In the wake of the deadly Orlando nightclub shooting, attention has once again focused on the threat of ‘homegrown terror,’ the notion that U.S. citizens are being recruited and inspired by the self-declared Islamic State to join the fight overseas or to carry out attacks in the U.S.

Minnesota, with its large Somali community, has found itself at the center of this national discussion. Many worry that increasing numbers of young Somali men will be lured to Syria by online ISIS recruiters, while some community members argue that the constant fearful chatter about radicalization stigmatizes Somali youth.

Consider this article a crash course in everything you need to know about ISIS, radicalization, and Somalis in Minnesota.

Why does Minnesota have such a large population of Somali-Americans?

The U.S. Census reported that one in three Somalis in the U.S. live in Minnesota, or about 25,000 people out of the American diaspora of 85,700. These numbers vary; some sources report that as many as 32,000 live here, or as much as 40 percent of all American Somalis.

Many Somali refugees came to the U.S. in the 1990s escaping civil war. Religious organizations and charities in Minnesota specifically have worked to help Somalis navigate the lengthy refugee process. A professor from Macalester College told WCCO that Minnesota’s generous government welfare programs makes the state a desirable place to stay for impoverished immigrants.

“As Somalis settle down, find a life, the good news spreads: ‘Hey this is a good place, you can find a life here,’” Professor Ahmed Samatar said.

Have any Somalis from Minnesota joined a terrorist group before?

Yes. In 2007, the nation was captivated by the news that more than 20 Somali men from Minnesota joined the terrorist group Al-Shabab, which is based in Somalia. Experts say Somali-Americans did this more for political and cultural reasons rather than religious extremism.

Counterterrorism officials do not know how many Somalis have left the U.S. to join ISIS, but they have foiled the plans of nine young Somali men in Minnesota since 2014. The men were all between the ages of 18 and 23 and all have been convicted of plotting to commit murder overseas.

Six of the men pled guilty to their terror charges, but the remaining three, Guled Omar, 21, Abdirahman Daud, 22, and Mohamed Farah, 22, stood trial a few weeks ago. They were all found guilty of the overseas murder charge– a life sentence– and of conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

“This will be the first time individuals facing ISIS-related charges will face trial in Minnesota, home to one of the largest clusters of ISIS defendants in the nation,” Minnesota Public Radio reported.

Using court testimonies and government documents, MPR reporters chronologically laid out the story of Omar, Daud and Farah’s radicalization up to their convictions.

Why are some young Somalis falling under the spell of ISIS’s extremism?

Experts point to a combination of factors that can cause some people to be more susceptible to ISIS’s recruitment efforts than others: poverty, unemployment, past criminal records or feelings of loneliness.

An FBI investigator said in 2014 that the prospect of nobly defending one’s religion is attractive to “disaffected,” “isolated” young men.

Yusuf Mohamoud, a sophomore at St. Thomas, is the public relations officer for the Muslim Student Association and a Somali-American. He gave a step-by-step rundown of how he believes radicalization is occurring in his community.

Somali children, who generally know English and Somali, grow up learning and memorizing the Quran– which is written in Arabic. But not many are taught the theological analysis of the verses, according to Mohamoud.

“The Twin Cities exports memorizers of the Quran,” Mohamoud said. “[Somalis] can read it beautifully, but they can’t tell you much about the context of the verses.”

Those well-versed children grow up in American culture, and by high school some are drinking alcohol and smoking — things that Muslims consider sinful, Mohamoud said.

If they want to return to their religion, they go what all teenagers go to find information — to the internet. But the people waiting online to answer their questions about Islam are usually ISIS recruiters, Mohamoud explained.

“They’re so good at social media,” Mohamoud said. Young Somalis find these extremist interpretations of Quranic verse, and because they never understood the deeper meaning of the verse in the first place, they believe what the ISIS recruiters say, he explained.

Mohamoud emphasized that the radicalized Somali-Americans truly have good intentions when trying to join ISIS, but they just are misunderstanding Islam.

“Anyone who is a sincere student of the Quran cannot come up with the conclusion that we should kill people who don’t follow the Quran,” Mohamoud said. “It’s a clear consensus among all of us.”

What is being done to staunch the flow of extremists from Minnesota to Syria?

The Department of Justice implemented a program called Countering Violent Extremism in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Boston in 2014. In Minnesota, it’s referred to as Building Community Resilience.

CVE has implemented after-school activities, tutoring programs and job training in the Somali community in an attempt to “address the root causes of radicalization,” according to MPR.

The program has drawn criticism from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and 50 other Muslim organizations who say it unfairly targets and stigmatizes one ethnic group. Some Somalis in Minneapolis even say it is just a way to gather intelligence — to spy on the community.

Mohamed Mohamed, a graduate student at St. Thomas pursuing a master’s in business administration, is the director of the West Bank Community Coalition and a vocal critic of CVE.

He argued that the government has not been transparent in its implementation of the program. He also said that radicalization is not nearly the biggest issue in the Somali community, calling out the “mainstream trend of fearmongering.”

“(The media is) only focused on radicalization, and in reality that’s not what’s happening on the ground,” Mohamed said. He said drugs, homelessness and the fact that “thousands are being failed by our education system” are much bigger issues than Islamic extremism.

“My goal is to put the problem of radicalization in its proper context,” Mohamed said. “I don’t think it is a threat … Radicalization is not the core issue. The issue is a lack of resources.”

Judge Michael Davis, who presided over the ISIS trials, believes that the issues Mohamed spoke of — poverty, unemployment, drug use — are factors that propel young Somalis toward extremism. In March 2016, he created a program to study and identify the individual factors that drive radicalization.

Davis is partnering with a German institute to interview some of the convicted ISIS recruits for the “Terrorism Disengagement and Deradicalization Program.” CVE director and U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger applauded the new effort.

“I am fully supportive of the court’s new initiative to rehabilitate those who have pled guilty to terrorism-related crimes,” Luger said. “This program is one important step to address terror recruiting by assisting those who want to reject the call of ISIL.”

Sophie Carson can be reached at sophia.carson@stthomas.edu.