Source: The Guardian

Sometimes, Mohamed Ahmed gets death threats. But that’s to be expected when you’re taking on Isis.

“I say a prayer, and I hope nothing bad happens,” said Ahmed, a 40-year-old gas station manager in Minneapolis who spends his free time producing anti-Isis cartoons. “If you’re going to blow off the people who kill and behead others, you expect the same thing coming back.”

Between 2006 and 2011, nearly 30 young Somali-Americans from Minneapolis left the US to fight with al-Shabaab, a terrorist group in east Africa. Recruiters for the group had turned to the Minnesota city, home to the largest Somali community in the US, as a source for young recruits.

Today, the Islamic State is trying to do the same, and Ahmed is among those in Minneapolis trying to stop them.

“Here we are, living in a blessed country, with bounty, access to healthcare, work, education, opportunity – where you basically become anything you want to become,” said Ahmed, who immigrated to the US two decades ago. “And the kids chose to become a Shabaab member, or an Isis member.”

Of all the Americans who have joined or attempted to join Isis, more came from Minnesota than any other state or city.

Ahmed added: “What can we do? That’s the question I asked myself.”

So he started making cartoons.

Consulting with Minneapolis imams, Ahmed uses the Qur’an to craft religious messages to show why Isis’s message is wrong. The short cartoon videos feature a character named Average Mohamed, a cheery man whose name was no accident. Mohamed is one of the most common names in the world. Average Mohamed is meant to represent the vast majority of them – the gas station managers, the doctors, the farmers, the professors – who reject Isis’s extremist interpretation of Islam.

“It’s the average people who must fight this war,” Ahmed said. “It’s a game changer. As Muslims on the frontline of this issue – whether it’s fighting it physically or fighting in my ways with counter ideology – that is a way we are closer to victory.”

Ahmed has started taking Average Mohamed’s message into Minneapolis classrooms as well. His videos have garnered worldwide attention, fostering meetings with the US Department of State and a presentation at a counter-extremism conference in London.

“The goal is to go ahead and create enough talking points so we can get to the kids before social media gets them,” Ahmed said. “So even though if they do start seeing these [Isis recruitment] videos … they know this is the wrong path.”

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