video report by Maury Glover
Friday, October 3, 2014
With young men leaving Minnesota to fight for ISIS, many in the Somali community are asking what can be done to stop them, and one Minneapolis man came up with a creative and entertaining strategy.
It may look like Mohamed Ahmed is watching videos on his laptop, but he's really fighting fire with fire to create a different narrative than the Islamic extremists put out in their recruitment videos. He's not an animator by trade. Rather, he manages a convenience store -- but he has found a unique way to make his voice heard in the marketplace of ideas.
"It takes an average Mohamed to recruit and radicalize our youth," he said. "It will take another average Mohamed to counter that perspective."
For the past two years, Ahmed has been making short videos under the name "Average Mohamed." In them, he voices an animated version of himself to explain why the ideology of extremist groups like al-Shabaab and ISIS, or ISIL, are at odds with the principles of Islam.
"It's an idea for an idea," he explained. "For every idea an extremist has, we have an idea that can shoot it down coming from our side. That's my goal."
Ahmed, who is Muslim himself, came up with the idea after seeing extremists use videos like the one that featured a handful of young men to Minnesota in an attempt to recruit more soldiers to fight and die for their cause overseas. Now, he hopes to reach 8- to 16-year-olds in the large Somali community in Minneapolis while they are still in their formative years.
"This is Generation Simpsons," he said. "We've been watching the Simpsons all our lives, so messaging through animation is unique."
Ahmed hopes that before recruiters even begin to coax Somali-American youths, his message will already have been received and will work as a logical buffer to any attempt at radicalization. While the animation may be a bit crude, Ahmed hopes the message in the medium is picture perfect as he continues to compete for hearts and minds.
"Little bits tend to form the tidal wave," he said. "A drop here and a drop there, and before you know it, we create a tidal wave against injustice and against repression and against this unholy ideology."
So far, Ahmed has made 5 videos in English, but they are also available in Somali and Swahili. They are available on his YouTube channel.