Sunday, September 29, 2013
A small group of ethnic Somalis demonstrated
in Minneapolis, Minnesota to express condolences for the victims of the
recent terrorist attack in Kenya and to condemn the Somali Islamic
militant group al Shabab for carrying out the attack and recruiting
susceptible Somali Americans to its cause.
A hundred or so demonstrators gathered at a Somali community center
in Minneapolis to show solidarity for their adopted American homeland
and to express grief at the loss of innocent lives in Kenya. But mostly
the participants wanted to speak out against the terrorist group
al-Shabab.
Jamal Hassan says his anger at al-Shabab is personal. His two nieces
were victims of the al-Shabab attack on the Nairobi Westgate Mall that
killed over 60 people.
"The older one, she was here with me in August, like 20 days before
this happened to her. And she was talking about becoming a doctor. She
just graduated from high school and now she is fighting for her life,
and she may lose her leg. She may never walk again," he said.
Some young Somali American men have joined al-Shabab and some may
have taken part in the Kenya attack. But Mariam Mahmoud wants her fellow
Americans to know that these few extremists do not speak for the vast
majority of Somalis.
"We are not terrorists. We are good people. We are survivors," she
said. "We come [from] civil war to this country to survive. So there are
some kids, they [are] brainwashed. They go back and they do bad things.
Not everybody [is] like that way."
Nimco Ahmed says she went to school with a boy in Minneapolis who was
later recruited by al-Shabab and became a suicide bomber. She blames
the Islamic extremist group for his terrible transformation from naive
boy to terrorist.
"When he put on that suicide bomb and blown himself up in a bus full
of innocent people, you know I struggle with that because I've know him
so well that I can't imagine he could do such a thing," she said. "But
part of me feels also, could he have been the victim as well?"
While few in number, this vocal crowd came to speak out against terrorism and to dissociate themselves al-Shabab.