Militant Islam Monitor > Articles > Jihad via America - 2002 investigative series documents genesis from mosques and magazine to murder
Jihad via America - 2002 investigative series documents genesis from mosques and magazine to murder
May 4, 2005
Groups' relationships raise questions
By Betsy Hiel and Chuck Plunkett Jr.
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, August 4, 2002
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/specialreports/jihad/s_84613.html
At the end of a wooded, one-lane road in Green Tree, Attawheed Foundation – dominated by Saudi students at area universities – plans to expand its operations. Its intended headquarters is a million-dollar property that once hosted an American Legion post.
Attawheed (pronounced "aht-taw-HEED") has grown from a student club in the 1980s into a well-financed foundation. It has shared board members with Al Andalus, an Arabic-language elementary and middle school opened here in 1990.
Like many religious groups, Attawheed (Arabic for "the oneness of God") sees its mission as spreading the faith – in this case, Islam. Its Web site talks of providing a mosque, a school and living quarters for Muslims in "bilad al-kufr" – the "land of infidelity."
But Attawheed and Al Andalus School are overshadowed by Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, the Arabic-language magazine once published in Pittsburgh.
"The magazine is shut down for two years now," says Nazeeh Alothmany, Attawheed's spokesman. "What do we have to do with it?"
The answer is three things: people, ideology, and ties to other groups.
Two Attawheed officers ran Assirat, and some writers for the magazine attended Attawheed's religious services. At least one Assirat writer taught at Al Andalus, and the school posted Web links to extremist groups embracing Assirat's ideology – links that a school official could not explain and that remained in place until pointed out by the Trib.
Attawheed also maintains close ties to the Islamic Assembly of North America, an Islamist group associated with Assirat.
Only two Attawheed representatives agreed to be interviewed for this article, and both denied any extremist connection. They objected to the Trib's translations of Arabic words and dismissed questions about their activities as anti-Muslim.
Experts consulted by the Trib disagree, however.
Mary-Jane Deeb, an Arab specialist at the Library of Congress, is disturbed by the school's Web links to what U.S. authorities define as terrorist groups. Deeb – who stresses her views are personal, not official – thinks the aim was to mobilize "young people … to become mujahideen."
Drew University religion professor Christopher Taylor says the Web links reflect "hard-core, radical" views. Those links, along with Attawheed's relationship to Assirat and IANA, suggest the foundation and the school tolerated – or shared – the magazine's ideology, he and others believe.
"People say things, and they act," says Peter Probst, vice president of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Washington, voicing a consensus of the experts. A former counter-terrorism specialist for the Pentagon and the CIA, he believes "there's a very compelling case that they have a hidden agenda and they need to be scrutinized with great care."
A ‘PEACEFUL MESSAGE'
For now, Attawheed's 50 or so members and their families meet and pray at a South Hills motel. The motel's conference room is a temporary mosque until the Green Tree property is ready to be occupied.
"We are firm believers in the peaceful message of Islam," says spokesman Alothmany. A doctoral student in electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, he moved to the city in 1999. After 9/11, he helped form the Islamic Relations Institute of Pittsburgh, to reach out to non-Muslims.
Foundation members, he says, concentrate on studying Islam's holy book, the Quran, and on community relations – "helping the needy, social activities, exchanging visits with neighboring churches, responding to school requests for speakers."
"You have seen these same activities taken place at all other mosques in the city, and they take place also in most mosques in U.S.A., even in other religious organizations in U.S.A.," he wrote in an email to the Trib. "So there is really nothing more special going on in Attawheed."
In a post-9/11 letter to officials in Green Tree, Scott Township and Pittsburgh, Attawheed's officers wrote: "We wish to share with you that our religion, Islam, does not – in any way, shape or form – support, promote or propagate acts of terrorism against innocent men, women and children. Rather, ours is a faith which holds sacred the sanctity of human life."
Al Andalus, attended by many Attawheed members' children, is in a West End strip mall. Its name refers to the Muslim-ruled Spain of the Middle Ages, a high point of Islamic power that is still revered by some Muslims.
Modeled on Saudi Arabia's strict religious curriculum, the school is partly funded by the Saudi Cultural Ministry, headmaster Ali Al-Shehri says. A Saudi embassy spokesman in Washington, D.C., said he was unaware of funding for the school; the embassy's cultural minister did not return phone calls.
Al-Shehri completed a master's degree in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999 and is pursuing a doctorate in rhetoric and linguistics. "We come here for a special purpose," he says, "to get our degree and to go back home."
Alothmany, a past board member of both Attawheed and Al Andalus, insists that each operated separately from Assirat.
"I've never read it, in all honesty," he says of the magazine. "They used to give it to me sometimes. They used to give me some. They were free publications, but I used to recycle them." He also insists that he knew little about Assirat's staff.
Yet several people were active in the foundation, the school and the magazine.
Legal papers list Attawheed secretary Bandar Al-Mashary as chief executive of Dar Assirat for Da'wah and Media Inc., which published Assirat. Mohsen Al-Mohsen, who edited Assirat for four years, once chaired Attawheed's board – at least one year while Alothmany sat on the board. Both Al-Mashary and Al-Mohsen received doctoral degrees from Pitt.
An Assirat writer, Khalid Ayed, taught at Al Andalus and was a school official, according to a statement he gave following a 1998 car accident involving an Al Andalus student. His brother-in-law, Mulhim El-Tayeb, wrote for Assirat, too. Records show they also shared a Portland, Ore., address with an alleged associate of Wadih El-Hage, a top U.S. lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, according to federal authorities.
El-Hage was convicted in 2001 of raising money for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 244 people.
One man who belonged to the Pittsburgh circle describes it as small but close-knit. "Even if you did not know someone
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A call for 'holy war'
By Betsy Hiel and Chuck Plunkett Jr.
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, August 4, 2002
In July 2000, the last edition of Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, an Arabic-language magazine published in Pittsburgh, advocated jihad – "holy war" – against the West.
Ten months later – and four months before Sept. 11 – the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA) posted Web-site justifications of "martyrdom operations," such as crashing an airplane "on a crucial enemy target."
Like all extremists, radical Islamists speak with hateful tongues.
But the militancy promoted in Assirat Al-Mustaqeem (The Straight Path) between 1991 and 2000 alarms experts consulted by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. They say it echoed the virulent anti-Americanism of Osama bin Laden's videotaped rants – years before he became the global face of terrorism.
The magazine's quality, its duration and its presence in an American city such as Pittsburgh surprise them, too.
More disturbing, an eight-month Trib investigation found close connections between Assirat and Islamist organizations such as IANA across the United States. Those groups endorse an extreme strain of Islam – one that labels the United States an enemy, defines American values as evil and clamors for "holy war."
Assirat and IANA maintained close operating ties for years. A number of Assirat writers left Pittsburgh to work for IANA in Michigan – and for an Islamic charity in Illinois that U.S. authorities accuse of terrorist ties.
Several experts say the movement between groups suggests a loose network intent on radicalizing Muslims here and abroad.
Some of those individuals and groups are under surveillance by U.S. authorities, sources say. An FBI spokesman in Pittsburgh "cannot confirm or deny" a local investigation.
In addition, the magazine cast a shadow over two other Pittsburgh organizations: Attawheed Foundation, made up mostly of Middle Eastern graduate students at local universities, and Al Andalus School, attended by many of their children.
Attawheed members deny ties to Assirat or extremism. But Assirat's publisher and editor were officers of Attawheed; one of its writers taught at the school. The school's Web site linked to IANA and to extremist groups embracing the ideology in Assirat. And Attawheed maintains its own relationship with IANA.
The Trib's experts – Arab and American academics, researchers, intelligence analysts and former law officers – say Assirat was not a case of cultural differences or of rhetoric sounding sinister only after 9/11. It was a "radical group … clearly in tune with the most extreme expression of Islamic revivalism – the most militant and extreme version," according to Christopher Taylor, professor of religion and Islamic studies at Drew University in Madison, N.J.
From 1991 to July 2000, it published articles condemning Americans, Jews and even other Muslims as "infidels," "Zionist-Crusaders" or "apostates." Other articles justified killing Jews or advocated acquiring nuclear arms.
The "reasons for concern are pretty straightforward," says Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former FBI terrorism analyst. "There is a different threshold after Sept. 11 … we have to recognize that sometimes when bad people say bad things, they mean it."
Assirat and its various connections reflect "one of our fundamental problems" today – the clash between constitutional rights and extremist threats, according to F. Gregory Gause III of the University of Vermont.
"Should we worry about what they say as opposed to what they do?" asks Gause, who directs the university's respected Middle East program. "I would tend to think we should worry about what they say, and particularly when there is good evidence they are following an ideological line that has led to direct attacks on the United States."
He suggests "we at least try to figure out who they are, what they are doing and where they get their money."
‘Pulpit of truth'
Assirat operated in Pittsburgh in relative obscurity, but it was not a few pages put together by college students between classes.
It averaged 30 pages a month between glossy covers, was produced by a paid staff and printed professionally. Its goal was to be "The Voice of Islamic Awakening in the West," as it subtitled itself — but with a global reach.
In its final years, Assirat printed about 3,000 copies monthly and distributed about 2,200 in the United States, according to two Pittsburgh firms that handled its printing and mailing. Other copies were mailed to Canada and overseas. Initially distributed for free, it later advertised subscription rates of $20 to $35.
How it was funded is unknown, but its budget seems substantial. Printing and mailing alone cost more than $48,000 annually, and two staffers claimed to earn $24,000 to $28,000 a year.
Office workers who shared a building in Scott Township with Assirat say its staff could swell to 40 young men. Those sources describe the men as aloof and apparently religious: They left their shoes in the building's hallway and washed their feet in restroom sinks — part of a devout Muslim's ritual cleansing — before praying several times daily.
Promoted as "a pulpit of the truth" attracting "the best Muslim writers from all over the Muslim World," Assirat aimed its message at Muslim youths, according to its Web site. It boasted an advisory board of sheiks (religious leaders) from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Britain and the United States.
Not every article dealt in politics; many reported on Muslim life in America or Islamic organizations such as IANA and the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh. The magazine typically contained a section on religious issues written by sheiks such as Salman Al-Awdah, imprisoned in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s for his anti-regime rhetoric. It included excerpts from the Arabic press, news briefs, editorials and letters from readers.
It also printed advertisements for such charities as Global Relief Foundation, Benevolence International and Holy Land Foundation. U.S. authorities are investigating each for ties to terrorism.
Assirat publisher Bandar Al-Mashary was the founding secretary of Attawheed Foundation, the university-student organization. He completed a doctoral degree in electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh in 1996, then returned to Saudi Arabia to teach at King Faud University.
Mohsen Al-Mohsen, the magazine's editor from 1996 until 2000, was Attawheed's former chairman. He received a doctorate in education from Pitt in April 2000 and now teaches at Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi political source describes the university as a "hotbed of extremists."
Three months after Al-Mohsen graduated and returned home, Assirat stopped publishing. Neither he nor Al-Mashary could be reached for comment.
Nazeeh Alothmany — who sat on Attawheed's board for at least a year while Al-Mohsen chaired it — insists Assirat had no connection to Attawheed, and no appeal for him: "It was too philosophical. I am too practical. I read the magazine a couple of times. … I don't like to get involved in these philosophical arguments and debates and opinions."
‘A strategic target'
On Aug. 7, 1998, truck bombs exploded at U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 244 and wounding 4,000. The United States blamed Osama bin Laden and attacked al-Qaida terrorist-training camps in Afghanistan.
In its next edition, Assirat mourned the "martyrs" killed in those camps, listing the 19 dead mujahideen (holy warriors) identified by al-Qaida's office in Peshawar, Pakistan. An accompanying statement hoped "that God would … reunite us with them in paradise."
That and other articles show "very clear, distinct al-Qaida ‘stretch marks,' " says Rohan Gunaratna of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, Scotland. Gunaratna, author of the book "Inside Al-Qaeda," accuses Assirat of "using extremist propaganda to radicalize the Muslims in America."
"It does surprise me that, somehow, such inflammatory rhetoric is propagated in the heartland of America," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East politics at Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
Mary-Jane Deeb, an Arab specialist at the Library of Congress and a prolific author on Middle Eastern topics, is equally surprised by Assirat's Pittsburgh presence, by its militancy, and by how long and how professionally it operated. A wide array of Islamic publications exists, she explains, but "those that call for jihad are usually a very small percentage." Even fewer are as sophisticated as was Assirat, because radical publications are banned in most Arab countries and operate underground.
Deeb — who stresses that her opinions are not official Library of Congress views — describes Assirat's militancy as "psychological warfare … I would expect this to be used when you are training mujahideen."
"These are not your garden-variety windbags," says Drew University's Taylor. "These are serious guys who are talking about the same thing as bin Laden."
In the October 1998 issue eulogizing al-Qaida's slain "brothers," for example, an editorial criticized Muslims who oppose jihad. It praised holy warriors for following an exhortation from Islam's holy book, the Quran, to be "humble to the believers and tough on the infidels, and … fight for the cause of God."
A month earlier, another editorial called the United States "a strategic target" containing "the virus of its own destruction." It concluded: "May the believers be so fortunate."
America was not the only target of Assirat's hate. Its March 2000 cover, titled "Year of the Plague," showed dark- and light-skinned hands shaking, a skull behind them — alluding to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks then under way. Inside, Sheik Abdel Rahman Abdel-Khaleq condemned Jews as "the eternal enemy" and called fighting "an unflinching duty."
"Anyone who believes that jihad is not a duty or seeks to abrogate it is an infidel and an apostate," he declared.
In the same issue, another sheik, Muhammad Ahmad Al-Rashid, proclaimed "struggling" against Jews to be "a religious duty."
"We believe that one day we will win, because of the prophet's saying: ‘… until the stones and trees say: O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind us, come and kill him,'" he wrote.
‘Mujahideen' and nukes
Killing, anti-Americanism and "holy war" were long-running themes of Assirat.
In 1994, it published an interview with Abu Abdel Aziz, a Saudi mujahid (holy warrior) who fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia. An editor's note defined jihad for the "rank-and-file of the youth of revivalist Islam" as "an authentic expression" of their religion.
Fresh from Bosnia's killing fields, Abdel Aziz thanked Assirat for its "interest in jihad and mujahideen" and for promoting Islam in "the land of infidelity and promiscuity." He accused an "international media campaign" of equating jihad with terrorism: "They know that Muslims, if they hold tight to jihad, will achieve the intended thrust which will make them reach whatever Allah wills."
American Muslims should donate money to mujahideen, he urged, a request he repeated in a 1995 Assirat update.
Aziz was one of several mujahideen profiled in the magazine.
Throughout its pages, Assirat accused the West and the United States of oppressing Muslims. Its October 1998 cover story, two months after the two U.S. embassy bombings, was "The International Aggression Against Muslims: The Story of the Covert War Against Muslims All Over the World."
The University of Vermont's Gause says Assirat often "taps into this notion that ‘everyone is against us' that seems so pervasive" among Islamist groups.
That sentiment seems behind an October 1998 article by Dr. Wasim Fathallah. Only an "Islamic nuclear force," he wrote, can "deter the enemy from waging a nuclear attack on Muslims." He called the "terror" of nukes "exactly what we need … the reward Allah has given to the (Muslim) nation."
Like many Assirat writers, Fathallah quoted the Quran — "prepare for them whatever force … you may to throw terror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah and your enemies" — to prove his point.
Such invocations of Allah disturb Farooq Husseini, an interfaith-dialogue leader at the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh. He says Assirat's ideology is a fringe interpretation of Islam at odds with mainstream-Muslim beliefs.
Assirat's message, "that death is to be valued more than life, is not Islamic in any way," says the Library of Congress's Deeb. Neither are its "emphasis again and again on killing" and "the whole attitude toward Christians and Jews."
‘Pure, simple extremism'
Assirat is "the sort of material that converts or gives people that final push that they sometimes need to commit acts of terror," says Hisham Kassem, former head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights.
Kassem, who publishes the Cairo Times magazine, has tracked Egypt's battle with terrorists for years. He is alarmed by "the rift and strife it can cause in society once you start pumping that sort of material and calling others ‘heathens.' "
Pointing to a copy of Assirat lying on a desk in his central-Cairo office, he says: "I am sure people like Mohamed Atta" — the Egyptian suspected of leading the 9/11 hijackers — "started off reading material like that."
But Attawheed Foundation spokesman Nazeeh Alothmany insists Assirat's articles are mistranslated or misinterpreted. So does Adel Fergany, president of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh.
Fergany says he only "browsed through" Assirat, although it published his 1999 article about establishing Islamic schools in America. Shown another 1999 article, on waging jihad against "infidels," he replies: "It talks about fighting infidels. It talks about fighting mushrikeen, but mushrikeen literally translated means ‘those who do not walk with God.' It talks about fighting them. But it does not say those infidels are Christians and Jews. It does not give the option for fighting them for no reason."
The article, "Practical Principles for the Group," endorsed jihad as "a continual endeavor. … Jihad in its absolute sense is facing the infidel in battle."
That article and others were translated for the Trib by an Egyptian translator. Several experts who analyzed them for the Trib are Arab; several of the Americans — including Deeb and Drew University's Taylor — read Arabic.
"Any reasonable person who reads that text on jihad, the only reasonable conclusion anyone could come to … is that for Islam to achieve what is required of it necessitates violent confrontation with the ‘infidel,' " Taylor says. "There's no bones about it."
Sarah Lawrence's Gerges, who translated one of bin Laden's videotaped statements for Columbia University, calls Assirat's language "pure and simple extremism."
The subject of "holy war" — what Imad Shahin, a specialist in Islamic movements at American University in Cairo, terms "jihadist discourse" — appeared regularly in Assirat. While some editions carried disclaimers that an article did not necessarily reflect Assirat's opinion, its editorials often endorsed the same views.
An October 1998 editorial, for instance, mocked Muslims who "love earthly life and hate death." The phrase mirrors the mantra recited by many Islamist suicide-bombers, by bin Laden and other Islamist militant groups.
"When a Muslim speaks about jihad," the editorial continued, "all others distance themselves from him, in fear of dire consequences."
Under Islamic law, only a legitimate political leader can declare "holy war" — so extremists often reject their leaders as infidels in order to declare jihad themselves. In a 1999 article, Assirat condemned "some organizations that call themselves ‘Islamic,' but the flagrant conduct of their belief resembles the infidel." It called for jihad to become "one of the pillars of the faith."
Taylor says that article echoes Mohammed Abd al Salem Farag, who led Egypt's Islamic Jihad. After the terrorist group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Farag was arrested and executed. An Islamic Jihad faction led by Ayman Al-Zawahiri then joined bin Laden's al-Qaida network, and Al-Zawahiri became a key al-Qaida leader.
In its final issue, Assirat called for "jihad against the usurping assailants who wave Zionist and Crusader-type banners, occupy the land of Muslims, shed Muslim blood and assail Muslim women and the Muslim faith. We, or our governments, have failed to wage jihad against those assailants, and this is why our Muslim nation lives today in such humiliation and degradation." It also called for a "jihad against apostates" — Muslims it judged to be faithless — once the West was defeated.
Deeb accuses the magazine of "calling for murder."
The words alarm some local Muslims, too. Safdar Khwaja, a leader of the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, Monroeville, believes he would be considered one of the "apostates" condemned by Assirat.
‘Cockroach bait'
"These guys are not on their own planet," says the University of Vermont's Gause. "They are part of an intellectual trend which is … a small minority, but still important because it animates a fair amount of the violence that we see."
Although Assirat's language "represents a tiny fraction of the Islamist movement," says Sarah Lawrence's Gerges, "it is highly vocal, highly assertive, highly powerful … inflammatory rhetoric that resonates in the political imagination of many Arab youth."
Both men and others call the magazine a "mobilizing" tool that aimed, in Deeb's words, "to educate the youth … to become mujahideen."
She describes it as "a form of brainwashing. When you say ‘you must not fear death and you must not love life,' you train people to say, ‘OK, I reject everything that makes me happy in life — family, love, connections, my home, my land, everything that means something.'"
"Why are they publishing this stuff?" asks Taylor. "In my mind … it is targeted toward the mainline Muslim community, and the hope is that you are going to attract some raw recruits that you might use as the senior leadership sees fit down the road.
"The process of recruiting someone like Mohamed Atta takes a lot of time and requires a large pool of candidates … This incendiary rhetoric acts like cockroach bait."
Steven Emerson, a researcher who has investigated Islamist militants for more than a decade, sees a greater danger. Calling Assirat's articles "pretty incendiary," he says it "clearly shows the existence of a radical center operating again, as we have seen too many times, below our radar screen."
Emerson's book "American Jihad" and his award-winning 1994 PBS documentary, "Jihad in America," contend an Islamist network operates in the United States. Many Muslims and other critics claim he is anti-Arab.
Levitt, the former FBI analyst, insists Assirat is not a free-press issue because, "when you start calling for the death of certain kinds of people … it is just a little bit more than free speech. I think it is something to be very concerned about."
"This doesn't mean that these people, or the people they support, are about to attack the United States tomorrow," he adds. But "a publication like this demands our attention, whether it happened yesterday, or in 2000, or in 1998."
Taylor believes Assirat was a "bulletin board of the Islamist presence in the United States." That presence worries many people — including many Muslims, who urge their mosques and organizations to root out any radicals in their midst.
But Assirat's own words suggest that won't be easy.
"If the people ordered to deliver Allah's word were to fail to deliver it," the magazine editorialized in 1998, "or run out of patience, or lost their faith, Allah would change them with others who would continue the mission, until Allah completes his glory and his faith is victorious against all other creeds."
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http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/specialreports/jihad/s_84612.html
Magazine writers moved on to Islamist groups
By The Tribune-Review
Sunday, August 4, 2002
YPSILANTI, Mich. - A militant religious message is spread worldwide from this city outside Detroit by a group of Islamists with connections to Pittsburgh.
Working in the onetime office of an accountant, the Islamic Assembly of North America promotes its views through books, magazines, Internet sites, a radio program, a prison ministry and conferences.
Two Algerians who wrote for Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, the Arabic-language magazine once published in Pittsburgh, are now on IANA's staff. They are among a number of former Assirat staff and other men who have moved between Pittsburgh and other U.S. cities, associating with organizations or individuals with known or suspected ties to Islamist movements.
Other names connected with IANA have surfaced repeatedly over a decade with Islamist movements in the United States and in Middle Eastern countries.
The two former Assirat writers are just the latest incarnation of a Pittsburgh-connected relationship that began in the 1990s.
Assirat regularly published articles about IANA; IANA's officers contributed articles to the magazine or sat on its advisory board.
The relationship did not end when Assirat folded in July 2000.
Attawheed Foundation, made up mostly of Saudi graduate students attending Pittsburgh-area universities, retains IANA as one of two beneficiaries of its assets. Attawheed also listed IANA as a financial reference for donors. And Al Andalus, the private school in Pittsburgh attended by many Attawheed members' children, maintained links on its Web site to IANA's Internet sites.
One IANA site reprinted three fatwas — Islamic legal opinions — that encouraged "martyrdom" attacks against enemy targets just four months before Sept. 11. Among the examples cited in one fatwa was the crashing of an airplane into an enemy target.
Spokesmen for Attawheed insist "no special relationship" exists between their foundation and IANA.
But an IANA employee said he is familiar with Attawheed and described the two groups' relationship as financial.
Like a 'father'
IANA operates from a single-story building with tan aluminum siding and rust-colored trim. The building stands along a busy street in a city that has struggled since the local General Motors plant closed more than a decade ago.
Few people visit IANA's office, according to workers in nearby office buildings. They describe IANA's staff as courteous but private; women who enter the building are covered in the traditional gowns and veils of devout Muslims, they say.
Neither the sight of fully veiled women nor an Islamic group's presence is unusual in this corner of southeastern Michigan. Detroit and surrounding cities such as Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Ypsilanti are home to a large concentration of Arab-Americans; many families date back generations.
IANA is far from its own roots, though. It incorporated in 1993 in Denver and listed directors in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Oregon. Its former president, Bassem Khafaji, an Egyptian then living in Denver, later sat on Assirat's international advisory board.
IANA grew out of Dar Makkah, a dissolved Denver-based organization that published "The Friday Report." The publication included a compilation of fatwas issued by Muslim sheiks. ("Friday Report" refers to Islam's Friday prayers, the equivalent of Christianity's Sunday services.) Dar Makkah's former director, Mohammed Al-Ahmari, now runs IANA.
In 1996, IANA bought its Ypsilanti property for $181,000, according to public records, and it operates on an annual budget of approximately $500,000. One of its directors, Ala'a Abunijem, founded Dar Makkah Association in Portland, Ore.
In the small reception area of the Ypsilanti office, IANA's Arabic- and English-language publications are showcased. A June 2000 copy of Assirat lies on a table. The Pittsburgh magazine was distributed at IANA's conferences, sources say.
Assirat's former managing editor, Khaled Guerdjouma, now writes for IANA's Web magazine, Al Asr (The Era). IANA has published a booklet by Guerdjouma — who uses the pen name Khalid Hassan — on Islamic movements in his native Algeria. Bloody warfare between Islamist guerrillas and government troops has ravaged Algeria for more than a decade.
Redouane Mohammed Azizi, a fellow Algerian and friend of Guerdjouma, wrote for Assirat in Pittsburgh as well. He moved recently to Ann Arbor to become an Al Asr writer.
Interviewed in IANA's office, Azizi said he knew other Muslims connected to Assirat and to Attawheed Foundation in Pittsburgh — although he initially claimed not to have written for Assirat — and described them as close-knit. Guerdjouma recently returned to Algeria, he said.
Azizi also insisted he knew nothing about the three fatwas endorsing suicide missions that Al Asr posted on its Web site in May 2001. He said that occurred before he joined IANA. but an article with Azzizi's byline appeared on Al Asr at the same time.
In one, Sheik Salman Al Awdeh wrote that "martyrdom" is permissible under certain conditions. Among those: A suicide attack should "gain supremacy for the word of God" or "harm the enemy, through the killing and the wounding … or demoralize the enemy when they see that only one Muslim could do such damage."
In another, Sheik Hamid Al-Ali explained distinctions between suicide operations, such as "storming enemy lines without a hope of survival" or dying "to destroy a vital enemy command post."
"The modern version of that," Al-Ali wrote, "is to use bombing methods or to crash one's plane on a crucial enemy target to cause great casualties."
IANA's director, Mohammed Al-Ahmari, was traveling in the Gulf state of Qatar, according to an IANA staffer who declined to give his name. But like Azizi, the IANA staffer said he was familiar with Attawheed Foundation in Pittsburgh and described IANA as "a father" to Attawheed.
Although no other evidence points to IANA parentage for Attawheed, the two organizations have been close for years, according to Attawheed's own records.
'You pick somebody'
While Assirat highlighted IANA in print, Attawheed Foundation made IANA part of its own legal set-up. Incorporating in 1995, it listed IANA and its then-president, Bassem Khafaji, as one of two beneficiaries of its assets. The other was the now-defunct Dar Makkah.
Even so, Attawheed spokesman Nazeeh Alothmany denies any involvement by the Pittsburgh foundation with IANA.
"You have to pick somebody, and you just pick," he says when asked about the choice of IANA as a beneficiary.
Alothmany moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., from Saudi Arabia in 1995. He says he was active in Islamic circles there — but not with IANA — before moving to Pittsburgh four years later.
Attawheed board member Abdulaziz Al-Nehabi agrees: "There is no special relationship or this kind of thing between Attawheed and IANA."
Yet when Attawheed later posted a message on an Islamic Internet site to raise funds, it included four references. Alothmany describes them as "like the one you would have in your resume. You get reference letters from people who you met with and interacted."
One reference was IANA.
Another was Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen, a Saudi religious leader who issued a 1991 fatwa condemning Muslim Shiites as infidels who should be killed. In 2000 he endorsed executing "apostates."
Shortly before Sept. 11, Jibreen issued a fatwa defending Afghanistan's Taliban against U.S. accusations that it harbored al-Qaida terrorists. His fatwa appeared on Azzam.com, the pro-bin Laden Web site with a link on the Web page of Al Andalus School in Pittsburgh.
"The Kafir nations, such as the Christians, the Jews, the Communists and the Atheists, all of them, are against the correct Islam," Jibreen wrote. True believers should wage war on infidels "with your wealth, your persons and your tongues."
Asked about Jibreen's fatwas, Attawheed's Al-Nehabi says a few intolerant opinions do not make a religious scholar all bad.
IANA follows an equally fundamentalist path on its "Fatwa Line," a toll-free phone service. One of the religious leaders its service highlights is Sheik Jamal Zarabozo, whose books are sold in IANA's Ypsilanti office.
Zarabozo's fatwas were frequently printed in the "The Friday Report" produced by IANA's predecessor, Dar Makkah.
In the past, Zarabozo has accused Muslim modernists of breaking Islamic principles by opposing the stoning of adulterers and the killing of "apostates." In another fatwa, he warned against visiting a Christian church to "watch people commit the greatest sin … You have no way of knowing what evil Satan may put into your heart by attending the gatherings wherein shirk (idolatry) is being committed."
IANA's outlook is not universally accepted, though. Even some other Islamic fundamentalists criticize it as being too radical.
In an open letter posted on the Internet in December 1996, the Quran was-Sunnah Society in Detroit accused IANA of emphasizing politics over religion, unjustly condemning others as infidels, inciting followers to "unrest and rebellion and causing them to fall into bloody confrontations."
The Quranic society endorses Islam's ultra-conservative Wahabist sect.
by name, you knew them by face," says Redouane Azizi. An Algerian, he moved recently to Ann Arbor, Mich., to write for Al Asr (The Era), a Web magazine produced by IANA.
Azizi hedged, however, when asked about Assirat. He said he never worked for the magazine – until being reminded of an article he wrote for it.
‘DANGEROUS DIVISIONS'
While denying a connection between Attawheed and Assirat, Alothmany and Attawheed board member Abdulaziz Al-Nehabi say the words of both are misinterpreted or mistranslated.
But experts reading those words, whether in translation or in the original Arabic, describe the language as divisive and militant.
"I can assure you that the concept of ‘killing the infidels' does not – nobody has these ideas," says Al-Nehabi, an Attawheed prayer leader and a Pittsburgh resident since 2000. "And I'm speaking on behalf of Attawheed. And I am sure of it, 100 percent. Since I have been here, nobody has tried to discuss this. Believe me."
He and Alothmany object to translating "jihad" as "holy war," for example. They insist it means a personal struggle to practice Islam.
They say "kafir," used in many Assirat articles and on Attawheed's Web site, means "non-Muslim," not "infidel." Attawheed's Web reference to "bilad al kufr" – which the Trib and others translate as "land of infidelity" – means "land of the non-Muslims," they say.
Nonsense, says Drew University's Taylor, an Arabic speaker. He compares the word "kafir" to an extremely hostile racial epithet.
An English-Arabic dictionary on Al Andalus School's Web site also matched the Arabic word "kafir" with the English word "infidel."
No matter how the words are translated, they create "dehumanizing … artificial and dangerous divisions," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East politics at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. "You are basically indoctrinating the youth and making them very hostile."
He calls the language a "beginning that basically escalates … from rhetoric into horrible actions."
Still, Alothmany scoffs at any suggestion of extremism. "So we're calling the ‘infidels' to our place?" he says, grinning and putting quote marks around the word with his fingers. "We are sending our children, most of the [Muslim] community in Green Tree [are] sending their children to the ‘infidel' schools?
"Um, what else … the Attawheed Foundation is going to donate to the ‘infidels' located in Green Tree some money to put some playground for the ‘infidel' children to come and play?"
Green Tree's manager, W. David Montz, said he knew of no Attawheed donation.
WEB TIES TO TERROR
John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, cautions that when analyzing Islamist movements, "you have to look at what they do. You can't simply look at … their exclusivist, racist theology."
Christian and Jewish extremists use hateful language too, he says. But while "their theology may stink," it is not always "a theology of hate/killing."
What Al Andalus School did – to use Esposito's test – was to link itself on the Internet to violently militant groups.
"It is very obvious, based on everything you sent me and their Web sites, that these are a bin Ladenite, pro-Taliban group," says As'ad Abukhalil, a political science professor at the University of California, Stanislaus, after reading several Assirat articles in the original Arabic.
Viewing the school's Web links on his office computer, Abukhalil exclaims: "They are so unabashedly militant, it's weird. I am more surprised they didn't even try to change things after Sept. 11."
Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former FBI terrorism analyst, agrees. After 9/11, Muslim groups in America removed any questionable Web link "because nobody wanted to get slapped with that."
Not Al Andalus School. It maintained Internet links to jihad movements in Chechnya, Eritrea, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan until late April, when those links were pointed out by the Trib.
The U.S. government lists at least two of those as terrorist groups – Lashkar i-Taiba in Pakistan and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The Uzbek group is allied with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, according to U.S. officials.
Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism researcher at Scotland's St. Andrews University, goes farther. "These are all al-Qaida umbrella groups," he says of the school's links.
The school's Web site also linked to Azzam.com, a pro-jihad site the FBI accuses of transmitting coded messages for al-Qaida. The site is named for Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian cleric allied with bin Laden who was assassinated in 1989.
A link to the Palestinian Media Center lists a "glory record" of "martyr" suicide-bombers in Israel. Sources say the site belongs to the terrorist group Hamas.
Another link was to Al Asr, IANA's Internet magazine. In May 2001, it reprinted three fatwas endorsing "martyrdom operations" – suicide missions.
Yet another mouse-click led from the school's Web page to Nida'ul Islam (The Call of Islam), a magazine based in Australia. It purports to reflect "the views of the Jihad stream amongst Islamic movements."
Nida'ul Islam offers sympathetic interviews of bin Laden and Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric and spiritual leader of Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), the terrorist group that killed 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997. Nida'ul Islam said it interviewed Rahman at a U.S. prison where he is serving a life sentence for conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks in 1993.
One of Rahman's co-conspirators was El-Sayyid Nosair, who lived in Pittsburgh before killing a militant Jewish rabbi in New York in 1991.
Nida'ul Islam also profiles "holy warriors" around the world and condemns many Arab governments. It called Saudi Arabia an "apostate" regime in one article.
Shown the school's links, Attawheed's Alothmany said he was "shocked." He acknowledged being responsible for the site but denied knowing how the links originated. They were removed five days later. Access to the site is now restricted.
Alothmany called the site a forum for parents to learn about the school. "The kids, they never, they never get exposed to these things," he said. "We don't – there is no teacher who sits down [and says], ‘Hey, guys, go visit Azzam.com.' "
Probst, the former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, calls Alothmany's denials a smokescreen: "It is obvious that they think we're idiots." Similarities between Assirat's articles and Al Andalus School's Web links are too disturbing to dismiss, he and others say.
"There is no doubt that this is a hard-core, radical Islamist group," says Drew University's Taylor. "The appearance of the jihad Web sites is a further expression of that."
The school's Web page "speaks for itself" with its links to groups "directly linked to al-Qaida," says Levitt, the former FBI analyst. "It is significant that these links were still there" after 9/11 and removed only when questioned by the Trib, he adds.
Safdar Khwaja, a leader of the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, Monroeville, says the Al Andalus links are a warning for all Muslim groups: "We have to broadcast to everybody that, even if it means censorship, that they are familiar with the direct context of their Web sites and magazines."
Nail Al-Jubeir, the Saudi embassy spokesman, says Saudi students are told not to engage in politics while abroad. "That is simply unacceptable, what they are doing … absolutely not part of their curriculum," he states, adding: "I really don't buy that excuse that they didn't even know about it."
‘RHETORIC ISN'T NEUTRAL'
Organizations representing many of Pittsburgh's estimated 8,000 Muslims condemned terrorism as un-Islamic after Sept. 11. Some Muslims interviewed by the Trib recoiled at the ideology found in Assirat.
"We have to have the courage of our convictions to say that, ‘No, I do not agree nor have I ever subscribed to that kind of utterly senseless material,' " says Khwaja, of Monroeville's Muslim center. "Do I think that 99 percent-plus of Muslims in the greater Pittsburgh area would reject this kind of philosophy? I would say yes."
Even so, the experts consulted by the Trib are troubled by the similarities between Assirat – which they classify as extremist – and the school and the foundation.
"When you're educating children, who the models are that you put forward is very important," explains the Library of Congress's Deeb, "because kids want to know what they will be like when they grow up." With its terrorist links, she says, Al Andalus School seems to have offered "holy warriors" as role models – just as Assirat promoted them in print.
She worries that the purpose "may very well be mobilizing young people and encouraging them to become mujahideen."
Drew University's Taylor says many people who sympathize with militant rhetoric think of themselves as "out there on the cutting edge of jihad, waging war against ‘the infidel,' although most will never act on their beliefs."
"But the possibility always exists that a small group will act on this rhetoric – and we all saw on Sept. 11 what a small band of committed fanatics can do," he says. "The problem is knowing which is which."
Gerges, the Sarah Lawrence professor, concurs: "While you might say ‘rhetoric is rhetoric,' in this case, given the polarized nature of relations between the world of Islam and the West, given the heightened sense of alienation and desperation in the Arab world, I think rhetoric is not neutral.
"Rhetoric can also have terrible implications and produce terrible results as well, as we have discovered on 9/11."
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http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/specialreports/jihad/s_84619.html
'Jihad' means struggle to some, war to others
By The Tribune-Review
Sunday, August 4, 2002
"Life is worship and jihad" proclaims the nameplate of Al Hayat, an Arabic-language newspaper in London. But "holy war" is hardly what its editors have in mind.
The Arabic word comes from the root jahada, meaning to strive or endeavor to do something. For mainstream Muslims it can mean struggling to lead a virtuous life.
"The fact that a lot of militant organizations choose the word jihad mixes things up," explains Hisham Kassem, who publishes the Cairo Times, an Egyptian magazine. It can refer to "a bloody 'sleeper' cell … or it could simply mean 'my jihad to keep the Cairo Times open.' "
Drew University professor Christopher Taylor calls it "a loaded term with multiple meanings" that depend on the "motives and intentions of the person using it."
The war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan in the 1980s popularized the use of jihad to mean fighting "infidels," says Georgetown University professor John Esposito. "After that, we see every major struggle — whether in Chechnya [or] Palestine … Kashmir or Bosnia — all cast popularly as a jihad."
Islamic militants selectively quote verses focusing on holy war that are found in the Quran and in the Hadith, a compilation of Mohammed's sayings. These jihadists take the word out of context to stress the need for battle, says Imad Shahin, a specialist on Islamist movements at the American University of Cairo. He says they twist "some principles of Islam" into misrepresenting the entire religion.
The word kafir, according to Taylor, is properly translated as "infidel" and conveys an unquestionably hateful attitude.
"The word has a strong sense … that the infidels are also ungrateful," he explains. "It's not just that they haven't heard God's word, they are usually thought of as actively ungrateful to God and hostile to His word as it is revealed in the Quran."
Mainstream Muslims use "a number of other, much more diplomatic" words to describe non-believers, he says. Many routinely call Christians and Jews Ahl al-Kitab — "People of the Book," referring to the scriptures.
But kafir "connotes a decidedly hostile stance," Taylor says. "It is a powerful and unquestionably antagonistic way of referring to people of another faith … a Muslim would never tell a non-Muslim friend that (he is) a kafir, even in jest."
He equates it to an English racial epithet to describe "how powerful and derogatory" it is.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/specialreports/jihad/s_84622.html
Magazine writers moved on to Islamist groups
By The Tribune-Review
Sunday, August 4, 2002
YPSILANTI, Mich. - A militant religious message is spread worldwide from this city outside Detroit by a group of Islamists with connections to Pittsburgh.
Working in the onetime office of an accountant, the Islamic Assembly of North America promotes its views through books, magazines, Internet sites, a radio program, a prison ministry and conferences.
Two Algerians who wrote for Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, the Arabic-language magazine once published in Pittsburgh, are now on IANA's staff. They are among a number of former Assirat staff and other men who have moved between Pittsburgh and other U.S. cities, associating with organizations or individuals with known or suspected ties to Islamist movements.
Other names connected with IANA have surfaced repeatedly over a decade with Islamist movements in the United States and in Middle Eastern countries.
The two former Assirat writers are just the latest incarnation of a Pittsburgh-connected relationship that began in the 1990s.
Assirat regularly published articles about IANA; IANA's officers contributed articles to the magazine or sat on its advisory board.
The relationship did not end when Assirat folded in July 2000.
Attawheed Foundation, made up mostly of Saudi graduate students attending Pittsburgh-area universities, retains IANA as one of two beneficiaries of its assets. Attawheed also listed IANA as a financial reference for donors. And Al Andalus, the private school in Pittsburgh attended by many Attawheed members' children, maintained links on its Web site to IANA's Internet sites.
One IANA site reprinted three fatwas — Islamic legal opinions — that encouraged "martyrdom" attacks against enemy targets just four months before Sept. 11. Among the examples cited in one fatwa was the crashing of an airplane into an enemy target.
Spokesmen for Attawheed insist "no special relationship" exists between their foundation and IANA.
But an IANA employee said he is familiar with Attawheed and described the two groups' relationship as financial.
Like a 'father'
IANA operates from a single-story building with tan aluminum siding and rust-colored trim. The building stands along a busy street in a city that has struggled since the local General Motors plant closed more than a decade ago.
Few people visit IANA's office, according to workers in nearby office buildings. They describe IANA's staff as courteous but private; women who enter the building are covered in the traditional gowns and veils of devout Muslims, they say.
Neither the sight of fully veiled women nor an Islamic group's presence is unusual in this corner of southeastern Michigan. Detroit and surrounding cities such as Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Ypsilanti are home to a large concentration of Arab-Americans; many families date back generations.
IANA is far from its own roots, though. It incorporated in 1993 in Denver and listed directors in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Oregon. Its former president, Bassem Khafaji, an Egyptian then living in Denver, later sat on Assirat's international advisory board.
IANA grew out of Dar Makkah, a dissolved Denver-based organization that published "The Friday Report." The publication included a compilation of fatwas issued by Muslim sheiks. ("Friday Report" refers to Islam's Friday prayers, the equivalent of Christianity's Sunday services.) Dar Makkah's former director, Mohammed Al-Ahmari, now runs IANA.
In 1996, IANA bought its Ypsilanti property for $181,000, according to public records, and it operates on an annual budget of approximately $500,000. One of its directors, Ala'a Abunijem, founded Dar Makkah Association in Portland, Ore.
In the small reception area of the Ypsilanti office, IANA's Arabic- and English-language publications are showcased. A June 2000 copy of Assirat lies on a table. The Pittsburgh magazine was distributed at IANA's conferences, sources say.
Assirat's former managing editor, Khaled Guerdjouma, now writes for IANA's Web magazine, Al Asr (The Era). IANA has published a booklet by Guerdjouma — who uses the pen name Khalid Hassan — on Islamic movements in his native Algeria. Bloody warfare between Islamist guerrillas and government troops has ravaged Algeria for more than a decade.
Redouane Mohammed Azizi, a fellow Algerian and friend of Guerdjouma, wrote for Assirat in Pittsburgh as well. He moved recently to Ann Arbor to become an Al Asr writer.
Interviewed in IANA's office, Azizi said he knew other Muslims connected to Assirat and to Attawheed Foundation in Pittsburgh — although he initially claimed not to have written for Assirat — and described them as close-knit. Guerdjouma recently returned to Algeria, he said.
Azizi also insisted he knew nothing about the three fatwas endorsing suicide missions that Al Asr posted on its Web site in May 2001. He said that occurred before he joined IANA. but an article with Azzizi's byline appeared on Al Asr at the same time.
In one, Sheik Salman Al Awdeh wrote that "martyrdom" is permissible under certain conditions. Among those: A suicide attack should "gain supremacy for the word of God" or "harm the enemy, through the killing and the wounding … or demoralize the enemy when they see that only one Muslim could do such damage."
In another, Sheik Hamid Al-Ali explained distinctions between suicide operations, such as "storming enemy lines without a hope of survival" or dying "to destroy a vital enemy command post."
"The modern version of that," Al-Ali wrote, "is to use bombing methods or to crash one's plane on a crucial enemy target to cause great casualties."
IANA's director, Mohammed Al-Ahmari, was traveling in the Gulf state of Qatar, according to an IANA staffer who declined to give his name. But like Azizi, the IANA staffer said he was familiar with Attawheed Foundation in Pittsburgh and described IANA as "a father" to Attawheed.
Although no other evidence points to IANA parentage for Attawheed, the two organizations have been close for years, according to Attawheed's own records.
'You pick somebody'
While Assirat highlighted IANA in print, Attawheed Foundation made IANA part of its own legal set-up. Incorporating in 1995, it listed IANA and its then-president, Bassem Khafaji, as one of two beneficiaries of its assets. The other was the now-defunct Dar Makkah.
Even so, Attawheed spokesman Nazeeh Alothmany denies any involvement by the Pittsburgh foundation with IANA.
"You have to pick somebody, and you just pick," he says when asked about the choice of IANA as a beneficiary.
Alothmany moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., from Saudi Arabia in 1995. He says he was active in Islamic circles there — but not with IANA — before moving to Pittsburgh four years later.
Attawheed board member Abdulaziz Al-Nehabi agrees: "There is no special relationship or this kind of thing between Attawheed and IANA."
Yet when Attawheed later posted a message on an Islamic Internet site to raise funds, it included four references. Alothmany describes them as "like the one you would have in your resume. You get reference letters from people who you met with and interacted."
One reference was IANA.
Another was Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen, a Saudi religious leader who issued a 1991 fatwa condemning Muslim Shiites as infidels who should be killed. In 2000 he endorsed executing "apostates."
Shortly before Sept. 11, Jibreen issued a fatwa defending Afghanistan's Taliban against U.S. accusations that it harbored al-Qaida terrorists. His fatwa appeared on Azzam.com, the pro-bin Laden Web site with a link on the Web page of Al Andalus School in Pittsburgh.
"The Kafir nations, such as the Christians, the Jews, the Communists and the Atheists, all of them, are against the correct Islam," Jibreen wrote. True believers should wage war on infidels "with your wealth, your persons and your tongues."
Asked about Jibreen's fatwas, Attawheed's Al-Nehabi says a few intolerant opinions do not make a religious scholar all bad.
IANA follows an equally fundamentalist path on its "Fatwa Line," a toll-free phone service. One of the religious leaders its service highlights is Sheik Jamal Zarabozo, whose books are sold in IANA's Ypsilanti office.
Zarabozo's fatwas were frequently printed in the "The Friday Report" produced by IANA's predecessor, Dar Makkah.
In the past, Zarabozo has accused Muslim modernists of breaking Islamic principles by opposing the stoning of adulterers and the killing of "apostates." In another fatwa, he warned against visiting a Christian church to "watch people commit the greatest sin … You have no way of knowing what evil Satan may put into your heart by attending the gatherings wherein shirk (idolatry) is being committed."
IANA's outlook is not universally accepted, though. Even some other Islamic fundamentalists criticize it as being too radical.
In an open letter posted on the Internet in December 1996, the Quran was-Sunnah Society in Detroit accused IANA of emphasizing politics over religion, unjustly condemning others as infidels, inciting followers to "unrest and rebellion and causing them to fall into bloody confrontations."
The Quranic society endorses Islam's ultra-conservative Wahabist sect.
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