Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [23]
The man returned to New York to report his findings. The bloody response came within a couple of months. On January 31, 1990, a group of men broke into the Masjid Tucson and stabbed Khalifa repeatedly.6 His body was drenched in a flammable paint thinner. The valves had been opened in a gas stove on the premises, but the fumes had not ignited.7
When asked about the killing years later, El Hage said simply, “I think it was a good thing.” El Hage was investigated but never charged for the murder—in the end, there would be plenty of other things to charge him with. Yet because of El Hage’s involvement, the killing of Rashad Khalifa is considered the first act of al Qaeda–linked violence in the United States.8
Khalifa had already seen how he would die. In September 1989 police in Colorado Springs investigating a series of robberies raided a storage locker being used by members of a radical Islamic fraternity known as Al Fuqra. They found a cache of homemade explosives, military equipment, and training manuals. They also discovered a detailed plan for murdering Rashad Khalifa, including surveillance notes on his movements. The plan was nearly identical to Khalifa’s ultimate fate.9 Police warned the imam of the plot two weeks before he was killed.10
One of the alleged killers, a Trinidadian Muslim who went by the name of Benjamin Phillips, had gotten close to Khalifa by posing as a student. He fled the country and escaped prosecution for nearly 20 years before finally being apprehended.11 Several Al Fuqra members were also convicted of conspiracy in the killing.12
AL FUQRA
It’s hard to imagine how an Islamic sect with a history of extreme violence and dozens of armed compounds all over the United States stays out of the headlines. Yet that is the story of Al Fuqra.
In 1980 a Pakistani sheikh named Mubarek Ali Gilani came to the Yasin Mosque on Herkimer Street in Brooklyn.13 He was looking for men to go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. Gilani was one of the first non-Afghans to join the battle, but his dream went beyond the conflict with communism.
A mystic and an Islamic faith healer of some renown, Gilani had a vision of a purified Islam, purged in fire and blood, with Muslims being segregated from the world of “kaffirs” (infidels) and living day to day, according to the precepts of their religion.14 His followers referred to themselves as Jamaat al Fuqra—the Society of the Poor. The group later changed its name to the Muslims of the Americas.15
Gilani’s message resonated with African American Muslims, and he began to attract adherents, first in Brooklyn and soon throughout the country, including significant centers of gravity in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. Some of Gilani’s new American recruits were brought to Pakistan to train in insurgent techniques with mujahideen factions fighting India in the disputed border region of Kashmir. American members of Al Fuqra would eventually take part in other jihadist conflicts, from Chechnya to Lebanon.16
Members of the group segregated themselves from Western influences, moving into rural compounds and small private villages in the United States and Canada with names like “Islamberg” and “Islamville.” The group also had outposts in Jamaica and Trinidad.17 Some of the communities aspired to be self-sufficient. Others were financed by “security” firms run by the sect, enterprises that tended to be a mix of bodyguard services and illicit arms trade.18
By the mid-1990s there were about thirty such communities in various parts of the United States, in addition to what investigators called “covert paramilitary training compounds” in several remote locations. Most of these communities still exist today.19
During the group’s thirty-year