Minnesota jihadi’s “descent into extremism” began “after he began attending mosque”

JULY 3, 2017 10:27 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER19 COMMENTS

“Warsame said his descent into extremism began after he began attending mosque at his mother’s urging. ‘Learning about the religion and reciting the Quran, I started to become more religious. I felt like there was something that was missing in me.'”

Learning about the religion and reciting the Qur’an, he got the idea that he had a duty to wage war against unbelievers. That should come as no surprise to anyone except Pope Francis and H. R. McMaster, because the Qur’an contains numerous exhortations to wage war against unbelievers (see especially chapters eight and nine).

“Then a teenager, Warsame felt alienated from his own mosque, which has not been tied to extremism, because the lessons were in Somali.”

Not because it was twisting and hijacking the Religion of Peace, but because the lessons were in Somali. The mosque “has not been tied to extremism,” but it taught the Qur’an and Sunnah. That those sources contain numerous exhortations to Muslims to commit violence against unbelievers is a fact that government and law enforcement authorities generally refuse to accept, and often deny outright, in the teeth of the facts.

“The American ISIS ’emir’ who wanted to commit his own gruesome atrocities and sent his friend to die in Syria,” by Keith Griffith, Dailymail.com, July 3, 2017 (thanks to Lookmann):

The leader of an American ISIS cell has spoken out about his thirst for violent extremism and how he send his friends to fight and die in Syria.

Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 22, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison last year, after he admitted he conspired to help two friends join Islamic State and planned to go to Syria himself.

Now, in an interview with Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, the Somali-American explains how the online ravings of a dead terror cleric radicalized him and drew him into a plot with eleven other young men in Minnesota’s large Somali immigrant population.

Asked if he had planned to join Islamic State in Syria and join in their atrocities, Warsame replied: ‘I was going to be, I was going to be participating in those activities.’

Warsame said his descent into extremism began after he began attending mosque at his mother’s urging.

‘Learning about the religion and reciting the Quran, I started to become more religious. I felt like there was something that was missing in me,’ Warsame said….

Then a teenager, Warsame felt alienated from his own mosque, which has not been tied to extremism, because the lessons were in Somali.

He turned online looking for religious instruction in English, and found the videos of Anwar al-Awlaki.

Once the respected imam of a mosque near Washington, DC, al-Awlaki was exposed as violent extremist and went into hiding in Yemen, where he was killed by a drone strike in 2011.

Yet the terror cleric’s sermons live on online, where they have been responsible for radicalizing scores of young Muslims.

‘He explained how Islam was, you know, like, my calling. It was almost like he was talking to you,’ Warsame explained to Pelley.

‘And like it made you feel like you were special, you know? And like you’re the chosen one. And the more I listened to it, the more it was appealing to me and the more interesting it became.’

Warsame became convinced that committing violence against non-Muslims would be best not just for himself but his family.

‘Most of the videos would talk about how if you would engage in jihad you would be doing your family a favor. And that you would be saving their lives from eternal hell fire,’ he said.

‘And so whether you’re doing something good for your community, whether you’re going to school, whether you have a nice job, all of that, they’re gonna make it seem like it’s worthless. And that there is something greater that you can be doing.’…