For a group of students who often met at the Carlson School of Management, on the University of Minnesota campus, the motto "Nowhere but here" seemed especially fitting.
They had fled Somalia as small boys, escaping a catastrophic civil war. They came of age as refugees in Minneapolis, becoming naturalized U.S. citizens and embracing basketball, the prom, hip-hop and the Mall of America. By the time they reached college, their dreams seemed within grasp: One planned to become a doctor; another, an entrepreneur. But last year, in a study room on the first floor of Carlson, the men turned their energies to a different enterprise. "Why are we sitting around in America, doing nothing for our people?" Mohamoud Hassan, a skinny, 23-year-old engineering major, pressed his friends. In November, Hassan and two other students dropped out of college and left for Somalia, the homeland they barely knew. Word soon spread that they had joined the Shabaab, a militant Islamist group aligned with al-Qaida that is fighting to overthrow the fragile Somali government. The students are among more than 20 young Americans who are the focus of what may be the most significant domestic terrorism investigation since 9/11. One of the Minnesotans, Shirwa Ahmed, blew himself up in Somalia in October, becoming the first known American suicide bomber. The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Mueller, has said Ahmed was "radicalized in his hometown in ..ore,,http://www.twincities.com/news/ci_12818257
A Call to Jihad From Somalia, Answered in America
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/12somalis.html?_r=1
No comments:
Post a Comment