Maldonado: The Lone Star Jihadi

He started out in the Granite State. The Boston Globe

Daniel Maldonado, a slender young man in his early 20s with tattoos and dreadlocks, entered the Selimiye Mosque in a densely populated neighborhood of central Methuen with a humble request for help converting to Islam.

But as his commitment to ever purer, more intense religious observance deepened over the next several years, he became critical of other Muslims' observance of the faith, until the imam who helped him convert told him to refrain from judging others or to leave the mosque.
Maldonado, on the road to the Islamic fundamentalism that would ultimately lead him to Somalia, decided to leave.

Maldonado, who grew up in Pelham, N.H., and later lived in Methuen, became immersed in Islam and attended prayer sessions regularly at Selimiye Mosque. He began wearing traditional Arab clothing, including the galabeyah, an ankle-length gown with long sleeves that covered the tattoos on his arms. He struggled to grow the beard of a religious Muslim. When he could not, he blamed his Puerto Rican heritage and began chastising fellow Muslims who could grow a full beard and chose not to.

His wife dressed in a burkah, exposing only her eyes, and wore gloves in public. The couple's daughter, a toddler at the time, wore the hijab headcovering, though under most interpretations of Muslim law this practice is required only after a girl reaches puberty. They renamed their son, Anthony, as Mohammed.


About his wife: Maldonado, the first American to be charged with training to fight with al-Qaida in Somalia, took his wife and three children with him. There, Tamekia Cunningham succumbed to a high fever that likely was caused by malaria. U.S. officials flew the couple's three children home to their grandparents in New England after Maldonado was captured in Kenya.