Secular Muslim shocked at learning her devout mother is top jihadist, Mama Shabaab

Here it is — what separates these women? What puts them on radically opposing sides of the equation? Piety.

Two Muslim women, mother and daughter, one devout, one secular — one freedom loving, reasoned and rational. The other a savage subjugating and slaughtering in the cause of Islam.

British woman’s shock at learning her mother is a top jihadist who helps suicide bombers and is known as Mama Shabab

Amal Farah was born in Somalia and moved to UK with her family aged 15
Her mother Faduma Jama became a strict Muslim as Amal was growing up
5 years ago she ditched Islam and was forced to cut off contact with family
In 2012 police revealed mother had become a pivotal member of Al Shabab

By Jack Crone, Daily Mail, 30 March 2015
A British woman has spoken of her shock at discovering her mother is an influential jihadist who helps suicide bombers and is known as Mama Shabab.

Amal Farah was stunned when police knocked on her door to tell her that Faduma Jama had become a pivotal member of Al Shabab, the Somali jihadists behind the Westgate mall massacre in Nairobi.

Mother-of-two Ms Farah had cut off all contact from her strict Muslim family five years earlier and fearful for her life, had changed her number, her name and hidden her whereabouts.

Shocking discovery: Amal Farah (left) was stunned when police knocked on her door to tell her that her mother Faduma Jama (right) had become a pivotal member of Al Shabab

Describing the moment she was told, Ms Farah told The Sunday People: ‘The man and the woman were from the anti-terror unit. It was utterly devastating.’

Known as Mama Shabab, Faduma Jama allegedly ran a safe house for suicide bombers and Western fighters recruited into the militant Islamic organisation.

The police officers told Ms Farah, 34, to Google her mother’s name if she wanted to know why she was in trouble.

She said: ‘It was not until I got to work that I could Google her name. There were all these pictures of people injured by suicide bombs.

‘As I read about what she’d done I felt so alone. I couldn’t just turn to my colleagues and say, “Guess what? My mum’s a wanted terrorist.”

‘I couldn’t believe my own mother was involved. I cried non-stop for days after that.’

Loving: Amal, pictured left with her mother, was born in the Somalian capital Mogadishu but now lives in Britain. Pictured right, Faduma Jama, now known as Mama Shabab, meets a soldier in Syria in 1984

In the three years since that earth-shattering day in July 2012, Ms Farah said: ‘I’ve grieved for her. It’s brought closure to any romantic idea about one day things being better with my mum.

‘I’ve accepted I’ll never see her again. How could she ever explain that she’d joined Al Shabab?

‘It’s too terrible. I fear that one day I will see her on TV or I’ll get a knock on the door to say she’s been killed. But despite all the terrible things she’s done, she is still my mother.’

For her own protection, we are not disclosing the details of Ms Farah’s current location or that of her family.

But using contacts she still has in Somalia, where she was born, she discovered her mother married one of Al Shabab’s leaders.

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