Mustafa was interrogated by PST because of the sisters’ trip. PST had received tip-offs about his alleged ties to al-Shabaab, to IS, and terror recruitment activity. His friends were also called in for questioning.
One of them, a teenager closely involved with the Prophet’s Ummah, was first asked some questions of a general nature before being asked if he knew Mustafa.
“Mustafa…? No…”
“So how come you’ve stayed the night at his place, then?” the policeman responded.
The young man realized that they must have been in possession of a lot of information, as he had spent the night on Mustafa’s sofa only a single time. Halfway through the interview, a man entered the room, a tall, fair-haired Norwegian who spoke fluent Somali and had detailed knowledge of clans, ethnic groupings, and movements in Somalia. The teenager was impressed. Sometime later, following a visit from PST to his parents’ home and a subsequent dressing-down from his father for ruining the opportunities Norway had given him, he made the decision to withdraw from the extremist network.
Teaching the Koran was not his main source of income. He also had a job as a security guard. Long after the sisters had left, the young Islamist was employed at the University of Oslo at its Blindern campus. In his dark blue uniform adorned with NOKAS, the name of the security company, he made the rounds of the faculty buildings at night.
PST searched but found no evidence against Mustafa.
He merely gave Koran lessons, everyone said. He was a good Muslim, he collected money for war victims, spent time with troubled youths. He sometimes drove around picking up boys who needed guidance. He might go to a bar and offer an inebriated Somali a lift home. They could have a chat on the way. Did the boy need help? Did he have problems?
Mustafa came across as a brother. He was a brother. He stood with open arms and a ready ear. Then things would come full circle, the helping hand would tighten its grip. It was time to give something back.
* * *
One who was eventually taken in, arrested, and charged was Ubaydullah Hussain—“Allah’s little slave” and Dilal’s former husband.
In September 2016, he became the first Norwegian to be charged with terror recruitment. The Director of Public Prosecutions believed there was sufficient evidence to prove he had recruited and facilitated the travel of would-be terrorists to Syria. Several of those he had helped had later been killed in action, according to the indictment. He had made travel arrangements, purchased clothing and equipment, helped procure tickets, and put the departed in touch with other contacts. “He was in direct communication with individuals with ties to ISIS in order to ensure that those traveling were picked up and transported across the border in Turkey,” the charges stated. PST believed him to be in effect a member of IS until his imprisonment.
The Prophet’s Ummah lay with a broken spine. Ubaydullah was in custody, Bastian and several others were dead, most of the other members were in Syria. Arfan Bhatti, who Aisha had called “the glue of the group,” was still a godfather of sorts, but the Prophet’s Ummah no longer arranged demonstrations and the Facebook group was no more. They still met over a meal, preferably at one another’s homes.
Arfan Bhatti was among those who had kept in close contact with Hisham in Syria. Many no longer dared chat with the Norwegians waging jihad, wary of coming to the attention of the security services. Because PST hounded the young Islamists, paying visits to their families, uncovering other activities of a criminal nature they were involved in, activities that could more easily lead to a conviction than terror recruitment. It appeared to have an effect. In 2016, as far as PST knew, no one left Norway for Syria. While the way to paradise no longer went through Syria, the radicalization continued.
For young women, the pious wave continued too. There were girls in different parts of Oslo who had considered traveling at the same time as Ayan and Leila but had remained behind. Many now agreed that IS was not true Islam. Only in the event of a state being created that really was proper Islam would they journey down.
One of the mosques the strict teenage practitioners were drawn to was Tawfiiq. “Going to the mosque twice a week used to be enough,” one of the girls in the Tawfiiq Sisterhood related. “Learn about the Koran on the weekends, behave correctly, and wear a shawl, or at least have one on when you arrived at the mosque and take it off on the way out. Now the girls practically live in the mosque, kids in their early teens.”
What were they looking for?
Sisterhood. A place to belong. Paradise. To follow the Prophet. To marry young, because “marriage was half the religion.” Many parents were proud when their daughters began practicing their religion with more enthusiasm, but the line between this increased activity and radicalization was thin. You did not suddenly wake up one day a fanatic; it was a direction you grew in. The girls in the extremist networks influenced one another, supported one another when the world opposed them. They excluded those who disagreed with them, dismissing them as either kuffar or friends of kuffar. They lent their ears to preachers claiming the West would not be satisfied until there were no Muslims left. And why would they not, when the West was becoming increasingly preoccupied with what Muslims should and should not do, what they could and could not wear? There was fear and ignorance on both sides, the more moderate stated.
Ayan and Leila had sailed on the early wave of radicalization that led them to Syria. They left precisely when the doors were wide open, both out of Norway and into Syria. Had they waited a year or two, they might not have been borne along but been content to be among
