Minneapolis man counters online radical recruitment videos with cartoons | Star Tribune

Minneapolis man counters online radical recruitment videos with cartoons | Star Tribune

A Minneapolis convenience store manager is on a mission to undercut the formidable online recruitment operations of overseas militants.

Two years ago, Mohamed Ahmed decided to do something about the slick video pitches. At the time, he was frustrated that young men were slipping out of the United States to join Al-Shabab’s fight in Somalia, lured by messages that he says distort his Muslim faith.
So he started a website, averagemohamed.com, which features cartoons refuting these pitches in the language of what he calls “Generation Simpsons.” The father of four felt renewed urgency after recent news that a small number of Twin Cities residents have left to join the militant group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
“It frustrates me that we are unable to take on this ideology,” he said.
Ahmed’s cartoons feature Average Mohamed, a plain-spoken man who mocks and dismisses arguments made by Al-Shabab, ISIL and Boko Haram, the group behind the kidnapping of Nigerian schoolgirls.
Take “Flames of Hell,” a parody of the recent trailer for “Flames of War,” an almost hourlong ISIL recruitment movie chock-full of explosions and special effects.
“You’d think it’s a ‘Rambo’ film,” Ahmed said. “It’s all glory- and action-packed.”
Ahmed’s video counters with less heroic images, such as an ISIL execution of prisoners with bound hands, and a reminder of the Qur’an’s denunciation of killing innocents.
Ahmed makes his videos on the cheap, with help from an Indian animator he found online. He hopes he will find backing to bring them to a wider audience. When he heard about a planned federal program to counter youth radicalization in the Twin Cities, he e-mailed the staff of U.S. Attorney Andy Luger.
Somali community leader Omar Jamal recently showed the cartoons to his own kids and their friends. He said the videos spurred a lively discussion: What is ISIL? Why do they kill innocent people? Said Jamal, “The only way to fight an idea is with another idea.”