ACT for America has some troubling news on the stealth jihad in America.
Minnesota continues to make the news with stories of suspected Somali-born Islamic terrorists coming out of the state; Muslims winning a legal battle against a meat processing facility that refused to knuckle under to their demands; a publicly-funded charter school being sued by the ACLU on the grounds it impermissibly promotes Islam; Muslim cab drivers refusing to pick up passengers who carry alcohol; a community college where the interfaith chapel was taken over by Muslim students and turned into a de facto mosque – and now this story below.
Meanwhile, Minnesota has dived into the world of shariah law through its state-sponsored program of home mortgage products that are shariah-compliant.
Is there a coincidence between Minnesota’s efforts to accommodate its Muslim immigrant population and the degree of radicalism that is bubbling up in the state? As Great Britain has learned, and as we reported last week is beginning to re-think, a policy of disconnecting the supremacist ideology of political Islam from radicalism has proven to be a failure.
Great Britain has shown us how not to deal with the threat of radical Islam, but it may be tempting to dismiss Britain’s experience as unrelated to us in the U.S. because they’re “over there.” Could Minnesota be emerging as one of America’s exemplars of how not to deal with this threat?
Richard Tsong-Taatarii, Star Tribune
Abdirahman Omar managed the counter at Mustaqbal Express in Minneapolis with his daughter, Sumay, 3, while behind them, business continued Wednesday at the shop’s money-transfer service.
Agents wouldn't say whether the raids were connected to several missing Somali men.
By LORA PABST and RICHARD MERYHEW, Star Tribune staff writers
Last update: April 8, 2009 - 10:04 PM
Federal agents raided three Minneapolis money transfer businesses that mainly serve the Somali community Wednesday, seeking records of financial transactions to several African and Middle East countries.
E.K. Wilson, a special agent for the FBI in Minneapolis, confirmed that agents searched the businesses on the city's south side to track money transactions, but wouldn't disclose any further details.
The businesses are Qaran Express and Aaran Financial, both in the Karmel Mall, near W. Lake Street and Pillsbury Avenue S., and North American Money Transfer Inc., also known as Mustaqbal Express, at the Village Market Mall, at E. 24th Street and Chicago Avenue S.
While it's not clear that the raid was directly connected to a continuing federal investigation into the possible link between terrorist groups and the disappearances of seven to 20 young Somali men in the Twin Cities over the past two years, it appears to be part of an effort since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to crack down on financial connections to terrorist networks and operations overseas.
Two months after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, federal agents froze the assets of five Somali-related operations at three locations in Minneapolis because of suspicions that they were laundering money to Osama bin Laden or his terrorist organization Al-Qaida. In the end, none was the subject of federal criminal indictments.
Somali residents had bemoaned the shutdowns, saying that the businesses were their only way of getting money to impoverished relatives in Somalia.
"We've been through this before," said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in St. Paul. "What happened today is the beginning of a long story, so we don't want the community to panic."
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