We Somalis must fight terror

Danish citizen climbed the third December of this year into a ceremony for newly qualified doctors in Mogadishu in Somalia. He was disguised as a woman and had his face hidden behind a burqa. The man was a father and established member of the Danish society, but had been radicalized in the Copenhagen suburb where he lived and moved with his family to Mogadishu in order to perform a terrible crime.
When he blew himself up - in a suicide bomb -, he also killed three ministers and young Somalis who fought years to become doctors and save lives in their homeland. I wish I could say that he was an exception. I can not. Somalis in both Denmark and Sweden and other countries are recruited to fight in Somalia for the terrorist group Al-Shabaab. In Sweden lived a man I knew previously - Imam Fuad Mohamed Khalaf. He lived for many years in Rinkeby and had Swedish citizenship. I knew him as a friendly, football-loving man, intelligent and wise. He lives no longer in Sweden. He is in Somalia, known as Fuad Shangole and is now one of the top leaders of Al-Shabaab, the Islamist terrorist organization. On the Internet sites there are pictures of when he condemns four alleged thieves to get their hands and feet amputated. He advocates not only the Sharia, he and his peers practice it also. I'm a Somali living in Sweden, a country I feel deep gratitude for. Here I was given a safe haven, protection and security after having been forced to flee the chaos that erupted in Somalia for almost 20 years ago. When I look at my country and my compatriots in Sweden and in other parts of the western world, I lament. I lament my people, a peaceful people, a proud and hardworking people. I grieve when I see how extremism grows among some fellow citizens. We have always been Muslims, but never extremists, I can not understand how that has taken hold of my people. My mother never had a burqa, our women were not draped in Arabic piece of fabric. We were and ought to be Muslim in our way, not as in Afghanistan. We Somalis are a group that had difficulties in coping life here in Sweden. You just have to admit. Unemployment is high and therefore exclusion. Despair over the collapse of our country, cultural differences and the inability of the Swedish government to deal with us Somalis are some explanations. It is as if we close ourselves within ourselves and seek solace in a form of Islam that is really foreign to us. We have been made passive, we have given up. Despite the great struggle ahead of us - for integration in Sweden and peace and reconciliation in Somalia. It is deplorable to see how my people, too many, have imported clan thinking to Sweden and to other Western countries. It is deplorable to see how the Islamist extremist groups undisturbed can work in democratic countries like Sweden and Denmark. We, in the moderate group of exiled Somalis, who want to create a democracy of our country are certainly many. But if I should be self-critical, we may not have organized ourselves as well as extremists. We may not also get the support from the Swedish state as one would expect. Why is Swedish authority adapting for instance to the clan thinking? When they call upon the Somalis to discuss, the Somalis represent different clans. But yet it was clan thinking that caused all the conflicts that forced us into exile from our country. Somalis act to peer pressure. Often based on fear. But when the terrible event arose on 3 December it was as if the people of Somalia had enough. People took to the streets and protested against the attack. People did not dare before. But now it was felt that it was enough. I hope and think Somalis in Sweden realize the same thing - that enough is enough! What we Somalis need is education; education for democracy and human rights, education on how to rebuild a country that now lacks all form of state infrastructure. We have had enough of terror and isolation. We can no longer sit in our clan-based Somali organizations with activities ... yes what? ... their aim in not anyway to open the door for integration or the creation of democratically trained members. At the same time, we also need the support from Sweden. Without support our people will have great difficulties to rise up again.
Yassin Mahi Mallin he is the Chairman of the SSUP lives in Sweden.