Hoda Muthana

Hoda Muthana (born October 28, 1994) is a New Jersey-born woman who left the United States to join ISIS in November 2014. She surrendered in January 2019 to coalition forces fighting ISIS in Syria and has been denied access back to the United States per a judge ruling as she is not an American citizen. At the time of her birth, her father was a diplomat for Yemen.[1]

Hoda Muthana
Born (1994-10-28) October 28, 1994
Hackensack, New Jersey, U.S.
Known forTraveling to Syria to join and support ISIS

Early life

Muthana was born in Hackensack, 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 in Hoover, Alabama and attended Hoover High School before leaving the United States to join ISIS in November 2014 using funds that her parents had provided for her college tuition.[1][2][3][4]

Time in ISIS

In December 2014, Muthana married Suhan Rahman, an Australian jihadist who went by the name Abu Jihad Al-Australi. On Twitter, she advocated for terror attacks against civilians in the United States and encouraged more residents to travel to ISIS-controlled territory and support the caliphate.[5] The Guardian reported that Muthana claimed that her Twitter account was hacked by others.[6] However, two days later, in an interview with ABC 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."[7]

Muthana's husband, Rahman, was killed in Syria in March 2015.[8] She then married a Tunisian 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 in Mosul in 2017, and she fled from Raqqa to Mayadin to Hajin and finally to Shafa in eastern Syria. She married and divorced a third man around this time. Muthana befriended Kimberly Gwen Polman, a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, when the jihadi 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 the Al-Hawl refugee camp in Syria.[1] The pair have expressed their desire to return to the United States.[9][10]

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 modest jilbābs and abayas since eighth grade, when she had only adopted modest dress recently.[11]

In an interview with The New York Times, Muthana described how newly arrived female sympathizers like her were made to surrender their cell phones, and confined to a locked barracks, where they were held available as potential brides for jihadi fighters.[1]

Citizenship

In January 2016, the Obama Administration revoked Muthana's passport, and stated in a letter that she was not a birthright citizen because her father's termination had not been officially documented until February 1995.[12]

President Trump instructed Secretary of State Mike 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."[13][14] Her lawyer, Charles Swift disputes the government's argument regarding birthright citizenship, asserting her father was discharged from his diplomatic position a month before she was born.[10][15] 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.[16]

In November 2019, a federal judge ruled that she did not have American citizenship.[17]

On January 19, 2021, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision of the District Court, ruling that Muthana is not a US citizen.[18]

References
  1. Rukmini Callimachi, Catherine Porter (2019-02-19). "2 American Wives of ISIS Militants Want to Return Home". The New York Times. al Hawl Camp, Syria. p. A1. Archived from the original on 2019-02-20. 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.
  2. "An American ISIS Militant Wife Who Left For Syria Now Wants To Come Back Home". News World India. 2019-02-20. Retrieved 2019-02-20. After she was smuggled in Caliphate, Hoda Muthana, posted a photograph on Twitter holding her American passport. "Bonfire soon," she promised.
  3. Leada Gore (2016-04-19). "What happened to Hoda Muthana, Alabama girl who joined ISIS?". AL.com. Retrieved 2019-02-22. 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.
  4. Dave Madoor (2019-02-21). "Hoda Muthana Denied US Citizenship: Other ISIS Brides From The Country". International Business Times. Retrieved 2019-04-26. However, Muthana isn’t the first ISIS bride from the U.S. In 2017, the ISIS was recruiting an army of women who married ISIS militants. They called themselves the “lionesses of Allah” and their children were called the “cubs of caliphate”. They believed they were carrying the work of Allah through all the killings and bloodshed. The ISIS brides were living in Syria and Iraq and several of them made to the terrorist watchlist.
  5. Hall, Ellie (2015-04-17). "Gone Girl: An Interview With An American In ISIS". Buzzfeed News. Retrieved 2019-11-15. 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.”
  6. Martin Chulov, Bethan McKernan (2019-02-17). "Hoda Muthana 'deeply regrets' joining Isis and wants to return home". The Guardian. al-Hawl, Syria. Retrieved 2019-02-22. 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.
  7. Francis, Enjoli; Longman, James (2019-02-19). "Former ISIS bride who left US for Syria says she 'interpreted everything very wrong'". abcnews.go.com. Retrieved 2019-11-15.
  8. Davey, Melissa (2015-03-18). "Australian Isis recruit Suhan Rahman reportedly killed fighting in Syria". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-02-22.
  9. Anna Beahm (2019-02-19). "Alabama woman who joined ISIS 'ready to face the consequences'". AL.com. Retrieved 2019-02-22. 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.
  10. Rukmini Callimachi, Alan Yuhas (February 20, 2019). "Alabama Woman Who Joined ISIS Can't Return Home, U.S. Says". The New York Times. p. A7.
  11. Ellie Hall (2015-04-17). "Gone Girl: An Interview With An American In ISIS". Buzzfeed. Hoover, Alabama. Retrieved 2019-02-22. 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.
  12. ‘Rule by tyranny’: American-born woman who joined ISIS must be allowed to return, lawsuit says, Washington Post, February 22, 2019
  13. "Statement on Hoda Muthana". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 2019-02-22.
  14. Hjelmgaard, Kim; Collins, Michael. "President Trump: ISIS wife Hoda Muthana won't be allowed to return to United States". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2019-02-22.
  15. David Shortell, Jennifer Hansler, Michelle Kosinski (2019-02-20). "Trump says Alabama woman who joined ISIS should not return to US". CNN. Retrieved 2019-02-22. 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.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. Holpuch, Amanda (2019-02-22). "Hoda Muthana's father sues in bid to bring his daughter back to US". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-02-22.
  17. "Alabama Woman Who Joined ISIS Is Not US Citizen, Judge Rules". The Guardian. November 14, 2019. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  18. "Decision of the Court in Matter No. 19-5362" (PDF). United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. January 19, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
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