ISIS Exposed: Beheadings, Slavery, and the Hellish Reality of Radical Islam
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Authors: Erick Stakelbeck
Tags: #Political Science, #Terrorism, #Religion, #Islam, #General, #Political Ideologies, #Radicalism
Copyright © 2015 by Erick Stakelbeck
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.
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First ebook edition © 2015
ISBN 978-1-62157-389-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stakelbeck, Erick.
ISIS Exposed : beheadings, slavery, and the hellish reality of radical Islam / Erick Stakelbeck.
pages cm
1.
IS (Organization) 2.
Terrorism--Religious aspects--Islam. 3.
Security, International. 4.
Middle East--Politics and government--1945-
I. Title.
HV6431.S687 2015
956.05’4--dc23
2015003260
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To my mom, Agnes. Thank you for a lifetime of love, patience, support, and understanding and for teaching me to trust in the Lord.
CONTENTS
The Islamic State of Minnesota
Hell Awaits: Welcome to the Islamic State
Target America: Why You Should Care about ISIS
Heartland Horror: The American Recruits
Jihadi Cool: Hip-Hoppin’ and Head-Choppin’
London Falling: The Battle for Britain
Amsterdamned: ISIS over Europe
America Fiddles and the World Burns
THE ISLAMIC STATE OF MINNESOTA
“WELCOME TO LITTLE MOGADISHU.”
I motioned out the car window toward a steady procession of Somali women covered in Islamic garb walking up and down the street, carrying shopping bags.
“This must be it,” my cameraman, Ian, agreed.
We pulled over to get the lay of the land. Groups of men congregated outside a gritty strip of Somali-owned businesses on one side of the street, while Riverside Plaza, a densely packed cluster of high-rise apartment buildings populated mainly by low-income immigrants from Somalia, occupied the other side.
As Ian and I strolled the streets of Cedar-Riverside—or “Little Mogadishu,” as it’s known to locals—capturing footage for a series of TV reports, I wondered how many Minnesotans realized that this neighborhood in the shadow of downtown Minneapolis was the “center of the nation’s largest concentration of Somalis.”
1
Or that the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and
neighboring St. Paul, were home to over a hundred thousand Somalis,
2
more than any metropolitan area in North America.
More important, I wondered how many Americans knew that these two cities nestled in the frozen tundra of the upper Midwest, in a prosperous state that annually ranks among the nation’s best for quality of life, had become the number one terrorist breeding ground in the United States—beating out New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and even Dearborn, Michigan, home to the country’s largest Arab-American population and a known hotbed of support for the terror group Hezbollah.
3
Frosty Minneapolis–St. Paul holds the dubious distinction of being America’s Jihad Central—thanks in no small part to its large Somali immigrant communities in neighborhoods like Little Mogadishu, which have proven fertile ground for terrorist recruiters.
Since 2007, dozens of young Somali men and women from the Twin Cities have used their U.S. passports to travel overseas and join Islamic terrorist organizations. The first wave departed for Somalia to join the al Qaeda–linked group al-Shabaab. Most never returned home, and some have been confirmed dead—including a Minneapolis man named Shirwa Ahmed who became the first successful American suicide bomber when he blew himself up as part of a coordinated attack in northern Somalia that killed thirty people in October 2008.
4
The destination of choice for aspiring
mujahideen
(holy warriors) from Minnesota changed around 2012, as the Syrian Civil War became the prime magnet for jihadists around the world. One organization in particular has captured their imagination—and allegiance—in an unprecedented way: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. Also sometimes referred to as ISIL—or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant—and by the Arabic moniker “Daesh,” the terror group originally grew out of an al Qaeda franchise that had fought against U.S. forces in Iraq. Employing a lethal mix of brutal violence, battlefield prowess, fanatical ideology, and social media savvy, ISIS blazed its way across large swathes of Syria and
Iraq in rapid and stunning fashion on its way to declaring a caliphate, or Islamic State. As we’ll see throughout this book, ISIS may be the most powerful terrorist movement in history, boasting tens of thousands of foot soldiers (and countless more sympathizers) and threatening not only the Middle East but also the United States and Europe in ways that are profound and unprecedented.
Look no further than Minneapolis and St. Paul. As of this writing, at least fifteen residents of the Twin Cities reportedly have traveled to the Middle East to join ISIS.
5
All but one of these American terrorists—a thirty-three-year-old African American convert named Douglas McCain who was killed fighting alongside the group in Syria in August 2014—were of Somali descent.
6
The list includes Abdirahmaan Muhumed, a twenty-nine-year-old Minneapolis resident who died in the same battle as McCain.
7
Before leaving Minnesota to join ISIS, Muhumed, who was the father of nine children, worked at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where he cleaned jetliners for Delta Air Lines. Muhumed reportedly “had unfettered access to jetliners at the airport, which handles 90,000 passengers a day. He also had access to the tarmac and special security clearance to other parts of the airport.”
8
How nice. If Muhumed was able to obtain not only a job but security clearances at a major American airport, one wonders how many more aspiring ISIS terrorists have been able to do the same.
As I sat at an outdoor café in the shadow of Little Mogadishu with Bob Fletcher, who for sixteen years served as sheriff of Ramsey County, which includes the city of St. Paul, he explained how terror recruiters have made inroads into the local Somali community. Fletcher retired from the St. Paul police force in 2013 and now heads the Center for Somalia History Studies, where he works with Somali community leaders to counter Islamic radicalization in their neighborhoods. He told me that the emergence of ISIS and its declaration of a new caliphate in the heart of the Middle East has been a game changer:
What’s happened is that since July of 2012, we haven’t had any kids leave to go join al-Shabaab, but we have had several leave now to go join ISIS. And the reason is that ISIS controls land; they control cities. They are in a position to be able to recruit differently than al-Shabaab. Al-Shabaab, all they have to promise is, “come join us in the jungles while we ambush and plot our terrorist attacks.” But what ISIS is selling now is the opportunity to build something, to build a new society, and that is very, very exciting for a lot of kids, to be a part of something new and special—to have some sense of self-worth.
9
In June 2014, a twenty-year-old man and a nineteen-year-old woman—both Somali Americans who attended the Al Farooq Youth & Family Center mosque in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington—disappeared. They are now thought to be in Syria.
10
Interestingly enough, the same mosque was also frequented by an Egyptian-American radical named Amir Meshal who allegedly preached jihad to young Somalis there. Meshal was no stranger to Somalia, a fact that may have helped him in his interactions with young Somali-Americans at Al Farooq. In 2007, he was arrested and questioned by counterterrorism agents in Kenya and “accused of having received weapons training in an Al-Qaida camp and of serving as a translator for the terrorist group’s leaders in Somalia.”
11
The charges against Meshal were eventually dropped, and he seems to have kept a low profile until resurfacing in Minnesota sporting a BMW and plenty of cash—according to his reputation around the Al Farooq mosque.
Whether the two missing young people came under Meshal’s influence is unclear; once the mosque’s leadership learned of his “extremist views,” it contacted local police and obtained a no-trespassing order essentially banning him from Al Farooq; and, as of this writing, Meshal’s whereabouts are unknown. Whether he was working as a terror recruiter or not (some have even speculated that he may have been an FBI mole), Meshal’s alleged
activities at Al Farooq show, at the very least, how a charismatic radical can influence impressionable young minds.
12
In his intensive work with the Somali community, former Ramsey County sheriff Fletcher has heard story after story of how young Twin Cities Somalis were lured to jihad overseas, to Syria and elsewhere. He provided me a fascinating—and chilling—firsthand glimpse of how the terrorist recruitment process works for ISIS and other Islamic terror groups on American soil: