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His father was a Syrian Muslim immigrant, and his mother was an American Christian. In high school Hammami had been a gifted student and the class president. Popular and well liked, Hammami showed little interest in his father’s religion while growing up, but during his sophomore year, he visited Syria with his father and became enamored of the Muslim culture he saw there. When he returned home, he began a gradual process of conversion.

Hammami eventually adopted the conservative Salafi school of thought. He aggressively pursued dawah—calling others to Islam. Not surprisingly, his quest was not well received in small-town Alabama. Eventually, he moved to Toronto with a childhood friend, Bernard Culveyhouse, who had also converted to Islam, thanks to Hammami’s influence.

Surrounded by a much more robust and diverse Muslim community, including a significant number of Somali immigrants, Hammami became more attuned to world events. He eventually grew angry and obsessed with America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as with conspiracy theories about September 11.

Seeking to educate himself about these issues, he discovered the jihadist Internet and began to take a more militant view of his obligations as a Muslim. Unlike many of his American predecessors, Hammami believed that the only true purpose of jihad was to establish an Islamic state.

Hammami met and married a Somali woman, guiding her from a relatively liberal view of Islam into Salafist conservatism and convincing her to wear an abaya and a niqab, which in combination form a full-body covering, leaving only the eyes visible.

Hammami and Culveyhouse decided that they wanted to study at Egypt’s Al Azhar University. They moved to Alexandria briefly, but their applications were rejected, and Culveyhouse became disenchanted with Hammami’s increasingly stringent path. He returned to the United States, leaving his friend behind.

Hammami turned to the Web for reinforcement on his journey. He met a kindred spirit online: Daniel Maldonado, an American citizen also living in Egypt.

The two took a keen interest in Somalia and the activities of the Islamic Courts Union. They were attracted by the ICU’s narrative about establishing a pure Islamic state in the war-torn country, the reality of that narrative notwithstanding.83

The friends agreed to travel to Somalia and join the jihad. Maldonado’s quest ended swiftly and ignominiously (see chapter 11). Hammami had better luck or maybe more commitment. He managed to work his way in with the Shabab fighters, who were now emerging as heirs to the ICU’s jihad.

Hammami wasn’t the only foreigner impressed with Shabab. Al Qaeda had taken notice of the group as well. Harun Fazul, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy in the Horn of Africa, took an interest in Shabab—and in the young American.

Taking the nom de guerre “Abu Mansour Al Amriki,” Hammami now became fully engaged in Shabab’s jihad against Ethiopia and its corresponding reign of terror over the Somali people. Shabab wasn’t only a military operation against the aggressors; it was also establishing a strict shariah code in the country, in the spirit of the worst excesses of the Taliban.

Like al Qaeda, Shabab had established a media division, which was populated largely by Westerners.84 Abu Mansour appeared in a couple of videos with his face covered. In March 2009 he showed his face for the first time in a video titled Ambush At Bardal. The video depicted an operation led by Abu Mansour, apparently in command of a small squad that included Somali American mujahideen from Minnesota. In cinema verité style, the camera caught Hammami speaking in hushed tones as his men prepared for action, his accent still containing traces of Alabama, flavored with an Eastern lilt.

We met the enemy, alhumdillilah [praise God]. So now, we know, we’re not seeing enemies. Right at, at this moment, the enemy’s very near, and if we hear that the enemy is moving, inshallah [God willing], we’ll be able to go and meet him. So, the only reason we’re staying here, away from our families, away from the