Saturday, December 6, 2008

If the story of how an Islamic group denied Islamic burial to the Mumbai bombers last Monday was so important, why isn't this one? If the Mumbai burial story was evidence that at least some Muslims reject the jihad ideology (which it may indeed have been), isn't this story evidence that at least some Muslims, right here in the United States, accept it? And shouldn't that be something to which at least some people are paying attention?
When the Muslim Jama Masjid Trust refused the Mumbai jihadists an Islamic burial, it made the news everywhere. Muqtedar Khan brought it up to me on the BBC the other day, and in response I pointed out that this gesture would have had much greater significance if not for the fact that Islamic jihad terrorists who have carried out suicide attacks and other attacks against Israel have been treated as heroes and given Islamic burials on numerous occasions.

But in any case, will this story get the same attention from the people who were so heartened by the denial of Muslim burial to the jihadists in India? After all, this is a story about an Islamic jihad-martyrdom bomber being given a Muslim burial in the United States -- and if that isn't enough, add in the little fact that the FBI seems to have pitched in (at taxpayer expense?) to bring his remains back into the country.

BURNSVILLE, Minn. (FOX 9)—One of the five men suspected to be a suicide bomber who killed himself and 29 others last October in Somalia, was buried Wednesday at a Burnsville Cemetery.
FOX 9 has learned DNA tests have confirmed Shirwa Ahmed was one of five suicide bombers who killed himself and 29 others last October in northern Somalia.
He is also a Minnesotan and a naturalized U.S. citizen.
The FBI helped return Ahmed's remains to his family.
At a Twin Cities cemetery in Burnsville Wednesday afternoon, the suspected suicide bomber was laid to rest.
Shirwa Ahmed, 27, was given a traditional Muslim burial.
Family and friends did not wish to talk about the circumstances of his death.
Community activist Omar Jamal is one of the few who will.
“Honestly I look at him seriously as a victim and not as a criminal, I think of him as a young victim," says Jamal....
Uh huh. Meanwhile, we learned last week that Shirwa Ahmed may have been recruiting jihad terrorists among Muslims in Minneapolis:

An investigation into terrorism recruiting among young Somalis leads to Minnesota. Shirwa Ahmed of Minneapolis is believed to have killed himself in a suicide bombing in Somalia last month. However, investigators fear he may have left a deadly legacy of recruiting other young Somalis to leave Minnesota and join terrorist groups in Somalia.
His high school pictures show a clean cut young man and neighbors at his Minneapolis apartment say lately 26-year-old Shirwa Ahmed had a thick beard.
"He doesn't talk to people," one neighbor said. [...]
In recent months a dozen young Somalis, some as young as 17, have left the Twin Cities, apparently headed back to Somalia where a civil war rages.
Omar Jamal, a local Somali activist, said the families of the young men are frightened.
"The families didn't think, it never crossed their mind, that their kids would have gone to Somalia either to blow themselves up or to join the holy war," said Jamal.
Sources tell WCCO the group suspected of recruiting the young Twin Cities men is know as al-Itihadd al-Islamiya, or AIAI, an organization with known ties to Al-Qaeda. [...]
Canjemi said the Twin Cities Somali community has been a ripe recruiting ground for AIAI for years.
"I believe this recruiting continues on a daily basis," he said.
According to national reports Al Qaeda is enjoying resurgence in Somalia. The FBI said the U.S. government continues to be involved in an active outreach to young Somalis to keep them from being courted by radical groups.
Which may be why the FBI helped bring Ahmed's body back to the States. But will the kuffar's ever-present willingness to help really keep young Somali Muslims in Minneapolis from joining the jihad?

No comments: