The United States seem have a fresh spotlight on the large Somali community in US after car-and-knife attack at Ohio State University by an immigrant student.
On Monday November 29th, Somali student Abdul Razak Ali Artan was shot and killed by police. Abdu; had driven into a crowd slashing several people with a knife.
According to US Media, a Facebook post made ahead of the attack delivered a long threat against “infidels” and urged Muslims to listen to the words of US-born Al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who inspired numerous conversions to the jihadist cause.
According to local reports, Artan’s attack came just two months after a 22-year-old Somali man wounded nine people in a knife attack in a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota.
Two weeks ago, nine young Somali men were sentenced to lengthy prison terms following their arrest in 2014 in Minneapolis for planning to travel to Syria to join the IS group.
A handful of others are said to have succeeded in joining the Islamic state, and, in 2007-2009, some 20 Somali Americans returned to their country and enlisted in the jihadist Al-Shabab group.
In 2013 four Somalis in San Diego were convicted of raising money for Al-Shabaab. Experts say that compared to population of 10,000 US-born Somalis the number of attacks is low, terming them as self-radicalized attacks.
Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, said the number of radicalization cases remains low.
“I would hesitate to broad-brush the community. You’re talking about such a small number of individuals,” said Hughes, who spent three and a half years working on Somali community issues at the government’s National Counterterrorism Center.
The government launched a pioneering outreach program to the huge Minneapolis Muslim community in 2014, aiming to both woo cooperation from the community and help deter people from joining radical Islamist groups.
“I think it’s too early to tell” if the program is working, he said.
Speaking at a press conference Monday on Artan’s attack, Roula Allouch, the national board chair of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, expressed worry over attacks against Muslims.
“We do know of his Somali heritage and that will be enough for some people to falsely link this tragic incident to the faith of Islam and to the Somali and Muslim communities,” she said.
Many Muslim Americans were outraged when now President-elect Donald Trump denounced Somali immigrants at least twice during the presidential election campaign.
In Maine in August, he linked local crime to Somali newcomers in the northeast state.
And just two days before the election, he tied the Minneapolis population to the IS group.
“Here in Minnesota, you’ve seen first-hand the problems caused with faulty refugee-vetting, with very large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state without your knowledge, your support or approval, and with some of them then joining ISIS and spreading their extremist views over all our country and all over the world,” Trump said.
But Horsed Noah, head of the Somali Islamic Centres of Ohio, said that his community did not support attacks such as Artan’s.
“It does not represent the beautiful culture and values of the Somali community,” he said.