Silence persists in Muthana’s home town of Hoover as some insist her views ‘in no way reflect the community she came from’

Before entering the conference room at the Hoover Crescent Islamic Center, Ashfaq Taufique makes one thing clear.

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“I won’t talk about Hoda. I won’t. I won’t!

“The father put a gag order on me,” he said moments later, as he turned on the audio for Friday prayers. “I think this should be discussed in a public forum but the [Muthana] family is a very private family.”

In 2014, when Hoda Muthana’s journey from this middle-class, strip-mall-pocked Alabama suburb to join Islamic State in Syria made the news, the center held an open forum for community youth. Taufique, who is president of the Birmingham Islamic Society, appointed a youth coordinator and took questions about how extremism had affected a seemingly well-integrated community in the American south.

Now, Muthana is begging to return to the US, having fled Isis after five years, three husbands and the issue of dozens of tweets urging violence on western soil. No such forums are being held.

Earlier this week, after Muthana reached Al Hawl camp in northern Syria, she told the Guardian she “deeply regrets” abandoning her family to join the terrorist group. She was “brainwashed, she said. She also said her Twitter account, now banned, was taken over by someone else.

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In response, the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, released a short statement claiming Hoda is not a US citizen and “will not be admitted into the United States”. Donald Trump duly echoed such sentiments.

Muthana’s father, Ahmed Ali Muthana, is the only family member to have spoken publicly about the case. He is suing the government, claiming his daughter is an American citizen born in New Jersey. The family’s lawyer, Hassan Shibly, has posted her birth certificate to social media.

But in Hoover, publicly at least, uneasy silence persists. Ahmed Ali Muthana declined to speak to the Guardian, saying in a text message: “Please understand my situation.”

Taufique reached out to a few young women to speak about the impact of the case. One agreed, then backed out. Another didn’t respond. When he left a message with a third girl’s mother, the girl’s father called him back, screaming.

“I’m not joking with you,” Taufique told the Guardian. “They will not talk, I’m telling you.”

Multiple Muslim organizations and members of the community declined to speak to the Guardian, including the Muslim Students Association at the University of Alabama, Birmingham and the Alabama branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“It is very unjust, very unfair,” Taufique said of Trump’s response, tweeting about Muthana but initially staying silent about the arrest of Christopher Hasson, a US Coast Guard lieutenant who espoused white nationalist views and planned violent attacks on well-known liberals.

“Oh, that’s mental, that’s not [Make America Great Again],” Taufique said, his voice rising. “I’ve gone beyond frustration. Every time those things happen it makes my resolve firm to continue the combat. Not in the physical sense, in making sure our voices are heard.”

Soon after Pompeo’s statement about Muthana, Hoover councilman John Lyda tweeted: “The right call … she’s certainly not welcome back in the [Hoover] as far as I’m concerned.”

In an email to the Guardian, the city of Hoover said: “Councilman Lyda speaks only for himself on this or any other issue.”

In person, at his office in Birmingham, Lyda was more conciliatory. Since 2013, when she left the University of Alabama Birmingham, he said, he has followed Muthana’s story. She and her son should be allowed to return to the US, he said, if she is indeed a citizen.

“At the time, it really was a story that caught the city of Hoover and its residents off guard,” Lyda said, “because we’re not used to having someone radicalized from our neighborhood.”

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Interest in the story only resurfaced, he said, when Muthana asked to return to America.

“Hoda’s views in no way reflect the community she came from,” said the councilman, stressing his comments on the case had nothing to do with Muthana being a Muslim. Someone of such notoriety, he said, could not hide in Hoover if she did return. Most of his constituents he had heard from have taken a hardline stance.

In the words of George Winslow, the father of a soldier killed in Iraq who responded to one of Lyda’s posts on Facebook: “[Lt Cpl] Ryan Winslow wanted to come back to Hoover, too, but thanks to terrorists like this traitor decided to join, he didn’t get to. Let her rot in Syria or whatever place she winds up in; better yet, let her rot in Hell.”

Another resident wrote: “I’m normally pretty forgiving. However, terrorism is a bridge burner.”

‘I hate what this does to our Muslim community’

Brad Coltrane has taught at Hoover high school for 20 years. He did not teach Muthana, but he said he saw Lyda’s social media posts and did not like the hateful comments on them. One said she should be executed, he recalled. When he ran into Lyda at the gym, he said, he pointed out that they are fathers of young girls too.

“I pointed out her parents still live here and they might see that and I had not thought of that perspective earlier either,” Coltrane said. “That’s somebody’s daughter and my strong inclination is [her parents] have nothing to do with this and probably were appalled by this, if not even more so.

They’re burned out, they’re overwhelmed and they want to see their daughter come back safely through our legal system Hassan Shibly

“No matter what my daughter did, I’d do anything to bring her back home, even if our daughter had joined what we can all agree is a terrible organization, I have sympathy for the parents.”

Coltrane said he would like to see Hoda back in America, “in custody, if she’s still a danger, if she still broke the law, than to have her out in the world and we don’t know where she is”.

Just like Lyda, he was keen to emphasize that he was not renouncing Muslim residents of Hoover.

“I hate what this does to our Muslim community and I also hate for people to think this is a part of the community,” he said. “It’s an anomaly.”

Shibly, the Muthana family’s lawyer, said the case concerned the rights of any American citizen to a fair trial.

“This isn’t about her,” he said. “Nor did she engage in acts of terrorism, to be clear. It’s about the authority of the president to declare somebody a non-citizen. Hoda is essentially becoming a defender against limitations on presidential authority to protect the constitution, which I don’t think she ever saw coming when she joined Isis.”

His sympathies remain with Muthana’s parents, whom he has represented and assisted since they found out their daughter had travelled to Syria.

“They’re just really tired,” he said, “they’re burned out, they’re overwhelmed and they want to see their daughter come back safely through our legal system.

“They didn’t want any of this. They wanted their daughter to grow up, graduate college. She would have graduated college by now, pursue a career and just live the American dream.”