Islamic University in Minnesota is breeding extremists

By Mark Ellis

An Islamic university in Minnesota is led by a man who espouses writings in the Hadith that have motivated Muslim terrorists to kill Jews and believes sharia law should supersede manmade law.

Waleed Idris al-Meneesey is the president and chancellor of the Islamic University of Minnesota (IUM), located in Minneapolis.

He also serves as an imam at a Bloomington, Minn. mosque where at least five young men left the U.S. to fight with ISIS and al-Shabaab, according to a report by John Rossomando, senior analyst at The Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“During a sermon in November 2015, al-Meneesey referred to the Hadith, a saying from Islam’s prophet Muhammad, describing how Jews had been punished by God repeatedly for “corruption,” Rossomando notes.

In the sermon, al-Meneesey said, “God Almighty has promised them (the Jews) destruction whenever they cause corruption.” History will repeat itself, he added.

“The Prophet related that in the Last Days his Umma [people] would fight the Jews, the Muslims East of the Jordan River, and they [the Jews] west of [the Jordan River] … Even trees and stones will say: O Muslim, this is a Jew behind me, kill him…”

Jerusalem “remained in the hands of the Muslims until it fell into the hands of the Jews in 1387 AH [1967], and has been a prisoner in their hands for 34 years, but the victory of God is coming inevitably,” al-Meneesey declared.

IUM has other radical affiliations. “IUM also professes to serve as the official representative of Sunni Islam’s most important institution – Al-Azhar University, which has grown increasingly radical – in the U.S. and Canada,” Rossomando notes.

IUM’s curriculum offered to American students endorses many practices used by ISIS.

These include: killing a Muslim who does not pray, one who leaves Islam, and prisoners and infidels within Islam. It allows gouging their eyes and chopping off their hands and feet, bans the construction of churches and allows discrimination between Muslims and Christians and Jews, according to Rossomando’s sources.

In 2007, al-Meneesey wrote that Muslims should not participate in non-Islamic courts that do not follow sharia law, particularly those in the West guided by “man-made” law.

“The authority to legislate rests with Allah alone,” al-Meneesey wrote. Muslims who adhere to secular law and refuse to follow the sharia are infidels. Classical interpretations of the sharia say that apostates should be killed, Rossomando notes.

Al-Meneesey’s Islamic Center and his youth and family Center have produced at least five people who left to

fight for ISIS or al-Shabaab. They include:

Abdirizak Mohamed Warsame, 20, of Eagan, Minn. (He was the reputed leader of many ISIS recruits from Minnesota.); Abdi Nur of Minneapolis; Mohamed Abdihamid Farah of Minneapolis; Abdullahi Yusuf of Burnsville, Minn.; Yusra Ismail of Minneapolis;

The radical views or al-Meneesey are not aberrations at IUM, according to Rossomando.

Instructor Sheikh Jamel Ben Ameur refused to denounce ISIS in the fall of 2014 amid stories about its brutality because news reports were “confusing,” the website MinnPost reported.

“We don’t need to accuse people of something we don’t know about. We don’t have to jump into judgment,” Ben Ameur said.

Ben Ameur challenged the legitimacy of the ISIS propaganda videos showing the beheadings of American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, and said he didn’t know if ISIS was responsible or not.

Another IUM instructor, Hasan Ali Mohamud, offered condolences to the family of Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in 2004 after he was killed by Israelis, according to Rossomando.

“Mohamud said that Yassin had achieved martyrdom and that the ‘Hamas mujahideen’ were fighting for the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque from Israeli control.

Rossomando is disturbed by the apparent indoctrination of young Muslims in the heart of the U.S. “These are ideas supported by al-Meneesey, who is responsible for a ‘university’ teaching Muslims about their faith.”

John Rossomando is a Senior Analyst at The Investigative Project on Terrorism. In addition to The IPT, his work has been featured in numerous publications such as Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting. For more go here