The challenge for this blog is in finding something
unique upon which to comment. Rather
than commenting upon Vladimir Putin and/or Russia yet again, I searched for
something completely different [apologies to Monty Python]. Such an opportunity presented itself about a couple
of months ago while I was driving to lunch.
I was listening to NPR, and there was a program [the name of which
escapes me] where the host was talking about a new book. The book in question is called Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and
Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad.
Two Sisters is written by
Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad, a writer who is known for her work as a
war correspondent. She has written other
works as well, among them One of Us: The
Story of a Massacre in Norway. One of Us told the story of Anders
Breivik, the self-described fascist who committed Norway’s worst act of
terrorism in 2011 when he killed 77 people [most of whom were attending a
Norwegian Labour Party youth camp]. Guess which book is next on my list?
As the title implies, Two
Sisters is the story of two Somali sisters who decided to leave the comfort
of Norwegian society, give up everything and travel to Syria to join ISIS. The two sisters Ayan [19] and Leila [16] [not
their real names, BTW]. Ayan accompanied their
parents to Norway in order to escape fighting in Somaliland [she was an infant
at the time]. The rest of the Juma children were born in Norway. Ayan and Leila were two
well-adjusted young women who “seemed” to assimilate well into Norwegian
society. They attended good schools in
the Oslo suburbs. Ayan was part of the
International Baccalaureate [IB] program [Editor’s Note: both of my boys did that. It’s very hard work]. She had fights with her mother about clothes
that were ‘too revealing.” Leila played soccer.
There were teenage crushes, intense friendships, bands, football and
summer camps are the stuff of any adolescence.
But in a homogenous society like Norway, Ayan and Leila were still
“different.”
How did this journey begin? Their mother Sara Juma was worried her
daughters were becoming too “Norwegian”.
She and other Somali mothers in Oslo hired a tutor from a local
mosque. His job was to not only teach
the children to read the Koran, but also how to be good Muslims in Norway. At first Sara was pleased with the
result. Both sisters had taken the veil
and became devout Muslims. She saw her
daughters were going to the local mosque regularly, and fasted during the
observation of Ramadan. There were
little post-it notes with phrases from the Koran sprinkled all over their
suburban Oslo apartment. It was this
association with the Koranic tutor that led to the radicalization of Ayan and
Leila. The author also details the story
of Dilal, one of Ayan’s original core group of friends. The least conservative of the four friends
who attended those early Islam Net meetings together, even she found herself
drawn in, eventually ending up in an abusive and controlling marriage with
Ubaydullah Hussain, one of Norway’s most vocal radicals. Dilal escaped her relationship, but her story
is one of how even the most grounded of people can get “sucked in” to
radicalism. The author illustrates how
groups such as Islam Net don’t only target the “isolated,” but also actively
seek to isolate their targets from family or the local adopted culture.
The girls’ radicalization is unexplained. But the author goes into detail about how
they became involved with a group called Islam Net, a society of young,
Salafist Muslims in Oslo. The sisters
voiced increasingly extreme views, broke up classes to pray or skipped school
entirely. The author points out that one
doesn’t suddenly wake up one day and decide “today I will be a radical
Muslim”. It was a gradual thing for Ayan
and Leila. Conversely, their brother
Ismael became an atheist, going as far to tell his sisters "I believe in
Allah about as much as I believe in the spaghetti monster." Ayan and Leila had been in regular contact
with Ismael via text messages, but after Ismael’s expressions of non-belief,
the sisters broke off contact.
Afterward, they contacted only their mother, who never pressed too hard
on what was really happening lest ISIS be monitoring their communications.
One October morning in 2013 had begun like any
other. Leila was presumed to be at
school while Ayan said she was going to be across town to visit a friend. Little did their parents know that they had
been planning for several months to leave Norway to join ISIS in Syria. Sadiq and Sara received an email from the
girls:
“We love you both
sooo much and you have given us everything in life. We are eternally grateful
for everything ♥. We ask your forgiveness for all the pain we
have caused you. We love you both sooo much, would do anything for you, and
would never do anything to purposely hurt you, and is it not then fair and
proper that we do everything for ALLAH swt’s sake and are grateful for what he
has given us by following his rules, laws, and commands. Muslims are under
attack from all quarters, and we need to do something. We want so much to help
Muslims, and the only way we can really do that is by being with them in both
suffering and joy. Sitting home and sending money is no longer enough. With
this in mind we have decided to travel to Syria and help out down there as best
we can. We know this sounds absurd but it is haqq and we must go. We fear what
ALLAH swt will say to us on the day of judgment.
We have now left
and will soon arrive inshallah. Please do not be cross with us, it was sooo
hard for us to leave without saying goodbye in the way you both deserve.
Forgive us inshallah, when we made this choice we did so with what was best for
our ummah in mind, but also what was best for our family, and it might be
difficult to understand now, but inshallah this decision will help us all on
the day of judgment inshallah. We love you both sooo much and hope you will not
break off ties with us, inshallah we will send a message when we arrive at the
hotel and then you can call inshallah. We want to tell you again that we love
you with all of our hearts and are sorry you had to find out this way, we have
already asked too much of you but we have to ask a favor: for both our safety
and yours no one outside the family can know we have left, this cannot be
stressed enough. Please try to understand our actions inshallah. Praise be to
Allah, the lord of the worlds ♥. Ayan & Leila ♥.”
The girls went to Turkey via Sweden. The Jumas contacted the authorities in Sweden
to try to intercept them, especially since Leila was still a minor. But the Swedish authorities did nothing. The system failed the Jumas.
I’m not very sympathetic with Sara, their mother. She’s the one who wanted Ayan and Leila to
not be quite so “Western.” When her actions lead to the introduction of her
daughters to radical Muslims, she put it all on her husband to Sadiq to go to
Syria, to find them and bring them back.
She wanted Sadiq to clean up the mess she made. It’s not like Sadiq didn’t have enough on his
plate. He was on disability from his job
and was studying to become an engineer. Like
a good husband, he did as Sara asked [or rather, demanded]. He emptied his bank account to make it
happen. Sadiq made the trip to
Turkey. He found when he got as far as
Turkey that border smugglers don’t take American Express – they only take
cash. He found his girls in Raqqa, Syria
and got to meet them. He told both their
mother wanted them to come home, but they had a surprise for him. Both had married ISIS fighters and had
children. They didn’t want to go back to
Norway. For Sadiq’s troubles, ISIS
arrested him, accused him of being a spy and tortured him for a couple of weeks [on
orders from his new son-in-law]. He was
released only after he convinced a sharia prosecutor that he was what he said
he was – a concerned father who was looking for his daughters. To add insult to injury, Sara went back to
Somaliland after he returned to Norway without the girls.
Before they broke off contact with Ismael, Leila told him
“You should know that we are happy and well, we are safe and Allah has provided
us with plenty of rizq [gifts].” There
is no update on what happened to the girls after they last saw their father. Since the book was published, the Islamic
State [the so-called Caliphate] has since collapsed. ISIS fighters have scattered to the fore
winds. Nobody knows whether the girls
are alive or dead. There is no “happily
ever after” in this tale.
