"People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim," said Hanif Nalkhande, a trustee of the Muslim Jama Masjid Trust. "Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime."
However, a Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota-area Muslim cemetery buried Shirwa Ahmed, a Somali suicide terrorist, whose body was shipped back to the United States with the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He and four others died in a suicide attack in October in northern
Ahmed is one of 10-20 Minnesota Somalis whose families feared had been recruited to join terrorist groups in
"The families didn't think, it never crossed their mind, that their kids would have gone to
At the traditional Muslim funeral, Jamal said he did not consider Ahmed a criminal. "Honestly I look at him seriously as a victim and not as a criminal, I think of him as a young victim because someone got into his mind," he said. "He has been indoctrinated. He has been brainwashed. He is a victim of some very complicated ideology. It is very sad," he stated.
While other families worry about the fate of missing sons, Mahir Sherif, attorney for local mosques, said no one has used mosques to recruit the young men to become terrorists in
"Let's say they went in answer to a call to stop aggression," he told Fox. "Or maybe they just left to protect their grandmother. Do people have a right to return to a country to fight? Will it be a crime?" he asked.