Yusra Ismail is a woman 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. She was one of more than a dozen Somali-Americans from the Twin Cities area who are confirmed to have joined ISIL. 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. 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. She volunteered at her family's mosque and at the community vegetable garden. She graduated from Lighthouse Academy of Nations, a charter school in Minneapolis. 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. She was unemployed but planned to attend Saint Paul College to study nursing. 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. She was studying Arabic and the Quran and working towards her goal of memorizing the Quran. Her family described her as a shy girl who preferred to be alone.
Ismail had deactivated her Facebook account and stopped going on long walks with her family, saying they were a waste of time and distracted her from prayer and Quran reading. 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. They had even confronted her about their concern. 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."
On August 18, 2014, Ismail allegedly stole a female friend's U.S. passport during a visit to her friend's home. The next day, she texted the friend, apologizing if she had ever harmed her. On August 22, Ismail told her family she was going to a friend's bridal shower and left home wearing a dress, a cardigan and a fitted headscarf rather than her usual loose flowing clothes and hijab. Another friend drove her to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. She took a flight to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, then to Oslo, Norway, flying on the stolen passport. At about midnight that night, Ismail called home and said she'd be spending the night at her friend's apartment. The next day, she didn't return home or call.
At 6:00 a.m. on August 24, Ismail called her family and said she was in "Sham", a term used to mean parts of Syria and Iraq where ISIL had recently declared a caliphate. She said she had gone there to study the Quran. Her family contacted the FBI to report her disappearance. Ismail made three calls to her family in the weeks after her arrival in Syria, and during the calls, she sounded "content" and said she was living with other girls from all over the world. Her family thought she might be working in nursing, due to her prior expressed interest in it.
Ismail's friend did not realize her passport had been taken until after she had heard Ismail had traveled overseas using someone else's passport. She then checked the place where she stored hers, realized it was missing and notified police that Ismail must have taken it. In December 2014, Ismail was charged in absentia with stealing and misusing a passport. She had booked a return ticket for September 1 when she left the United States, but never used it.
At least four other people who attended the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center went to fight for ISIL, or for the terror group Al-Shabaab in Somalia. Nothing more is known of the fate of Ismail.