affect Christian and Jews Americans. I cannot think of seeing a mainstream American woman wearing a head veil.

Deficiencies in the Somali Parenting Scheme

Here are a couple of examples of deficiencies in the Somali parenting scheme.

The Somali culture, in general, discourages children to engage their parents in a constructive dialogue, let alone challenge them. It is culturally inappropriate for children to answer or to disagree (respectfully or disrespectfully) with their parents or elders. Children are supposed to listen only. They know nothing. Parents and elders know everything. Whenever a child attempts to voice an opinion, he/she is accused of “talking back”. Talking back is sacrilege. In the process, the child’s opportunity to develop critical consciousness, which requires intercommunication as opposed to receiving communiqués, and a voice is suppressed. I would encourage Somali parents to start conversing with their children. Most importantly, to listen to their voices.

Somali parents routinely swear at their children: balaayo kugu dhacdey, stubid, jinni kula tag, belo kuqaadey, etc. Consequently, children also begin swearing. Somali parents must start curbing their swearing tendencies if they want to raise disciplined children.

Seal (pronounced as siil)

A Somali female friend of mine instructs a business training class for upcoming Somali entrepreneurs. At the end of the four weeklong course, she distributes certificates of accomplishment stamped with a gold seal featuring the business training center’s logo. Seal is pronounced as SIIL, the Somali word for vagina—phonetics at work. Hearing SIIL, some of the Somali men, due to their lower proficiency level in English, thought the instructor is generously awarding them with great sex for their success. Their hearts pounded with excitement. Others noticed that the words are phonetically parallel but distinctive in meaning. The noises that run deep inside their head were saying, “it must mean something else”. When the instructor reiterated, they felt weird and out of the norm to hear the name of the organ that is every man’s fantasy.

Discussing sex and sex life candidly is a taboo within the Somali culture. It is a culture that treats (not always but often) sex as a means of reproduction, not of attaining pleasure and emotional attachment. Or one that puts more emphasis on the former than the latter.

All the Somali clichés in one post

Here are a few of the recycled talking points that the Abubakar Asadique Islamic Center (AAIC) disseminates to its surrogates in defence from any accusations related to the current Somali Minnesota predicament. All the clichés in one post.

1- We are all Muslims and Somalis. Therefore, we must think and act alike with one mindset (hint: essentialism).
2- The accusations are politically and tribally motivated
3- The media is the problem (see the Foxnews9 clip)
4- The media is being overtaken by few individuals who don’t represent the views of the Somali community (hint: Omar Jamal)
5- The underlying intent is to destroy and discredit Muslim mosques and centers (the missing men rhyme is merely a scapegoat)
6- We provide valuable services for the youth and the community at large
7- The kids were recruited from the streets and not from the mosques (to the contrary, most of the youngsters were either college or high school students or working, or both)
8- There are those who want to exploit Somali plight for political reasons
9- Our problems stem from lack of a unified leadership among the Somali community; and
10- Lack of a united Somali community organization with one voice. In other words, the community is paralyzed by the existence of so many different community organizations and advocates with different visions and services. Therefore, we need to unite them all and form one community organization with one voice.

Somali Christmas Party in Minneapolis

Last night I attended a Somali Christmas party. Yummy-tasting food and desserts, old-school music and dance highlighted the festivity. A well-decorated Christmas tree lit the room. Handsome men and beautiful women of all ages ready to mingle packed the room. At the door, a gorgeous young woman ushered us in with a cordial greeting. Inside, my eyes were exposed to some of the old recycled faces and strangers. For some, it was an ideal social gathering to meet potential mates. For others, a fun place to relieve themselves of the gloominess of the winter. Whatever intentions there were, everyone had a pleasurable evening.

Only a handful of them were dancing conservatively in a circle, moving their bodies moderately with no booty shaking and body contact, entering the ring one after another and sometimes in duo. O yeah, there was a senior citizen woman who exceptionally swung her booty with great excitement. I give her an A+

There were no alcoholic beverages served as anticipated from Somali gatherings. Paradoxically though it may seem, if I may extrapolate an observed trend from smaller circles of trust, majority of the attendees, men and women alike, drink. However, they prefer to drink covertly and are uncomfortable with exposure to the public eye as the ensuing social backlash is severe. I don’t blame them. I fault but the culture.

Things were quite different at the Shiisha place on Central Ave, our next destination. Young Somali women puff on a smoke pipe liberally and with a great pleasure in the presence of Somali men. How much we have progressed. It is said that social progress is measured by how much social progress women have attained. Somali women endured (the majority of them continue to endure) centuries old misogynistic treatments at the hands of male dominated societies. Thanks to America, smoking shiisha is now an acceptable social norm for the female sex. Free at last!
---RELEVANT POSTS: Young Somali Minnesotans and Soul Mate Searching

Blaming on Non-existent External Factors on the Recruitment of young Jihadists

Abdirahman Aynte asks: Are jihadist groups luring Minnesota Somalis back to fight?
I say: you betja, yeah.

Before these teenagers went missing, youth programs at mosques went minimally scrutinized, complained some community leaders. To address this, Adam, the Daral Hijra Center director, urges mosque leaders to introduce greater oversight on youth activities. “Our image as a community is tainted,” he said. “Instead of pointing fingers at our mosques and religious leaders, we need to repair our image. We need to minimize the influence of external factors by increasing oversight.”

Minimize the influence of external factors? This is absolutely baloney and a diversion. There is no such thing as external factors. The factors that are luring young men to Jihad activities are already built into the Abubakar mosques’ dynamics. The matter should be framed as to how can we progressively modify and monitor mosques’ and Madrasas’ Islamic curriculum.

Young Somali Minnesotans and Soul Mate Searching (Updated)

I attended a so-called Somali comedy show by Oday Cabdule on Saturday night. The proceeds will go to charity, the organizers claim. Hopefully it turns out that way. The event took place at Minneapolis Convention Center on 12/20/08 between 9-12midnight.

Most people were there ostensibly to contribute, but in fact to find soul mates. There were many singles. Due to cultural reasons, some Somalis prefer to keep their mate hunting intentions vague. Others are reluctant to appear desperate in their pursuit for a partner-in-love though they are. Consequently, it is convenient for them to join or form pseudo-cause-driven (depending on the founders’ true intentions) ad hoc committees. It's worth noting that some of them have both objectives in mind: the explicit and the implicit one: to assist the needy ones and simultaneously to link hearts. On rare occasions, they kill two birds with one stone.

Outside, in the hallways, they gave each other the looks and the smiles, and gazed on each other's shining high foreheads common to Somalis; each waiting to see whether the other will summon up the courage to ask him/her out while limiting conversations to mundane matters.

After a great deal of indecision about how to move the night forward without making it appear like a blind date, a group of about a dozen (myself included) moved on to a popular rendezvous for after-party breakfast goers in uptown Minneapolis. There, they devoured their food, chitchatted, laughed, bored each other to death, took up their bill to the counter and departed. I cannot tell who got whose contact. I wish them all luck, however.
Me wondering how many of them hooked up.
---RELEVANT POSTS: Somali Christmas Party in Minneapolis

How Kids are Turned into Jihadists

A former Somali terrorist who is now a resident of Minnesota, Yusuf Shaba, has some fascinating insights on the evolution of radicalism and how Jihadists penetrate young Muslims’ minds only to become like them. The missing young Muslim Somalis of Minnesota is a case in point.

Yusuf Shaba, who writes about Islamic ideology and radicalism for the Warsan Times, a Somali-English monthly newspaper published in Minneapolis, says he decided to speak out about what he considers Islamic indoctrination at Minneapolis mosques because he doesn't want his sons to follow the same path he did. Shaba, 34, joined Al Ittihad Al-Islami (Islamic Union) at age 16 and was wounded at age 19 in Somalia. Al Ittihad was Somalia's largest Islamic terrorist group in the 1990s. Shaba says jihadists generally recruit young men from among two groups: those shunned by their families because they've turned to drugs, gangs or alcohol; and the sons of families who forbid exposure to Western culture and allow them to socialize only at the mosque. Shaba says he and his three teenage sons attended a program two months ago at Abubaker As-Saddique Islamic Center, where a former Somali warrior sat in a circle with other young people and delivered a passionate recitation of his experiences during the Somali civil war.

Some mosques also screen videos about the war in Afghanistan and about Muslim victims of perceived injustices in such places as Nigeria and the Palestinian territories. "They give them all the grievances that Osama Bin Laden has," Shaba says. "They talk about nothing but jihad and it's the best thing that can happen to a Muslim." When the brainwashing is done and the teachers are confident students will do anything asked of them, the teachers give them tazkia, or clearance, to get more specialized training in the United States or abroad, Shaba says. "The people who trained us encouraged us to not get married, to sever our ties with our families, so that when the mission comes we won't worry about family." Shaba says similar activities occur at Minnesota Da'wah Institute in St. Paul, another mosque. Sheik Mahamud Hassan, the institute's imam, says nothing like that is happening as his mosque. "It's liars," he says. "I'm not missing any members."
---READ MORE---

The Shoe-thrower is Awarded with Hand in Marriage

Middle East’s Muntazer Al-zaidi ‘the shoe-thrower’, America’s irritating Joe ‘the plumber’ counterpart, was eulogized widely in the Arab world for his weird but brave act for throwing his shoes, one after the other, to president Bush. He received the highest accolade when one Arab pronounced that his daughter and the shoe-thrower be joined in matrimony. “I find nothing more valuable than my daughter to offer to him”. In other words, his daughter is his most valuable property.

The Origins and Purpose of Life

By Lisa Zyga

In a recent study called “Why did life emerge?”, two scientists, son and father Arto Annila of the University of Helsinki and Erkki Annila of the Finnish Forest Research Institute, offer some insight into the general driving force of life’s origins in terms of thermodynamics. As they explain, all organisms are composed of molecules that assemble together via numerous chemical reactions. Just as heat flows from hot to cold, these molecules obey the universal tendency to diminish energy differences, so that the most likely chemical reactions are those in which energy flows “downhill” toward a stationary state, or chemical equilibrium.

Although the researchers don’t speculate on the specific chemical reactions that created life, they explain that the molecules involved most likely underwent a series of more and more complex reactions to minimize mutual energy differences between matter on Earth and with respect to high-energy radiation from Sun. The process eventually advanced so far that it cumulated into such sophisticated functional structures that could be called living.

---READ MORE---

Teen disappears: 'Mom, I'm in Somalia'

CNN has the story of Burhan Hassan, 17, one of the young missing Somalis from Minnesota possibly enticed to go fight Jihad in Somalia. The most concern now by U.S. officials is the ramification of their return to U.S. soil after acquiring terrorism training. Omar Jamal seems to know: “I don’t see anything that would prevent from those kids to carry out suicide bombs right here [in the United States].”


Hassan's mother speaks out:


---RELEVANT POSTS:
The Somali American suicide bomber, a victim or a villain?
Islamism and college campuses
Do Terrorists deserve a proper Muslim burial?

I was a fanatic...I know their thinking, says former radical Islamist

A former radical Islamist writes:

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians. The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain. For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

--READ MORE--

Do Terrorists deserve a proper Muslim burial?

The controversy and resentment surrounding the proper Muslim burial given to the Somali Minnesotan suicide bomber, Shirwa Ahmed, last week is simmering within the conservative blogs and some commentary sites. Ahmed was buried at a Muslim cemetery in Burnsville, Minnesota after the FBI shipped his corpse back to Minnesota. Fox news reported that Ahmed was neither hailed as a hero nor was he condemned as a killer but buried and the last rites performed on him as an ordinary Muslim.

This causes a PR nightmare for Somalis and Muslims in general. Ahmed, an unrepentant terrorist, took innocent lives down with him. Thus, giving him a proper burial sends the wrong signals that the community isn’t doing enough to condemn terrorism. The Somali community would have done a great service—to mend relations with the mainstream society—for themselves had they taken a stance similar to the one the Indian Muslims adopted. Influential Indian Muslim clerics refused to give burial service to the nine gunned down Mumbai terrorists.

The men are not true followers of the Islamic faith, according to the influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre (three-hectare) Badakabrastan graveyard in downtown Mumbai.

"People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim," said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee. "Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime."

I wonder whether the Somali community believes that Ahmed was a true believer who died for an Islamic cause.

Sheikh Kalisch comes out of the closet, the fall out

A Muslim cleric is hired to train teachers to teach Islam, little did we know that he harbours doubts about the existence of prophet Muhammad. Now Muslims are boycotting, and Germany's plan to integrate the country's 3 million Muslims is in limbo.