'SHARIAH COP' CRACKS DOWN ON MINNESOTA MUSLIMSPolice 'monitor' Abdullah Rashid but don't arrest him
A 22-year-old Muslim convert has been denounced for trying to enforce Shariah law on Somali refugees living in Minneapolis, but he says he’s just trying to be a good Muslim and please Allah.
Abdullah Rashid married a Somali woman and moved from his hometown in Walton County, Georgia, to Wyoming and then on to Minnesota last year. Formerly Devon James Miller, Rashid now dresses in traditional Islamic headdress. But when he isn’t in a turban, he wears a green uniform with a patch marking him as the “religious police.”
That’s causing quite a stir, even in the Muslim enclave of Minneapolis’s Cedar Riverside community.
In a recent interview with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Rashid said he aims to turn the city’s Cedar-Riverside area into a “sharia-controlled zone” where Muslims are learning about the proper practices of Islam and that “non-Muslims are asked to respect” it, the paper reported.
He pays regular visits to Somali households and makes sure the women are dressed in compliance with Islamic law, that no alcohol is being consumed and that nobody is interacting with the opposite sex. He is performing, in his mind, a service similar to that of the morality police who enforce Shariah in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Somalia or the Islamic State.
He claims to have 10 other men working under him to patrol the Cedar Riverside community.
There’s one problem: While Rashid says he is just trying to be a good Muslim and do right by Allah, this isn’t Saudi Arabia, or Somalia.
“People who don’t know me would say I’m a terrorist,” he told the local newspaper. “I’m someone who’s dedicated to Islam and trying to help the community all ways I can.”
Local Muslim leaders told the Star-Tribune they are working to stop Rashid’s group, the General Presidency of the Religious Affairs and Welfare of the Ummah, while providing no evidence that they are serious about stopping him.
Minneapolis is home to the nation’s largest community of Somali refugees, which have been arriving weekly in the U.S. since the early 1990s, most coming through United Nations refugee camps.
Just last week, WND reported the Somalis have taken over politics in the sixth ward in Minneapolis, providing a video that showed their caucus event turning into bloody chaos.
Rashid has encountered some backlash, even from other Muslims who may not yet be ready for full compliance with various aspects of Shariah law, or who know it would do long-term damage to Islam’s reputation in America if Muslims try to implement Shariah too early.
Rashid has been questioned by Minneapolis police who say they are “monitoring” his actions.
He has been condemned as out of line by local Muslim leaders, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which turned to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, for the authoritative word on Shariah.
“What he’s doing is wrong and doesn’t reflect the community at all,” Jaylani Hussein, executive director of CAIR Minnesota, told the Star-Tribune. CAIR, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror-financing trial held in 2007-08 in Dallas and which has seen several of its leaders convicted of terrorism-related crimes.
Minneapolis police started receiving reports in February of Rashid making unannounced visits to Somali homes. So far, they have not found reason to arrest him.
“We’ve had conversations with community members that live over there,” Officer Corey Schmidt, a police spokesman, told the Star-Tribune. “Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to deal with it, but it’s something we’ve been monitoring.”
There are other troubling aspects to Rashid’s mission, such as his display of the al-Qaida flag and his adoration of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born imam of Yemeni descent who was a spiritual leader of al-Qaida before he was killed in Yemen by a drone strike ordered by President Obama.
His Somali wife, Kadro Abdullahi, said Rashid is not mentally ill and that she supports his work.
“He’s a man with a good personality and he loves Islam,” Abdullahi told the Star-Tribune.
On his website, Rashid posted a video by Anwar al-Awlaki titled “Never Trust Non-Muslims.”
On the same day the Star-Tribune reported a Shariah enforcer is making house visits in Minneapolis, the Detroit News reported a female Muslim doctor in Detroit was arrested on federal charges that she was performing female genital mutilations on girls as young as 7.
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http://www.wnd.com/2017/04/shariah-cop-cracks-down-on-minnesota-muslims/
