“Accept the Call,” which premiered on PBS on Martin Luther King Day, is a chilling documentary about the plight of a father whose 19-year old son became radicalized and tried twice to join ISIS. Twenty-five years ago, Somali-born Yusuf Abdurahman fled the civil war raging in Somalia to settle as a refugee in Minnesota. Yusuf is a poster-child for Muslim immigrant assimilation. He works hard, devoting himself fully to his eight children and community.
Yusuf is baffled by his son’s alienation from American society. Yusuf feels nothing but gratitude for the country that gave him a chance to reconstruct his life out of the ashes. Yusuf practices a tolerant, mystical form of Sufi Islam that is deeply rooted in Somali culture and is compatible with pluralism and democracy. When Zacharia was 13 years old, religious differences between Yusuf and his wife, who practices a rigid Salafist brand of Islam, led to the dissolution of their marriage. Yusuf, nevertheless, remained deeply involved in his children’s lives.
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