Below is the latest newsletter from the Tennessee Council for Political Justice.

Newsletter #160 — Nashville’s Mayor Celebrates Sharia Enclaves

Is Nashville “Music City, USA” or “Little Kurdistan”? You decide.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean said the needs of “new Americans” were a top priority, so he established the city’s Office of New Americans:

“The number of foreign-born residents in Nashville has more than doubled over the past decade. And today our city is the proud home of the nation’s largest Kurdish population, as well as growing enclaves of immigrants from Somalia, Sudan and all over the world.”

Mayor Dean refers to the two out of three groups that have brought political Islam and sharia law to Nashville; Kurds and Somalis. They have been brought to Nashville through the federal refugee resettlement program.

Immigrants-turned-advocates talk about “Nashville for all of us” but instead choose to live like the Mayor’s office said, in enclaves. They complain about being treated as “the other,” but through self-segregation, guard against assimilating into and adapting to the American culture.

When they self-segregate its called preserving their culture. When native-born Tennesseans self-segregate, it’s called racism.

Kurdish Islamist agitator Remziya Suleyman whines endlessly about being thought of as “the other.” However, she was quick to appropriate Nashville’s generous spirit for her community’s political purposes, calling it “Little Kurdistan.”

Drost Kokoye, an activist Nashville’s Kurdish activist community, is known for her Jew-hatred and pro-Hamas politics. She worked in Suleyman’s organization, TIRRC, the ACLU and helped establish and is a board member of the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC). She’s now at UTKnoxville where she agitates with the Muslim Students Association (MSA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and has led pro-Ferguson rallies.

Ironically, Drost’s mother is a Parent Ambassador to new immigrant families as part of Mayor Dean’s Office for New Americans, even while her daughter Drost doesn’t want to be called a “new American” or even an “American.”

Enclaves in Tennessee?

Early on, the federal policy for resettling refugees advised scattering them across the country as a way to disperse the impact on receiving communities. In 1981 the federal government reversed this practice and instead started placing refugees of similar ethnic groups in the same area. Today, migration patterns upon arrival in the U.S. either for jobs, welfare benefits or to join an established ethnic community, help fuel the growth of the enclaves described by Mayor Dean.

There are enclaves such as the Muslims of America (MoA) compound in Stewart County, Tennessee.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Muslims of America (MoA) is linked to the Jamaat ul-Fuqra Pakistani militant group.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes MoA as “virulently anti-Semitic,” attributed to it also anti-Christian and anti-American rhetoric and tied it to “a terrorist organization that has carried out firebombings and murders in the United States.”

There is also evidence of enclaves in the U.S. governed by sharia law.

Importing sharia law and terrorism into the U.S. via Islamic enclaves

According to a Pew Research survey,, “the estimated share of legal Muslim immigrants entering the U.S. each year has roughly doubled, from about 5 percent of legal immigrants in 1992 to about 10 percent in 2012.” The Obama administration has helped accelerate this increase. Legal immigration in the form of refugee resettlement contributes to this growth.

A 2012 poll found that 40% of Muslims living in the U.S. want to be governed by sharia law and 32% want sharia to govern all Americans. Almost half surveyed said “Americans who offer criticism or parodies of Islam should face criminal charges,” while “one in eight” called instead for the death penalty.

Where will this take our nation?

Because of the U.S. refugee resettlement and asylum program, and Washington’s refusal to stop importing people from terror-sponsoring countries, we have experienced the Boston marathon bombing, the Portland Christmas tree bombing threat, and the New York Times Square bomb threat, to name a few.

How did two Iraqi refugees get to Kentucky when their fingerprints were on an IED that killed five soldiers in Iraq? Because our security screening is lax two jihadis and their radical Islamist ideology, were brought to the U.S. as refugees. Watch the video clip about the case.

In December 2013, liberal California Democrat Sen. Diane Feinstein spoke about the Islamic terrorist threat to the U.S. She acknowledged that there is a, “real displaced aggression in this very fundamentalist jihadist Islamic community, and that is that the West is responsible for everything that goes wrong and that the only thing that’s going to solve this is Islamic sharia law and the concept of the caliphate.”

Sen. Feinstein suggests a connection between jihadists and sharia law.

The Tie Between Minneapolis and Nashville — “Little Mogadishu”

The vast majority of Somalis living in the U.S. have been brought by federal contractors paid by the U.S. refugee resettlement program; 9,000 in 2014 and over 2,800 so far in 2015.

The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis is called “Little Mogadishu” because it has the largest concentration of Somali Muslims living in the U.S. In August 2014, mainstream media also referred to it as “fertile ground for Islamic terrorist groups recruiting new fighters.” The report cited at least 40 residents who went to fight with ISIS, a pattern similar to the Minneapolis Somalis who joined al-Shabaab in 2013.

The Somali community complained to the Secretary of Home Land Security that their young men had no jobs, nor training or economic opportunity or “an appropriate place to live.” This is why they became “disillusioned and influenced by terrorist organizations” and then leave to go fight with ISIS.

How does this explain the FBI’s newest “Most Wanted Terrorist” a Somali who became a naturalized U.S. citizen through the refugee resettlement program? He drove a taxicab in D.C. and Virginia while he was recruiting for terrorists.

So, the Obama administration agreed to spend millions of dollars for job training and after-school activities.

The Somali enclave Mayor Dean admires comes with a Somali gang problem. This also connects Minneapolis and Nashville in ways the Mayor likely never envisioned as the price his city would pay for its Somali enclave. Part of Somali gang activity includes human sex trafficking and prostitution. The largest Somali sex trafficking ring which operated out of Minneapolis, Nashville and few other cities, was prosecuted in the federal courthouse in Nashville.

“Little Kurdistan” — Another Nashville Islamist Enclave

Since 2007, federal contractors have been paid to bring approximately 200,000 Iraqis to the U.S. Catholic Charities brought the first Kurds to Nashville in 1976. They were joined by some Iranian Kurds and then Kurds fleeing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Between refugee resettlement and “secondary migration” (resettling in one place and moving to another), Nashville has the largest Kurdish community in the U.S. The number is estimated at about 11,000. Their mosque is the Salahadeen Center.

Programs such Nashville Public Television’s series entitled “Next Door Neighbors,” just like the “Welcome to Shelbyville” detailing the arrival of Somalis to the town, go to great lengths to characterize these refugees as “hardworking and grateful” to be in this country.

In 2007, the Kurdish Pride Gang (KPG) which grew out of the Nashville refugee Kurdish enclave, shined a different spotlight on the Kurdish community. Police described gang members as “increasingly vicious and brazen.” Gang experts warn that gangs made up of people that come from war-torn countries pose a “unique problem” because they are desensitized to violence and dismissive of authority.

As of 2012, Metro police used a new tactic to break the KPG gang. A judge ruled the gang a public nuisance and issued an injunction that prevents the gang from gathering together in public places.

What the propaganda pieces don’t disclose is that most of the pro-Islamist activism has been initiated and led by members of the Nashville Kurdish community actively abetted by Nashville’s Somali community.

For example, shortly after launching the American Center for Outreach (ACO), Remziya Suleyman aligned her organization with Muslim Brotherhood CAIR. Suleyman brought CAIR to Nashville to train young Muslims in advocating for political Islam. She mentors them in leading a sharia-adherent lifestyle despite admitting “she never knew the concept of sharia.” She has ceded leadership of ACO to the former CAIR-Houston director, Paul “Iesa” Galloway.

ACO’s Civic Engagement Coordinator, Drost Kokoye, another member from the Kurdish community, helped start the American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC) and to organize and lead anti-Israel rallies in Nashville. Kurdish Islamist Jihan Abdullah worked for ACO, while her sister Kasar, serves on the AMAC board.

Can Mayor Karl Dean explain again why we should be excited about these enclaves in Nashville?