Hoda Muthana | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1994-10-28)October 28, 1994 (age 31) Hackensack,New Jersey, U.S. |
| Citizenship | Yemen |
| Known for | Traveling to Syria to join and supportISIS |
Hoda Muthana (Arabic:هدى مثنى; born October 28, 1994) is a U.S.-born Yemeni woman whoemigrated from theUnited States toSyria to joinISIS in November 2014. She surrendered in January 2019 tocoalition forces fighting ISIS in Syria and has been denied access back to the United States after a U.S.court ruling rejected her claim toAmerican citizenship. When she was born, her father was aYemeni diplomat, making her ineligible for American citizenship by birth.[1]
Muthana was born inHackensack, New Jersey on October 28, 1994. Her father was a Yemeni diplomat, although it is disputed whether he was a diplomat at the time of her birth or whether he resigned months before. Muthana was raised inHoover, Alabama and attended theUniversity of Alabama at Birmingham before leaving the United States to joinISIS in November 2014 using funds that her parents had provided for her college tuition. She graduated fromHoover High School in 2013.[1][2][3]
In December 2014, Muthana married Suhan Rahman, an Australian ISIS fighter who went by the name Abu Jihad Al-Australi. OnTwitter, she advocated for terror attacks against civilians in theUnited States and encouraged more residents to travel to ISIS-controlled territory and support the caliphate.[4]The Guardian reported that Muthana claimed that her Twitter account was hacked by others.[5] In an interview withABC News on February 19, 2019, when she was asked about a tweet in which she called for the murder of Americans at Veterans and Memorial Day parades, Muthana replied "I can't even believe I thought of that."[6]
Muthana's husband, Rahman, was killed in Syria in March 2015.[7] She then married a Tunisian ISIS fighter and gave birth to a son.[1] Muthana stated that she began to question her allegiance to the caliphate around this time. Her second husband was killed fighting inMosul in 2017, and she fled fromRaqqa toMayadin toHajin and finally to Shafa in eastern Syria. She married and divorced a third man around this time. Muthana befriendedKimberly Gwen Polman, a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, when the ISIS enclave had shrunk to just a few square miles. Food was so scarce that they were reduced to boiling grass for nourishment. They agreed to try to escape the enclave, although Polman said that her first attempt to defect had led to her being imprisoned, tortured and raped. Muthana escaped from Shafa and surrendered to American troops on January 10, 2019. Both Muthana and Polman were placed in theAl-Hawl refugee camp inSyria.[1] Muthana expressed their desire to return to the United States.[8][9]
BuzzFeed conducted an interview with Muthana, her father, and a friend in 2015. They reported that after her father gave her a cell phone, she created a Twitter account her parents were not aware of, which eventually gained thousands of followers. The friend they interviewed said she may have been one of the only people who knew her in both real life and through Twitter. Buzzfeed respected her friend's desire to remain anonymous. She said that there was a gulf between Muthana's real world self and the more radical persona she adopted on Twitter, offering as an example that Muthana claimed she had worn modestjilbābs andabayas since eighth grade, when she had only adopted modest dress recently.[10]
In an interview withThe New York Times, Muthana described how newly arrived female sympathizers like her were made to surrender their cell phones, and confined to locked barracks, where they were held available as potential brides for ISIS fighters.[1]
In January 2016, theObama Administration revoked Muthana's passport, and stated in a letter that she was not a birthright citizen because her father's termination of diplomatic status had not been officially documented until February 1995.[11]
Donald Trump instructed Secretary of StateMike Pompeo to not allow her back into the country. Pompeo released a press statement that read: "Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States. She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States. We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria."[12][13] Her lawyer,Charles Swift disputes the government's argument regardingbirthright citizenship, asserting her father was discharged from his diplomatic position a month before she was born.[9][14] On February 21, 2019, Muthana's father, Ahmed Ali Muthana, filed an emergency lawsuit, asking the federal government to affirm Muthana's citizenship and allow her to return to the United States.[15]
In November 2019, a federal judge ruled that she did not have American citizenship.[16]
In 2021, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the District Court, ruling that Muthana is not a US citizen.[17] In 2022, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear her appeal.[18]
In April 2021, her sister was arrested while allegedly attempting to join ISIS.[19]
As of June 2024[update], Muthana and her 7 year old son are being held in the Al-Roj detention camp (along with over 65,000 suspected Islamic State members and their families) in north-east Syria by US-allied Kurdish forces.[20][21][22] She’s well-known in the camp for being outspoken. She doesn’t wear a face veil and scrawled F-ISIS on the wall outside her tent.[20]
Ms. Muthana and Ms. Polman acknowledged in the interview here that many Americans would question whether they deserved to be brought back home after joining one of the world's deadliest terrorist groups.
After she was smuggled in Caliphate, Hoda Muthana, posted a photograph on Twitter holding her American passport. "Bonfire soon," she promised.
Muthana herself has been identified as one of the operators of a series of online accounts that encourage American Muslims to rise up against their own country.
Using her account @ZumarulJannah, which has now been suspended, [Muthana] expressed contempt for the United States. "Soooo many Aussies and Brits here," she tweeted. "But where are the Americans, wake up u cowards." If other American ISIS supporters couldn't make it to Syria, she said, "Terrorize the kuffar [derogatory term for non-Muslims] at home. "Americans wake up!" she tweeted on March 19. "Men and women altogether. You have much to do while you live under our greatest enemy, enough of your sleeping! Go on drive-bys and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriot, Memorial etc Day parades..go on drive by's + spill all of their blood or rent a big truck n drive all over them. Kill them."
For many months in 2015, her Twitter feed was full of bloodcurdling incitement, and she says she remained a zealot until the following year. She now says her account was taken over by others.
Muthana is currently the only American among an estimated 1,500 foreign women and children inside the sprawling al-Hawl refugee camp of 39,000 people in northern Syria, according to a report from The Guardian. She also has an 18-month-old son.
A naturalized U.S. citizen who fled Yemen with his wife more than 20 years ago, Mohammed watched from across an ocean as his country descended into civil war. As each of his five children was born, far away from falling bombs and tribal violence, he thanked God for their lives in the United States.
According to Shibly, Muthana was born in New Jersey in 1994. Her father, who had been in the US as a Yemeni diplomat, stepped down from his diplomatic role months before Muthana's birth, Shibly added.
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