In July of this year, a group of 22
Somali Salafi scholars met in Nairobi, Kenya, and issued a fatwa (a religious
edict) that condemned a young Somali cleric based in Kenya named Shaikh Hassaan
Hussein Adam. He is widely known as a spiritual supporter of Al-Shabab. The
signatories and attendees of this meeting included a who’s who of the Somali
Salafi community: Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Umal, Shaikh Mohamoud Shibli, Shaikh
Abdirizak Mohamoud Takar, Shaikh Abdulkhadir Nur Farah, Shaikh Mohamed Idris,
Shaikh Abdirahman Shaikh Umar and two former leaders of al-Ittihad al-Islami
(AIAI), Shaikh Ali Warsame and Shaikh Mohamoud Issa. The scholars condemned
Shaikh Hassaan as a heretic and asked the Somali public not to buy his work or
listen to his lectures.
Hassaan Hussein “Abu Salman” Adam,
or “Shaikh Hassaan”, as he is popularly known, is on the United Nations’ (UN) sanctions
list of persons accused of providing material support to the militant Al-Shabab.
A UN Security Council report in 2011 accused
Hassaan of engaging in acts that threatened the “peace, security or stability
of Somalia.” He was also accused of recruiting new members for Al-Shabab and
raising funds for the group, not to mention issuing fatwas calling for attacks
against the Somali government. Last year, Hassaan was arrested by Kenyan
authorities and then released for reasons not bereft of domestic and ethnic
politics. Hassaan indeed belongs to a major Somali clan that has a powerful
presence in Kenya’s political corridor. He
is 33 years old, soft-spoken, supremely talented, and singularly driven. In
spite of his scholarly bent, Hassaan appears to be a preacher with a concealed
agenda because there is a subtle call for activism in his prolific lectures. He
is blunt with his views and does have a habit of being accusatory.
What is known currently is that
Hassaan is popular among young Somali Islamists worldwide because he espouses
radical views about jihad. He is more or less Somalia’s version of Anwar al-Awlaki
in terms of his youth, vigor, knowledge, and articulateness. Many Salafis from
the old school, however, consider him to be extremely dangerous because, by all
accounts, Hassaan provides Al Shabab radicals with the religious justification they
need for their militant war in Somalia. He is, they say, an apologist for
Al-Shabab because even though he does not carry arms, he is still able to
articulate the ideology of Al- Shabab from the comfort of his home in Nairobi. Shaikh
Hassaan’s lectures are very popular among the militant youth and are widely disseminated
in Al-Shabab media outlets which also provide a glowing picture of him. Moreover,
his lectures are instantly available as far away as Seattle in the U.S and as
close as Mogadishu.
The Salafi movement, according to
Quintan Wiktorowicz’s scholarly article, “The Anatomy of the Salafi Movement,”
in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (2006), is an array of
trends that all share a “puritanical approach to religion.” Yet this “community
is broad enough to include such diverse figures as Osama bin Laden and the
Mufti of Saudi Arabia.” Within the Salafis, there are differences in politics and
jihad. One jihadi figure aptly summarized the concept as “The split is not in
thought; it is in strategy.” Recently, the Salafi presence in many parts of the
world has become palpable. In 2010, a report by Germany’s intelligence service
concluded that Salafism was becoming the fastest growing Islamic movement in
the world.
Traditional Somali Salafis generally
are in congruence with the ideology of al-Ictisaam movement. For starters, the al-Ictisaam
is the product of the old al-Ittihad al-Islami group, which was the largest
Islamic movement in Somalia in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1997, the group laid aside
its arms and dissolved itself, but it does not refrain from politics and
activism. Al-Ictisaam is the new version of the al-Ittihad sans arms. It is headed by Shaikh Bashir Ahmed-Salad Warsame, who
is also the head of the Council of Ulama in Mogadishu. Prominent scholars like
Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Umal, the late Dr. Ahmed Haji Abdirahman (who was
assassinated by the Al-Shabab last year), Shaikh Mohamoud Shibli, and Shaikh
Abdulkhadir Nur Farah are considered the top figures of al-Ictisaam.
There are three types of Salafis:
the traditional−some say the ‘politico’−group as represented by al-Ictisaam, the armed Salafist group – or what French scholar Gilles Kepel
would call Salafism Jihadism− manifested by al-Shabab, and the neo-Salafis,
better known as Salafiyyah Jadidah (the
New Salafis). Shaikh Ali Mohamoud “Ali Wajiis”, Dr. Ahmed Dahir Aweys, Shaikh
Mohamed Abdi Dahir, and Shaikh Abdulkhadir Cukaasha, a scholar based in Nairobi,
are major symbols of the neo-Salafis. Shaikh Cukaasha is one of the disciples
of the late Shaikh Mohamed Moalim Hassan, the father of Somalia’s Islamic
resurgence. In the 1980s, he became one of the Salafi scholars of al-Ittihad.
His break with AIAI came during the peak of the group’s armed incursions inside
Somalia. Cukaasha was opposed to AIAI carrying arms and condemned the jihadist
policy of the group’s leaders. He was then upbraided and ostracized by the AIAI
leaders including Hassan Dahir Aweys and Abdullahi Ali Hashi who ironically
became top figures in Al-Shabab a decade later.
The rift between the al-Ictisaam
scholars and the young Shaikh Hassaan, while ideological in nature, can also be
explained as an interplay of power and ideology. Until recently, Al-Shabab has
been in power in many areas of the south whereas the defunct AIAI, now al-Ictisaam,
lost its power base after it demilitarized. Many of the Al-Shabab leaders including
Ahmed Abdi Godane, Ibrahim Afghani, and Mukhtar Robow, were once AIAI members, but
became disenchanted after that group disbanded its armed militias. The constant
in the Al-Shabab leadership is its demonization of al-Ictisaam as a spineless
group that has shamelessly abandoned its jihadi mission and ideology. Al-Shabab,
on the other hand, appears to those who listen to Hassaan’s lectures, to be the
ones who are offering a far more muscular stance on dealing with the Somali
government.
It was in the midst of this political
backdrop that Shaikh Hassaan issued a fatwa last year where he enunciated the
“devious” nature of al-Ictisaam as an Islamic movement. This young cleric then rendered
a verdict, accusing the group of being apostates, “Dhaa’ifa Murta’dah.” Furthermore, Shaikh Hassaan declared that it
is religiously permissible to kill the scholars of al-Ictisaam as long as the
goal is stopping their “fasaad” (transgression).
The fatwa generated stinking rebukes from al-Ictisaam members and sympathizers.
The crime of al-Ictissam, according to Shaikh Hassaan, is that it issued a fatwa
that allowed participation in the country’s political process spearheaded by
the Transitional Federal Government (TFG). The Somali government, Somaliland,
and Puntland are seen by A-Shabab radicals as infidels that should be fought
and eliminated.
Shaikh’s Hassaan’s fatwa on al-Ictisaam
has, for the last few weeks, generated new interest after the Puntland security
forces apprehended some of Dr. Ahmed Haji Abdirahman’s killers. The young defendants,
who allegedly carried out this heinous crime, spilled the beans and had a
tangle of a story to tell. They accused Shaikh Hassaan of being a secret member
of Al-Shabab and of issuing the fatwa to kill Dr. Ahmed Haji. In essence, the
young defendants are saying that they were inspired by Hassaan’s edict to carry
out their targeted assassination. The public confessions of these perpetrators
has become, to al-Ictisaam members and sympathizers, a clear rallying point to
expose what they perceive as Hassaan’s deleterious influence on the minds of many
young Somalis.
The Salafis and the U.S
Immediately following the 9-11
tragedy, the American government went through a period of panic and confusion about
dealing with Muslims, in general, and Islamic groups, in particular. In the
last few years, however, there has been a clear policy to differentiate, for
instance, between the Salafi jihadists and the neo-Salafis. In 2010, the U.S Department
of State issued a visa to Shaikh Abdulkhadir Mohamed “Cukaasha” in Nairobi to
visit America and attend an Islamic conference in Atlanta. The state department
even offered protection for the cleric, according to a person close to
Cukaasha, during his tour in the U.S. but the cleric politely declined. The goal
of the American government was to have Cukaasha, who is opposed to Al-Shabab’s
violence, speak to young Somali Islamists in Atlanta and Minneapolis about the
danger of joining Al-Shabab’s armed struggle. What was not known to Cukaasha
and his American sponsors, however, was the cool way that the cleric would be
received in the Somali communities that he visited and by the Salafi establishment.
Many Salafi imams and leaders in
the U.S, who are also inimical to Al-Shabab tactics, simply saw Cukaasha’s trip
as an attempt to strengthen the small number of Somali neo-Salafis in North
America. Cukaasha, according to people he talked to, was flummoxed and felt
frozen out by his former colleagues in the Salafi community. Thus the visit, in
essence, aggravated the already frayed relationship between the Salafis and the
neo-Salafis. To Washington, which has become weary of the radicalization of
Somali youth, the neo-Salafis are a counter force to ward off jihadi elements
in America.
On the other hand, in early
October of this year, the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) took an
unprecedented move by terminating the American citizenship of a prominent Somali
Salafi scholar based on errors in his original citizenship application already
filed and approved more than a decade earlier. This technicality, while seemingly
small, might portend something larger, such as perhaps curtailing the influence
of certain Salafi scholars in the U.S. Because the case is still under appeal, this
scholar’s name will not be divulged here.
Another incident involved the
renowned Shaikh Mohamed Abdi Umal. Several
months ago, he generated a media sensation when he said that it was “halaal” (permissible) to eat the meat of
hyena. Umal was also denied an entry visa to the U.S to attend an Islamic
conference in Minneapolis on July 27, 2012, that was organized by the Abubakar
Islamic Center, the same institution widely investigated by the FBI—but later
cleared of any wrongdoing−regarding the missing Somali youths. Umal’s visa was also denied
on a technicality, namely, there was not sufficient time to process his visa application.
However, it was clear to the Somali religious establishment in Minneapolis that
the cleric, a prominent figure of al-Ictissam, was not welcome in the U.S. It
was also not the first time that Shaikh Umal has been denied entry to America.
In July 2009, the U.S government
barred the famous Somali preacher from Norway, Shaikh Mustafe Haji Ismail
Harun, from entering the country. Shaikh Mustafe, a Salafi, is an Islamic scholar who hails from Somaliland and is well-liked by Somalis
from all walks of life. He was supposed to be the keynote speaker at an Islamic
convention in Minneapolis and had checked with the U.S Embassy in Oslo. At that
time, he was told there were no problems preventing him from attending the
conference. Norway, incidentally, has a
visa waiver with the United States. After arriving at Newark International
Airport after a nine-hour flight from Norway, Shaikh Mustafe was questioned by
U.S federal agents for three hours and informed that his name had been cleared,
but he was still sent back to Oslo.
In a nutshell, the conflict
between al-Ictisaam scholars and
Shaikh Hassaan’s al-Shabab is at least partly dictated by the nature of
political Islam. Each Islamic group has a phalanx of scholars who readily offer
religious justification for their own actions and policies. Both groups wrangle
and tangle as the spiraling saga of fatwa issuing intensifies. The views of
Shaikh Hassaan, although radical and dangerous and not in the mainstream even
among the Salafis, still offer a spiritual and ideological grounding for those Somali
militants who are waging what they consider a “legitimate jihad” against the Somali
government.
