Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
On July 13, 2023, Mohamad Barakat, a Syrian refugee, packed up several rifles and handguns 1,800 rounds of ammo, a hand grenade, and a car filled with gas cans on the way to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack at Fargo’s Downtown Street fair aiming to kill thousands of Americans. Instead the terror refugee got into a confrontation with police and died in an exchange of fire.
North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley insisted that there was ‘no evidence of political, racial or religious motivation’. “At this point it seems [no] more notable that he’s Muslim than I’m Lutheran,” he bafflingly argued. He also dismissed footage of Mohamad holding a Koran.
“I can’t discern, from the evidence that we have, any other motivation,” he claimed.
A year before, Fargo had gotten its first Somali Muslim mayoral candidate, the head of a social justice group, who had been photographed meeting with top state officials. And no one was looking to offend the state’s growing Muslim population who were wielding more political clout.
And so the story of one of the worst Muslim terror plots in the country quickly disappeared and most people forgot about it. Few asked why there was a major Muslim terror plot in Fargo.
While Mohamad had been Syrian, the previous Islamic terrorist attacker out of Fargo had been Somali. In 2016, Dahir Adan, part of a Somali refugee family that had been resettled in Fargo, stabbed 10 people in the Crossroads mall in Minnesota while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and demanded to know if his victims were Muslims or non-Muslims and therefore ‘fair game’.
The FBI claimed that the Muslim terrorist’s motive may never be known. ISIS or the ‘Islamic State’ took credit for the attack and its ‘unknown motive’ in the name of Islam.
While the attack was going on, his brother, Abdullahi Adan, was already in prison in Fargo and was part of a group of Muslim inmates suing the prison system for $100 million, complaining that pork was being secretly put in their food. Several of the litigants were Somalis including a Somali Muslim man charged with robbing a store and another Somali man accused of attempted kidnapping, terrorizing and robbery. The sole non-Somali was a black Muslim convert who had murdered two men in a drug frenzy and then tried to burn a building down.
“They fed us pork during the holy month of Ramadan,” the Somali who robbed a store complained. Somali names are prominent among the inmates of the Cass County prison system and in the cases of assault, robbery and rape that litter the local news.
Fargo likes to brag about its diversity and the fact that nearly 1 in 10 in the city are ‘foreign born’. Fargo’s population shot up from 74,000 in 1990 to 90,000 in 2000 to 128,000 today. Somalis flooded Fargo, as did Iraqis, Bosnians and Bangladeshis. Amid the pure snows rose mosques, ethnic welfare nonprofits, Halal markets and other outposts of the new population.
By 2000, six hundred Somali families occupied Fargo, by 2004, Somalis outnumbered Hispanics in the Fargo public school system. Refugee resettlement, led by Lutheran Social Services, continued bombarding the state with foreign migrants, 70% of them into Fargo.
After President Trump’s outrage at the $1.5 billion in Somali fraud, Rep. Hamida Dakane, the first Somali Muslim to hold office in the North Dakota legislature, dismissed Trump and bragged about a Somali Muslim population encompassing Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin, Washington, Virginia, Maine, and North Dakota. “We are history,” she declared. “And we will always rise.”
Earlier this year, Fargo Mayor Tim Mahoney declared that June 28 was to be ‘Somali Heritage Day’. The new Somali Heritage Day was a mere two weeks after the anniversary of the Muslim mass terror plot in Fargo.
And over the summer, Fargo held its Somali ‘culture fair’ to commemorate Somalia’s ‘independence’.
In North Dakota, as in Minnesota, Somali community groups getting government grants played a key role in wielding political power. The Afro American Development Association sounds like a black group, but in reality it was founded by Hukun Dabar, a Somali Muslim ‘community organizer’, who has been photographed with Rep. Dakane, as well as former Gov. Doug Burgum, and other state and local officials, along with Somali officials.
Hukun Dabar ran in the mayoral election in Fargo in 2022 and came in fourth.
Dabar also co-founded the Ethnic Self Alliance for Refugee Assistance (ESHARA) which claims to help migrants apply for ‘public benefits’ and offers legal aid. It played a role in planning the Somali Cultural Festival. Its leadership appears to be Somali and its ‘partners’ include Lutheran Social Services, North Dakota’s Office of Refugee Services and the city of Fargo. Reports state that ESHARA’s funding was rerouted by the state of North Dakota through Lutheran Social Services so the Somali group was no longer “overburdened with paperwork”.
Hamida Dakane had started out as one of the “care coordinators” for ESHARA.
“They’re funding other groups but not our group,” the future state representative ranted. “I’m here to provide for my community, but when you hire someone else who has never lived with these people, who never spoke this language, who cannot walk into grocery and talk to people the way we can do—what will you call that other than oppression?”
News reports have described Dabar as “a business partner involved with Adult Rehabilitative Mental Health Services, which is part of the Minnesota Department of Human Services.” The Minnesota Department of Human Services is at the epicenter of the fraud consuming the state.
“They come here as refugees, the majority of them, and they are carrying trauma, and that when the highest level of the government calls names and dehumanizes them, it hurts all of us,” Ahmed Makaraan, who currently heads ESHARA, complained.
Makaran had started out at Dabar’s Afro American Development Association.
Cani Adan, a former staffer at the Afro American Development Association, founded New Roots Midwest which aims to create “endless opportunities for immigrants” in North Dakota and Minnesota through various services. Adam has posted pictures of himself with incoming Gov. Kelly Armstrong Gov. Armstrong recently condemned Trump for criticizing Somalis.
New Roots Midwest doesn’t list the rest of its staff, but its social media appears to feature Somalis, Somali celebrations and translations from English into Somali.
These organizations are competing in a crowded space to provide services to Somali migrants, refugees and settlers in Fargo. And they’re also competing against the established white liberal groups. Abdi Jama, a Somali refugee who heads Global Youth United in Fargo, accused the New America Consortium, another organization linked to Lutheran Social Services, which offers services to Somalis, of “money laundering, deception, corruption”
Meanwhile the Somalization of North Dakota continues through ‘refugee resettlement’ into Fargo, as well as Grand Forks and Bismarck: all of which now have Somali populations and mosques.
Global Friends, an affiliate of the Church World Service coalition, has been resettling Somalis in Grand Forks. The most visible spokeswoman for the Somalis there is the owner of a Somali restaurant which had hosted an Islamic ‘Iftar’ event with Mayor Brandon Bochenski, and which was raided by the Department of Homeland Security over accusations of illegal money transfers.
Despite claims by local politicians, Somalization isn’t making North Dakota any better. Just like in Minnesota, Somalization and Islamization are making North Dakota that much worse.
