They don’t call it “Little Mogadishu” for nothing. The Cedar Riverside section of Minneapolis is home to the University of Minnesota, supplying college graduates who fight for jobs in a tough market. But this one neighborhood is also supplying something else: Dozens of jihadis — drawn from the area’s large concentration of Somali refugees — who leave Cedar Riverside and travel abroad to fight for terrorist groups.
Just as shocking, though, are the attitudes of some who remain in the North Star State. This was revealed recently by documentarian Ari Horowitz and a film crew from the David Horowitz Freedom Center, who took to the Cedar Riverside streets and asked some important questions. And they got some telling answers — ones that, distressingly, polls show reflect common sentiments among Muslims in America.
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WND.com provides some more background, writing that some of the Minnesota Muslim jihadis “have joined Somalia’s notorious al-Shabab, which slaughtered 147 Christians at a university in Kenya last month [April], while others have opted for ISIS in Syria. Their goal is the same — to join their brothers in the fight to establish a Shariah-compliant utopia known as a caliphate.”
And it appears that many of those staying behind are behind these brothers all the way. Every respondent but one in the Horowitz video said he’d prefer to live under sharia law than American law.
The interviewees were striking in their honesty. There was no playing of the bigotry card, with many of them readily acknowledging that being Muslim in the United States was “easy” and that persecution and prejudice weren’t problems. But they also proudly proclaimed their own biases: Sharia should be preeminent, criticizing Mohammed is a crime, and using violence against those who slander him is legitimate.
One interviewee was an outlier. Appearing to be a middle-aged businessman smartly decked out in a sport jacket and tie, he said, “This is a free country; that’s the beaut[y] of it. We love America; I mean, it’s a great country — freedom of speech, freedom of choice, of religion, so we don’t have any issues.” Yet others certainly did have issues. As WND.com related:
One young man with dark sunglasses and a big smile, followed by another in a plaid dress shirt, and another with long hair stuffed under a Brooklyn Nets baseball [basketball] cap, all said they would prefer to live under Islamic law rather than American law.
“I’m a Muslim. I prefer Shariah law,” the man in the dress shirt said.
“Shariah law, yes,” said another.
“Of course, yeah,” said the one in the Nets … cap.
Asked if most of his friends felt the same way, he responded, “Of course if you’re a Muslim, yeah.”
While it can’t be known to what degree, if at all, Horowitz “cherry-picked” the respondents shown in the video, their beliefs aren’t uncommon among Muslims in America. As WND wrote three years ago reporting on the results of an October 2012 Wenzel Strategies poll:
The poll … found 40 percent of Muslims in America believe they should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution, but by Sharia standards.
… “Almost half of those Muslims surveyed — an astonishing 46 percent — said they believe those Americans who offer criticism or parodies of Islam should face criminal charges,” said pollster Fritz Wenzel in an analysis of the survey’s results.
“Even more shocking: One in eight respondents said they think those Americans who criticize or parody Islam should face the death penalty, while another nine percent said they were unsure on the question,” he said.
Wenzel said even the 9 percent “undecided” on that particular question is alarming.
… Wenzel’s poll said 7.2 percent of the respondents said they “strongly agree” with the idea of execution for those who parody Islam, and another 4.3 percent said they somewhat agree.
Polls of Muslims in other Western countries have shown similar results. In a 2006 piece entitled ”Many British Muslims Put Islam First,” CBS News reported that 78 percent of U.K. Muslims advocate punishing the publishers of Muhammed cartoons; a 2010 study found that 32 percent of Muslim students surveyed at 30 British universities support killing for Islam; and a poll of 40,000 Al Jazeera readers conducted by the news network earlier this year revealed that 80 percent of them supported ISIS. Note that only one-third of American colonists backed the American Revolution, yet that passionate minority sufficed to defeat its age’s greatest empire.
Speaking of passion, that and anger are precisely what the Cedar Riverside respondents gave way to when asked about the drawing of Mohammed cartoons. The teen in the baseball cap said, “That really p***es me off” and that those who depict Mohammed “know it’s a button to push.” The man in the sunglasses stated, “It makes me angry.…They don’t see that the freedom that they’re getting is causing a problem.” And a man in a short beard exclaimed, “I was so upset, and I was so mad. They insulted our religion. They insulted our prophet, and we couldn’t take it,” while gesticulating and often shaking a fist.
As for remedying this problem, should it be made illegal in America to make fun of Mohammed? The shown respondents were unanimous. The man in the sunglasses said, “Definitely, yeah.” The fellow in the plaid shirt stated, “That would be better, yeah … to stop, you know, aggression.” And the bearded man zealously agreed, “Oh, my God, big time, yes!”
Not surprisingly, they also said they could understand violence perpetrated by those reacting to depictions of Mohammed (e.g., the Charlie Hebdo massacre). The basketball-cap-wearing teen said, “Yeah, I understand totally where they’re coming from, yeah.… Every action has a consequence.” A woman in a pink hijab asserted that it was right to kill someone who insults Mohammed, saying about Pamela Geller, “She shouldn’t pick on the prophet, you know.” And the bearded man seemed to concur, stating that you get so frustrated “you could do anything you wanted”; you might commit “suicide,” he said, because “your heart is telling you, ‘I don’t want to live no more.’ … Or you, you kill someone.”
Most telling, in a way, was an interview with a Muslim boy of approximately 14. He exhibited no anger or hatred and admitted that it’s “not tough at all” being Islamic at his school. Nonetheless, he said he preferred sharia law because it yields a “tighter” society with less crime. Said he, “Sharia law, it says that if you steal something, they cut off your hand.… The smallest things usually have big consequences.” This may reflect studies showing that — contrary to the trend of declining faith among Western Christians — young Muslims are actually more religiously zealous than their elders.
Three of the four respondents who were asked in the video whether they’d rather live in the United States or Somalia, said the latter. The teen in the basketball cap unabashedly emphasized, “I’m not Americanized. I just speak fluent [English].” He elaborated, “My culture and my preferences and everything, it’s still Somali.… I’d rather live in a Muslim country with my people.” The only one who didn’t answer “Somalia” was the 14-year-old — he said he’d rather live in Saudi Arabia.
It was not revealed if they had any plans to emigrate to their lands of choice. However, it has been revealed that U.S. government officials are continuing to flood America with Muslims — despite admitting they often have no idea who the Muslims are or where their passions lie.
