ISSUE 2: The Shooting of Luqman Abdullah · November 20, 2009 ISSUE 2: the luqman abdullah shooting and the darul islam movement The Shooting of Luqman Abdullah Page 1 Jamil Al-Amin

November 20, 2009

ISSUE 2:

the luqman abdullah shooting

and the darul islam movement

The Shooting of Luqman AbdullahPage 1

Jamil Al-AminThe Former H. Rap Brown

Page 6

The Darul Islam Movement in the United States

Page 10

Cause Célèbre Islam: Racism, Revolution, Black Nationalism

Page 14

The Center for Terrorism Research (CTR) is a project of the Foundation

for Defense of Democracies. CTR studies terrorist movements and

the ideologies that drive them, and seeks to identify how major trends in these areas will affect terrorism and

counter-terrorism activities in the West.

The Shooting of Luqman Abdullah

“Police, so what? Police die too! Feds die too!...Do not carry a pistol if you’re going to give it up to police. You give them a bullet.”

— Luqman Abdullah, the late imam of Masjid Al-Haqq1

An October 2009 shootout at a warehouse in Dearborn, Michigan, claimed the life Luqman Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid al-Haqq, and in the process garnered national attention. Abdullah had been a Detroit representative to al-Ummah, which the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) describes as “an association of mosques in several cities in the U.S. that coordinates religious and social services primarily in the Black American community.”2 In contrast, a criminal complaint filed by an FBI special agent describes al-Ummah as “a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African-Americans.”3

The shootout occurred during an FBI raid designed to disrupt a variety of illegal activities being carried out by Abdullah and at least ten of his associates—activities that were uncovered by an undercover investigation stretching back for about three years, and a series of transactions pursuant to a Group I Undercover Operation.4 According to local news reports, the

www.defenddemocracy.org/ctr1

Masjid Al-Haqq in Detroit (center), surrounded by empty lots; served as the home base for Detroit’s branch of al-Ummah

shooting came after FBI agents and police from the Joint Terrorism Task Force “surrounded a warehouse and trucking firm on Miller Road near Michigan Avenue where Abdullah and four of his followers were hiding.”5

Abdullah did not surrender when ordered to; instead, he opened fire. He was shot to death, as was an FBI K-9, a three-year-old Belgian Malinois named Freddy. Although press reports do not detail how the dog was shot, it is common practice for the FBI to introduce a K-9 to “locate and detain” a suspect who refuses to surrender. The four men with Abdullah did lay down their arms and allow themselves to be arrested, although the DOJ’s press release leaves some ambiguity as to whether they did so before or after Abdullah was killed.6

The FBI has arrested ten of Abdullah’s associates, most of whom were members of his mosque and the al-Ummah movement. Three of them—Yassir Ali Khan, Mohammad Philistine, and Abdullah’s son Mujahid Carswell—were arrested in Windsor, Ontario following the raids.7 Windsor is located directly across from Detroit, over the U.S.-Canada border.

The arrested men face charges that include conspiracy to receive and sell goods that the defendants believed were stolen from interstate shipments, conspiracy to commit mail fraud through an insurance scam involving arson, providing firearms to a known convicted felon, and tampering with motor vehicle identification numbers to further the theft of a vehicle.

The Al-Ummah Movement

Al-Ummah—which is either a splinter from, or a cover for, the Darul Islam movement (see this issue’s article on the history of Darul Islam)—had been led by Jamil al-Amin, who was formerly known as 1960s firebrand H. Rap Brown. Though al-Amin is reportedly still considered al-Ummah’s leader by the group’s members, he has not been involved in

day-to-day operations for some time: he is currently serving a life sentence at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, following his 2002 conviction for

shooting two police officers in Georgia.

In May 2009 in Alabama, Luqman Abdullah claimed while under surveillance that al-Amin had created al-Ummah out of fear of government interference. Two years before Abdullah became part of the movement,

several Darul members were killed in a shooting in New York. “Jamil Al-Amin said they had to divide the group because having too many people in one organization made them an easy target,” the criminal complaint against Abdullah recounts. “According to Abdullah, the group is still Dar-Ul, but this is not widely known because of the United States government. The Ummah is a cover name for Dar-Ul.”8

Multiple sources estimate that al-Ummah under al-Amin had “approximately thirty branches in America and the Caribbean.”9 Muslim journalist Steven Barboza stated that al-Amin’s “followers are said to number around 10,000 Muslims.”10

Detroit’s Masjid Al-Haqq, which had been located at 4118 Joy Road, was an al-Ummah mosque. It was not only used for prayer services but also for weapons and combat training. Abdullah also lived on the premises with his family. In January 2009, Abdullah and his followers were evicted from the mosque for nonpayment of property taxes. Authorities recovered firearms, knives and martial arts weapons from Abdullah’s apartment in the mosque, and observed “empty shell casings on the basement floor, and large holes in the concrete wall of the ‘shooting range.’”11 Although the mosque was located in an urban environment, it was surrounded by empty lots on all sides, and was thus relatively secluded.

In addition to describing al-Ummah as a nationwide fundamentalist group, the criminal complaint filed against Abdullah asserts that it has the goal of establishing “a separate, sovereign Islamic

ctr vantage the luqman abdullah shooting


Imam Luqman Abdullah



state…within the borders of the United States, governed by Shariah law. The Ummah is to be ruled over by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.”12 MANA, which had Luqman Abdullah on its majlis ash-shura, claims that this depiction of al-Ummah “is an offensive mis-characterization.”13

It is difficult, from available open-source information, to make a definitive judgment about al-Ummah’s religious ideology. However, the three-year criminal investigation of Luqman Abdullah and his associates yielded a great deal of information about Abdullah’s ideas.

Luqman Abdullah’s Teachings

Luqman Abdullah seemed to blend Islamist ideology with black nationalist grievances, supplemented by a healthy dose of criminality that was afforded a thin veneer of religious justification.

Abdullah saw the world as sharply divided in a struggle between good and evil. He understood those concepts not in racial terms, but rather saw Islam as good and the forces of disbelief as the evil that must be opposed. To him the entire system of the United States was of the kuffar (infidels; singular, kafir). “The U.S. government,” he said, “is nothing but Kuffars.”14 In October 2008, when the black community was abuzz with excitement over Barack Obama’s impending victory (as was the U.S. Muslim community writ large), Abdullah emphasized that an Obama presidency would change nothing: “Obama is a Kafir. McCain, all the rest of them Kuffar, are Kuffars. You can’t make them a good Kafir, bad Kafir…. The premise of Allah, and Islam said, ‘the worst of [unintelligible], the worst Muslim is better than the best Kafir.”15

In the face of this corrupt, kafir system, Abdullah insisted that violence was necessary. “[W]e should be trying to figure out how to fight the Kuffar,” he said. “You see, we need to figure out how to be a bullet.”16 He has also emphasized that “you cannot have a non-violent revolution.”17 In part, he taught that violence was needed because the system was conspiring against attempts to establish Islam. He compared Washington to the Quraish, a Meccan tribe that had viciously opposed the Prophet Muhammad because his strict monotheism posed a challenge to

their practice of idol worship. Abdullah said that just as “the government plots and plans against them so they need to plot and plan in return and ‘do whatever it takes.’”18

What would replace the U.S. government? Abdullah was rather unclear on this point, although he clearly endorsed the idea of revolution. In this way, he was similar to his associate Jamil al-Amin. Before al-Amin’s conversion to Islam, when he was still known as H. Rap Brown, he spoke often of the U.S.’s inherently evil nature. Though Brown said that “America’s very existence offends me,” and suggested that he endorsed a Communist-style revolution, he never discussed in any detail the new order he wanted to impose.19

Abdullah at one point suggested that perhaps small Islamic states could separate from the U.S., “like the Amish and the Mormons in Utah.”20 Of course, neither the Amish nor the Mormons are actually separate from the United States. Abdullah echoed this theme of separatism in August 2008, stating that “just as states and cities are separate entities under the U.S. Government, the members of Masjid Al Haqq are also a separate entity independent of the government under their own set of laws.”21 At other times Abdullah suggested that rather than separating, the Muslims should seize power. An FBI confidential source stated that in a May 2009 sermon, Abdullah said his followers “should make America like Saudi Arabia, where the Muslims took control by fighting and dying.”22

Abdullah expressed his approval for transnational jihadi movements. He told his followers in February 2009 that “they need to be with the Taliban, Hizballah, and with Sheikh bin Laden.”23 This was based on his binary view of the world: that Muslims are the party of God, while all else is the party of the devil. He likewise gave one FBI source a CD that the source described as “pro-Taliban propaganda.”24

One thing the agents and officers charged with arresting Abdullah must

have had in mind was his promise that if law enforcement came after him, there

would be a reckoning.

A special place was reserved for law enforcement in Abdullah’s teachings. He encouraged his followers to always be armed, even though many were convicted felons, to prepare for a confrontation with law enforcement. In April 2008 he described law enforcement as “being the devil and evil.”25 He also suggested to an FBI source that they should stalk and kill FBI “super Agents.”26 And in January 2009, Abdullah told the same source that if they wanted a bullet proof vest, they should shoot a police officer in the head and take it. He proceeded to jump around the room making shooting motions with his hands, while shouting “shoot cops in the head” and “pop, pop.”27

One thing the agents and officers charged with arresting Abdullah must have had in mind was his promise that if law enforcement came after him, there would be a reckoning. At one point he said that if law enforcement tried to arrest him, it would be worse than Waco—“a straight up war.”28 He also said: “These pigs don’t even know, their department will have a bad day when they deal with me.”29

Criminal Activities

Though there are several disturbing aspects to Abdullah’s teachings and ideology, this was not a terrorism case. Rather, the criminal complaint describes a pattern of criminal activity culminating in a major undercover operation.

Some of this criminality involved crimes of violence by Abdullah and his followers. One FBI source testified that he saw Muhammad Abdul Salaam, who is believed to be Masjid Al-Haqq’s First Emir, murder a person whom he thought had killed his brother.30 Abdullah loved to boast about murdering people. In May 2009 he visited another al-Ummah mosque in Montgomery, Alabama, and prior to a study session that he was to lead he told the attendees about his experiences shooting other people. Abdullah, quite animated, illustrated how their bodies reacted when shot.31 At another al-Ummah mosque in Gainesville, Georgia, Abdullah sat with the imam’s children,

who were between ages 9 and 11, and “told them stories about his shooting people with a 9mm gun.”32 Surveillance also revealed that he had handguns

on him, even though this was illegal because he was a convicted felon.

In addition to possessing and training with firearms, Abdullah also expressed an interest in creating TNT-based explosive material, which he believed one of the FBI informants could make for him. Abdullah later expressed an interest in C4 or another type of explosive that could

help him do “what he needed to do.”33

Abdullah helped arrange for a new VIN for a truck that he believed to be stolen. He even justified this on religious grounds, arguing it was a form of jihad “because the kuffar would harm them if they were to get caught.”34 Likewise, Abdullah provided religious sanction for an arson orchestrated by Ummah member Mohammad Abdul Bassir: in order to collect insurance money, Bassir hired his neighbor’s nephew to burn down his house while he was working as a DJ at a cabaret (and thus had an alibi).35

Based on this pattern of criminal activity, as well as several mosque members’ expressions of willingness to fence stolen merchandise, the FBI obtained the necessary approval to conduct a Group I Undercover Operation. The operation was designed to give members of Masjid Al-Haqq the opportunity to fence merchandise that they believed to be stolen. At first Abdullah gave religious sanction to these acts, insisting repeatedly that he should be given one fifth of the proceeds because “they need to keep Allah first,” and by giving 20% to Abdullah “the ‘dirty’ money is purified.”36 Later, he became more directly involved in the process. Overall, the undercover operation featured ten transactions, with the merchandise that Masjid Al-Haqq members were involved in fencing including stolen furs, laptop computers, LCD television sets, and loads of cigarettes.



Masjid Al-Haqq

Controversy

Following Abdullah’s death, some American Muslim organizations jumped into the fray. MANA, for example, issued a press release:

To those who have worked with Imam Luqman A. Abdullah, allegations of illegal activity, resisting arrest, and “offensive jihad against the American government” are shocking and inconsistent. In his ministry he consistently advocated for the downtrodden and always spoke about the importance of connecting with the needs of the poor…. We urge the Muslim community and all Americans committed to justice to actively monitor both the investigation and trial of the accused.37

The American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT), a coalition of major U.S.-based Islamic organizations, has also called for an independent investigation into the shooting that “makes[s] public the exact circumstances in which he died.”38 The AMT is an umbrella organization that includes such groups as the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and MAS-Freedom.

1. Quoted in Gary Leone, Criminal Complaint, United States v.

Abdullah, No. 2:09-MJ-30436 (E.D. Mich., Oct. 27, 2009), ¶ 11.

2. Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), “The FBI Raid and

Shooting Death of Imam Luqman,” Oct. 29, 2009.

3. Leone, Criminal Complaint, ¶ 5.

4. Unlike a Group II Undercover Operation, which can be

approved by the Special Agent in Charge in the relevant FBI field

office along with the local U.S. Attorney, a Group I Undercover

Operation requires “painstaking planning, substantial amounts

of documentation, lots of coordination, and minute review

by a panel of senior FBI Headquarters and Department of

Justice officials.” Joseph W. Koletar, The FBI Career Guide: Inside

Information on Getting Chosen for and Succeeding in One of the

Toughest, Most Prestigious Jobs in the World (New York: AMACOM,

2006), p. 77.

5. Paul Egan, “Detroit Mosque Leader Killed in FBI Raids,” Detroit

News, Oct. 28, 2009.

6. See U.S. Department of Justice, Press Release, “11 Members/

Associates of Ummah Charged with Federal Violations; One

Subject Fatally Shot During Arrest,” Oct. 28, 2009.

7. Canwest News Service, Nov. 2, 2009.


9. Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience

(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2nd ed. 2003), p. 233.

10. Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X (New

York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 48.


12. Ibid., ¶ 5.

13. MANA, “The FBI Raid and Shooting Death of Imam Luqman.”

Abdullah is listed as a member of MANA’s majlis ash-shura on its

web site. See http://www.mana-net.org/subpage.php?ID=about

(accessed Nov. 16, 2009).


15. Ibid., ¶ 18.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid. See also ibid. ¶ 24, in which Abdullah states: “We are

going to have to fight against the Kafir.”

18. Ibid., ¶¶ 20, 37.

19. H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die! (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books,

1969), p. 135. For examples of Brown’s endorsement of the

need for revolutionary action, without a specific revolutionary

program, see pp. 128-29. Another intellectual thread that the

Brown in his black nationalist days and Abdullah had in common

is the idea that necessary change could only be obtained through

“long, protracted, bloody, brutal and violent wars with our

oppressors.” Ibid., p. 128.


21. Ibid., ¶ 41.

22. Ibid., ¶ 61. Abdullah also stated in this sermon “that they hate

the Jews and that God hates the Jews.” Ibid.

23. Ibid., ¶ 48.

24. Ibid., ¶ 53.

25. Ibid., ¶ 29.

26. Ibid., ¶ 25.

27. Ibid., ¶ 47.

28. Ibid., ¶ 38.

29. Ibid., ¶ 45.

30. Ibid., ¶ 92.

31. Ibid., ¶ 66.

32. Ibid., ¶ 70.

33. Ibid., ¶ 65.

34. Ibid., ¶ 33.

35. Ibid., ¶¶ 85-88.

36. Ibid., ¶ 149.

37. MANA, “The FBI Raid and Shooting Death of Imam Luqman.”

38. American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections,

Press Release, “Coalition Calls for Probe into FBI Shooting Death

of Imam,” Oct. 30, 2009.



jamil al-aminthe former h. rap brown

The criminal complaint against Luqman Abdullah and his associates states that when al-Ummah succeeds in establishing a “separate, sovereign Islamic state,” they intend for it to be led by Jamil al-Amin, who is currently serving a life sentence after being convicted of shooting two police officers.1 Further underscoring al-Amin’s importance to the movement, an al-Ummah mosque, Atlanta’s Community Masjid, still lists him as its leader despite his incarceration.2 This article explores al-Amin’s background, and how the framework for al-Ummah’s ideology was built.

Al-Amin, the former H. Rap Brown, made the transition from black nationalist firebrand to nationally prominent Sunni imam. In the 1960s, he issued scathing indictments of America and called for violent revolution. After his conversion to Islam, al-Amin adopted a more measured tone in his societal criticism, but remained attached to the idea of revolution. Though he focused on a more inward-looking revolution, one that would transform his community morally, al-Amin continued to believe that the system writ large was sick and broken. Some analysts have questioned how far al-Amin truly progressed from the violent ideals that he once openly proclaimed.

H. Rap Brown

Jamil al-Amin was born Hubert Gerold Brown in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on Oct. 4, 1943, and was known during the late 1960s as H. Rap Brown. (He did not adopt the moniker of al-Amin until his jailhouse conversion to Islam in 1971). He has said that he took

on the name Rap because of his “ability to talk,” and even claimed that rap music was named after him.3 We could not, however, find any credible sources to corroborate this claim. Prior to his conversion to Islam, al-Amin did rap (“signifyin”),4 often in a boisterous and sexually explicit tone:

I’m sweet peeter jeeter the womb beaterThe baby maker the cradle shakerThe deerslayer the buckbinder the women finder…I’m the bed tucker the cock plucker the motherfuckerThe milkshaker the record breaker the population makerThe gun-slinger the baby bringerThe hum-dinger the pussy ringerThe man with the terrible middle finger.5

In 1967, at age 23, H. Rap Brown became the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was preceded in this position by Stokely Carmichael. Rep. John Lewis (D.-Ga.), who had once chaired SNCC, recalled: “Some people thought that Stokely was too moderate. But after they asked Rap, Stokely told me: ‘This is a bad cat. They’re going to wish they had me back.’”6

Brown, a towering figure at 6-foot-5 and a naturally gifted athlete, did indeed generate enormous controversy. He had a notable ability to package revolutionary slogans in a pithy, memorable way; his most famous such statement held that “violence … is as American as cherry pie.”

In July 1967, Brown delivered a fiery speech in Cambridge, Maryland, saying: “This town is ready to explode … if you don’t have guns, don’t be here … you have to be ready to die.”7 After a school and two city blocks burned the next morning, he was charged with incitement to riot. A supporter of Brown’s described the legal maneuvering that followed as “Kafkaesque,” writing: “It seemed like every few months he would be hauled into court in a new jurisdiction on a different charge and held under an oppressively large bond…. Rap would eventually come out and in a matter of days be reported somewhere else making even more ‘incendiary’ utterances and be back in custody, there to begin the dismal cycle all over again.”8

Brown’s militant orientation, though, was never in question. He was critical to SNCC’s decision to renounce non-violence and remove the word “Non-Violent” from its name, and its ill-fated attempt to



merge with the Black Panther Party.9 Brown was named the Panthers’ Minister of Justice; and though he was only a Panther for five months or so, “it remains the tie for which he is best known.”10 In 1969 Brown published his political memoir, Die Nigger Die!

Malcolm X was a towering figure within the black nationalist movement whose autobiography is regarded as a literary classic. A comparison of his book with Brown’s is interesting both for the commonalities they share, and the differences. One commonality that Brown’s book has with Malcolm X’s, in light of Brown’s later conversion to Islam, is its critique of Christianity as a tool of racial subjugation. In the book’s first chapter, Brown writes:

White nationalism divides history into two parts, B.C. and A.D.—before the white man’s religion and after it. And “progress,” of course, is considered to have taken place only after the white man’s religion came into being. The implication is evident: God is on the white man’s side, for white Jesus was the “son” of God.11

Brown also sarcastically refers to how whites try to “[c]ivilize the savage through Christianity,” and states that one of the problems a black child has is that “the big white world … forces a white God and a white Jesus on him and has him worshipping somebody that doesn’t even look like him.”12 Also like Malcolm X, Brown believes that the U.S. is flawed to its very core, beyond redemption. He writes that it “represents everything that humans have suffered from,” and the fact of its existence “appals [sic] most of mankind.”

Brown continues: “This country is the world’s slop jar. America’s very existence offends me…. The animal that is america [sic] must be destroyed.”13

Despite these commonalities, Brown does not come across well in his own book. For one thing, there is his anti-intellectualism, something he did not abandon as an imam. Explaining his refusal to study Shakespeare, for example, he rattles off several bawdy verses from games of dozens (a competition that is part of the African-American oral tradition wherein two competitors go head-to-head in often coarse trash talk): “I fucked your mama / For a solid hour. / Baby came out / Screaming, Black Power.” After three such verses, he triumphantly concludes: “And the teacher expected me to sit up in class and study poetry after I could run down shit like that. If anybody needed to study poetry, she needed to study mine.”14

A more serious flaw is that Brown leaves his experiences with racism nebulous. This is different from Malcolm X’s book, the first sentence of which describes his mother being intimidated by hooded Ku Klux Klan riders while pregnant with Malcolm,15 and which provides enough richness of experience that the reader can empathize with how he was driven to extreme conclusions. In contrast, some of Brown’s examples of discrimination seem petty and contrived. He writes that he “began to see where ‘the man’ was at” while employed as a neighborhood worker with “the poverty program.” The program apparently sought to financially incentivize good performance; but to Brown, this exposed the sinister stratagems of “the man.” He wrote: “It was the whole trick of the stick and the carrot in front of the mule. If you do a better job than this other dude, then you get this carrot.”16

Despite the dubious nature of many of Brown’s complaints, the reality of racism—pervasive, often deadly racism—was undeniable during this period. Just as undeniable is the fact that Brown was personally stung by it. Yet his attitude in Die Nigger Die! seems to be that this justifies virtually anything on his part: Brown writes of his open insubordination toward every employer he had before SNCC, assuming the reader will side with him because they were his employers, rather than showing any kind of injustice or racism on their part. He feels justified in



Brown at a SNCC news conference, 1967

threatening whites physically, or lying about them to their managers; and he endorses the idea of collective racial guilt, stating that after some whites attacked a black man in Fort Deposit, Alabama, “I thought that we should at least jack up 10 or 12 crackers.”17 Even theft is justified under this worldview as an act of “liberat[ing] food.”18

Conversion to Islam

In March 1970, Brown skipped his trial date for the Cambridge riot and disappeared for about 17 months. During his time on the run, the FBI placed him on its Most Wanted List. He was apprehended in 1972 after robbing the Red Carpet Lounge, a bar in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Time reports that Brown and his three accomplices “ordered about 25 customers to lie on the floor, assaulted some of them, took their wallets and laid down a barrage of fire as they left.”19 After leaving the bar, the robbers were chased by six carloads of police. The ensuing “running gun battle” left two policemen injured, and resulted in Brown being wounded by two shots to the abdomen and ultimately captured.20 Though Brown’s standing declined after this because he “seemed to have crossed the line between militant political defiance and flat-out criminality,”21 some of his supporters have attempted to justify the episode by arguing that the bar was targeted for its exploitation of the local community.

Brown converted to Islam in 1971 while in prison, and adopted the new name Jamil al-Amin. He later explained that he found Islam through the Darul Islam movement: “I was in prison in New York. The Dar-ul-Islam movement had a prison program and brothers would come in to conduct juma and for dawah purposes.”22 Ihsan Bagby, who currently is an associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky, told the Associated Press in 2000 that “the Dar-ul Islam movement appealed to Al-Amin and many other black militants because it blended the rhetoric of black power with a call for strict devotion to Islam.”23

Islamic Activism and Ideology

After leaving prison, al-Amin went on hajj to Mecca, then moved to Atlanta. In a 1995 profile of him, the Atlanta Journal Constitution explained that in his

first year in Atlanta al-Amin “opened a one-room store across from West End Park, and in that neighborhood of danger and drugs became an imam.”24 Indeed, he helped clean up the neighborhood where he made his new home, something that both Muslim and non-Muslim residents deeply appreciated. As West End resident Barbara Jordan told the Atlanta Journal Constitution five years later, al-Amin’s followers “laid the law down” when they confronted drug dealers and other undesirable elements that were then ubiquitous in the neighborhood.25

Al-Amin became the leader of Darul Islam/al-Ummah, and multiple sources estimate that “approximately thirty branches in America and the Caribbean” fell under his leadership.26 Muslim journalist Steven Barboza stated in 1994 that al-Amin’s “followers are said to number around 10,000 Muslims.”27 Al-Amin also cultivated relationships with a variety of nationally prominent Muslim organizations. He was elected Vice President of the American Muslim Council in 1990, and became a member of the Bosnia Task Force, USA in 1992. He was later elected chairman of the Islamic Shura Council, an umbrella group that also included the secretary generals of the Islamic Society North America (ISNA) and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA).

The most comprehensive expression of al-Amin’s Islamic thought is his 1994 book Revolution by the Book. The first five chapters are themed around the five pillars of Islam—tawheed, prayer, zakat, fasting, and hajj. They make clear that al-Amin is theologically situated within the Sunni tradition, and is not part of one of the quasi-Islamic movements that is more black nationalist than it is Muslim (such



Community Masjid in Atlanta, at which al-Amin was the imam

as the Nation of Islam).

Al-Amin makes clear that he continues to embrace revolutionary struggle, that his conversion to Islam was “a continuation of a lifestyle” rather than a 180-degree transformation. “See,” he explains, “most people don’t have a true picture of what Islam is. Islam is not nonviolent. There is a right to self-defense, and there is [a] right to defend your faith. Allah says that fighting is prescribed for you.”28 He argues that success in revolutionary struggle “requires a spiritual consciousness,”29 and that the problem with social movements in the 1990s was that they had been reduced to sloganeering:

It is criminal that, in the 1990’s, we still approach struggle on the basis of sloganeering, saying, “by any means necessary,” as if that’s a program. Or, “we shall overcome,” as if that’s a program. Slogans are not programs.30

What did al-Amin want to overthrow? Though his tone was far more measured, he continued to see the entire system as overrun by sickness. The cause of the malady seemed to be secularism, “the distance from the Word of God that keeps an individual in darkness.”31 This is manifested in a polluted and degraded natural environment, and citizens who pollute and degrade themselves. This occurs even in the diet, wherein preservatives and the hormones we give to animals disrupt the digestive process. Moreover, al-Amin claims that when males eat these hormones, “the male begins to take on feminine characteristics. He takes on an affinity for feminine things. He wants to pierce his ears, he wants to get manicures.”32

“If a person takes LSD, he might hallucinate,” al-Amin writes.33 But noting the artificiality of Tang, al-Amin likens the breakfast drink to LSD:

I often think of Tang, the breakfast drink that they have out there for you to buy. Tang does not have even one natural ingredient in it. Not even one. It is a totally chemical drink that is flavored with a chemical orange flavor, that is sweetened by processed sugar. And when you consume it, there has to be some effect on you.

You may be totally “out-of-pocket” in terms of what you see or perceive after you drink chemicals.34

To al-Amin, the U.S. Constitution is a part of the problem by reinforcing secular culture, being “diametrically opposed to what Allah has commanded upon us.” Its concept of freedom is “unique,” blinding us to “our relationship with our Creator” and thus blinding us “to true freedom.”35

Past revolutionary movements in the United States failed because their understanding was limited. Al-Amin is particularly critical of the movements of the 1960s, of which he was a part. Though

1960s era social movements “rebelled against the unnatural way human beings were being treated,” the revolution “was defused because it was not based on a Divine program. In many ways, it was itself artificial, based on man-made solutions and personal agendas, devoid of truth and sincerity.”36

Al-Amin sees Islam a methodology for revolution, and the Prophet Muhammad’s life as “a clear blueprint for changing a society, for bringing about revolutionary change even under the most difficult conditions.”37 Much of what he advocates is inner struggle designed to remove ignorance, to help Muslims curb their appetite. “The Qur’an,” he writes, “is either an argument for you or against you. Islam is a cutting force; it is a vanguard movement that sets a standard for people.”38

Conclusion

Throughout the 1990s, al-Amin was seen by many who knew him as having changed from violent to non-violent revolutionary, from focusing on the outward struggle to the inward one. As Nation of Islam spokesman Wendell Muhammad told the local press: “He did a 180-degree turn on that. He was the epitome of the peace of Islam.”39 However, there were clues that this was not the entire picture of Jamil al-Amin. Some of these clues came from his followers. In the criminal complaint filed in the Luqman Abdullah case, for example, Mohammad Abdul Bassir told an FBI source that “he learned from Jamil Al-Amin that one does not have to appear angry in order to let



somebody know that you would kill them.”40

The biggest clue, of course, is his 2002 conviction for shooting two police officers in Georgia, one of whom died. Following the shooting, al-Amin was again on the run, again placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and eventually arrested in White Hall, Alabama. He is now serving a life sentence at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

His supporters maintain his innocence to this day, and there are web sites dedicated to freeing Jamil al-Amin. He will continue to be regarded as a leader within al-Ummah, and his imprisonment one of the perceived injustices around which its members rally.

1. Gary Leone, Criminal Complaint, United States v. Abdullah, No.

2:09-MJ-30436 (E.D. Mich., Oct. 27, 2009), ¶ 5.

2. This statement can be found at http://communitymasjid.org/

home.html (accessed Nov. 18, 2009).

3. Quoted in Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm

X (New York: Image/Doubleday, 1994), p. 49.

4. “Signifyin occurs when one makes an indirect statement about

a situation or another person; the meaning is often allusive and,

in some cases, indeterminate.” Cheryl L. Keyes, Rap Music and

Street Consciousness (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press,

2002), p. 24. “[S]torytelling, ritualized games” like signifyin and the

dozens “provided a foundation for rap.” Ibid.

5. H. Rap Brown, Die Nigger Die! (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books,

1969), p. 27.

6. Richard Lezin Jones, “Conflicting Images of a Former Panther,”

Philadelphia Inquirer, Mar. 22, 2000.

7. Quoted in Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, “Foreword,” in Die

Nigger Die! (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2002), p. xx.

8. Ibid., p. xxi.

9. R. Robin McDonald, “Spiritual Ministry Replaces Rhetoric from

Earlier Era,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, Aug. 9, 1995.

10. Jones, “Conflicting Images of a Former Panther.”

11. Brown, Die Nigger Die!, p. 4.

12. Ibid., pp. 14, 47.

13. Ibid., p. 135.

14. Ibid., p. 26.

15. Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

(New York: Ballantine Books, 1964), p. 1.

16. Brown, Die Nigger Die!, p. 75.

17. Ibid., p. 93.

18. Ibid.

19. “Cherry Pie,” Time, Oct. 25, 1971.

20. Ibid.

21. Thelwell, “Foreword,” p. xxiv.

22. Barboza, American Jihad, p. 49

23. Justin Bachman, “Who is Al-Amin?,” Associated Press, May 12,

2000.

24. David Kindred, “Imam Jamil Al-Amin Has No Regrets,” Atlanta

Journal Constitution, Aug. 16, 1995.

25. John Blake, “Mosque a Stabilizing Influence,” Atlanta Journal

Constitution, Mar. 17, 2000.

26. E.g., Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American

Experience (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2nd ed.

2003), p. 233.

27. Steven Barboza, American Jihad: Islam After Malcolm X (New

York: Doubleday, 1994), p. 48.

28. Jamil al-Amin, Revolution by the Book: The Rap is Live

(Beltsville, MD: Writers’ Inc., 1994), p. xvi.

29. Ibid., p. 6.

30. Ibid., p. 119.

31. Ibid., p. 103.

32.. Ibid., p. 47.

33. Ibid., p. 56.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., p. 126.

36. Ibid., p. 153.

37. Ibid., p. 10.

38. Ibid., p. 144.

39. Blake, “Mosque a Stabilizing Influence.”

40. Leone, Criminal Complaint, United States v. Abdullah, ¶ 85.

The Darul Islam Movement in the United States

The 1960s were a time of great social upheaval in the U.S. Within the African-American Muslim population, young organizations trumpeted separation from mainstream American culture. Of these groups, Darul Islam “was the largest indigenous Muslim group until W. Deen Mohammed transformed the Nation into a more inclusive Sunni Islam.”1 This article explores the evolution of Darul Islam.

The Islamic Mission to America and Darul Islam’s Founding

Darul Islam’s founding members came from the Islamic Mission of America, which was founded in 1924 by Sheikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal and based out



of the State Street Mosque in Brooklyn, New York. His thinking, which derived “as much from Franz Fanon’s anticolonialism as the literature of Islamic revivalism,” held that African-Americans “needed to totally transform themselves—their language, dress, customs, and even their daily interactions—in a ritual of purification that would cement them to the real foundations of the worldwide Islamic revival that was occurring across the Atlantic.”2

However, Faisal did not advocate for complete withdrawal from American society, nor disloyalty to it. Unlike some organizations that taught African-Americans that they were originally Muslim (such as the Moorish Science Temple), the Islamic Mission did not instruct followers to resist the military draft, but “permitted its male followers to join.”3 In this way, “Faisal thought that blacks should reclaim their Islamic heritage and also lay claim to an American allegiance.”4 Though the Islamic Mission originally brought together Muslim immigrants and American-born converts in one congregation, over time “the fraternal atmosphere” at the State Street Mosque “degenerated into two thinly disguised factions, the new Americans (Arab Muslim immigrants) and the new Muslims (African-American converts).”5

With this degeneration in social relations, Rijab Mahmud and Yahya Abdul Karim led a group of African-American converts away from the State Street Mosque, and founded a new mosque in nearby Brownsville, Brooklyn in 1962. This breakaway group’s members relied on the religious counsel of a Pakistani religious instructor, Hafis Mahbub, who was affiliated with the Tablighi Jamaat. The new group “set out to build an urban community governed under the sharia,” calling it Darul Islam.6 Darul Islam

is an Arabic term meaning “abode of Islam.”

Darul Islam’s Religious Methodology

Darul Islam is ideologically influenced by “the teachings and writings” of Pakistani thinker Abu Ala al-Mawdudi.7 One of its founding themes was the experience of racism, with Islam viewed as “the liberating force.”8 Gutbi Mahdi Ahmed notes that “[l]ike many black movements of the sixties Darul Islam was a militant movement, with occasional outbreaks of violence.”9

Darul Islam emphasized a literal translation of the Qur’an, strict adherence to the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, and “the avoidance of assimilating non-Islamic influences”—all of which “translates into a sustained suspicion, if not hostility, toward American social, political, religious and educational institutions.”10

Membership in Darul Islam was not granted to everyone, but was instead “awarded on the basis of demonstrated ability to learn the information contained in the Fundamentals of Islam, a study book developed by Shaykh Dauod for the training of new members.”11 Once granted access, new members swore an oath of bayat to the group. This pledge stated:

In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful; Allah is the greatest; Bearing witness that there is no God but Allah and that Muhammad (peace be on him) is His Messenger, and being a follower of the last Prophet and Messenger of Allah, I hereby pledge myself to the Shariah and to those who are joined by this pledge. I pledge myself, by pledging my love, energy, wealth, life and abilities. I also pledge myself to the Majlis (Imamate), whose duty is to establish, develop, defend and govern according to the precepts of the Shariah.12

Immigrants were excluded from membership in Darul Islam for several years “in order to exclusively convert African Americans to mainstream Islam.”13

Darul Islam members were expected to widen their understanding of Islam through religious



State Street Mosque in Brooklyn, site of the founding of Darul Islam

courses that included Arabic, and the study of the Qur’an and ahadith.14 Conservative rules of gender relations were enforced on the congregation, with men and women sitting separately during Friday prayers, women wearing full hijab, and male and female alike adhering to “moral dress,” wherein “men wear long baggy pants and shirts, women wear long, loose clothing with a veil.”15

The organizational structure of Darul Islam movement was hierarchical, with leadership “selected on the traditional criterion of being ‘most knowledgeable’ of the Qur’an and the hadith.”16 At the top of the organization, the majlis ash-shurah (governing body) would make decisions affecting the community as a whole.17 Under the majlis ash-shurah, Darul Islam was organized into several ministries, each with distinct responsibilities, including propagation (dawah), defense, information, culture, education, health and welfare, and protocol.18 The ministry of defense had its own paramilitary wing called the Ra’d, meaning “thunder” in Arabic. Members of the Ra’d performed a variety of activities, including acting as personal bodyguards, providing building security and community protection, and “administering punishments to those who broke the laws of the community.”19

Imam Yahya Abdul Karim led the overall movement; individual communities had their own imams responsible for day-to-day operations. By the 1970s, the movement had “formed a federation of mosques around the country.”20 There were around twenty Darul Islam mosques in the New York area alone,21 with affiliates in Canada and the Caribbean.

Prison Outreach

This issue’s article “Jamil al-Amin” describes how al-Amin converted to Islam under the tutelage of Darul Islam. Indeed, the movement’s prison education program was particularly active in New York state prisons.

In the 1960s, Sunni Muslims “began to worship openly in New York state correctional facilities.”22 Of particular importance to Darul Islam, Muslims in the Green Haven prison were not “recognized by the administration as a legitimate religious community deserving an area designated as a mosque.”23 Thus,

they reached out to Abdul Karim, the first spark that eventually led to Darul Islam’s Prison Committee and its prison dawah activities.

With Darul Islam’s assistance, the Green Haven prisoners created their own mosque, calling it Masjid Sankore. Sheik Ismail Abdul Rahman, who acted as Darul Islam’s emissary to Green Haven, noted: “When you walked in there [Masjid Sankore], it was another world. You didn’t feel like you were in Green Haven in a maximum security prison. Officers [prison guards] never came in. It was like going to any other masjid on the outside; you felt at home.”24 The conditions of worship were transformed there, and over time the changes at Green Haven spread to other correctional facilities; it became the model for Darul Islam’s prison work moving forward.

In 1975, the New York State Department of Corrections “offered to hire Muslim chaplains as direct employees of its Ministerial Services Division.”25 Abdul Karim balked at the offer out of concern that direct payment from the corrections department would compromise the autonomy of Darul Islam’s Prison Committee. The movement pulled back on its prison dawah for a short time, only resuming it in 1978.

Darul Islam Splinters

In 1978, Pakistani sheikh Syed Gilani began preaching at the Islamic Center in New Jersey.26 His charisma led to a growing following that included Abdul Karim and other Darul Islam leaders. Al-Amin Abdul Latif, president of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York City and a former high-ranking Darul Islam member, said in 1993: “The brothers



Sign inside Masjid Al-Haqq

fell in love with [Gilani]. Yahya and the leadership accepted him. When he [Abdul Karim] did that, we had problems with that. For many of us, loyalties were very strong. That caused a split in the Dar.”27 In 1980, Abdul Karim abdicated his leadership of Darul Islam to follow Gilani, and the movement fractured.

Sheik Gilani named his group Jamaat al-Fuqra, meaning “community of the impoverished.” Al-Fuqra is an incredibly controversial organization today; members have attacked ethnic Indians and Indian sects, and the group has also been linked to an attack against a Muslim leader in Tucson, Arizona. Al-Fuqra has bought and developed a number of properties in rural regions of the U.S., maintaining its headquarters in Hancock, New York. Al-Fuqra members are said to receive weapons and other military-style training on these properties. One analyst has warned that the group, now known as the Muslims of the Americas, is “capable of committing violence toward any proponent of a belief set that does not match their own.”28

However, several mosques that were a part of the Darul Islam federation stayed loyal to the movement’s ideology and organizational structure, including the Universal Islamic Brotherhood in Cleveland, the Ta’if Tul Islam ministry in Los Angeles, and the West End Community in Atlanta.29 Jamil al-Amin ended up leading this group, which took on the moniker of the National Ummah, or al-Ummah.

Darul Islam has had a lasting impact on African-American Islamic organizations in the U.S. Moreover, its offshoots—like al-Fuqra and al-Ummah—are of continuing relevance today.

1. “African-American Islam Reformed: ‘Black Muslims’ and the

Universal Ummah,” The Pluralism Project, Harvard University


2. Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam (Oxford, UK: Oxford

University Press, 2002), p. 63.

3. Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam, (New York:

Routledge, 1995) p. 22.

4. Ibid.

5. Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam, p. 66.

6. Ibid., p. 67.

7. Sherman Jackson, Islam and the Blackamerican (Oxford, UK:

Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 49.

8. Jane I. Smith, Islam in America (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1999), p. 98.

9. Gutbi Mahdi Ahmed, “Muslim Organizations in the United

States,” The Muslims of America (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1991), p. 20.

10. Ibid.

11. McCloud, African American Islam, p. 70.

12. Quoted in R.M. Mukhtar Curtis, “Urban Muslims: The

Formation of the Dar ul-Islam Movement,” in Muslim Communities

in North America (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, Yvonne Yazbeck

Haddad & Jane I. Smith eds., 1994).

13. Richard Brent Turner, Islam in the African-American Experience

(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2nd ed. 2003) p. xx.

14. Smith, Islam in America, p. 98.

15. McCloud, African American Islam, p. 71.

16. Ibid., p. 70.

17. Aminah Beverly McCloud, African American Islam, (New York,

New York: Routledge, 1995) p. 70.

18. Curtis, “Urban Muslims,” p. 61.

19. Ibid.

20. “African-American Islam Reformed.”

21. Ahmed, “Muslim Organizations in the United States,” p. 20.


23. Ibid.

24. Quoted in ibid., p. 171.

25. Ibid., p. 172.

26. Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam, (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2002) p. 74.

27. George E. Jordan & M.P. McQueen, “Pakistani Sheik Swayed NY

Sect,” Newsday, June 29, 1993.

28. Zachary Crowley, “Jamaat al-Fuqra Dossier,” Center for

Policing Terrorism, Manhattan Institute, Mar. 16, 2005, p.9.




Cause Célèbre Islam: Racism, Revolution, Black

Nationalism1

“We can’t just be saying, ‘O.K., everything is run by the U.S. government,’ we got to take out the U.S. government. The U.S. government is nothing but Kuffars.”

—Luqman Abdullah, imam of Masjid al-Haqq and Detroit representative to al-Ummah2

“So the goal of the government is to destroy this group [al-Ummah] and to send the message to other African Americans that the federal government will not allow any unified, organized Islamic activities to be carried out inside of the United States of America. But we have a message for them. We will not be intimidated by the government of the United States of America.”

—Abdul Alim Musa, imam of Masjid al-Islam and founder of al-Sabiqun3

The shooting of Luqman Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid al-Haqq and a representative to al-Ummah, provided a glimpse into a movement that blends conservative Sunni Islamic practice with the legacy of black nationalism. Abdullah’s rhetoric weaves references to the Qur’an and ahadith together with the language of militant jihadism and assertions of injustice perpetrated against African-American Muslims by the U.S. government in the form of harassment, targeted raids, arrests, and “assassinations.” Other preachers similarly fuse these themes, resulting in a distinctive understanding of the faith that can be described as “cause célèbre Islam.”

For Abdullah and his followers, this doctrine provided justification for criminal behavior. In other cases, cause célèbre Islam prepares adherents for an inevitable violent revolution against the U.S. government: this revolutionary vision is at least as indebted to the ideas of men like Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and Malcolm X as it is to more typical advocates of Islamic revolution like Sayyid Qutb. Those who share this view tend to be suspicious of outsiders, and outside influences.

Cause Célèbre: An Indigenous American Islamic Movement

The “cause célèbre Islam” movement arose from a combination of uniquely American conditions and experiences. Because many of the movement’s leaders were children of the civil rights era and were active in the black nationalist movement, or had significant exposure to members of that movement, the leaders’ rhetoric fuses black nationalist themes with conservative or militant Islamic ideas.



EVENT TIMELINE

1913 First Moorish Science Temple founded in Newark, N.J.

1924 Islamic Mission of America founded by Sheikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal

1930 W.D. Fard, founder of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, arrives in Detroit and begins his ministry

1962 Darul Islam Movement formed by a group of African- American converts to Islam

Feb. 21, 1965 Malcolm X assassinated in New York

1967 H. Rap Brown becomes chairman of SNCC

1971 Brown converts to Islam while in prison, adopts nameamil

1975 Sheikh Gilani begins preaching at the Islamic Center in

New Jersey

1980 Darul Islam fractures, Sheik Gilani forms Jamaat al-Fuqra

1994 (approx.) As-Sabiqun formed

2002 Jamil al-Amin convicted of shooting two police officers in Georgia, sentenced to life in prison

Oct. 28, 2009 Luqman Abdullah shot and killed in FBI raid in Dearborn, Mich.

Antecedents of this movement include quasi-Islamic sects that catered to African-Americans by trying to frankly address the reality of racism in America, such as the Moorish Science Temple and the Lost-Found Nation of Islam. However, unlike these groups, there is nothing within the cause célèbre Islamic movement—such as the Nation of Islam’s belief in W.D. Fard’s divinity and the prophethood of Elijah Muhammad—that clearly places it outside the mainstream of Islamic theology.

This issue’s article “Jamil al-Amin” profiles a significant leader within the cause célèbre Islam movement, a man who continues to serve as an ideological inspiration and who has himself become one of its causes célèbre following his conviction and life sentence for shooting two police officers in Atlanta. Al-Amin’s supporters claim he was framed because the U.S. government feared his power and influence.

Abdul Alim Musa is an associate of Jamil al-Amin, and the leader of the Washington, D.C.-based group As-Sabiqun, which subscribes to the same cause célèbre brand of Islam as al-Ummah. Speaking of al-Amin’s trial, he commented: “You know a different America than I do. I know America coming from Arkansas of lynchings, of burning, and of torture. I don’t know an America of a fair trial. I don’t know America of a Bill of Rights. I have never seen that America. Imam Jamil came out of a generation coming up out of Louisiana.”4 He has further explained his deep admiration for al-Amin, describing him as a living legend:

You know who Imam Jamil al Amin is? I’m gonna tell you who he is. You see all these movies, a last man standing, right? A guy who goes through houses being blown up. Ran over by a train. Legs ripped off, sawed in half, buried alive. Isn’t that right? And he’d come out the last man standing. Imam Jamil al Amin, they tried to blow him up in 1967. They tried to assassinate him on several occasions. Isn’t that right? They ran him into exile in the late 60’s and the early 70’s. But he came on back. The last man standing. Martin Luther King is dead. Malcolm X is dead. Medgar Evers is dead. Isn’t that right? [Huey] Newton is dead. Eldridge Cleaver is dead. Everyone you read about in a black history book that struggled

against what we used to call the “white man” is dead. Isn’t that right?5

This article now turns to the revolutionary threads and criminal threads within cause célèbre Islamic ideology.

Revolutionary Threads

Revolution and potential confrontation with the U.S. government are overarching themes within the movement’s thinking. They featured prominently in Luqman Abdullah’s rhetoric, for example. “[W]e should be trying to figure out how to fight the Kuffar,” he said. “You see, we need to figure out how to be a bullet.”6 Further, he said, “you cannot have a non-violent revolution.”7

There are various gradations of how revolution is seen within the movement. At their most extreme, the revolutionary ideas are pegged to the notion of establishing an Islamic state within the U.S., or more ambitiously seizing the instruments of government and imposing Islamic rule throughout the nation. At other times, the idea of revolution within the movement’s rhetoric is more secularized, with “the oppressed” (and not just Muslims) rising up against the institutions that hold them back. And in their mildest form, the movement’s revolutionary ideas are inward-looking, with fighting against ignorance and addiction seen as transformative in themselves.8

The revolutionary theme fosters an “us versus them” mentality, putting the U.S. government in the role of the community’s oppressor. This can isolate members of the movement from outsiders, and also cultivate a lack of respect and trust for the government’s authority. Members of the movement will see law enforcement action that has an impact on those within their community as calculated, part of a grand strategy to keep the movement weak. One example of this conspiratorial view is an article in New Trend Magazine, an online Islamist publication, which remarked that “Muslims of America, especially African Americans, are leaderless. The government knows this and wants to keep Imam Jamil in prison on a bogus case which should have been thrown out long ago.”9



Criminal Threads

Though Luqman Abdullah and his associates were heavily involved in criminal activity, this is certainly not the case for all adherents of this brand of Islam. Indeed, many antecedents of the cause célèbre Islamic movement, such as the Nation of Islam, prided themselves in giving followers with a criminal past the self-discipline necessary to avoid lapsing back into criminality.

Many within this movement have served time in prison, but in part this may be due to the fact that Darul Islam and similar groups have systematized prison dawah programs. Often Islam provides an attractive alternative to the violent and degrading prison environment. “Acting through the principle of freedom of worship, Islam meets these challenges and shows a remarkable capacity to redefine the conditions of incarceration,” writes Robert Dannin. “A new Muslim repeats the attestation of faith, the shahada, before witnesses at the mosque. His Islamic identity then means a fresh start, symbolized by the choice of a new name, modifications to his physical appearance, and an emphasis on prayer.”10

But not all converts to Islam leave behind their criminal past. Among other reasons, some of them may not be able to shake old worldviews and habits after adopting their new faith. Others may not even try to shake old them at all, and may in fact use their new Islamic framework to justify criminality. Luqman Abdullah, who served two prison terms (one for carrying a concealed weapon, the other for assaulting a police officer), continued to justify theft and crimes of violence after his conversion to Islam. After his conversion, he used religious justifications to argue that such activities were legitimate; when he helped arrange for a new VIN for a truck that he believed to be stolen, he described it as an act of jihad.11 He encouraged members of Masjid al-Haqq to carry firearms, which many did even though their criminal records made it illegal.

The shooting of Abdullah now gives the movement the opportunity to establish his status as a martyr, and to create another cause célèbre to rally

around. As Abdul Alim Musa has declared: “[W]hat the government is doing by assassinating Imam Luqman is it’s trying to intimidate the Muslim community,

especially the black community. And I say that because the immigrant community, which is about half of the Muslims in the United States, and the African American Muslim community, which form the other half, have different views about Islam in America and how it should be fostered.”12

As-Sabiqun

Certainly, one cannot draw complete analytical conclusions about a movement’s theology, doctrine, and strategy based on what is disclosed in court documents: criminal complaints and other such documents are used to support a criminal prosecution, and are not meant to provide a comprehensive history or account of the subject’s activities. Therefore, in assessing the movement’s priorities it is helpful to look beyond Abdullah, and toward an active group that is part of the cause célèbre Islamic movement.

As-Sabiqun, which is another offshoot of Darul Islam, is one such group. Group leader Abdul Alim Musa was a close associate of Jamil al-Amin, and is very active in the campaign to free him from prison. In his public statements, Musa often warns of a war on African-American Muslim converts by the FBI at the behest of a “Zionist-controlled U.S. government.” He uses every incident involving law enforcement actions against African-American converts as an opportunity to bolster his claim. He also speaks of the need for dramatic change to the government:

[I]t is the responsibility of God-serving people to champion the right of self-determination—to alter that government, and to institute a new form of administration that is in conformity with the eternal principles and values of God’s Law; a government which is both human-friendly and earth-friendly. Prudent and just means must be employed to accomplish the establishment of such a government. The timeless prescribed methods to address tyranny are threefold: the usage of the hand (physical or military might), the tongue (to raise our voices in defense of Truth and justice), or the heart (to detest it



As-Sabiqun logo

internally and implore for God’s assistance).13

One of Musa’s favorite themes is the use of “snitches and FBI informants” as a tool of the government to eliminate the movement’s leaders. In June 2007, he delivered a lecture at his mosque entitled “How to Punk the FBI,” which included such pointers as: “How to bring the sissy out of your local FBI agent. Counter-harassment techniques (Did your mamma buy that shirt?) Laugh your fears away by laughing in your oppressor’s face.” And in July 2009, Musa hosted another seminar to discuss the position of the African-American Muslim community toward the FBI entitled “RE-PUNK THE F.B.I.: Practitioners of Tyranny & Oppression.”

The justification for holding the meeting was described in a release issued by As-Sabiqun in June 2009. It read, in part: “The history of the Zionist-occupied United States government has been one of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an oppressive and tyrannical world order. Prudence demands that we, the oppressed, list some of our outstanding grievances in this regard.” The release asserts that “actions, on the part of the Zionist-occupied U.S. government, has created an atmosphere of pervasive fear, that exists both nationally (via the FBI, Homeland Security, Immigration, and others) and internationally (via the CIA and its partners in crime throughout the globe).” The announcement then asked supporters to join them at their masjid “for an afternoon of courage and clarity, where Imam Musa will, insha’Allah, give a detailed discussion on two very critical and timely topics: the Re-Africanization of the Islamic movement in North America & the De-Israelization of the global Islamic movement.”14

Many followers of As-Sabiqun are ex-convicts who converted to Islam while in prison, as did Musa, who spent several years in the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas after being convicted of charges that included drug trafficking. As-Sabiqun engages in dawah efforts directed at prison inmates, and offers them a community where they can go after their release. According to Musa’s biography on his personal MySpace page, “His ‘street’ background helps explain part of his appeal to inner-city youths and ex-convicts, with whom he can identify through personal experience.”15 In

addition, Musa travels extensively to lecture, often speaking to Muslim youth groups and Muslim student associations at U.S. universities.

As-Sabiqun’s web site is a first place to look to understand the group ideologically:

Carrying on the torch lit by El-Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) and past homegrown Islamic movements such as the Darul Islam movement and the Islamic Party of North America, As-Sabiqun aspires to:

• make Islam a living force by challenging and breaking the grasp of social and political forces seeking to suppress and destroy the Deen.

• obliterate the hold of jahiliyyah through moral and spiritual development.

• establish Islamic homes and build model communities where Islam is lived.

• work toward total economic independence.

• stand up against those who oppress Muslims and all other human beings across the globe as well as the earth and Allah’s creation itself.16

As-Sabiqun members are encouraged to familiarize themselves with the writings of thinkers like Abu Ala al-Mawdudi, Hasan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Malcolm X, and Ayatollah Khomeini. This list is telling in itself: though a number of conservative and militant Sunni Muslims were heartened by Iran’s 1978-79 Islamic revolution, they largely turned against Khomeini in the 1980s due to their problems

with Shia theology. Not so for Musa, for whom being a revolutionary seems to be a top concern.

As-Sabiqun’s stated goal is to establish the “Islamic State of North America” no later than 2050.17 However, Musa has given somewhat contradictory guidance about this aspiration. On the one hand, he tells his followers to invite people to Islam peacefully; on the other, he glorifies suicide bombers as heroes.



“My enemy is the United States….We are living under a

dictatorship in the U.S.”

18 www.defenddemocracy.org/ctr


ctr vantage

Written and Edited byDaveed Gartenstein-Ross

&Madeleine Gruen

“The Darul Islam Movement in the United States”

written by Laura Grossman

Josh Bronfman and Sara Westfall contributed research and writing

Layout and Design byNoah Chestnut

&Sara Westfall

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In a June 2008 speech delivered to a group in Dearborn, Michigan, honoring Ayatollah Khomeini, Musa said, “My enemy is the United States…. We are living under a dictatorship in the U.S.” Though he preceded these comments by telling his audience to “invite people to Islam instead of shooting,” he went on to say that “we are being harassed to a point.”18 Perhaps, then, Musa is suggesting that violence is now justifiable, given the extremes to which the Muslim community in the U.S. has been “pushed.”

Conclusion

The shooting of Luqman Abdullah does not eliminate potentially violent groups that fuse Islamism with black nationalist grievances. This movement, which we dubbed “cause célèbre Islam,” is broader than Abdullah, with a traceable ideological foundation based on the heritage and experience of African-Americans. It is certainly a movement that will remain on the radar of those who are concerned about the possibility of homegrown terrorism.

1. Portions of this article were originally published in

Counterterrorism Blog, “The Threat Here—2008: As Sabiqun,”

by Madeleine Gruen and Frank Hyland, July 28, 2008.

2. Gary Leone, Criminal Complaint, United States v. Abdullah,

No. 2:09-MJ-30436 (E.D. Mich., Oct. 27, 2009).

3. “Washington’s Imam Musa: FBI Assassinated Luqman

Ameen Abdullah to Intimidate the Black American Muslim

Community,” Press TV (Iran), Nov. 2, 2009.

4. Abdul Alim Musa, speech at Jamil al-Amin Fundraiser, University

of California at Irvine, Sept. 9, 2001, accessed from the Investigative

Project on Terrorism web site, Nov. 20, 2009.


6. Ibid.

7. Ibid. See also ibid. ¶ 24, in which Abdullah states: “We are going

to have to fight against the Kafir.”

8. Examples of this framework can be found in Jamil al-Amin,

Revolution by the Book: The Rap is Live (Beltsville, MD: Writers’ Inc.,

1994).

9. Kaukab Siddique, “Dr. Siddique Interviews Sister Karima al-

Amin,” New Trend Magazine, Sept. 9, 2009.

10. Robert Dannin, Black Pilgrimage to Islam (Oxford, UK: Oxford

University Press, 2002), p. 175.


12. “FBI Assassinated Luqman Ameen Abdullah to Intimidate the

Black American Muslim Community,” Press TV.

13. “RE-PUNK THE F.B.I. “Practitioners of Tyranny & Oppression,”

posted to Abdul Alim Musa’s Facebook page on June 24, 2009


14. Ibid..

15. This page can be accessed at http://www.myspace.com/

imammusa2 (last visited Nov. 20, 2009).

16. As-Sabiqun’s web site can be accessed at www.sabiqun.net (last

visited Nov. 20, 2009).

17. This statement can be found at http://www.sabiqun.net/join.

html (last visited Nov. 20, 2009).

18. Video of this speech can be seen at http://www.shiatv.net/

view_video.php?viewkey=7dbc9960ae158598a6a9 (accessed Nov.

20, 2009).

Documents

ISSUE 2: The Shooting of Luqman Abdullah · November 20, 2009 ISSUE 2: the luqman abdullah shooting and the darul islam movement The Shooting of Luqman Abdullah Page 1 Jamil Al-Amin