Yusra Ismail
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Saint Paul, Minnesota
Yusra Ismail | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1995 |
| Disappeared | August 22, 2014 Saint Paul, Minnesota |
| Status | Missing for 11 years, 7 months and 28 days |
| Alma mater | Lighthouse Academy of Nations |
| Known for | Somali-American woman who joined ISIL |
Yusra Ismail is a teenager who, in 2014 at age 19, allegedly stole a friend's passport and used it to travel from her home in Minnesota to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Syria.[1] She was one of more than a dozen Somali-Americans from the Twin Cities area who are confirmed to have joined ISIL.[2] Her ultimate fate is unknown.
Ismail was born into a Somali family in Nairobi, Kenya, the eighth of nine children by a widowed mother. In 2009, she moved to St. Paul, Minnesota with her family.[3] She was a practicing Muslim and because of her faith she usually dressed very modestly in loosely fitting clothes and a loose hijab, and wore the niqab when visiting the mosque. She did not smoke or go to parties but enjoyed listening to R&B music by the Muslim singer Maher Zain.[3][4] She volunteered at her family's mosque and at the community vegetable garden.[5][3] She graduated from Lighthouse Academy of Nations, a charter school in Minneapolis.[6] There she was remembered as a quiet, respectful and kind student.
By the time of her disappearance, Ismail was in the process of becoming an American citizen.[4] She was unemployed but planned to attend Saint Paul College to study nursing.[1] She had also stopped attending her family's mosque and begun attending another one, the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Bloomington, saying there would be "fewer friends to distract her" there as she knew fewer attendees.[3] She was studying Arabic and the Quran[5] and working towards her goal of memorizing the Quran.[6] Her family described her as a shy girl who preferred to be alone.[4]
Ismail had deactivated her Facebook account[3] and stopped going on long walks with her family, saying they were a waste of time and distracted her from prayer and Quran reading.[4] Her family said they thought her intensive religious studies had been taken "too far" and left her with a lack of balance in her life.[5] They had even confronted her about their concern.[4] They had not, however, noticed any warning signs that she planned to go Syria. She apparently did not follow world news and events, and her sister said that prior to her disappearance, Ismail "never mentioned anything about Syria."[3]