She simply didn’t want to know.
The atmosphere in Denmark after 9/11 hardened towards Muslims. Karima wore a niqab in the streets, so only her eyes could be seen. Shewore gloves even on a summer’s day. I wore a traditional, long, flowing thawb . Between us we drew plenty of suspicious glances.
After a couple of months my mother’s welcome began to wear out and I found the primness of our surroundings too much to bear. In the wake of the attack on the MV Limburg , I had been advised by contacts in Taiz not to return to Yemen yet; the ‘brothers’ were being rounded up in dozens. If I had to stay in Denmark I would rather it be among ‘my own’ – among the grey apartment buildings of the Odense suburb of Vollsmose, where Muslims outnumbered native Danes. Many were Somali, Bosnian and Palestinian immigrants. Stories were beginning to appear in the Danish media about the crime rate in Vollsmose, stories that were meat and drink to the far-right parties.
We moved into a bare three-bedroom apartment. While Karima felt more comfortable to hear Arabic on the streets and see other veiled women, she did not appreciate our modest surroundings, nor my preference for debating jihad rather than clocking on for some menial job. Vollsmose had plenty of gang-related trouble and occasionally we would be woken by the sound of gunfire.
I soon reconnected with old associates such as Mohammad Zaher, my fishing partner from a couple of years previously. I noticed Zaher had become more militant and now had a recent convert to Islam trailing around as his sidekick.
Abdallah Andersen, who worked as a teaching assistant, was clean-shaven with a mop of dark hair and a fleshy round face. He was insecure and timid, easily led, and looked up to Zaher.
Nothing suggested they would soon plan to bring terror to the streets of Denmark.
In September 2006 Zaher, Andersen and several others would be arrested in Vollsmose after a sting operation by the Danish intelligence agency, PET, involving an informant. Angered by the publication of controversial cartoons in Denmark that lampooned the Prophet, the group had discussed attacking the Danish parliament, Copenhagen town hall square and the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten . Police found fifty grams of detonating explosive in a glass flask in Zaher’s bathroom. He was convicted and sentenced to eleven years. Andersen received a four-year sentence .
I found that I was something of a celebrity among the more radical in Vollsmose thanks to an interview I had done with a Danish newspaper in which I refused to condemn the 9/11 attacks so long as people in the West declined to condemn the sanctions that had caused the premature deaths of so many Iraqi children. It was a glib comparison, but one that made me plenty of friends in the more radical mosques. 1
I had no work but was still receiving an allowance from the Danish government for studying in Yemen, even though I was now in my mid-twenties, living in Denmark and not even attending college courses. The income allowed me to spend my days in prayer. I posted on Islamist chat forums and watched the growing archive of jihadist videos. I began to adopt a takfiri viewpoint, seeing some other Muslims as kuffar – no better than disbelievers because of their views. One of them was Naser Khader, a Syrian-born immigrant and Denmark’s first Muslim MP, who took to the airwaves to argue that Islam and democracy were compatible. Then he began criticizing Sharia law. Seething with anger I wrote on an online Islamic forum: ‘He is a murtad [apostate]. You don’t need a fatwa to kill him.’
My commitment to the cause went beyond words. I joined other would-be jihadis, including Zaher and my Pakistani friend Shiraz Tariq, for training at paintball sites. To us it was not a game; we declined protective gear so that when we were hit by a pellet it hurt. One drill involved a team member charging out in a suicide-style attack to draw fire from the other team.
The atmosphere in Denmark after 9/11 hardened towards Muslims. Karima wore a niqab in the streets, so only her eyes could be seen. Shewore gloves even on a summer’s day. I wore a traditional, long, flowing thawb . Between us we drew plenty of suspicious glances.
After a couple of months my mother’s welcome began to wear out and I found the primness of our surroundings too much to bear. In the wake of the attack on the MV Limburg , I had been advised by contacts in Taiz not to return to Yemen yet; the ‘brothers’ were being rounded up in dozens. If I had to stay in Denmark I would rather it be among ‘my own’ – among the grey apartment buildings of the Odense suburb of Vollsmose, where Muslims outnumbered native Danes. Many were Somali, Bosnian and Palestinian immigrants. Stories were beginning to appear in the Danish media about the crime rate in Vollsmose, stories that were meat and drink to the far-right parties.
We moved into a bare three-bedroom apartment. While Karima felt more comfortable to hear Arabic on the streets and see other veiled women, she did not appreciate our modest surroundings, nor my preference for debating jihad rather than clocking on for some menial job. Vollsmose had plenty of gang-related trouble and occasionally we would be woken by the sound of gunfire.
I soon reconnected with old associates such as Mohammad Zaher, my fishing partner from a couple of years previously. I noticed Zaher had become more militant and now had a recent convert to Islam trailing around as his sidekick.
Abdallah Andersen, who worked as a teaching assistant, was clean-shaven with a mop of dark hair and a fleshy round face. He was insecure and timid, easily led, and looked up to Zaher.
Nothing suggested they would soon plan to bring terror to the streets of Denmark.
In September 2006 Zaher, Andersen and several others would be arrested in Vollsmose after a sting operation by the Danish intelligence agency, PET, involving an informant. Angered by the publication of controversial cartoons in Denmark that lampooned the Prophet, the group had discussed attacking the Danish parliament, Copenhagen town hall square and the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten . Police found fifty grams of detonating explosive in a glass flask in Zaher’s bathroom. He was convicted and sentenced to eleven years. Andersen received a four-year sentence .
I found that I was something of a celebrity among the more radical in Vollsmose thanks to an interview I had done with a Danish newspaper in which I refused to condemn the 9/11 attacks so long as people in the West declined to condemn the sanctions that had caused the premature deaths of so many Iraqi children. It was a glib comparison, but one that made me plenty of friends in the more radical mosques. 1
I had no work but was still receiving an allowance from the Danish government for studying in Yemen, even though I was now in my mid-twenties, living in Denmark and not even attending college courses. The income allowed me to spend my days in prayer. I posted on Islamist chat forums and watched the growing archive of jihadist videos. I began to adopt a takfiri viewpoint, seeing some other Muslims as kuffar – no better than disbelievers because of their views. One of them was Naser Khader, a Syrian-born immigrant and Denmark’s first Muslim MP, who took to the airwaves to argue that Islam and democracy were compatible. Then he began criticizing Sharia law. Seething with anger I wrote on an online Islamic forum: ‘He is a murtad [apostate]. You don’t need a fatwa to kill him.’
My commitment to the cause went beyond words. I joined other would-be jihadis, including Zaher and my Pakistani friend Shiraz Tariq, for training at paintball sites. To us it was not a game; we declined protective gear so that when we were hit by a pellet it hurt. One drill involved a team member charging out in a suicide-style attack to draw fire from the other team.
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