When Ramadan gets under way this week, a group of Muslims in north London will gather for prayers not in a mosque, but a synagogue. In a tale of interfaith tolerance for our times, the Finchley Reform Synagogue has been hosting local Bravanese people – members of an Islamic community from south-east Somalia – since their nearby community centre was burned down in an arson attack two years ago. The cohabitation has broken down stereotypes on both sides. “Now we really look forward to Ramadan,” said Jon Freedman, an outreach organiser at the synagogue. “It’s become another holiday on our community calendar. “We hope they get their own centre soon,” Freedman added, “but it’s been a wonderful experience hosting them here.” Friendships have developed over shared meals of gefilte fish and Bravanese donuts called kalamati, and the two communities recently held an interfaith sukkot festival at a local shopping mall. The Bravanese community centre was gutted by fire on 5 June 2013, 10 days after the killing of fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, south London. Video footage showed a suspect lighting several fires within the building. Graffiti extolling the English Defence League was daubed on a nearby building. FacebookTwitterPinterest Jon Freedman shows messages from the public from the interfaith sukkot. Photograph: Hadani Ditmars/Guardian“When the arson attack happened, there was a visceral response from the local Jewish community,” said Rabbi Miriam Berger. “It was hard not to think of Kristallnacht [when German Nazis attacked Jews and their property in 1938].” For Somali community leader Abubakhar Ali, the response from the Jewish community was welcome, even if some of his fellows were uncertain about worshipping in a synagogue. “Members of my community were a little concerned,” said Ali. “For many it was their first time ever in a synagogue.” Soon, however, they were won over by the generosity and sincerity of their hosts. There was some trepidation from the synagogue congregation about opening up to a group of Muslim strangers. We are discovering that we have more in common than we think Rabbi Miriam Berger “But I remember having a very peaceful feeling that first evening of Ramadan prayers,” said Freedman, who was one of the volunteer hosts who bonded with the Bravanese over a series of impromptu iftars, the evening meal with which Muslims end their daily fast during Ramadan. “We have received as much as we have given,” said Berger. In addition to escaping “the trap” of “perceived relationships between Jews and Muslims globally”, she said there was “something incredibly powerful about facilitating other people’s rituals”. Negotiations with Barnet council for new premises for the Bravanese community are ongoing. Citizens UK and an active interfaith alliance that includes FRS are working with the Bravanese to ensure that the council lives up to its promise to provide a new community centre of the same standard as the one destroyed by arson. While offering hospitality to the Bravanese is an expression of Jewish values, Rabbi Berger said: “It’s also a demonstration of how easy it is to have harmony between different cultures and faiths. We are discovering that we have more in common than we think.” Source: http://www.theguardian.com

The world of athletics was lining up to explain how easy it is to miss a drugs test. Doesn’t make you a cheat, they said. Doesn’t mean you dope. And of course it doesn’t. Then again, it doesn’t make you innocent either. That’s the problem with a miss. You never know. Nothing can be presumed. That’s why the athletics authorities take it so seriously. The myth is that a missed test is common. It suits those who miss to say that. But it isn’t. In 2010, for instance, there were 394 athletes in the National Registered Testing Pool. They would each be tested three times a year minimum, and as many as nine times maximum. Mo Farah posted this picture on social media with the double Olympic champion trains in the south of France Farah returned to the track where he won double Olympic gold in 2013 to launch the Anniversary Games Let’s allow for a conservative ball park average of five tests per individual. So that works out as 1,970 NRTP tests a year. And how many were missed? Just 43. So this isn’t something that happens to many athletes once, let alone twice. This isn’t routine. There was a worrying spike in whereabouts offences by British athletes in the year before the London Olympic Games, too. Meaning a missed test is a big deal, and just one can incur a ban, if the anti-doping legislators believe an athlete has been deliberately evasive. So Mo Farah isn’t subject to some irrational witch-hunt. He isn’t being pursued or bullied. This is not tall poppy syndrome, build ‘em up to knock ‘em down. He works with a coach, Alberto Salazar, who has a queue of athletes and coaches making accusations against him. This led to the revelation that Farah missed a date with the testers twice prior to the 2012 Olympic Games. That isn’t a meaningless development, either. Anxious emails were sent warning of the dire consequences of a third no-show; Farah’s agent Ricky Simms went to significant lengths to dispute the second miss on the grounds his client hadn’t heard his doorbell. All of this indicates a developing crisis treated with huge significance at the time. And if it was big for Farah then, it most certainly is for British athletics and the Olympic movement now. Alberto Salazar has been accused of doping by a raft of former athletes and coaches Farah celebrates after adding the European 5,000m title to his trophy cabinet last year Farah and his Team GB colleagues are all that remain in terms of 2012 Olympic legacy. The bold predictions of a revitalised healthy nation have crumbled. Fond memories alone are left and any suspicion around Farah threatens that happy state. Missed tests, by definition, cast doubt. The latest figures from Sport England make depressing reading. In the last six months, 250,000 people have dropped out of sports participation. The anticipated spike in activity that would be London’s legacy never materialised. Swimming is down 144,200, and closer to 160,000 no longer visit a gym. Hell, Britain can’t even keep its citizens interested in Zumba classes, considering dance-related fitness has also taken a hit. The cycling boom has peaked — down by over 40,000 — and the biggest racket sport, badminton, is not far behind. Stadium legacy is equally elusive. A football club has claimed the Olympic arena, other structures have been dismantled and reduced, and the diversion of capital to the capital has actually helped forced the closure of some facilities in the regions. So it’s the sport. That is what is left. It was a marvellous party, and we loved every minute of it. Farah was at the heart of that, from his gold medal on Super Saturday to his heart-stopping triumph in the 5,000 metres a week later, arguably the run of his life. He was Britain’s athlete of the games, a long-distance runner capable of outlasting the East Africans, a competitor of incredible resolve and courage, with a back story that encapsulated all that was positive about modern Britain. A school age refugee from Somalia, who arrived speaking little English and at first struggled to assimilate, his rise to become the greatest long distance runner of his time was a tale of true inspiration. It was this country’s equivalent of the American dream — anybody can be anybody, with enough drive and determination. It is no exaggeration to describe Farah as a national hero. Prime Minister David Cameron poses with Farah outside No 10 Downing Street after his 5,000m Olympic win Spectators perform the Mobot at the Anniversary Games in 2013 to salute their hero And now? He is still. He has never been banned, he has never failed a drugs test, the allegations against his coach are yet to touch him, directly. There are plenty ready to vouch for Farah, to claim he is the innocent party, unjustly tainted by association. Yet it isn’t good. This isn’t good. There are 16 witnesses making allegations against Salazar, his coach, with tales of testosterone and clear vials. There are two confirmed missed tests, aberrations from a time when Farah’s standing in the sport was improving, rapidly. And there is an explanation around a muffled doorbell ring that suggests, far from being wrongly besmirched, Farah was treated quite leniently by the authorities. He was at home in Teddington when the testers called in 2011. His house was not huge. They rang the doorbell, which he said was hard to hear from his bedroom. Simms made a video attempting to prove this. And, of course, it is a plausible explanation. A person doesn’t always hear the bell at home, or even a knock at the door. Mo Farah's agent, Ricky Simms, made a video inside the athlete's house in Teddington, London to try to show why he failed to hear the doorbell from his upstairs bedroom (above) when the drug testers called in 2011 After entering the house Simms filmed as he went up some stairs to the first-floor living/trophy room (above) where the doorbell sound was clearly audible Simms then climbed some more stairs and passed an altitude machine (above) before entering Farah’s second-floor bedroom. The doorbell is barely audible Yet testers don’t ring once and depart. They hang around, for the allotted hour the athlete is supposed to be available. They knock. They try again. The reason Simms was so impassioned in making Farah’s case, is that holing up in a room that made it difficult to hear the bell might fall into the dangerous category of evasion. Without doubt, this second missed test could have been taken further had Farah’s explanation not been indulged. The second missed test wasn’t discounted, but nor was it played up into something more serious. For now, there are the memories. Farah, out on his own on Super Saturday, Farah, holding off a pack of menacing rivals to complete a double in the 5,000 metres, Farah and Usain Bolt swapping poses, the Mobot and the archer. The Olympic Stadium was never louder, more impassioned than for Farah’s second gold. It was as charged as Sydney was for Cathy Freeman or Ian Thorpe. That noise, that fervour, is our legacy. This was the best we could be. An overjoyed Farah crosses the line to win the 5,000m title to complete a long-distance Olympic double Farah and Usain Bolt share a moment during medal presentations during the euphoria of London 2012 ‘A missed test doesn’t mean you are doping,’ said Olympic medallist Kelly Sotherton. ‘It doesn’t make you a drugs cheat.’ But there was a caveat. ‘If you make a mistake once, most athletes learn from it,’ she said. Farah didn’t. The hope of the nation is that his only crime is absent-mindedness. It really is all we have left. Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

LANE TURNER/GLOBE STAFF Those who know 18-year-old Fatah Adan say he acquired his sense of humor and equanimity from his mother, Habibo Osman, and father, Abdi Adan Hussein. Family is at the heart of Fatah Adan’s success. Devotion to his eight siblings and their Somali parents, who fled civil war to give their children a better life, has guided his journey from birth in a refugee camp to Harvard University, where he will be a freshman this fall. “There’s a kind of reverence that he has toward his mother and his father that I think is unique among teenagers in America of any generation,” said Ravi Singh, Fatah’s debate coach at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, where Fatah is this year’s valedictorian.Fatah, 18, credited his parents with giving him the will to succeed. “They did everything they could to come to America,” he said. “I have that want to give back to them. That’s what’s driven me all throughout middle school, high school. That’s what’s going to continue to drive me.” Boston's 2015 valedictorians Singh, who recruited Fatah for the debate team when he was a freshman in Singh’s history class, said he was an unusually poised 14-year-old, even at a tournament when his debate partner, Elvis Alvarado, was homesick and Fatah faced off alone in the final round against two juniors. “They looked like men — they were tall, and they had deep husky voices — and there was Fatah, who at that point in his life was probably 80 pounds soaking wet,” Singh recalled. “He just destroyed them. It was amazing.” ‘They did everything they could to come to America. I have that want to give back to them.’ Fatah Adan, speaking about his parents’ struggles Fatah is studious but far from humorless, Elvis said; he is known at New Mission as the creator of catchphrases that serve as all-purpose answers to any question, such as “You know the rules.” “I’d be like, ‘Fatah, why’d you get an A on this test?’ He’d be like, ‘Cause you know the rules,’ ” said Elvis, 17, making his voice deeper and more forceful to mimic Fatah’s. “You’d be like, ‘Fatah, why are you eating a hamburger?’ He’d be like, ‘You know the rules.’ ” LANE TURNER/GLOBE STAFF “I have that want to give back to them,” said Fatah Adan. “That’s what’s going to continue to drive me.” Those who know Fatah suggested that his humor and precocious equanimity come from the perspective he learned from his parents, Abdi Adan Hussein and Habibo Osman. “They’re people who have endured quite a bit, and they have managed to do so with a great degree of grace,” Singh said. Married in 1985, Hussein and Osman fled Mogadishu in 1992 for a refugee camp in Kenya, where they lived for six years until a United Nations refugee program brought them to Boston. Fatah and his older brother Jamal were born in the camp, where, Hussein said, conditions were overcrowded and “sometimes terrible,” with armed men stealing food from families. Natives of a country that is hot year-round, the family had a hard time adjusting to Boston winters, and the war left Osman with post-traumatic stress that caused her to panic at loud noises. As years passed, a longstanding kidney condition worsened, weakening Osman. She needed a transplant and was fortunate that Hussein was both a medical match and an eager donor. Her illness, along with their parenting responsibilities, delayed Osman and Hussein’s plans to study English, which they began last year. They were influenced in part by observing their children’s education, they said. But their hard work — in learning English and in all their struggles — also inspired Adan. “I saw my mom with post-traumatic stress disorder, I saw her sick, and I saw my parents trying to get adjusted to a new country,” Fatah said in a recent interview at his family’s Roxbury home, where traditional Somali sectional sofas encircle common rooms with ample seating for the large family. Dozens of debate trophies fill a glass cabinet. “I think it made me mature pretty quickly,” he continued. “I knew that I wanted to do good, I wanted to be successful for them.” Hussein and Osman said they work hard to set a good example, starting with their own relationship. Their parenting is evident in the academic success of their children. Fatah was accepted at eight of the nine colleges to which he applied, turned down only by MIT. His younger brother, Mohamed, who is ending his freshman year at New Mission, appears to be following a similar path. “The other freshmen regard him as my freshman class regarded Fatah,” Elvis said. Older brother Jamal, now a rising junior at Boston University, is also a standout student. “He was the first to go to college, so he showed us that we could do it. I was trying to mimic him . . . and ended up doing better than him and being more successful,” Fatah said with a laugh, and a hint of pride. The family is held in high esteem by the local Somali immigrant community, said Ali Abdulkadir, a family friend who has known Hussein and Osman in Somalia, the refugee camp, and in Boston. “All Somalian people are proud of them,” said Abdulkadir, 53, who lives in Dorchester. With such a foundation, Fatah isn’t intimidated by Harvard, where only 12 percent of undergraduates are black and where many classmates will come from elite private schools with more advanced courses than the New Mission curriculum could possibly offer. Fatah does not need to worry. He knows the rules. Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com

NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In Somali culture, men are expected to provide all household needs, from food to security. However, many women have become breadwinners since the 1991 ouster of Dictator Siad Barre, creating an identity crisis for men. Many Somali men are addicted to an amphetamine-like drug called khat, traumatized, depressed and physically disabled, the study found. "Men find themselves dispensable, with no meaningful role and no stake in the future," said the World Bank-funded study, based on interviews with 400 men and 90 women living in Somalia and neighboring Kenya. "Men of all ages and backgrounds commonly recalled periods when they experienced some form of mental breakdown." Khat, a leaf that is chewed for several hours, has become a "social epidemic," said Said Mohamed, one of the researchers. "It's a way to escape from reality," he said. "Men feel useless." After the collapse of Barre's government, which was the country's major employer, many Somali men lost their jobs, causing a "personal catastrophe for many men, from which many have not recovered," the report said. Those living as refugees in Kenya are legally barred from working or leaving the camps, and depend on aid agency rations given to their wives. "He lost respect in the house," a mother of seven said about her husband in the report. "Even his children do not listen to him." Young men are under increasing pressure to provide for their families, often through illegal means such as piracy or through the barrel of a gun, the researchers from the Rift Valley Institute Nairobi Forum said. "The picture that emerges is really a very depressing one," said Judith Gardner, one of the report's authors. The men "join al Shabaab or another militia group that would pay (them) a salary ... or (they) try to escape to Kenya," she said. Rates of divorce were reported to be "very high," with some men in their 20s having been married more than three times. Verbal abuse of men by women has also increased, the study said. "When I come home in the evening I will find her with some meager income she has earned that makes her think she has taken over responsibility for the family," one man told the researchers. "She will start yelling at me, 'He is sitting there idly!'" Men have started seeking wives to support them financially, the study found. Most common are "Diaspora marriages" with Somali women overseas, or "gigolo" arrangements in which "a young, healthy man marries an older woman to live as her sexual companion, assistant and financial dependent." The researchers called on donors to pay greater attention to men's needs. "There are lot of men who have suffered enormously and are not getting any support," said Judy El-Bushra, one of the report's authors. Source: http://www.catholic.org

An emotional Mo Farah has insisted he is “not dodgy” despite remaining with a coach who has been accused of plying athletes with drugs. Speaking three days after his coach Alberto Salazar was accused of multiple doping offences in a BBC documentary, Farah came out on the offensive as he repeatedly stated that he has done nothing wrong. “I’m really angry about the situation,” he said. “It’s not fair. “I haven’t done anything but my name is getting dragged through the mud. “My reputation is getting ruined. I don’t want kids to think I am doing something dodgy, when I am not.” Mo Farah, Galen Rupp and Alberto Salazar at the London OlympicsIgnoring the advice of a number of prominent British athletes who urged Farah to leave Salazar this week, the double Olympic champion confirmed he will remain under his guidance at the Nike Oregon Project with UK Athletics stating they have “absolutely no concerns” about the relationship.However, Farah insisted he will leave the camp unless Salazar can provide proof that he has not committed the offences he is accused of.“I spoke to Alberto, I got on the phone and said to him, ‘Alberto, what's going on?’ and he said, ‘Mo, I can prove this to you, these are just allegations and I can show you evidence’, and I said ok.•Mo Farah silent as pressure grows“It's not something in my control but I want to know answers. I need to know what's going on.“If they turn out to be true, and Alberto has crossed the line, I'm the first person to leave.”Salazar is alleged to have given Olympic 10,000m silver medallist Galen Rupp drugs throughout his career.The claims, made in a BBC Panorama documentary, allege that Salazar gave Rupp steroids when the runner was just 16 years old, as well as encouraging him to take the asthma drug prednisone, which is banned in competition, and to use intravenous drips to flout anti-doping regulations.• Farah's association with Salazar raises awkward questionsBoth Rupp and Salazar have denied any wrongdoing, while Farah was not accused of doing anything illegal.Salazar has worked as a consultant for UK Athletics since 2013 and the national governing body sprang something of a surprise when they released a statement yesterday offering their support for the American.Mo Farah's coach Alberto Salazar has been caught up in a doping rowDespite releasing a statement saying they “had absolutely no concerns over Salazar’s conduct and coaching methods”, performance director Neil Black then said UK Athletics would sever ties with him if he could not prove he was innocent.“Alberto swears to us that the responses are going to demonstrate that he has nothing to answer to,” he said.“That is what we are expecting and if that is what we get, we will move forward collectively.“We will end the working relationship as soon as there is any proven doubt.”Farah, who has been based with Salazar since moving his family to America in 2011, runs his first race in Britain this summer when he competes at the Birmingham Grand Prix on Sunday.Mo Farah has denied he has broken any rules at any timeInsisting that he has “nothing to hide” and would publish all of his blood values to convince people he is clean, Farah said he hopes the British public will still support him.“I haven’t done anything,” he said. “It’s about Alberto and allegations made about him.“I hope the public can understand that. There are answers needed and I hope I have answered what people need to know.” Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/athletics/11656643/Mo-Farah-set-to-keep-Alberto-Salazar-as-coach-despite-doping-allegations.htmlhttp://www.somaliaonline.com/an-emotional-mo-farah-says-he-not-dodgy-despite-remaining-with-a-coach-who-has-been-accused-of-plying-athletes-with-illegal-drugs/

Traditional cloth makers doing the final embroidery (tarash). Seen in Xamarweyne, Mogadishu’s old quarter. Somali traditional cloth makers are coming back into the market as people long for old and fine traditional dress. Muna, a diaspora returnee is here to contribute to the restoration of the Somali nation-state. Koofi Baraawe or the Bravanese hat is worn by Somali elders. They also dye their hair with Henna. The style exemplifies dignity, wisdom and prestige. Sometimes politicians and leaders mimic the elders and wear these hats. aa wali the mystuc from Xamarweyne likes to hang by the sea, done with grocery shopping, girls take time to enjoy the scenery. Tonight’s casho: fish stew and rooti. Students from Abdiaziz Primary salute the flag. Basbaas Shareero Band or Hot Chilli Peppers Shareero that play n perform traditional folklore dance and music in the capital city Mogadishu, Somalia. Ikea aint got nothing on this neighborhood furniture shop. Bunk beds on display here. Mogadishu, Somalia Source: http://mogadishuimages.tumblr.com/ http://www.somaliaonline.com/mogadishu-images-breathtaking-images-that-capture-daily-life-in-the-nations-capital/

Photo by Futsum TsegaiThe new album from Seattle’s Somali hip-hop duo Malitia Malimob courts controversy. It’s titled simply ISIS, a move that delayed the album’s release while iTunes scoured the group’s lyrics looking for ties to the infamous terrorist organization. The album cover is a picture of a dead Somali baby beneath a cartoon of Egyptian pharaohs and African lions. The band itself isn’t even together at the moment because one-half of Malitia Malimob is in jail after being shot in the back by the cops. And though this might seem to be a lot of shock value, the point is to force the listener to look beyond the stereotypes to see the truth: that African culture has been defined in the worst terms by non-Africans, while African voices are silenced every day.I’m meeting one-half of Malitia Malimob, Chinoo Capo Gaddafi (born Guled Diriye), at Paradise Restaurant, a well-worn Somali restaurant so underground and deep in the community that Chinoo had to call ahead to let them know that white people were coming. Chinoo rolls in late and we’ve already eaten, giant delicious heaping mounds of spicy roast chicken, goat, and, strangely, curried spaghetti, a throwback to the days of Italian colonization. Chinoo immediately orders more food, and tucks into it. He’s here to talk and he’s got stories to tell. Stories about escaping Somalia on foot. Stories of AK-47 rifle shots echoing behind him as his family left. Stories about growing up in Seattle as a displaced African and Muslim.These are stories that aren’t being heard in the local press, who seem more concerned about “gangs” of Somalis that have supposedly been robbing people on Capitol Hill, a heavily gentrified neighborhood. “I feel like our community is shunned,” Chinoo explains. “Every time it’s negative. We’re good people, good-hearted, welcoming, but we’re shunned. You see East Africans, Somalians, it’s: ‘They’re criminals, they’re no good. Get them out of here. They’re pirates!’” The epithet of “pirates” is an immediate flashpoint for many Somalis. Somali pirates (Chinoo refers to them half-jokingly as the Somalian Navy) came about as a response to the desecration and destruction of traditional fishing grounds by multi-national corporations taking advantage of Somalia’s lack of a central government to dump in or overfish the waters. I ask Chinoo how he feels about the pirates and he leans forward with an intense look. Talking directly to me, he says, “Let’s say you guys were in Somalia. Let’s say we switched places and you guys were from Somalia, you have nothing. You only rely on the water for your food… You rely on the fish. So, you go in there every day; you fish for your family. What if that was gone? These big companies and ships coming in and dumping shit, killing your fish. Your kids are dying because of the shit that the fish have been eating and now you got nothing. Would you let your family just die? Or would you hop on that little banana boat and grab that AK and get on up there? That’s what the fuck I would do. You got to put yourself in that predicament; you can’t really say nothing ‘til you’re in that position.”It’s a sobering thought and an example of the divide between Seattle’s predominantly white middle-class and the war-torn background of the Somalian community in Seattle. And that’s only one example of the cultural clashes that young Somalis in America experience. Many young Somalis are also torn between their religion, Islam, and an American culture that fears Muslims. In response, they take up the street culture around them to blend in, which brings them into conflict with their more conservative parents. “I was just having this talk with my mom,” Chinoo says. “’Cut your hair, son. Go to the mosque, son. Leave this music and all this crap alone, son.’ My mom’s a musician herself; she’s a poet. In [my parents’] eyes, all they see is, ‘Yo, yo, yo motherfucker, bitch.’ That’s how my mom will tell you. With her, when I explain it to her, I break my lyrics down for her. Some of them. I tell her, ‘Mom, this is what I love.’ She tells me, ‘Go to school.’”Caught between two worlds, Somalis have few resources to help them cope. “I was just reading an article about how they had an FBI division come over here specifically for the East African Somali community,” Chinoo says. “They don’t understand us. They think we’re untamable animals. They don’t know our problems. They don’t know what we go through. They don’t know why all these Africans are causing all these problems. It’s common sense; we just came from civil war in Somalia…”[youtube url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq3JeGQPyjo]Chinoo came from an affluent family in Mogadishu, living in a mansion on the beach. In a matter of moments, as civil war broke out, that was all gone, and he and his family were forced to flee to refugee camps in Kenya. There, he found himself with no toys, no shoes, playing in busted tanks and picking parasites out of his feet for fun. It was a terrifying journey, and still clearly takes an emotional toll on him to recount. In this way, he associates with the new war-torn, anarchic world of ISIS, without actually believing in any of the ideology that the terrorist organization spouts. “I hate them. I’m not with them. I hate their cause,” he says. “I named the album that and I thought about what I was doing. It took me time. That’s why you see the cover; it’s the complete, total opposite. It’s a little baby Somalian that’s dead. And underneath is his mother. The concept is: how could something so evil or cruel, come together? How come something so positive and beautiful, like us—Somalians, Muslims… How could we not look at ourselves and come together?""So, when I wrote in that last song, ‘I Am James Foley…’ [James Foley was the American journalist beheaded by ISIS]. What I meant by that is to explain to you, ‘I am James Foley,’ meaning… I felt bad for him, I felt like I can relate to him because of the fact that he was a good guy that went over there, and his intentions were to help the people. They killed the man that was out there to help them. So, with me, when I say, ‘I am James Foley,’ I speak that I am a casualty of war.”The shadow of war and violence looms over Malitia Malimob, both in their backgrounds as Somali refugees and in their present day lives. Chinoo himself has been shot on the streets of Seattle, and his partner (Malitia Malimob is supposed to be a duo), J. Krown, is currently serving a three-year sentence in jail after being shot in the back by Seattle cops. As the sung refrain of “I Am James Foley (RIP)” goes, “And they wonder why, why my people so violent, when all we know is violence. I was born in the civil war, fled to the States. Right now, bitch, we’re still at war, war in the streets. But we still pray. Pray for better days.”There’s a positivity in Chinoo’s music and in his speech, and an intense pride in Somalian people and culture. “If I could choose,” he says. “If God created me all over again and he said, ‘You can pick whoever you want to be.’ I could pick something that would probably make my life a lot easier, but I wouldn’t. I would be the same shit. I can’t even lie. It’s just the simple fact of seeing how strong that we are. It’s beautiful; I love what I am. I love our culture.”Source: http://noisey.vice.com http://www.somaliaonline.com/seattles-somali-hip-hop-group-malitia-malimob-courts-controversy-with-its-isis-album-title-a-move-that-delayed-the-albums-release-in-itunes/

The Hobyo-Harardhere Pirate Network was probably the most notorious pirate gang in Somalia in 2009, and its ring leader was the pirate kingpin known as Afweyneh or “big mouth” whose real name is Mohammed Abdi Hassan. Abdi Hassan became notorious as his men engaged in a spree of ship hijackings that included kidnapping a British couple from their yacht, capturing a Saudi oil tanker, and a Ukrainian flagged ship that turned out to be loaded with 33 T-72 tanks. But the beginning of the end for Abdi Hassan actually came after his gang hijacked a Belgian vessel, the MV Pompei.When Abdi Hassan’s pirates captured the Pompei in 2009, Belgian Special Forces immediately began planning to conduct a hostage rescue mission to recover the ship’s crew. A 9-man advanced party from the Belgian Special Operations Group traveled to the French air base, Base Aerienne 188, in Djibouti and began preparing for the eventual arrival of a 50-man element to conduct the hostage rescue mission.From the United States, Belgium requested intelligence support, a U.S. Navy vessel to help them infiltrate to the Pompei, and the use of the U.S. military’s shoot house at Camp Lemonier to conduct mission rehearsals. The Deputy Commander of the Belgian Special Forces Group, Major Denolf, met with the Combined Joint Task Force: Horn of Africa to prepare for the operation. Today, Denolf has moved on to become the Special Forces Group commander. Denolf, the Belgian Special Forces Group CommanderThe entire deployment was to be conducted under the cover of a pre-arranged joint training mission in Djibouti with the French which had already been scheduled months prior.Why this mission was never executed is not known but considering that it took place in the context of a very complicated tactical and political environment, it is not surprising that the Belgian Special Forces Group was stood down. There were two other hijacked ships in the vicinity of the Pompei which also may have played into the planning process. More than likely it was a simple risk mitigation strategy. The Belgian government knew that they would face a domestic political firestorm if something went wrong during the raid and saw that the shipping company was prepared to pay the ransom anyway. From there it was probably a straight forward decision for policy makers.With the ransom paid, the crew of the Pompei, including the two Belgian nationals, were released.While the hostage rescue may have been a no-go, the Belgian police proved that there is more than one way to skin a cat. They caught up with Abdi Hassan a few years later in 2013.The years were catching up with Somalia’s most notorious pirate. Hassan claimed to have left the piracy business and was even trying to stand up a pirate transition program with the Somalian government to provide job training to pirates who wanted to go legit.Along for the ride with Hassan was Mohamed Aden, AKA “Tiiceey.” Tiiceey was a naturalized American citizen who spent about a decade living in Minnesota prior to returning to Somalia where he became Hassan’s self-styled governor. Hassan and Tiiceey may have been outlaws, but they did provide some basic services to the people living in the region that they controlled, services that the Somalian government couldn’t provide such as keeping the Islamic radicals of Al-Shabaab out of their way. Eventually, the two Somalian pirate lords had to pay off Al-Shabaab, but Hassan was made it clear that this was purely a financial relationship designed to keep the Islamists out of his hair.Hassan and Tiiceey were shrewd business men who knew how to play the game and make the most out of the cards they were dealt. By starting a pirate rehabilitation program, Hassan killed two birds with one stone. First, he was able to rehabilitate his own image. The facade he put up was at least good enough to get the Somalian Transitional Government to issue him a diplomatic passport, his saving grace when he was stopped by authorities on a trip to Malaysia in 2012. Second, Hassan engaged in the age old Somalian scam-the-western-NGOs drill. Foreign Non-Governmental Organizations would pitch in money for a pirate rehabilitation program and no doubt Hassan was laughing all the way to the bank as he took their money.Respect Afweyneh, Respect.CGSUBehind the scenes, the stage had already been set for the demise of Tiiceey and Hassan’s careers as professional scallawags. Begium and the island nation of Seychelle had created a partnership to implement a law enforcement mechanism to deal with Somalian pirates. Six Somalian pirates were captured and sent to trail on Seychelle where it turned out that one of their fingerprints matched prints lifted from the Pompei. The six pirates belonged to Hassan’s crew and one of the Belgian sailors from the Pompei is said to have identified that pirate in a line up as well.In 2013, Belgian authorities launched the culmination of a elaborate sting operation. Exactly how this operation was run is unknown, but it involved a clever ruse. Abdi Hassan was tricked into thinking that a Belgian production company wanted to bring him on as a consultant to a documentary they were making about his days as a pirate king in the lawless Harardhere region of Somalia. Allegedly outraged by the way Somalian pirates were portrayed in the American film “Captain Philips,” Hasan wanted to see his side of the story told as well.While CIA Officer Tony Mendez created a fake movie called Argo to help smuggle American embassy workers out of Iran in the 1980’s, Belgian counter-terrorism police created a fake documentary to lure a bad guy into their country. Flying to Brussels with Tiiceey, the CGSU, Belgian’s version of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, slapped them both in handcuffs when they arrived at the airport.“Regarding the significance of his arrest, I don’t think there will be anymore high profile arrests of pirate leaders or financiers,” James Bridger, a maritime security consultant informed us. “Their names, locations, and even banking details are known to intentional investigators, but the political will to go after them isn’t there.”CGSU again made headlines again this year when they raided an apartment belonging to suspected ISIS fighters, killing two of them and arresting a third, in the town of Verviers. It was believed that the jihadists were planning an attack similar to the Charlie Hebdo assault in Paris.Back in Somalia, the Hobyo-Harardhere Pirate Network is now run by Hasan’s son, Abdiqaadir who has offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who brings him a Belgian hostage that he could attempt to exchange for his father. Thus far, no one has collected.Hassan was put on trial in Brugge, facing charges of hostage taking and running a criminal network. In 2014, he was given a 20 year prison sentence. With “Big Mouth” behind bars, he is probably proud of the legacy he left behind, known as the first to take Somalian piracy to an industrial scale. While earlier pirates “taxed” foreign vessels illegally fishing in Somalian waters, Hassan knew how to think big. “Hassan transformed Somali piracy from a cottage industry to a commercial enterprise. He elevated (or reintroduced) piracy to the 21st century global security agenda and in doing so, sowed the seeds of its downfall,” James Bridger told SOFREP.Although his actions were illegal, you can’t deny that he had an impressive run as Somalia’s first pirate kingpin.Read more: http://sofrep.comhttp://www.somaliaonline.com/before-they-were-caught-afweyne-and-tiiceey-were-shrewd-businessmen-who-knew-how-to-play-the-pirate-game/

Lying on the Gulf of Aden opposite Yemen, Berbera was once a centre of maritime trade between the Horn of Africa interior and the Middle East.A larger port in neighbouring Djibouti now dominates regional commerce, leaving Berbera's role far diminished.In the heart of the old town, its small fishing harbour is strewn with broken boats while half-sunken ships testify to diminished fortunes.Berbera's fragile architectural beauties, ranging from Ottoman mansions to neighbourhoods where Arab, Indian and Jewish trading communities once lived, are gradually disintegrating.Somaliland was a British Protectorate until independence in 1960, although few colonial reminders remain in Berbera. Its British cemetery is all but destroyed.Somaliland's economy depends on livestock exports from Berbera's small modern port. Goats and camels are sent to Saudi Arabia while 70% of imports are sold to its neighbour Ethiopia."Somaliland used to be a strategic trade hub," says Weli Daud from the Somaliland Ministry of Finance. "Now the government is looking for foreign investment in the port."Out-of-work members of the Somaliland Seaman's Union gather at Berbera's docks to try and get hired. They complain they are not getting paid equal wages. They earn about $250 (£160) a month - far less than foreign workers - because they don't belong to an internationally recognised organisation.Somaliland's 850km coastline offers enormous potential for a thriving fishing industry. Presently, however, only a few fisherman gain from the surrounding sea's abundant riches.Some propose using the undiscovered beaches to attract tourists. But Georgina Jamieson with UK-based tourism consultancy service Dunira Strategy says there is not enough infrastructure. "Though that is part of the beauty; it is very untouched. Some say it is like what Egypt looked like prior to its tourist boom."Little activity, if any, stirs Berbera's fish shops. Many young workers head to the perceived bright lights of the capital, Hargeisa, for work, as 75% of Somaliland's workforce are jobless.One way to while away the hours is to chew the mild stimulant khat, something an estimated 90% Somaliland men do.There are no plans for restoration, as far as Hargeisa Culture Centre director Jama Musse knows "and unfortunately we have to act very soon if we are to save it from disappearing," he says. Source: BBC http://www.somaliaonline.com/in-pictures-somali-port-city-of-berbera-builds-future-from-crumbling-past/

When artist Abdulasis “Aziz” Osman arrived in Minnesota in 1991 as part of the first wave of Somalis to resettle here, he could not afford art supplies.So he fashioned canvas out of old cereal boxes — painting vivid scenes of the people and land he left behind directly onto the cardboard.He sold many of his cereal box paintings. A few he kept, including one in a gilded frame displayed prominently in his Columbia Heights home.“When you don’t have money, you have to be creative,” the acclaimed painter and potter explained with a grin.Survival is a recurring theme in Osman’s art and in his life.He escaped death by a firing squad during the civil war that ravaged his native Somalia. He struggled to start over in Minnesota — toiling for years as a parking lot attendant while continuing to create art. Even now, at 67, he is fighting for survival — cultural survival. He paints the pictures of a place and time he remembers, so that no one will forget. ELIZABETH FLORES, STAR TRIBUNE Gallery: Gallery: Artist captures scenes of prewar Somalia He’s focused on teaching Somali-American youths about their roots.“I want to remind these kids where they come from, to tell them: You have a lot of treasure,” said the artist, an avuncular figure with graying hair at the temples and a pensive look.His oil and acrylic paintings — signed simply “Aziz” — have adorned community spaces across Minneapolis, from Hennepin County Medical Center to the Thrivent Financial building downtown to the African Development Center in Cedar-Riverside. At the Midtown Global Market, a mural he created with fellow artist Richard Amos decorates a large wall.“He is one of the best Somali artists,” said Osman Ali, founder of the Somali Cultural Museum in Minneapolis, where 20 Aziz paintings are part of the permanent collection. “He is well-known in Somalia and in the diaspora also.”Last summer at the fourth annual Somali Entertainment Awards at the Cedar Cultural Center, Aziz Osman was named best professional artist.Influenced by Italian painters from the 1500s and 1800s, he paints traditional landscapes and portraits, as well as bold abstracts in geometrical shapes.One of his best known paintings is a colorful abstract titled “Civil War.”Like a puzzle, its meaning is hidden in the jagged, overlapping shapes. Standing in front of the painting, he explains that there are two girls standing behind their mother. It is a scene he saw many times during the war. Abdulasis “Aziz” Osman stood in front of the mural he helped create at the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis. His paintings — signed “Aziz” — adorn community spaces across the city. “They are preparing to go,” he said. “I see a lot of people in their houses and they have to go. They live all their lives in that house.”Another painting, called “Knowledge,” shows girls with books. They are still learning despite the chaos of war around them, he said.“I try to focus always on the girls. Because the men, they are the ones who started the civil war,” he said.He spends his days painting in his studio in the basement of his suburban rambler.When he’s working on something, he is the picture of patience, said his wife, Fatuma Elmi.“Sometimes for one painting, he will do it in a couple days,” she said. “Sometimes he will take four or five months to do the details.”Becoming AzizOne of seven children, Osman grew up in Mogadishu and enjoyed an aristocratic upbringing. His father, Dahir Haji Osman, was one of the 13 founders of the Somali Youth League — a political party that was pivotal in establishing Somalia’s independence from colonial forces in 1960. Abdulasis “Aziz” Osman has a studio in the basement of his Columbia Heights rambler. When he’s working, he is the picture of patience, said his wife, Fatuma Elmi. In school, Aziz Osman was always drawing — slyly sketching portraits of his classmates and teachers.He left Somalia for Italy to study architecture. There, he started painting with oils and discovered his true passion. He honed his skills at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and after graduating in 1975, he began displaying his work all over Europe, traveling to shows in a camper crammed with his paintings and personal belongings.Despite his love for adventure, he felt the pull of home and returned to Somalia. Soon afterward, the war started, and he found himself on a new journey — to the U.S. for a new beginning. At first, he painted scenes from Somalia to cure his homesickness. “It helped me to say, ‘You are not far from Somalia. It’s in your house.’ ”Intimate scenes of the country before the war depict children playing, nomadic women walking with their goats, men and women joyously dancing. His favorite painting portrays an older Somali couple sitting and talking together.Of course, there are some memories of Somalia he wishes he could forget.Like that time he faced the firing squad.He had returned to Mogadishu from Italy and was with his brothers at the family home when a group of armed rebels forced their way inside. Pointing guns at Aziz and his brothers, the rebels marched them outside toward a large wall.Aziz overheard the gunmen discussing their plans. “They say, ‘We have to kill these guys,’ ” he recalled.The rebels tried to blindfold their hostages, but Aziz and his brothers refused. Suddenly, a neighbor came running into the street and shouted at the rebels. The neighbor vouched for Aziz and the others with him, telling the gunmen that the men weren’t working for the government. At last, after an hour of standing in the blazing heat, the insurgents released Aziz and his brothers.“We have been so lucky,” he said. Source: http://www.startribune.com http://www.somaliaonline.com/somali-painters-art-captures-scenes-of-somali-life-and-struggle-in-his-vibrant-art-works/

LEILA NAVIDI, STAR TRIBUNE Minneapolis City Councilman Abdi Warsame, right, talks with Mubashir Jeilani, 19, at Mapps Coffee Riverside in Minneapolis on Friday, May 29, 2015. On a rainy day in a coffee shop in Minneapolis’ Cedar Riverside neighborhood, Council Member Abdi Warsame sat across from a young man, quizzing him about his quest to become a community service officer with the Metro Transit Police.Warsame has been a mentor to Mubashir Jeilani for years, and now the 19-year-old is a finalist for a coveted spot in the CSO program, on his way to becoming the first kid to grow up in Cedar Riverside and join the force. For Warsame, the city’s first Somali-American council member, Jeilani’s success would be key to a bigger goal: one by one, proving that young Somalis can and will do good things in the Twin Cities.Nearly a year and a half into his first term, Warsame is balancing two big jobs out of his small City Hall office. There is the usual business of a ward that winds through the neighborhoods just south and east of downtown, where people want permits for new shops and restaurants, brighter lighting on the streets, new equipment in the parks.And there is the work of being one of the most prominent Somali-Americans in the country, at a time when the Somali community is making inroads in politics, business and education — but also pushing back against a wave of news about young Somalis trying to link up with terrorist groups overseas. In between council meetings and city business, Warsame’s calendar is filled with visits from East African dignitaries, trips to other Somali communities in the United States and casual conversations with people who need help with problems large and small.Warsame’s words travel further than those of most people in local government. So on a high-profile issue like the recent arrests of a half-dozen young Somali-Americans accused of trying to leave the Twin Cities to join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, Warsame chooses his words carefully.“I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I know how you should raise your children,” he said. “But I know I have a platform where I can say the truth as relative to me, as I see it. And the truth is … there’s something wrong here, and what’s wrong is these young men don’t understand where they came from.” City Council Member Abdi Warsame, left, talked with Mubashir Jeilani, 19, about his plans to join the Metro Transit Police. Grew up in England Warsame, 37, came from Somalia, via England, where his family moved when he was young. There, he had what he calls a “middle-class” life, but he was often told about the much harder life left behind in Somalia. He was told to stay out of the decades-long civil war there, that it was a “stupid” conflict that pitted families against each other. Warsame says he knew that no matter how hard it was being poor and foreign and black and Muslim, he was in a place that would give him a better future than in his birthplace.When he moved to Minneapolis in 2006 with his wife, Warsame said he felt more at home than ever. He worked for a bank, then as a community organizer in Cedar Riverside and in 2013, he decided to make a run for office.Warsame saw his victory — the first for any Somali-American in a major U.S. city — as a rallying point for a community that needed a win. Other Somalis seem to see it that way, too. When he won, Warsame’s phone rang and rang. His few dozen Facebook friends turned into a few thousand Facebook fans. His page was soon full of photos from a parade of visitors to his office: kings, prime ministers, elders from every region of Somalia. The Kenyan foreign minister wants to visit next.Somalis with less political influence vie for his time, too. Walking home from work, Warsame is nearly always stopped by people looking for the kind of help council members usually aren’t asked to provide. There’s an apartment with bedbugs, a sick son, an uncle dying in Somalia, a wife having trouble with her immigration papers.“With the East African community, they want to see you first,” he said. “They want to know what you’re doing. They want to see what you’re doing. They want to bless what you’re doing.”Warsame also seeks out interaction beyond Minnesota’s Somali community. He has traveled to other cities with East African populations, including Seattle and San Diego.Council Member Blong Yang, the city’s first Hmong-American elected official, said there is not an easy way to manage the demands and interest from a broader community when there’s so much work to do on basic council business. “I feel like from his perspective, he seems to be managing it pretty well,” Yang said. “In some ways you get the sense that he relishes in it.” role model: Abdi Warsame is the first Somali-American on the Minneapolis City Council. Typically brief commentsIn public meetings, Warsame is often one of the quietest people on the council dais. He lets other council members debate before he weighs in. His comments are typically brief, if he makes public comments at all. Occasionally, however, such as when the council approved the country’s first-ever Somalian sister city, Warsame speaks passionately.“I think he’s a real powerful voice when he does speak,” Council President Barb Johnson said. “I remember him in the budget — he had the audience in his hand and it quieted people who had been screaming and hollering. You could have heard a pin drop when he was speaking.”In conversations with the Somali community, Warsame is much more outspoken. And while he waited before saying anything publicly after the recent conspiracy arrests, he eventually spoke out with a statement to the media, an opinion piece in the newspaper and in conversations on the street and in coffee shops.After the arrests, some family members of the young men in jail came to Warsame’s office looking for help. His staff members had to tell them there wasn’t much they could do. But Warsame thinks there is something to be done with all the other Somali kids searching, as he did, to make something out of their lives.Families, he said, need to do more of what his mother did: teach their children about where they came from and why they are here.“Let’s give our children both sides of the story,” he said. “Why are you in America? Where did we come from? Why did we flee? If we had a choice we wouldn’t be here, that’s reality. Most Somalis would want to be in Somalia. But the reality is you have to do hard work.”The stakes are high, as are the expectations. Mohamud Noor, a Somali-American who is a former Minneapolis school board member and former legislative candidate, said both Somalis and the larger community are watching to see if Warsame can make a difference.“People are expecting him to step up,” Noor said.Warsame takes it upon himself to be a personal cheerleader and coach for any kid who expresses interest in a goal. He’s spent his Saturdays taking teenagers to job fairs, ensured others got applications filled out for jobs and college. With each success — like Jeilani’s, with his police department ambitions — Warsame believes he’s picking up the momentum it will take to transform his community.“If he gets into the police force, then I have a prototype,” he said. “I can say: ‘You see this kid? Why is he different to you? Is he better than you? Is he cleverer than you? No. But he’s earning $20 per hour, he’s getting his tuition paid for, he’s going to the cops, and you’re standing around.’ ’’Said Warsame: “That’s how you change people. You change people by showing an example of what they could be.”Source: http://www.startribune.com http://www.somaliaonline.com/for-minneapolis-council-member-abdi-warsame-recruitment-fight-starts-small/

It was unbelievably shocking and painful to see Somaliland politicians and administrators outbidding each other in expressing their enmity and hatred for Somalism and the Somali people. While Somaliland politicians were falling over each other to be in at the front row of the festivities held in Hargeisa for Ethiopia’s 24th anniversary of the EPRDF’s overthrow of the Mengistu Regime, Somaliland authorities were blocking Somali refugees returning from Yemen to disembark in Berbera port while people of other nationalities were welcomed with open arms. Although successive Somaliland governments tried their best to distance themselves from other Somalis, particularly, those in Southern Somalia, things have never reached such level of hatred and hostility. There was even a time when Somalis saw an improvement in attitude when Silanyo government sent a Somaliland delegation carrying relief aid to drought-stricken people in Mogadishu in 2011. Many people saw this as a heartwarming gesture which showed that brotherhood among the Somali people was still intact despite Somaliland’s secession fait accompli. However things deteriorated quickly to the point that Somaliland today shamelessly and cruelly uses the plight of the weak and scared Somali refugees from Yemen as a political game. As a Somali, hailing from Somaliland, and on behalf of the good people of Somaliland, I would like to give my apology to our sisters and brothers who cried for Somalism onboard the foreign ship, who were treated like Burma’s unwanted Rohingya by Somaliland authorities. There is no doubt that history will not forgive the leaders of Somaliland. Nor will decent Somalis, Somalilanders included, ever forgive people like Somaliland President Silanyo, Vice President Saylici, Interior Minister Ina Waran Cadde, Berbera Port Manager Cali Xoor-Xoor, Berbera Governor Fahmi Bidaar and all Somaliland Ministerial Cabinet who accepted and approved this ugly decision. They will remain accountable for your plight. We will name them and shame them. It is a dark spot in our history. Your tears and words will forever wrench our hearts…. “We are Somalis, we speak Somali…aren’t you Somalis” said one of the women passengers. “I don’t want to go anywhere else. I want to live in Hargeisa and Buroa and raise my children here. We don’t need any financial help from you, we have our money. Just let us disembark.” said a mother of six. The returnees came from Yemen, haggard and tired. Seeking only peace and tranquility. They spent many years as refugees in Yemen. They were aliens there but they were welcomed. They dreamed of the day they would return to their homeland and kiss its soil. But when they did, they were rejected by their own kith and kin. As Somali Foreign Minister Abdusalam Hadliye said in an interview with VOA, Somalis went as refugees everywhere in the world, both to Muslim and non-Muslim countries, and they were accepted and welcomed. “I cannot understand, and all Somalis including Somalilanders cannot understand, why Somali people would be refused to land in their own homeland. This is a logic I cannot understand and I don’t think anyone else understands it,” he said. It was reassuring to hear Faisal Ali Waraabe, Chairman of the UCID party, express a similar feeling in a statement to the BBC. The people of Somaliland from Borama to Berbera also expressed their outrage against this infamous action. But I expected Somaliland opposition parties and Somaliland civil societies to do more. They should have been demonstrating and camping next to the ship, bringing food, water and other provisions to the people. They should have been holding a sit-in at the port, demanding that they would not leave the place and would rather all die in the heat until Somaliland administration accepted to allow the Somali refugee returnees to disembark from the ship. Above all, I expected Somaliland religious leaders to highlight the fate of these people in their Friday sermons or aren’t these people also Muslims apart from being Somali. This is a humanitarian issue and the fate of the weak, tired, and war weary mothers, children and elderly is at stake. It is imperative that any human being in this dire situation let alone Somali people returning to their homeland should be welcomed. The life of these vulnerable people should never have been used as a pawn to score political goals. What a disgrace Mr. Silanyo for taking Somaliland to its moment of infamy. Bashir Goth is a Somali poet, journalist, professional translator, freelance writer and the first Somali blogger. Bashir is the author of numerous cultural, religious and political articles and advocate of community-development projects, particularly in the fields of education and culture. He is also a social activist and staunch supporter of women’s rights. He is currently working as an editor in a reputable corporation in the UAE

Four years ago, Muna Abdulahi was in seventh-grade English Language Learner classes at Willmar Middle School when it hit her that “this is important.” “I was a very quiet person,” she said, and ELL teacher Cathy Nilles helped her overcome some of her shyness. “She would pull me out of my comfort zone,” Muna said in a recent interview at Willmar Senior High.A combination of the influence of teachers like Nilles and Muna’s own determination has brought her to this point — a confident high school junior preparing to leave June 7 to spend part of her summer as a page for U.S. Sen. Al Franken.These days, she speaks English fluently with barely a hint of an accent and is consistently on the school’s honor roll. She is a mentor/tutor for other students.In the past school year, she became the first Somali student to be chosen for Willmar Senior High’s National Honor Society, and she has placed highly in speech tournaments for her poetry interpretation. She was recently honored by the American Association of University of Women.Her parents are both very excited about her opportunity to go to Washington, she said. She expects that her mother is “probably going to call me every day.”Muna’s mother Lul Yusuf said she and her husband Abdi Noor are proud and excited about their daughter’s opportunity. She is the second oldest of their four daughters.Yusuf said she’s not worried about her daughter making the trip. “If she is comfortable, I’m comfortable,” she said. When Muna applied, “I told her she can go to the interview; if you win, you can go.”She hopes Muna is able to visit the White House.Muna said she’s still adjusting to being chosen as a page. “I’m still in the stage where I’m still shocked that I’m actually going. … I never actually thought I was going.”Muna found out about the opportunity from Principal Paul Schmitz, who urged her to apply and wrote a letter of recommendation.“Muna is a talented, unique individual who would not only benefit greatly from being a part of this program, she would be an asset to all others that are a part of this program,” Schmitz wrote in his letter.Tollefson said Muna is her first student to participate in the page program. In her letter, she added comments from several teachers in addition to her own recommendation that the program “would be fortunate to have her working for you as a page.”Schmitz said he’s never recommended a student for the program before.He called Muna a “bridge builder.” He pointed out that “Muna rises above those differences and helps bring students together” in the school’s diverse student body.Schmitz described Muna’s introducing herself to him as a ninth-grader and asking for his advice on how she could get the most out of high school. “I have seen her mature from a ninth-grader interested in learning about the world to an 11th-grader who is ready to make a difference in the world,” he wrote.Her parents are both from Somalia. They met while living in Atlanta, which has a significant Somali community. Many of their relatives remain in Atlanta.The family moved from Atlanta to Seattle for several years before coming to Willmar about eight years ago, Muna said. When she was a young child, the family spoke Somali, but now, everyone speaks English. Her mother, a registered nurse in Somalia, is a medical interpreter and a day care provider. Her father works in the information technology department at Jennie-O Turkey Store.Muna was in fourth grade when the family moved here. She said she likes having friends from many different backgrounds, something she didn’t have in Seattle.“I don’t think I would have come out how I am right now if I hadn’t been in Willmar,” she said. “I’m friends with almost anyone; we learn to respect each other.”Muna said one of her goals in entering speech competition was to improve her English, and she’s learned she really enjoys it.“I’ve always had a passion for poetry, but I never thought I’d be the one out there,” she said. “Poetry can be beautiful.” Her interpretation this year was on bullying. She also did a duo presentation with friend Laura Norling using an excerpt from the novel “The Help.”“It had such great meaning to it,” she said. “I thought it was incredible to share it.”Muna participated in sports in her freshman year and was on the basketball team. When she turned 16, she went to work at Target. In her spare time, she likes to read, watch movies and go to the YMCA to play basketball and hang out with her friends.Muna said their parents are supportive of her and of her sisters and want them to get good educations. “I’m so lucky to have parents like them.”She is motivated to move beyond the stereotypes some people have of her community, to “get out of that bubble of low expectations and do what I want to do.”The University of Minnesota is her school of choice, and she hopes to major in political science. “I have a lot of different ideas,” she said. “My long-term goal is law.” http://www.somaliaonline.com/somali-student-muna-abdulahi-is-going-to-washington-to-work-as-a-page-for-u-s-senator-al-franken/

Fathia Absie of Eden Prairie, right, wrote, directed and starred in The Lobby, a film that explores the connection between two cultures that don t know much about each other, despite living side by side. She is pictured here in a scene from the film. (Courtesy photo) Fathia Absie didn't wear a hijab when she first moved to Minnesota about five years ago. The decision to wear one was born out of necessity when she started losing hair from the stress of living in a new environment, she said. "For the first time, I had people calling me names just walking by, for no reason at all, and the only reason I could come up with is that I looked different and was wearing a hijab. It made me feel very sad," Absie said. The Eden Prairie filmmaker is sharing the message that people have more in common than they realize. Absie's 56-minute film about a relationship between a white man and a Somali-American woman is a response to something she has noticed in her new home. "I still feel that Somali-Americans and fellow Minnesotans share the same space but could not be further apart. There's no relationship, so I thought there was a dialogue missing," said Absie, who wrote, directed and stars in the film. She calls her movie a "very simple story." "The minute we start sharing our stories we realize we are so close, so similar and everything else fades away," Absie said. In "The Lobby," which premiered at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival in April, a man finds himself intrigued by a woman wearing a hijab in a hotel lobby. They begin to talk and a relationship forms. The film might seem like a departure from Absie's previous work at Washington D.C. -based Voice of America, where she made a documentary about Somali youth radicalization and indoctrination.But it was driven, Absie said, by the same desire to tell Somali stories and create conversations. "We are a culture of storytellers," Absie said. "First and foremost we are an oral society ... they say 'tell me something. ...' Fiction is a powerful tool." But the film isn't just for Absie's Somali community. She said she hopes her fellow Minnesotans come out to support her too. "It made sense that it would be a story about two cultures that didn't know that much about each other but shared the same community," Absie said. Katie Kather can be reached at 651-228-5006. Follow her at twitter.com/ktkather. What: "The Lobby" When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday Where: Lagoon Cinema, 1320 Lagoon Ave., Minneapolis Information: 612-267-9688 Source: http://www.twincities.com

Mary Nelson walked down to the end of Mankato East High School’s Wolverton Field track, looking for two members of the girls track and field team that she had talked to a few minutes earlier.They were nowhere to be found.After several minutes, Amal Hussein and Nimo Hassen, two of East’s growing population of Somali students, finally showed up. They had followed what they thought were Nelson’s instructions to go for a jog around the block.Nelson, a Cougars assistant coach, had a good laugh, along with the girls. She actually had told them to go down to the blocks — the starting blocks.“I know running lingo, but you literally have to break it down,” Nelson said. “It’s beginning stuff for them.”The language barrier — for some students of immigrant families — was just one roadblock to getting Somali girls out for sports at East, but they are starting to be coaxed onto the playing fields.This year, East had five Somali girls out for the high school track team. Another five junior high girls were out. School officials hope there will be even more in years to come.“There are cultural and religious barriers,” said Harbi Hassan, the cultural liaison for the Mankato school district. “You have to understand and respect the religion and culture, and the school made it possible that they can participate.”East has the goal of getting 100 percent of its students to participate in extra-curricular activities; currently, it’s at about 75 percent , according to activities director Todd Waterbury. The school identified Somali girls as a group that needed some nudging into school sports and clubs.While Somali boys have played soccer and other sports for years, the girls have not gone out for athletics at the same rate, often maintaining traditional gender roles in their families.Hussein, a junior, was one of the first to sign up.“Any sport would be awesome,” she said.Said junior Warda Jama, who competes in shot put and discus: “I was tired of going home, doing homework and just going outside. I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do what other students were doing and be more balanced at school.”Jama, who is in her second year of track, said she now wishes she would have gone out in seventh grade. However, she said, language was more of a barrier to her then.One of her teammates, freshman Ikra Mohamud, has been in the United States less than year and still needs some translation assistance. “I love the sport of running,” she said through Hassan.Hassan and assistant principal Dave Lutz talked to parents and community members about getting the girls more involved. The response, they said, was positive.“The biggest part when we talked about barriers was asking questions,” Lutz said. “We engaged the community and got community support and interest. They deserve as much credit as anybody.”Hassan said giving all students a sense of belonging in the school setting is important in their growth. He’s had similar discussions with the district’s Hispanic and Sudanese populations.“It starts at the top with a commitment from the school to bridge any gap in equity and access for all kids,” Hassan said. “We want to make them feel comfortable here.”Track and field ended up being a good fit. Athletes aren’t cut from the rosters, and they’re constantly working to better their sprints, runs, jumps and throws.“One of the beautiful things about track is that things can improve every single time they do something. It doesn't matter if it's a meet or practice,” Nelson said. “It's literally about PRing (achieving personal records). Everybody is looking to get a PR so it puts on a level playing field every student-athlete out here. Did you improve?”East had to make accommodations for the girls. Officials searched far and wide for athletic-style hijabs – the head coverings worn by Muslim girls and women – finally securing them through a vendor in the Netherlands. The school also provides athletic pants and long-sleeved shirts to ensure they are following and respecting religious customs.“The (hijabs) are cool,” said Hassen, a freshman sprinter. “You don't worry about them falling down when you run. … They make you feel special, too; it shows that the school cares about us and supports us.”Sabrina Abulkadir, a sophomore who does sprints, jumps and throws, agreed.“Everybody in the Mankato East community makes you feel more comfortable,” she said. “We’re breaking boundaries.”Source: http://www.mankatofreepress.comhttp://www.somaliaonline.com/there-are-cultural-and-religious-barriers-but-one-minnesota-high-schools-field-track-is-breaking-boundaries/

Faduma Warsame is a woman on a mission.On Sunday, the 21-year-old graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in English and a minor in teaching English as a second language. One might expect Warsame to start hunting for a teaching job, or take a break from school in the summer.She's doing neither. In late July, the young woman will embark on a journey she has waited years to make: She'll be memorizing all 6,236 verses of the Quran.In her family's Eagan split-level home, Warsame, the eldest of eight children, nestled recently on a couch with her smartphone. She wasn't texting or tweeting, but reading from a Quran app."That's my goal right now, to be studying the Quran full time after graduation," Warsame said.She recited one of her favorite verses — one about how all people came from a common beginning. This is the poetry she fell in love with.Warsame knows learning the Quran by heart is no easy feat. Islam's holy book is 604 pages and consists of 114 chapters of varying lengths. Muslims believe the Quran is the word of God as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad by the angel Gabriel in Arabic."If this is the true word of God, it's an amazing thing to memorize," Warsame said. "We believe it's an act of worship, too. If you truly love the Quran, you can take it wherever you go, you don't need to have a book with you all the time."For the past five years, Warsame has been studying the Quran part time at al-Jazari Institute at Al-Farooq Youth and Family Center in Bloomington.But now she wants to take it a notch higher: Since March 10, Warsame has raised more than $2,000 through an Internet fundraising campaign to pay for an intensive summer Quranic program at the Bayyinah Institute near Dallas. I still did not know who I was because I did not know much about my religion at all. Faduma Warsame Such a fundraising campaign is "an extra step of dedication," said Omar Ali, who teaches high school Islamic studies at al-Amal School in Fridley. "I've never seen anybody who's done that."The number of Quranic schools, known as dugsi in Somali, is growing in the Twin Cities, along with the state's Muslim population. Many Somali parents believe having their children memorize every verse of the Quran is the most noble rite of passage in their faith.Muslim children in countries like Pakistan, Somalia or Nigeria spend most of their free time after school learning the Quran. But it's often a struggle for young Muslims in the West to balance their religious studies with their secular education and extracurricular activities.Warsame's journey stands in contrast with those taken by a handful of young men — some who likely crossed paths with her at the Bloomington mosque — who now face charges of trying to travel to Syria to enlist with ISIS. She said she disagrees with the notion of fighting for extremist groups overseas and has sympathy for the men's families in Minnesota.The alleged ISIS recruits displayed a new religious fervor a few years before their reported attempts to enlist with the group. Families and friends of these men say someone took advantage of their developing beliefs and radicalized them.Ali, the schoolteacher, said young people who try to take a shortcut to learning Islam may be especially vulnerable. Radicals could influence these teenagers and persuade them to seek a more "pure" form of Islam in another country, he said. "Learning the religion needs a lot of patience, which is something a lot of kids don't have," Ali said.Warsame said young Muslims in America can find it a struggle to balance their American side with their Islamic identity and values.Faduma Warsame Jennifer Simonson | MPR NewsAs the first born of eight children, Warsame knows that struggle. "It's very hard growing up the oldest," she said. "You don't know what the right path is. Everything is a trial run."For years, her studies and family responsibilities kept her from moving forward with the Quran. It wasn't until she turned 17 that she seriously started learning the Quran at a local dugsi."The unsaid rule is that once you're over the age of 13 14, 15, dugsi isn't really for you anymore," she said. "I felt like it was really embarrassing."Warsame was born in a refugee camp in Kenya in 1994, a year and a half before her family immigrated to the United States. Her parents did not go to college, their schooling having been interrupted by the civil war in Somalia.Her mother tried to continue her studies in Minnesota, and Warsame remembers her mother doing ESL homework, something that was "so easy for me," she said. "And so I'll be like, 'Mom, I can help you with your homework.'""It's really humbling seeing my parent strive so hard," Warsame said.At Kennedy High School in Bloomington, Warsame excelled in academics, but that's also where she struggled most with her identity. Though she was active in extracurricular activities, had good friends, participated in the debate club and knew her teachers on a personal level, there still was something missing from her life."I still did not know who I was," she said, "because I did not know much about my religion at all."For now, Warsame wants to delve deeply into a fuller understanding of her faith."Just listening to [the Quran], it would make you wonder: What kind of impact will it have when you understand every single thing?" she said. "That's why I push myself."Source: http://www.mprnews.org http://www.somaliaonline.com/now-that-she-graduated-from-university-faduma-warsame-plans-to-embark-on-a-journey-to-memorize-all-6236-verses-of-the-holy-quran/

Saheela Ibraheem was accepted to Harvard College at age 15, and arrived at 16. She took ultra-tough Math 55. She was a teaching fellow for Harvard’s largest class, CS50. She introduced President Barack Obama at a reception in March. Now, she is graduating at just 20.So she’s planning a well-earned rest.Ibraheem is a Quincy House neurobiology concentrator with a computer science secondary and an aim for a career in academia. That means graduate school is in her future. But first she’s taking a gap year and, for once, has no specific plans for it yet.Ibraheem, who grew up in Piscataway, N.J., has long been in the spotlight for her academic achievements. At 16, she was named to a list of “The World’s 50 Smartest Teenagers,” which got the attention of the White House. She was invited to Washington, D.C., in early March, where she introduced the president and first lady at a reception to kick off Black History Month.“She’s like the State Department and the National Institutes of Health all rolled into one,” Obama said during a short speech. “Young people like this inspire our future.”Ibraheem became interested in neurobiology in high school — which she entered after skipping sixth and ninth grades — when she picked up a copy of “Gray’s Anatomy” at the school library. She fed that interest at Harvard not just in class, but also in the laboratory of Emery Brown, who investigates the neurobiology of anesthesia and holds appointments at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.Ibraheem’s parents are both numerically inclined. Her father is a quantitative analyst for a New York bank, and her mother is an accountant. She has three younger brothers, two of whom are in their first years at Yale University and Dartmouth College. Lest her academic accolades give her a big head, one brother reminds her occasionally that he got into Yale, and she didn’t.Being younger than her Harvard classmates didn’t prove too difficult, Ibraheem said, though she recalled that one first meeting with a classmate devolved into an argument about how old she really was. Other than that, she said that being too young to buy some cold medicines or to see R-rated movies were the most significant obstacles.At Harvard, Ibraheem has been a member of the Harvard Islamic Society, and worked with two other student groups: the Science Club for Girls, which provides after-school mentoring at the Amigos School in Cambridge, and,Dreamporte, which uses 3-D technology to teach geography and world culture to foster children.When asked what advice she had for incoming students, Ibraheem said that they shouldn’t shy away from challenging classes, but that they also shouldn’t sacrifice sleep and free time just to study endlessly.“There are so many new people. Meet as many as you can. Maybe try out extracurriculars you didn’t [try] before,” Ibraheem said.Ibraheem said her Harvard experience transformed her from a shy person to someone comfortable meeting people, talking with them, and listening to them.“[it was] definitely enlightening, transformative, unique,” she said.Source: http://media.news.harvard.edu http://www.somaliaonline.com/ahead-of-her-time-gifted-child-saheela-ibraheem-who-went-to-harvard-at-the-age-of-16-graduates/

Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of July 7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay A British extremist known as the 'White Widow' is commanding an army of 200 female jihadis and is known as the "Mother of Holy War", according to reports coming out of Somalia.Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of 7/7 bomber Germaine Lindsay, gained notoriety after fleeing the UK in the wake of the attacks and joining the Al-Shabaab terrorist group.Now she is said to be working in the organisation's Intelligence Unit and is said to have masterminded the deaths of over 400 people in attacks carried out by her network of loyal followers.One of her proteges was reportedly behind a recent suicide bombing at a hotel in the capital Mogadishu, killing 28 people.She has also been linked to the appalling killings of 148 students at a university in Kenya, and the raid on Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 67. Samantha Lewthwaite, dubbed the 'White Widow' and Jermaine LindsaySomali security services told the Mail Online that Lewthwaite lives with a group of widowed Al-Shabaab women who she trains to gather intelligence in government-controlled areas in Somalia by posing as tea shop owners, street sellers and hotel workers.Her so-called spies gather information and gossip from patrolling government troops in the area and passes the details back to her leader.Intelligence officer Mohamed Hassan said: "Her activities inside the group are increasingly directed by al-Shabaab's chief of intelligence Mahad Karate."A recent suicide attack at the Central Hotel in Mogadishu was carried out by Somali-born Lul Ahmed, believed to be a former student of Lewtwaites'.Ahmed was posing as a receptionist when she blew herself up, killing 28 people including an MP and the city's deputy mayor. Paramedics help a woman who was injured during an attack by Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab gunmen on the Moi University campus in Garissa Hassan added: "We have intelligence reports that suggest that White Widow Samantha Lewthwaite was somehow involved in the bombing at the Central hotel, one of the most serious attacks in Mogadishu."She has been blamed for hundreds of deaths since climbing the ranks of the feared Al-Shabaab network.Atrocities linked to the 32-year-old mother of four include last month’s slaughter of 148 by gunmen at a university in Kenya, say security chiefs.One told the Mirror in the Somalian capital, frequently bombed by al Shabaab: “This lady sits at the right hand of the leader directing attacks.”She has been rapidly promoted through the ranks of al Shabaab after many of its leaders died in drone attacks.The London University graduate was quickly recognised as intelligent and evil-minded enough by jihadi terror bosses to be trusted with the most horrific atrocities. Undated photo of Samantha Lewthwaite A senior Somali anti-terror officer says Lewthwaite is now at the right hand of al Shabaab leader Ahmad Umar and is suspected of ordering the deaths of more than 400 innocent people.He said: “She is an evil person but a very clever operator.”Lewthwaite, of Aylesbury, Bucks, is believed to have directed terror raids, suicide attacks and car bombings in Somalia and Kenya.She has also launched a recruitment drive of teenagers and women as suicide bombers after bribing their desperate families with as little as £300.And Lewthwaite is believed to have sent brain-washed boys as young as 15 to their deaths as suicide bombers – after they were pumped full of heroin.The top officer at Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency – who we are not naming to protect his identity – added: “The lady has moved up the ranks. She is one of the most important figures in the terror group.“We think this lady is sitting at the right hand of the leader directing attacks.“She does not carry out attacks herself as she is too important but is responsible for many, many deaths - hundreds.“She uses children to kill for her after giving money to their families.”Source: http://www.mirror.co.uk http://www.somaliaonline.com/white-widow-samantha-lewthwaite-commands-army-of-200-female-jihadis-in-somalia-and-is-called-mother-of-holy-war/

Asha Farah, spent the first 11 years of her life as a nomad in Somalia.For half the year, she chased the rainfalls and raised livestock with her mother and siblings. Their only shelter was a portable house made of bent sticks, dried grass and woven mats.“As a child, my daily life focused on battling thirst, hunger and extreme drought,” Farah explained.Farah’s uncle had moved to the city to build a better life. He found work and received an education. And, like many in Somalia who reach a certain level of success, Farah’s uncle was intent on supporting his nomadic family. He began by educating his younger brothers and their children, including Farah’s brother.In the mid-1970s, Farah and family members still living as nomads lost everything they had to drought. Her brother, who had become an officer in the Somali Army, evacuated the family. Farah, now twelve years old, was exposed to Somalia’s city life and school for the first time.“From the moment I got the chance to read and write, I knew it was my turn to make it and never forget others who did not get the rare opportunity I had been given,” she said.Eleven years later, Farah moved to Washington, D.C. She began a new life, taking advantage of every opportunity before her. However, there was more Farah wanted for her life, so she headed west to pursue her dreams.“As difficult as the nomadic life was, I’m incredibly thankful for the survival skills it gave me,” said Farah. “Somali nomads are proud, resilient, and resourceful. These traits came in handy as I adjusted to life in the U.S.” A Starbucks Journey BeginsFarah’s Starbucks journey began in 1998, when she accepted a temporary position at Starbucks Support Center in Seattle.“Starbucks was not well known when I started, yet I saw the opportunity that the company’s welcoming culture represented right away,” Farah shared.Within months, she was hired fulltime on the Store Development team and over the next several years, helped to open stores in the Pacific Northwest, Western Mountain region and Canada.“As a nomadic child, there were many days that a small container of water allowed my family to survive another day. The same little girl who was literally dying for a drop of water is now a Starbucks partner (employee) opening stores and contributing to the company’s success,” Farah said. “If you open the opportunity door for a child, like my uncle and brother did for me, you are creating endless possibilities for that child.”Farah was encouraged by the level of support Starbucks provides partners who wish to volunteer. She began tutoring young Somali-American children at local schools in Seattle. Soon, she was using her vacation time to return to Somalia and help educate kids there as well.Today, sixteen years later, Farah is poised to do what her uncle and brother did so many years earlier – pull children out of poverty and provide them with an education.Teaching Somali YouthIn 2008, Farah joined three like-minded Somali Americans to start the Karin Foundation, a nonprofit that supports education for underprivileged children in Somalia. The foundation re-opens schools, provides supplies, pays teacher salaries and sustains classrooms in small remote villages.“Educating kids who live a nomadic lifestyle is challenging,” said Farah. “Families move around so frequently that it’s hard for kids to continue with their schooling. We just want to plant educational seeds to create a glimmer of hope for these kids.”The Karin Foundation began its most ambitious project in 2014, by developing the Burao Academy of Science and Technology, one of the first science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) co-ed boarding schools in Somalia. The school’s main goal is for every student to graduate and either pursue higher education or build a successful vocation in the country.“My passion for Burao Academy’s mission is, of course, deeply rooted in my background,” she said. “I know exactly what it’s like to have no future or opportunity because it did not exist for me and my family for a very long time. Burao Academy will provide opportunities for young people who would otherwise face a lifelong cycle of illiteracy and poverty.”The Karin Foundation has raised $150,000 of the total $500,000 needed to complete the school. Although all funds have yet to be secured, the project kicked off in February 2015, starting with the construction of a wall to secure school grounds. The school is scheduled to open in September 2016.“At Starbucks, we go into communities around the world and open stores that make a difference and uplift the people in these neighborhoods,” said Farah. “I’m inspired by what we do. I work for a company that breaks barriers every day. You can’t ignore that, it becomes part of you. I see first-hand how Starbucks creates jobs and opportunities for people and I know how important it is for me to do the same back home in Somalia.”Source: https://news.starbucks.com/http://www.somaliaonline.com/life-as-a-somali-nomad-motivated-starbucks-partner-asha-farah-to-help-kick-start-the-burao-academy-of-science-and-technology/

The Arc Greater Twin Cities has honored Marian Ahmed of Savage with its “Changing Attitudes” Changemaker Award. The award was presented at The Arc’s Volunteer Celebration and Annual Meeting on May 1 at the Hilton Minneapolis/Bloomington, according to a press release. The Changemaker Awards recognize individuals or organizations for making a difference for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. The “Changing Attitudes” category recognizes those who positively change public perceptions of people with disabilities. The mother of two young sons with autism, Ahmed is changing attitudes in the Somali community, where intellectual and developmental disabilities are often stigmatized. She had the courage to have her sons diagnosed at an early age and get therapies that are helping them overcome their challenges. Now she is publicly sharing her story to encourage other Somali families to get help for their own children with disabilities. “It takes incredible bravery to come forward and speak about an issue that people would rather deny or avoid,” said Kim Keprios, CEO of The Arc Greater Twin Cities, in a press release. “Marian has dared to bring her story to light, and her courage is making a profound difference in her community. She is helping Somali families connect with resources and become advocates for their own children. But perhaps most important, she is helping the Somali community see disability differently, and that is truly an extraordinary change.” The Arc Greater Twin Cities promotes and protects the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, actively supporting them and their families in a lifetime of full inclusion and participation in their communities. The Arc was started almost 70 years ago by parents determined to create more opportunities for their children with disabilities. Today, The Arc continues to be a family-focused, grassroots organization helping people address issues such as early intervention, education, transition to adulthood, health care, housing, employment, guardianship and more. For more information and volunteer opportunities, call The Arc Greater Twin Cities at (952) 920-0855 or visit www.arcgreatertwincities.org.Source: http://www.swnewsmedia.com http://www.somaliaonline.com/marian-ahmed-wins-changemaker-award-from-arc-to-recognize-her-for-making-a-difference-for-people-with-intellectual-and-developmental-disabilities-and-their-families/

On the morning of 12 May, Mahdi Hashi was brought from a high-security cell in New York’s Manhattan Correctional Facility, where he had been held in solitary confinement since 2012, and asked to answer the charge of providing support to the Somalia terrorist group al-Shabaab. Hashi, 25, who grew up in Camden, north London, but is no longer able to call himself British because Theresa May has stripped him of his citizenship, told the judge he wished to plead guilty. His conviction marks the end of a three-year investigation, which the FBI was quick to trumpet as another success in its battle to win the war on terrorism. Yet the case of Mahdi Hashi may not be all that it seems. His journey from the streets of Camden, where he worked as a community youth leader, to a New York terrorism court room has taken in encounters with MI5, claims of torture in an East African prison and an American interrogation and rendition programme that was supposed to be outlawed by President Obama. Mahdi Hashi has been held in the Metropolitan Correctional Facility in New York After his arrest in East Africa in 2012, Hashi had first faced allegations that he was part of an elite al-Shabaab suicide squad planning chemical weapons attacks on the US. But this week, US federal prosecutors accepted a plea to the controversial charge of providing material support to terrorism, an offence that imposes guilt by association. Hashi’s supporters claim that he had been visiting family in Somalia in 2012 when Theresa May stripped him of his passport under Britain’s own controversial powers against terror suspects. When he later tried to leave war-torn Somalia, he was picked up by an “unnamed” East African security agency before being handed over to the Americans. His lawyers say that he was detained in Djibouti where he was illegally interrogated and threatened with physical and sexual abuse in order to force him to co-operate. Finally, the FBI arranged for Hashi, now no longer a British citizen, to be flown to New York where he was held for three years before being put on trial for terrorism. His supporters say that such harsh treatment and all those years in solitary confinement left him little choice but to end his ordeal by pleading guilty. In the long-running war on terror, all this has a very familiar ring. But because cases like Hashi’s are nearly always wrapped up in issues of national security in which intelligence against a suspect remains secret, the full story is hardly ever told. But the case against Mahdi Hashi is more illuminating. In a post-conviction statement released by the FBI, it is clear that Hashi has admitted to something that demonstrably cannot not be completely true. The FBI says that “between approximately December 2008 and August 2012, the defendants [Hashi appeared with two others in the case] served as members of al-Shabaab in Somalia, where they agreed with others to support al-Shabaab and its extremist agenda”. But in May 2009, a year after the FBI said he was in Somalia supporting al-Shabaab, Hashi was interviewed by The Independent in London when he complained of harassment by MI5. In fact, part of his complaint was that the security services in the UK and Djibouti were making it impossible for him to visit Somalia. He denied being involved in terrorism and claimed that he felt he was being targeted simply because he wanted to travel to Somalia, where some of his family lived. The second part of the public case against Hashi released by the FBI on Tuesday was that he “was a close associate of American-born al-Shabaab leader Omar Hammami”. This was a key element in the offence of providing material support to al-Shabaab. Hammami was an American Islamist known as Abu Mansour al-Amriki who had joined al-Shabaab in 2010. But he was aligned to a more moderate wing within the terror organisation, and before Hashi had arrived in Somalia in 2012, he had left al-Shabaab after expressing misgivings about its violent direction. In 2013, Hammami was killed by the al-Shabaab leadership for what they regarded as his betrayal. Hashi was one of a number of young Somali Muslim men interviewed by The Independent in 2009 and 2010, each of whom claimed they faced intimidation by the security services. It is difficult to argue that none of them was interested in Islamist extremism or had some contact with terror suspects. Yet at the time not one of these men had a criminal record and all appeared genuine in their wish to lead violence-free lives while living in the UK. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, more young Muslim men today wrestling with what they perceive to be contradictions between their religious and British identities. A tiny number may feel the need to join terrorist groups to resolve these issues, and they must be properly investigated by our security agencies. But the vast majority want openly to engage with the arguments without fear of harassment and intimidation. READ MORE: AL-SHABAAB VOWS TO MAKE KENYA 'RUN RED WITH BLOOD' BRITISH SUSPECTS STRIPPED OF CITIZENSHIP… THEN KILLED BY DRONES The leader of the community centre where Mahdi Hashi worked in 2009 believes the Home Secretary’s decision to take away his citizenship was ill-judged and left him exiled in a country where he was not equipped to survive. Sharhabeel Lone, chairman of the Kentish Town Community Centre, told The Independent: “Let down by his own country and at the mercy of a foreign power’s skewed judicial system – three years of solitary confinement have extracted a confession from Mahdi that he was a member of a terrorist organisation in Somalia for four years. But that can’t be true because, for nearly two of those years, he was helping young people out of gang crime and drugs as a junior youth leader with our organisation.” Source: http://www.independent.co.uk http://www.somaliaonline.com/after-years-in-solitary-confinement-fbi-allegedly-extracted-a-confession-from-mahdi-hashi-that-is-guilty-of-supporting-al-shabaab-but-was-his-plea-coerced/

Two members of the Cardiff Somali community are campaigning for Somali land independence ahead of the self-proclaimed state's independence day next week. Abdikarim Abdi Adan, left, and Eid Alli Ahemed.Leading members of Cardiff’s Somali community are calling on the British and Welsh governments to recognise Somaliland as a country in its own right. Speaking ahead of Somaliland independence day next week Eid Ali Ahmed, a founder member of Wales Refugee Council, and Abdikarim Abdi Adan, who runs Cardiff’s Somali Advice Centre, said recognising Somaliland would give it the investment and help it needs to be a stable area in a troubled region. Such a move could even help address the current migrant crisis as people from across Africa risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean for Europe, they said. 'If the economy grows why would people need to come here?' “If it is recognised as a country it will have access to international aid and UN agencies and businesses will be more willing to invest,” said Mr Ahmed “If the economy grows why would people need to come here? “Migrants from across Africa coming from Libya to Italy are facing all these problems finding jobs. Western powers need to look at other ways to address this. “We are building and investing in people in Somaliland but not getting the recognition to help us further our aims.” Since declaring independence in 1991 Somaliland now has its own constitution, universities, currency, police and military and there has been no fighting in the area for six years. A peaceful enclave, it has refugees from Somalia in the south and other countries, but cannot expand its economy without investment, the pair said. 'Huge potential' Former Fitzalan pupil Mr Adan, a UK representative for the Somaliland Chamber of Commerce, said: “There is huge potential not being tapped into. “Recognition would give it status. “One of the key things is if we are able to support business and universities it will reduce numbers of youngsters leaving. “Foreign Office travel advice is not to go to Somalia but Somaliland is safe. It needs to be recognised as a safe country in its own right. “The international community refuses to recognise Somaliland as a country, continuing to see Somalia as one country and all the problems that brings with it.” In March Cardiff Council officially recognised Somaliland as a sovereign state passing a motion to call on the UK Government and Welsh Government to recognise the region as an independent state. 'It's about providing support' Some members of the city’s Somali community opposed the move saying it caused division and was beyond the council’s remit. Labour councillor Lynda Thorne, who proposed the motion, said, “The motion was on the basis of sustaining democracy and in terms of helping Somaliland be recognised by the United Nations and to bring more investment, jobs, and prosperity there and to the rest of Somalia. “I don’t think we’re meddling, it’s about providing support to a large community in Cardiff. “It could be said as a council we have no power to recognise Somaliland but we’re trying to help that community get support from the United Nations and the UK Government, one small step at a time.” Source: http://www.walesonline.co.uk http://www.somaliaonline.com/two-somaliland-secessionists-argue-that-recognizing-somaliland-could-help-address-the-current-migrant-crisis-in-europe/

“Images”, as the Chilean visual artist Alfredo Jaar has said, “are not innocent.” From their creation, to their distribution to their interpretation, images are conveyors of power and influence. While traditional media channels have been consolidated in the hands of a few, the rise of the Internet has offered people unprecedented means to access and publish visual content.As a more inclusive image-delivery outlet, the web has offered diverse, creative visions a place to thrive, visions which had previously been rendered nearly invisible by parochial corporate media architecture. Developing her work in this new cultural wave is the photographer/poet Amaal Said. Born in Denmark to Somali parents and having came of age in London where she now lives, Said has created space in the digital landscape to offer humanizing photographs and poems of people in her community, frequently young people of the diaspora who are far too often under- or misrepresented.One only has to do a Google image search for the words “beauty” or “immigration” to see the dominant narratives Western audiences are usually subjected to. In contrast, through her deeply intimate portraits, Said captures lives in plain sight (including her own), and in so doing, expands her viewers’ very understanding of beauty, belonging, migration and youth through perceived similarities and differences.Just as photographic film was not originally designed to capture the details of darker skin and had to be recalibrated, so too must our minds be recalibrated with an enhanced sense of visual and cultural literacy. In the same vein, Dorothea Lange once said, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera.” In these troubled cultural times, this is precisely why Said’s counter-narratives are so powerful and necessary.Africa is a Country spoke to Amaal Said to learn more about her creative vision.AIAC: Your photographs are remarkable in how they challenge and evolve notions of beauty in mainstream Western media by featuring intimate portraits of melanin-rich young people – with piercings, in headscarves and with natural hair. What experiences inform and shape the content of your photographs?Amaal Said: I try my hardest to keep close to beauty. I grew up in a neighbourhood referred to as a ghetto in Odense, Denmark. I went back two years ago and all I can remember is how many shades of green I saw. I wish I had captured more of it. My own memories of Odense are at odds with what I read about it and hear from family. It’s always been a beautiful place to me, which doesn’t mean that a lot of sadness and tragedy didn’t happen there, it just means that both elements can exist at the same time.I’ve spent most of my life in London and I’ve had the pleasure of being in communities with other artists who are doing really important work in the world. I never felt alone in that case. Negative opinions of the countries we came from and the communities we lived in existed. I was in classrooms with other children who claimed that people that looked like me were dirty immigrants who stole jobs and cheated the system. I feel like I spent a lot of time at secondary school fighting people’s opinions. And I’m not in those particular classrooms anymore, but I’m still trying to combat those negative portrayals.I never saw the documenting I did as particularly hard work. I asked to take people’s pictures because I found them beautiful, because I recognised myself in them. I realise now how important the work is and how necessary it is to push against the images that do not represent us in our best light.There are certain signatures in your portraits; natural elements, shadows, graceful everyday moments. What do you look for in an image?There’s a huge contrast between my expectations of the photos I want to capture and the actual pictures I end up taking. There are thoughts that come to mind when I think of photographing a person. There are ways I imagine that I can photograph them while keeping their own personality in mind. My plans completely went out of the window when I would take the pictures. I’m always surprised at what I capture.There are new obsessions all of the time, but I am fascinated by shadows at the moment. I love the feel of the photo and I find capturing something as fleeting as a shadow exciting. I gravitate towards bright colours. I’m interested in how colours clash, what works together and what doesn’t, and what it says about the person I’m photographing.I’ve been drawn to parks more recently. I go on a walk with the person I’m photographing and we see what we can find. The walking was necessary because it allowed the person I was photographing to get comfortable with me, instead of getting straight to it. It’s incredible when I go through the pictures we just took, how it doesn’t look like we’re in London at times, but somewhere else where it’s greener and sunnier. It’s a form of escape in a way.You moved a number of times during your childhood. Is there a search for home and belonging that manifests itself in your images?It’s definitely what drew me to photography in the first place. It was the homelessness I felt. I took the picture and I rooted myself somewhere. I photograph because I’m frightened of forgetting people, places and how I feel. What connects me to the people I photograph is how we’re still trying to figure out where and what home is.There was a sense of guilt for a long time about the feeling of displacement. My parents had left their home because they wanted to give me a safe one. What does it mean to be in a so-called ‘safe’ country but not feel at home? Photography became another form of touch, a way to reach out and connect with people. My parents never really got why I chose to take pictures of people. It’s been my way of defying the feeling of displacement I didn’t know what to do with.What has been the social response to your work?I’m still so surprised at all of the love I’ve received. The responses that are the closest to my heart are the ones from the women that I have photographed. My friends have thanked me for capturing so many different parts of their personality, for making them feel beautiful.The awe that they have when they see themselves also makes me feel very warm inside. I know that I stopped taking pictures of myself for a long time because I didn’t feel beautiful. I always felt that I wasn’t the same as the person in the photograph. I feel like I’ve done a good job when the person I’ve photographed recognises themself, when they are in awe because of their own beauty.As for a broader social response, I’m so glad that it goes beyond just beauty and that people realise how necessary honest representation is. It’s important that we are documented in an intimate way. I consider myself a storyteller first and everything else is an extension of that.You have a series called “Proving our existence” which features young diaspora women holding photographs of older generations. What relationships and memories are encapsulated in the grasp of those old images?There’s a reliance on family archive images that I only paid attention to this year. I didn’t realise how often I went back to my mother’s closet to pull out the bag with all of our childhood pictures. I remember being teary-eyed over a picture of my father in his teens. It was diagonally folded and looked like it would rip. Then there are the pictures of my mother that I placed on my desk next to my books, the ones where she wore the dresses that she said all the other girls wanted.I sat with a friend in a coffee shop and she explained how all of her family pictures had been stolen. I couldn’t imagine losing all the pictures I came back to so often. I do not have my own memories of Somalia, but I’ve used my parents’ pictures to try and fill a void I felt. I started having conversations with friends about the pictures we took across continents with us, how communication occurs through pictures as well as language.I asked them to bring a picture from the archives that had travelled with them or had been sent over. I asked how they related to the person in the picture, how that person informed their own existence, why they had kept the image and other questions. It made me want to continue taking pictures. I realise how important it is to have pictures to pass on to others.In addition to being a photographer you are also a poet, which explains why there is such a strong visual poetry to the sequences of images you present. Does your lyricism of the written word influence your visual art and vice versa?I feel like I’m trying to write a very long poem when I’m a taking picture. There’s always a story being told, which I may not be aware of until I look back at the pictures. I love capturing movement, being present with a person and allowing them to move in a way that they want. There are the closed-eye moments that I especially cherish. A person asked me once how I got people to close their eyes around me. I realise now that there’s a sense of vulnerability and trust involved. It reminds me of being on a stage and telling people my shame, the family secrets I was supposed to keep a secret, the condition of my own heart.There were events in my life that kept moving full speed ahead that I tried to stop by sitting down and writing about it. I tried to describe the moment’s power, how I felt, how it changed me. There is so much that I can’t get across with the written word, so much that I want to say that I can’t write out because it hurts too much. Sometimes it’s easier to take the picture. I had to take the pictures for the ‘proving my existence’ project before I could try and write about the first and last phone conversation to my grandmother in Kenya before she died. I kept repeating ‘I’m fine’ because my Somali refused to stretch further. That’s why I chose to take the pictures of my aunts and my mother, because I didn’t have the language at the time to try and bridge the gap between us.I’ve used both forms as healing. I turned to writing when I was young and hurt, when I was learning English and feeling lost in a classroom with nobody that understood me. Photography has helped me to get out of myself, reach out to others. I’m usually haunted by the pictures I didn’t take because I was too far away from the camera or perhaps not brave enough to point the camera and capture the moment. I told a friend about it and he said, ‘turn the picture you didn’t take into a poem.’ Sometimes both forms blur into one another in my head. I can’t separate the two.You shoot some of your work with a film camera. What are the special qualities that draw you to film?I wish I used film more often. There’s a feeling that I get from using a film camera that I don’t get from a digital. Much of it stems from the excitement of having only a couple of shots and having to get it right. It forces me to be more focused, to also trust myself more. And then it’s also about getting the prints of film back and remembering the exact moment I took it. There’s a nostalgia that I feel. I remember the weight of my father’s film camera and wishing he had kept it and continued photographing us. My mother insists on a film camera too, she’s frightened of losing digital files and doesn’t trust the computer. She likes the pictures in her hand. I feel the same way.How do you see your work continuing to evolve?There are so many projects that I want to work on. There are things I’ve been struggling to write that I want to explore through photography. I want to experiment more with film photography. I want to continue being as honest as I can possibly be, connecting with more people as well as travelling. London feels so small all of the sudden. I feel a huge responsibility to continue the work, to follow it wherever it wants to take me.Find more of Amaal Said’s work at amaalsaid.com and instagram.com/amaalsaid Source: http://africasacountry.com http://www.somaliaonline.com/somali-photographer-amaal-said-has-created-space-in-the-digital-landscape-to-offer-humanizing-photographs-of-people-in-her-community/

When Fadumo Dayib announced her bid to run for President of Somalia on national TV last year, people thought she was crazy. Somalia's violent history and the life-threatening conditions that the country's politicians and activists face on a daily basis makes Dayib's choice to run for office— especially as a woman in a patriarchal culture—a brave one. "People just can't understand why I would do such a thing," Dayib says. Somalia's 2016 elections will be the first democratic elections held since 1967, when President Abdirashid Ali Shermarke rose to power. He was assassinated two years later and the Somali Army quickly took control, declaring a military coup d'état. A civil war followed in the early 1990s, as well as severe famine and political upheaval. A federal, democratic president was finally elected by the Parliament in 2012 to replace a series of transitional governments. And if all goes according to Vision 2016, Somalia's citizens will officially elect its first democratic President next year. If anyone can become Somalia's first female president, it is this articulate, highly successful Finnish woman of Somali origin. Born to illiterate Somali parents in the mid-1970s, Dayib had a turbulent childhood full of financial difficulties. Her single mother, who often had to go to great lengths to make ends meet, mainly raised her. But despite the disadvantages she faced early on in life, her résumé boasts an impressive list of credentials: After receiving several degrees in international public health, Dayib is currently a MC/MPA Mason fellow at Harvard and a doctoral candidate with a focus on women, peace, and security at the University of Helsinki. She also has over a decade of experience working for the UN. An especially notable feat considering Dayib didn't become fully literate until about the age of 14. "THEY SAY THAT MY PLACE IS IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE, NOT IN THE PUBLIC SPACE." "Throughout my childhood, I was constantly moving back and forth between Kenya and Somalia. At the age of 11, I really started to concentrate on my studies and I fully became literate at 14, having less than five years of primary schooling," she says. At around 17 years old, she and her two younger siblings moved to Finland as refugees, and there Dayib was able to build take advantage of academic opportunities and build a successful career. Dayib's husband and four children are still based in Finland today. Dayib was deemed resilient from the moment she entered the world. She is her mother's first surviving child after the loss of eleven children to treatable diseases. Perhaps that's why, despite not having an extensive political background, connections, or a privileged upbringing, Dayib truly believes she can lead her homeland to a better future. "I've been waiting for 25 years, and nobody is taking that responsibility seriously, and I have decided to do it," Dayib says. She's hoping her clean reputation, education, and international policy-making experience will bring the refreshing change that Somalia needs today. She also hopes that having a woman lead the country will bring about much needed social change to the everyday life of a Somali woman. "We currently have a 30 percent quota requirement for women in Parliament but it's only at 14 percent today," Dayib explains. "And even that 14 percent are women who probably don't have a lot of say in real issues." Dayib will focus her policies on security and economic development, particularly for women and girls, who are doing much worse than their male peers, she says. "We have an entire generation that doesn't know any other life other than violence. You have four years to effect change, you can't do everything. The priorities are too many." "WE HAVE AN ENTIRE GENERATION THAT DOESN'T KNOW ANY OTHER LIFE OTHER THAN VIOLENCE." But her roadblocks to winning the election are substantial—the biggest, of course, being that she's a woman. "They say that my place is in the private sphere, not in the public space," she says of her detractors. "They tell me it's un-Islamic, 'how dare you step out of your place.'" Sexual violence for women and girls has been a major cause of concern in Somalia. The UN reported nearly 800 cases of sexual and gender-based violence in Mogadishu alone for the first six months of 2013. When asked what steps she would take to combat this problem, Dayib responded that there's a desperate need for good governance. "Somali women and their children face a lot of challenges including sexual violence," she says. "I think if people were dealt with according to the law, that would make a huge difference." So far, Dayib is the only female candidate for the 2016 presidential election. "I hope there will be others," she says. But Dayib might have more to contend with than just detractors. There are rumors that the current administration might ask for a two-year extension—even though the UN recently dismissed the idea of it. In spite of this uncertainty, Dayib is currently preparing as best she can, and is ready to fight hard for her chance to lead her country—no matter the odds. "You know you're going into a boxing match even though your hands are tied behind your back," she says. "The people have to have a say." Source: http://www.marieclaire.com/ http://www.somaliaonline.com/born-to-illiterate-somali-parents-and-didnt-become-literate-herself-until-the-age-of-14-fadumo-dayib-is-now-studying-at-harvard-university-and-wants-to-become-somalias-first-female-presidential/

Counterfeit money printing is threatening to collapse Somalia’s struggling economy as businessmen abandon the local currency for the dollar in almost all their transactions. The country’s central bank, which was only formed in 2011 after decades of war, has said that the fake currency infiltrating circulation in the horn of Africa nation is hurting its effort to stabilize the Somali shilling against major currencies including the US dollar. Somalia’s warlords and unscrupulous local businessmen are blamed for printing their own counterfeit shillings and increasing the number of fake currencies in circulation. “There is counterfeit money in circulation and it’s a big concern. Within 24 hours it has reduced the value of the shilling (against the dollar) by 2,000. It will destabilize the shilling even further if its circulation continues,” Bashi Issa Ali, Somalia’s central bank governor told . Source: http://afkinsider.com http://www.somaliaonline.com/counterfeit-money-printing-by-warlords-and-unscrupulous-local-businessmen-is-threatening-to-collapse-somalias-struggling-economy/