Muslim group: ‘Who cares’ if US terrorists in Kenya mall siege

One of the most prominent and controversial Muslim-American advocacy groups says “who cares” if American jihadists were involved in the murderous terror attack on a shopping mall in Kenya.

“It doesn’t matter who’s involved in it,” Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told The Post.

“Terrorism is terrorism, whether it is Americans involved or anyone from any nation or background. Who cares?” he said.

Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed said Monday “two or three Americans” were among the bloodthirsty thugs from the al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab who attacked the mall, hunting down and killing non-Muslims.

The American jihadists were 18 to 19 years old and of Somali or Arab origin and came from Minnesota and another place in the United States, Mohamed told PBS.

CAIR is a DC-based nonprofit organization that describes itself as a “grassroots civil rights and advocacy group” for Muslim-Americans. The group also has been linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The American-Muslim community has repeatedly and consistently condemned all acts of terrorism, in whatever form they take and wherever they occur,” said Hooper.

Stressing that Islamic extremists from the United States or around the world are merely a “tiny minority” of Muslims, he insisted that American Muslims are not being radicalized in American mosques or American Muslim communities.

“When you see individuals engaged in religious extremism or violence, it’s a violation of the norms in their community – not because of something that is being promoted,” he said.

Rep. Pete King (R-LI), chairman of the House Homeland Security subcommittee on counterterrorism and intelligence, was skeptical.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said King.

King conducted a series of Homeland Security Committee hearings in 2011 that focused on homegrown terrorist, which included testimony about more than 40 Muslim Americans from Minneapolis, Minn., recruited to fight for al-Shabab in Africa.

“In Minneapolis some of the local leaders at the mosques told the people, told the family members not to cooperate with the FBI or with the police,” he said. “They actually gave out false information to the families that were trying to find out where their sons were.”

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