| A taste. |
[FrontPage] Not all that many years ago, the worst things you could say about Minneapolis were that it was very cold in the winter and, for an American city of its size, it was somewhat dull. On the plus side, this traditionally Scandinavian-American burg was a model of safety and cleanliness.Well, that's ancient history. Minneapolis is now the world's #2 capital of Somali Muslims. (#1 is Mogadishu.) In the Somali community, unemployment and welfare dependency rates are high. The city is a major recruiting center for ISIS. At least a couple of ISIS recruits have used taxpayer-funded student loans to fly to the Middle East to become jihadists; many other local Somalis are suspected of wiring welfare cash to terrorist groups. Violent crime is epidemic: as recently as December 13, a Somali Muslim immigrant stabbed a Minneapolis woman no fewer than fourteen times on her way home from work.
None of this has kept government officials and news media from boasting of the success of Somali integration. Last February, CNN ran a collection of photographs designed to show just how delightful a contribution Somalis have made to Minnesota. In August, Ibrahim Hirsi of the Minnesota Post lauded the "Somali community's success" in the state. Hirsi's article began by summarizing the "classic American success story" of one Abdirahman Kahin, who emigrated to the U.S. two decades ago and, after founding a restaurant called Afro Deli in 2010, built it up into "one of the most successful immigrant-owned businesses in the state."
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune routinely waxes effusive over all the cultural enrichment: last March, in a glowing portrait of life in the city's Muslim enclave, "Little Mogadishu," reporter Allie Shah applauded the fact that the neighborhood, cut off from the rest of the city "by the Mississippi River and two freeways," functions "like a self-sustaining village" and has thus been able to "retain its character." Ah, the joy of euphemism!
One recent occasion for celebration was the election, in 2016, of the first Somali American to the Minnesota legislature. As it turned out, the legislator in question, Ilham Omar, had married her own brother in 2009, apparently to enable him to enter the U.S. ‐ and if that weren't enough of a transgression, Omar was already married at the time to one Ahmed Hirsi, the father of her three children. When blogger Scott Johnson, who uncovered these irregularities, asked Omar's campaign for a comment, he heard back from a lawyer who basically accused him of racism, sexism, and Islamophobia: "There are people who do not want an East African, Muslim woman elected to office and who will follow Donald Trump’s playbook to prevent it. Ilhan Omar’s campaign sees your superfluous contentions as one more in a series of attempts to discredit her candidacy." On the contrary, some Minnesotans were apparently so eager to see an East African, Muslim woman elected to office that they gladly overlooked Omar's criminal offenses. Omar remains in the legislature, while her shady past has been neatly whitewashed on her Wikipedia page.