Radicalization of Somalian Youth
At yet another mosque in Toronto, another cleric has spoken out on Islamic jihad. Imam Saed Rageah said in his week-end sermon that the plagues of suicide bombings in his native Somalia do not represent Islam. The Abu Huraira mosque congregants had no particular reason to find fault with his assertion, since Islam does not entice its adherents to become martyrs to the cause of jihad; it is fanatical clerics and depraved religious psychopaths who narrate an interpretation of the Koran to convince restive and action-hungry youth to embrace violent jihad.A newly-recognized trend of young Somalian men from The U.K. Australia, the United States and Canada suddenly disappearing from their neighbourhoods, their families having no idea where they've gone, recruited to jihad and volunteering themselves to battle with groups like Al Shabab, has alerted intelligence authorities. The national president of the Canadian Somali Congress has informed the press that "the community is very, very concerned". Their parents are undoubtedly frantic with worry.
Also concerned are the very intelligence agencies in the various countries from whence the young men departed to return to their native country as warriors. Trained in battle and dedicated to jihad, their eventual return to their adopted countries becomes a matter of grave concern. Imam Sead Rageah believes the Internet may have had a malevolent effect on the missing young men, whom he characterized as 'emotional'.
Imam Rageah is eager to be as of much assistance to investigators as possible. The missing men, he says, must have had help to secure them passage to Somalia,where it is believed they are, but there were no recruiters in the mosque. Because the mosque authorities are alert and would instantly halt any such activities. It is a secret underworld where extremists carry out their work, enthusing the conflicted young with their ideological mission.
As for Imam Rageah, his background appears more than slightly interesting. He emigrated to Canada from Saudi Arabia in 1980, where he had lived with a brother after his parents and two brothers died in Somalia. He became imam at the Ayah Islamic Centre, a mosque in Maryland, after studies in the United States. After 9-11 that mosque came under FBI scrutiny which revealed that two of the hijackers of the Pentagon crash had left their belongings there, before the attack.
The FBI investigation appeared to have revealed that Imam Rageah had been busy fundraising for the Global Relief Foundation, a charity recognized as having been allied with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. But no charges were laid. Imam Rageah returned in 2003 to Canada where he lived in Calgary before moving back to Toronto to take up work at the Abu Huraira Centre.
Where he is an immensely popular lecturer.
Labels: Canada, Conflict, Particularities/Peculiarities
posted by Pieface @ Monday, December 14, 2009
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