A senior leader of al Qaeda’s affiliate in Somalia has declared jihad against neighboring Kenya for supporting the weak Somali Transitional Federal Government.

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“In our country there are three paths: you can join al-Shabaab, you can join [the government forces] or you can go abroad,” said Ismael Mohamed. “Me, I don’t have money to go away so I join al-Shabaab.”

Ismael, 21, is a typical Islamist footsoldier. He is neither a jihadi nor an extremist; he loves God and Manchester United. He is a young Muslim with an education — his English is excellent — but no opportunities in a country that has been at war for as long as he has been alive.

Civil war led to the collapse of Somalia’s last Government in 1991. The rebels then turned on one another in a fight for power. Many Somali youngsters know nothing of life without war.

Al-Shabaab’s leaders are militant nationalists and Islamic extremists but the rank-and-file fighters are hired guns, conscripts or volunteers. Ismael joined up during last year’s failed rains when food was scarce and al-Shabaab was in the ascendancy — weeks earlier it had launched a fresh offensive against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). “I didn’t have anywhere to stay or anything to do.” My friends, some of them were al-Shabaab and they would tell me that TFG is not Muslim, but al-Shabaab is Muslim,” he explained.

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The accusations arise out of a longstanding rift in the Somali community between Somali Bantus, a minority in their homeland, and the majority.

“There’s been a lot of rumors about bad blood between the different factions, said Dan Calegari of Southern New Hampshire Services. “I work with these people daily. There’s never even been any hint of religious activity. … It really comes down to animosity between different segments of the Somali population.”
….

Somali Bantus, the descendants of African slaves, are a marginalized minority in Somalia that suffered greatly during the country’s civil war. Many were evicted from their farmland by other Somalis and fled to neighboring countries. Thousands of these refugees eventually made their way to the United States.

There is a language difference between Somalis and Bantu Somalis, said Idhow, which is how the rift all started. Because some Bantu refugees were more fluent in their own tribal language than Somali, the local elders thought it best to have a group that specifically served the Somali Bantu community.

Hilariously, the folks at this website looked at this story and decided it was the sign of a left-wing conspiracy.

Last night we heard from reader Thomas in response to the Manchester Somali story I posted yesterday. He confirms for us that the Cloward-Piven strategy* to overload the welfare system with poor and angry people was well-established in radical leftwing circles 40 years ago! Thank goodness we are all catching on, I just hope it’s not too late for us.

Apparently, Cloward-Piven is to nativists what Area 51 is to the UFO people. Sadly, I’ll have to report this to my overseers back in Moscow. A black helicopter will be sent to mutilate their cattle…

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It’s a magazine article so there is lots of this:

Daphne sits along Alabama’s serene Mobile Bay, just north of the Gulf of Mexico. The town seems stopped in time. Colonial-style cottages and gazebos dot the bluffs. The wide, blacktopped streets are shaded by pecan trees and Southern maples. At dusk, the tide slaps the docks as fishermen loll, casting silhouettes against a golden sky.

But Hammami strikes his most dramatic pose silhouetted against the rubble of Somalia:

When Hammami engages in combat, he makes an impression on other militants, said a former Shabab commander, Sheikh Mohamed Sheikh Abdullahi Sheikh Mohamed. “He doesn’t blink in the face of the enemy,” said Mohamed, who recalled four battles in 2008 and 2009 in which he and Hammami took part. In combat, Hammami used a sharpshooter’s rifle, firing calmly and with precision, said Mohamed…

The author suggests with this quote from a poem that Hammami wrote when he was 12 that he is a glory-seeker:

“My reality is a bore. I wish, I want, I need the wall to fall and the monster to let me pass, the leash to snap, the chains to break.
….

“I’ve got a taste of glory, the ticket, but where is my train?”

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“It’s a small group but they have power,” said Abadirh Abdi Hussein, a 25-year-old hip-hop artist and “110-percent Muslim” who has become the best known Somali in Rinkeby because of his campaign to counter al-Shabab’s influence. “People don’t speak up against them. They don’t dare.”
….

Hussein, the hip-hop artist, said youth who were approached by al-Shabab told him they were shown videos of al-Qaida suicide bombings and urged to become jihadists in their ancestral homeland.

As his worries worsened, he started going public to Swedish media on the issue last year. Since then, resistance to the extremists has grown and last month dozens showed up for a rally against al-Shabab in Rinkeby.

The singer’s campaign has also prompted Swedish politicians to talk about the spread of extremism in immigrant suburbs, something that in the past might have drawn charges of being hostile to Muslims.

“He is a real hero,” said Nalin Pekgul, a leading politician for the opposition Social Democrats said of Hussein. Pekgul, a Kurdish immigrant, is an outspoken critic of the radicals.

But Hussein has paid a price. In September he was attacked on the street by a masked man who slashed his forehead with a sharp object – he has an inch-long scar – and warned him in Somali to “leave us alone or we’ll kill you.” Police haven’t found a suspect.

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Having consolidated its power in the Deep South along the Kenyan border, Shabaab has launched a terror offensive in the northern self-declared state of Puntland. It is a Mexican drug gang-style campaign, with an aggressive string of targeted assassinations and low profile bombings in a Somali region that had been relatively safe and prosperous.
….

In its quest to overrun Puntland, Shabaab will have to confront two strong groups. The first is Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a, a pro-government Somali Islamist militia that follows the religious tradition of Sufism. Shabaab has targeted Sufis for practicing a different strain of Islam, and has destroyed Sufi shrines, cemeteries, and other symbols. Ahlu Sunna Wal Jama’a is strong in the central regions of the country and has fought back against Shabaab’s incursion on its turf.

The second group standing in Shabaab’s way is the Puntland security forces.

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This follows reports earlier this week in Kenya that authorities there swept through Somali neighborhoods and rounded people up by the hundreds after protests on behalf of Abdullah al Faisal.

Apparently, Somali refugees are being unfairly tainted with the reputation of al Shabaab and viewed more widely in Africa with suspicion and mistrust. Consequently, they are being targeted for greater persecution.

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Hizbul Islam was aligned with al Shabaab until October when the two groups turned on each other.

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As the government scrambled to find countries willing to take in hardline Jamaican preacher Abdullah al-Faisal, whose botched deportation sparked the unrest, police vowed to deal firmly with a new protest planned on Friday.

The elite paramilitary General Service Unit and the anti-terrorism police raided Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood late Sunday and detained 300 people said to be illegal Somali immigrants.

Related: Kenya says Muslim cleric to be deported in two days.

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“One of the young men was found engaging in secret wedlock which is illegal under Islamic law,” Sheikh Mohamed Moalim, a senior Shebab official, said from Kismayo.

“The other one was found seducing a lady alone. Both of them confessed to the charges in front of a court and they were publicly punished,” he said.

The flogging took place over the weekend.

Youths in some Muslim countries where sex before marriage is forbidden and the cost of a wedding prohibitive sometimes resort to secret marriage, known as “Qudbosir” in Somalia and “Urfi” in most Arab countries.

The custom, which keeps the matrimony secret from the couples’ parents and sometimes from another wife, is frowned upon in most of Somalia but has been practised in southern regions.

So by this particular interpretation of the Shariah, its purpose is to prevent those who are too poor to afford a wedding from getting married. And they say capitalists are cruel…

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