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Dr. Michael Waller
Annenberg Professor of International Communication
Statement of J. Michael Waller
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security
Senate Committee on the Judiciary
14 October 2003
I am testifying in my capacity as Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft and national security in Washington. My expertise is in the political warfare of terrorist groups, not the theology of Islam.
Enemies of our free society are trying to exploit it for their own ends. These hearings ensure that policymakers and the public know and understand how our enemies' operations work within our borders.
Chaplains are only one avenue terrorists that and their allies have used to penetrate and compromise the institutions of our civil society.
The recruitment and organization of ideological extremists in prison systems and armed forces is a centuries-old problem, as is the difficulty that civil societies have had in understanding and confronting the matter. While in tsarist prisons, Stalin and Dzerzhinsky organized murderers and other hardened criminals who would lead the Bolsheviks and their Cheka secret police. Hitler credited his time in prison as an opportunity to reflect and write Mein Kampf. Terrorist inmates and others communicate and organize among themselves and with the outside world via the rather open nature of our correctional system, and are known to do so in secret with collaborative lawyers by abusing the attorney-client relationship.
Chaplains are a vital part of military and correctional life, and until recently they have been above reproach. For several years, however, some of us have been alarmed that the small but important Muslim chaplain corps in the military has been harmed by those with an agenda that is more political than spiritual. This raises legitimate - indeed pressing - national security concerns.
The nation now finds itself with suspicions about the integrity of certain Muslim chaplains and how one or more may have been able to penetrate one of the nation's most secure terrorist detention facilities at Guantanamo, Cuba, breaking through the heavy compartmentation that was designed in part to keep the detainees from communicating with one another and with the outside. That particular case is pending in the legal system, but its gravity is magnified by an important fact: the group that vetted the suspect chaplain was founded by a Wahhabi-backed member of the Muslim Brotherhood with a long track record of supporting terrorist leaders from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad to Hezbollah. It shares an office with him and, reportedly, even the same tax identification number.
My testimony will discuss:
? The foreign entities and individuals who created the Muslim chaplain corps for the United States military;
Initial research findings
Our country's security, intelligence and counterintelligence services missed a lot before 9/11, and have been so deluged with information since then that it is often hard to make sense of it even two years later. Those inside government, and those of us outside, are early in the analytical process. My testimony is based entirely on the public record, and is intended to help connect the dots among what can be a maze of confusing names and organizations. Much of the research has been done with the staff of the Center for Security Policy.
In short, this is what my colleagues and I have found:
? Foreign states and movements have been financing the promotion of radical, political Islam, which we call Islamism, within America's armed forces and prisons.
Before I begin, one should note that a great battle is taking place today within the Islamic faith around the world. Many Muslims have come to me and to my colleagues with information about how their mosques, centers, and communities have been penetrated and hijacked by extreme Islamists who have politicized the faith and sought to use it as a tool of political warfare against the United States. We would not know what we already know were it not for the active collaboration of Muslims from many countries and currents who fear the political Islamists, and it is clear that federal terrorism-fighters and the nation at large have benefited likewise.
As a society, we have not understood the nature of the problem. Some, such as the FBI leadership, have contorted themselves to unusual lengths to avoid honest discussion of the issue.
The testimony of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before this subcommittee on 26 June of this year is a case in point, where the witness failed even to discuss the subject on which he was requested to testify, which was on growing Wahhabi influence in the United States. The FBI Director himself has a splendid staff of speechwriters who painstakingly avoid using the words "Islam" and "terrorist" in the same sentence. Such dissembling does a disservice to the American public and arguably has harmed efforts to protect the country from terrorism.
Part of the trepidation against honestly discussing the issue is the atmosphere of fear and intimidation surrounding part of the discourse. Oftentimes as soon as a non-Muslim notes that nearly 100 percent rate of terrorist attacks were perpetrated in recent years by those who call themselves Muslim, certain self-proclaimed Muslim "leaders" in the United States take to the airwaves, the press and the Internet to denounce the critic as being "racist" or "bigoted." Some of their non-Muslim friends have done the same, creating a chilling effect on open discussion, leading to poor public understanding of the conflict at hand.
Curiously, there is no shortage of normal Muslims in this country who agree with the critics. However, they are not organized and often have felt too intimidated to speak out.
Significantly, our research shows the most virulent of the denunciations have come from the self-proclaimed Muslim "leaders" who are tied to foreign or domestic terrorist organizations; foreign - mainly Wahhabi - funding; and in crucial cases, the Muslim Brotherhood. As we will see, a reported Muslim Brotherhood member, who had built a political pressure group in Washington that the FBI certified as "mainstream," frequently assailed the arrests of bona fide terrorists as bigoted actions that would harm the American Muslim community.
When we discuss the chaplain issue, we should keep it in a larger context. That context spans 40 years of Wahhabi political warfare as an element of religious proselytizing - or, some would argue, political warfare of which proselytizing is an element.
The strategic goal is twofold: to dominate the voice of Islam around the world; and to exert control over civil and political institutions around the world through a combination of infiltration, aggressive political warfare, and violence.
We see this happening globally: In Pakistan and Egypt, the United Kingdom and continental Europe, in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, in Russia and Turkey; in Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and Latin America; and here in the United States.
This trend is one of the factors that unites so much of the world - including the Islamic world - in the Global War on Terrorism. And that factor helps to explain why some countries find it so difficult to cooperate to their full potential, and why other leaders have been nothing short of courageous.
Hearings this subcommittee held last June and September have illuminated the issue and started to connect the dots. Chairman Kyl, you said it exactly on September 10 that "we must improve our ability to 'connect the dots' between terrorists and their supporters and sympathizers. We must understand their goals, their resources and their methods, just as well as they understand our system of freedoms and how to exploit them for their terrible purposes."
The process for becoming a Muslim chaplain for any branch of the U.S. military, currently involves two separate phases. First, individuals must complete religious education and secondly, they must receive an ecclesiastical endorsement from an approved body. As several recent media reports have noted, federal investigators long have suspected key groups in the chaplain program - the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC), and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) - of links to terrorist organizations.
? The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) trains Muslim chaplains.
As of 8 June 2002, nine of the fourteen chaplains in the U.S. military received their religious training from the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) in Leesburg, Virginia.
Following training at GSISS or another religious school, the majority of Muslim chaplains receive their endorsement from the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AVAFVAC).
ISNA provides ideological material to about 1,100 of an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 mosques in North America. It vets and certifies Wahhabi-trained imams and is the main official endorsing agent for Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military.
An organ of ISNA, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) has physical control of most mosques in the United States. NAIT finances, owns, and otherwise subsidizes the construction of mosques and is reported to own between 50 and 79 percent of the mosques on the North American continent.
One can trace part of the military chaplain problem directly to its origin: A penetration of American political and military institutions by a member of the Muslim Brotherhood who is a key figure in Wahhabi political warfare operations against the United States.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an international movement founded in 1928 that seeks the destruction of all state and geographic divisions, rejects the idea of the nation-state and all forms of secularization, and works toward creating a world pan-Islamic state with a government based on Muslim sharia law. Initially it was uncompromising in its rejection of secular society, but in recent years changed its strategy to renounce violence ("ostensibly," in the word of the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram), and to take over or dominate political parties, unions, and professional syndicates. It is technically banned in its home country of Egypt, but operates through cutouts. Al Ahram calls the Muslim Brotherhood a "political movement" because of its political goals.
The Muslim Brotherhood's slogan is "God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Qur'an our constitution. Jihad our way and dying for God's cause our supreme objective."
Following the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the Muslim Brotherhood became part of the international Wahhabi infrastructure, with the Saudis providing sanctuary and support. Its functional leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is widely believed to al Qaeda's second-in-command after Osama bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri is currently on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list for his alleged role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
In 1990 Abdurahman Alamoudi, an émigré from Eritrea of Yemeni descent and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, set up a political action organization in Washington called the American Muslim Council (AMC). This subcommittee heard testimony almost six years ago that the AMC, based at 1212 New York Avenue NW, was inter alia, the "de facto lobbying arm of the Muslim Brotherhood."
Earlier this month, AMC advisory board member Soliman Biheiri, whom federal prosecutors say was "the financial toehold of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States," was convicted of violating U.S. immigration law.
Alamoudi is presently in jail on federal terrorism-related charges. He was arrested in late September 2003 at Dulles International Airport after British law-enforcement authorities stopped him with $340,000 in cash that he was trying to take to Syria. U.S. officials allege that the money may have been destined for Syrian-based terrorist groups to attack Americans in Iraq. Charges include illegally receiving money from the Libyan government, passport and immigration fraud, and other allegations of supporting terrorists abroad and here in the United States.
Since Alamoudi has not had his trial, it may be inappropriate in this Judiciary subcommittee setting to discuss the case further, other than to say that one of his attorneys, Kamal Nawash of Northern Virginia, spoke to the suspect after his arrest and called the case politically motivated. Nawash told reporters less than two weeks ago that Alamoudi "has no links whatsoever to violence or terrorism. On the contrary, he supported the U.S. war on terrorism."
Alamoudi has a long public record that indicates why his instrumentality in founding and shepherding the U.S. Muslim military chaplain program unfortunately calls into question the integrity of the entire Muslim chaplaincy, and requires thorough investigation.
Alamoudi successfully burrowed into the American political mainstream until some of his extremist statements made him a public liability. My testimony will not discuss the details of his political activity other than to say that it included both main political parties and two administrations.
A timeline of events and statements shows that the Pentagon's Muslim chaplain program was compromised at the start due to the fact that Alamoudi founded it and guided it, and nominated the first chaplains.
During the time he and his organizations were involved in the chaplain program, Alamoudi was a senior figure in Northern Virginia-based entities that were raided or shut down for alleged terrorist financing; he openly spoke out in support of Hamas and Hezbollah, he campaigned for the release of a Hamas leader, and he attempted to secure the release of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad leader convicted for his role in plotting to bring down civilian airliners and bomb bridges, tunnels, and skyscrapers in New York City.
1979: Abdurahman Alamoudi emigrated to the United States.
1985-1990: Alamoudi was executive assistant to the president of the SAAR Foundation in Northern Virginia. Federal authorities suspect the Saudi-funded SAAR Foundation, now defunct, of financing international terrorism. SAAR is the acronym for Sulaiman Abdul Aziz al-Rajhi, a wealthy Saudi figure and reputed financer of terrorism. Victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks allege in court that "The SAAR Foundation and Network is a sophisticated arrangement of non-profit and for-profit organizations that serve as front-groups for fundamentalist Islamic terrorist organizations."
1990: Alamoudi founded the American Muslim Council (AMC) as a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization, based at 1212 New York Avenue NW in Washington. The AMC has been described as a de facto front of the Muslim Brotherhood. The AMC's affiliate, the American Muslim Foundation (AMF), is a 501(c)(3) group to which contributions are tax-deductible. SAAR family assets financed the building at 1212 New York Avenue NW.
1991: Alamoudi created the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC). Its purpose: to "certify Muslim chaplains hired by the military." Qaseem Uqdah, a former AMC official and ex-Marine gunnery sergeant, headed AMAFVAC.
1993: The Department of Defense certified AMAFVAC as one of two organizations to vet and endorse Muslim chaplains. The other was the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS).
? March: Alamoudi assailed the federal government's case against Mohammed Salameh who was arrested ten days after the first World Trade Center bombings in February: "All their [law enforcement] facts are - they are flimsy. We don't think that any of those facts that they have against him, or the fact that they searched his home and they found a few wires here or there - are not enough." Salameh was convicted in the bombing plot and is currently serving a life sentence in prison.
From about 1993 to 1998, the Pentagon retained Alamoudi on an unpaid basis to nominate and to vet Muslim chaplain candidates for the U.S. military.
1994: Alamoudi complained that the judge picked on the 1993 World Trade Center bombers because of their religion: "I believe that the judge went out of his way to punish the defendants harshly and with vengeance, and to a large extent, because they were Muslim."
? He began a public defense of Hamas: "Hamas is not a terrorist group ... I have followed the good work of Hamas...they have a wing that is a violent wing. They had to resort to some kind of violence."
1995: Alamoudi continued his Hamas defense, arguing that "Hamas is not a terrorist organization. The issue for us (the American Muslim Council) is to be conscious of where to give our money, but not to be dictated to where we send our money."
? Alamoudi accompanies AMAFVAC chief Qaseem Uqdah on a tour of naval installations in Florida to assess the needs of Muslims in the U.S. Navy.
1996: In 1996, Alamoudi became a naturalized citizen of the United States. In so doing he swore to defend the Constitution against "all enemies, foreign and domestic."
? Alamoudi spoke out in response to the arrest at New York's JFK Airport of his admitted friend, Hamas political bureau leader Mousa Abu Marzook. Months after the arrest, Alamoudi blamed the February 25th Hamas suicide bombings of Israeli citizens on Marzook's detention: "If he was there things would not have gone in this bad way. He is known to be a moderate and there is no doubt these events would not have happened if he was still in the picture."
o "It depends on me and you, either we do it now or we do it after a hundred years, but this country will become a Muslim country. And I [think] if we are outside this country we can say oh, Allah, destroy America, but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it."
? And again: "I know the man [Marzook], he is a moderate man on many issues. If you see him, he is like a child. He is the most gracious person, soft-spoken. He is for dialogue... [His arrest] is a hard insult to the Muslim community."
1997: Back to Hamas: "I think [Hamas is] a freedom fighting organization."
2000: Alamoudi publicly embraced not only Hamas but Hezbollah. At a videotaped protest in front of the White House on 28 October, Alamoudi shouted, "Anybody who is a supporter of Hamas here? Hear that, Bill Clinton. We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah. Anybody who supports Hezbollah here?"
? Alamoudi described a two-track political approach, advocating prayer for the destruction of the United States, but counseled that while working within the U.S., his allies should try to change policy: "I think if we are outside this country, we can say oh, Allah, destroy America, but once we are here, our mission in this country is to change it."
2001: In January, Alamoudi attended a conference in Beirut with leaders of terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda.
? November 2001: After NBC and other channels broadcast a 2000 videotape of him proclaiming support for Hamas and Hezboollah, Alamoudi told reporters, "I should have qualified what I have said. I should have said that we should support Hamas and Hezbollah in the effort for self-determination."
2002: Alamoudi protested the arrest Imam Jamal Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown): "I think there is a witch hunt against Muslims." Al-Amin, who held a former AMC post, was later convicted of murdering a Georgia law-enforcement officer.
? March: Federal agents raided Alamoudi's American Muslim Foundation during Operation Green Quest, as well as several other organizations which Alamoudi had led, staffed, or otherwise been affiliated.
2003: In September, Army Capt. James "Yousuf" Yee, a Muslim chaplain who ministered to the 660 terrorist detainees at the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, was arrested and identified as having been "sponsored" by the AMAFVAC.
? Alamoudi was arrested by federal agents as he returned from a trip to Libya, Syria, other Arab countries, and the United Kingdom.
U.S. counterintelligence is vigilant against recruitment of American military personnel by foreign intelligence services, but has been blind toward the possible recruitment of American officers into Wahhabi political extremism or Islamist terrorist networks. See Appendices 3, 5 and 6 for case study of Bilal Philips, a former Jamaican Communist Party member-turned-Saudi agent of influence who claims to have converted thousands of American soldiers from the Persian Gulf War period to the present.
Philips, recruited in the U.S. by Tablighi Jamaat, went to school in Saudi Arabia, was made a proselytization official by the Saudi Air Force. One of his greatest influences was Mohammad Qutub, who developed a political theory for Islamist revolution and who taught Osama bin Laden.
Islamists terrorists view conversions of non-Muslims to Islamism as vital to their effort. Europeans and Americans from non-Muslim backgrounds do not fit the terrorist profile. They know their societies far better than immigrant terrorists, and they blend in seamlessly. They also have Western passports. Some analysts view the conversions as a new generation of political and social protest against the West and toward the "Third World." According to a recent report:
The young people in working-class urban areas are against the system, and converting to Islam is the ultimate way to challenge the system," said Roy, a director of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. "They convert to stick it to their parents, to their principal... They convert in the same way people in the 1970s went to Bolivia or Vietnam. I see a very European tradition of identifying with a Third World cause."
The converts are useful to a new al Qaeda strategy of "training the trainers," a method that the increasingly decentralized organization used to export terrorism to other countries.
Radical Islamist groups, most tied to Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi organizations suspected by the U.S. government of being closely linked to terror financing activities, dominate Muslim prison recruitment in the U.S. and seek to create a radicalized cadre of felons who will support their anti-American efforts. Estimates place the number of Muslim prison recruits at between 15-20% of the prison population. They are overwhelmingly black with a small, but growing Hispanic minority. It appears that in many prison systems, including Federal prisons, Islamist imams have demanded, and been granted, the exclusive franchise for Muslim proselytization to the forceful exclusion of moderates.
? The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences (GSISS) trains prison chaplains. It trained Imam Umar the Bureau of Prisons chaplain who was fired after the Wall Street Journal profiled his post-September 11th extremist rhetoric.
? "Yvonne Haddad, an academic who studies Muslims in America, noted in a lecture at Stanford University that the two loci of Islamic awakening in the United States are the university and the prison. It makes sense to connect these two centers of Islamic activity for sake of establishing Islam in the United States."
? "In the U.S., just two weeks after the September 11 attacks, Muslim Chaplain Aminah Akbarin at New York's Albion Correctional Facility was put on paid administrative leave after telling inmates that Osama bin Laden should be hailed as "a hero to all Muslims" and that the terror attacks were the fault of President Bush....According to published reports, radical Islamists--Muslims who follow a rigid interpretation of the Koran called Wahhabism--have put a high priority on reaching disaffected inmates around the world and recruiting them for their own deadly purposes."
? Some prison-oriented groups prey on that disaffection. A leader of the Chicago-based Institute of Islamic Information & Education (III&E) said after 9/11,
The Islamist Appeal
The Islamic Society of North America is an influential front for the promotion of the Wahhabi political, ideological and theological infrastructure in the United States and Canada. Established by the Muslim Students Association, ISNA seeks to marginalize leaders of the Muslim faith who do not support its ideological goals. Through sponsorship of propaganda, doctrinal material and mosques, is pursuing a strategic objective of dominating Islam in North America.
ISNA provides ideological material to about 1,100 of an estimated 1,500 to 2,500 mosques in North America. It vets and certifies Wahhabi-trained imams and is the main official endorsing agent for Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military.
Politically, ISNA has promoted leaders of the American Muslim Council (AMC), the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC).
Notable Prison Converts
Summary of Muslim military chaplain founder Abdurahman Alamoudi's organizational affiliations (asterisk * indicates the organization was raided in federal counterterrorism probes)
Executive Assistant to President of SAAR Foundation*
Founder, former executive director, American Muslim Council (AMC)
National Islamic Prison Foundation (NIPF) - Contact: Mahdi Bray; 1212 New York Ave. NW, Suite 525, Washington, DC 20005. This is the same address as the American Muslim Council (AMC).
? "Specifically organized to convert American inmates to Wahhabism."
? NIPF "coordinates a coast-to-coast campaign to convert inmates to Islam. Foundation officials claim an average of 135,000 such conversions per year. More than 10 percent of the 2 million plus U.S. prison population is Muslim. When black American Muslims are released from prison with the customary $10, a suit of clothes and a one-way bus or train ticket, they know any mosque or masjid [Islamic center] will shelter and feed them and help them find a job."
Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
? "The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) have been bringing prison chaplains and volunteers together since 1998 in their "Islam in American Prison" conferences. These delegates deliberate on various ways of serving inmates, such as the provision of free literature within prison, helping the families of those incarcerated, building halfway houses for those released, and similar other beneficial measures."
National Association of Muslim Chaplains - Contact: President, Imam Warithuddin Umar
? Founded by Warith Deen Umar, a radical prison convert, who offered his views of Isalm and the Sept. 11 attacks to the Wall Street Journal arguing that "The hijackers should be honored as martyrs, he said. The U.S. risks further terrorism attacks because it oppresses Muslims around the world." He was later fired from his job as a contractual consultant with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and barred from continuing his volunteer chaplaincy in New York State Prisons.
? "CAIR has recently dedicated more resources to assisting Muslims in prison. 'We are meeting with the appropriate government agencies, researching case law and contacting more inmates to see how we can help Muslims practice Islam in prison with the limited rights they have,' says CAIR Civil Rights Coordinator Hassan Mirza."
Institute of Islamic Information & Education (III&E) - Contact: Managing Director, M. Amir Ali, Ph.D.; P.O. Box 410129, Chicago, IL 60641
? "There are indications that each piece of literature of the Institute sent to a prisoner is circulated and read by at least ten persons; based on this estimate the III&E is reaching out to more than 20,000 individuals a year in the prison system. The cost of correspondence is somewhere $25 to $40 per letter and enclosures, which includes management, rent, utilities, personnel, material and postage."
Islamic Prison Services Foundation - Contact: Nasir Shahid; 1709 4th St. NW, Washington, DC 20001.
Islamic Prison Outreach - Contact: Imam Alauddin Shabazz; 10326 S. Hoyne, Chicago, IL 60643.
Islamic Correctional Reunion Association - Contact: Mohammad Firdause; 6336 S. 66th Ave, Tinley Park, IL 60477
Islamic Prison Service Dawah - Contact: Ali Jabbar Hakkim; 4715 Fable St., Capitol Heights, MD 20743.
The following is a reprint of an article by Sebastian Rotella, "Al Qaeda's Stealth Weapons," Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2003.
The convicted terrorist has a hard-core moniker: "the blue-eyed emir of Tangier."
But Pierre Richard Robert was once a French country boy, an athletic blond teenager living in a house built by his father among pastures here in the Loire region.
Robert liked drinking and fast bikes more than school. He got interested in Islam when he played soccer at the Turkish cultural center in a neighboring industrial town. He said he wanted to convert because Allah watched over him as he sped downhill into town on his bicycle.
"I told him it's not like changing shirts," said Ibrahim Tekeli, a leader of the Turkish community. "The imam told him, 'I want you to reflect and talk to your family first.' But Richard said: 'I've already reflected... For months before I made my decision, I would run the red light on the big hill every day going real fast. I would always pray to Allah to protect me. And I never got hit by a car.' "
Fourteen years later, though, Robert has hit bottom. A Moroccan court sentenced him to life in prison Thursday after convicting him of recruiting and training Moroccan extremists for a terrorist campaign.
He joins an unlikely group of men with non-Muslim backgrounds that includes Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber" convicted of trying to blow up an airliner; American Jose Padilla, an alleged Al Qaeda operative being held as an enemy combatant; and Christian Ganczarski, a German convert arrested in June by French police.
Robert and Ganczarski were not just foot soldiers, investigators say. They represent a dangerous trend as police chop away at Islamic networks two years after the Sept. 11 attacks: converts who assume front-line roles as recruiters and plotters.
The number of converts has grown as Islamic militants have struck a chord with young Europeans from non-Muslim backgrounds. These "protest conversions," as scholar Olivier Roy calls them, have less to do with theology than with a revolutionary zeal dating to Europe's ultra-left terrorist groups of the 1970s and '80s.
"The young people in working-class urban areas are against the system, and converting to Islam is the ultimate way to challenge the system," said Roy, a director of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. "They convert to stick it to their parents, to their principal... They convert in the same way people in the 1970s went to Bolivia or Vietnam. I see a very European tradition of identifying with a Third World cause."
As demographics and immigration propel Islam's spread in Europe, the number of French converts -- the vast majority of them law-abiding -- has increased steadily to about 100,000, Roy said.
Extremists of European descent worry police for the same reasons that Al Qaeda prizes them: their symbolic value, their Western passports and their fanaticism.
"Converts are the most important work for us right now," a French intelligence official said. "They want to show other Muslims their worth. They want to go further than anyone else. They are full of rage and they want to prove themselves."
The rise of the converts actually may be a sign of Al Qaeda's weakness, a need to fill a vacuum as leaders are hunted down. The limited hierarchy of Islamic networks can make leadership a question of circumstance and initiative. A Spanish investigator said Al Qaeda has "many soldiers, some sergeants and the generals."
Ganczarski and Robert were no generals, but they allegedly stepped up to plot attacks and recruit. And investigators say Ganczarski, 36, became a pivotal figure in Europe during the post-Sept. 11 period because of his alleged ties to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's now-imprisoned operational boss, who turned increasingly to converts while on the run.
Ganczarski is being held in a French jail as a suspected conspirator in the bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people, including French tourists, in April 2002.
Investigators say Mohammed controlled the plot from Pakistan despite the vigilance of U.S. spy satellites that intercepted some of his coded conversations with accomplices. To elude detection, he used non-Arabs in Europe to support the Tunisian suicide bomber, Nizar Nawar, police say.
On the day Nawar blew himself up in a truck-bomb at the historic synagogue on the island of Djerba, he called Mohammed in Pakistan, investigators say, and Ganczarski's home in Duisburg, Germany. A German wiretap recorded the latter call: As if addressing a mentor, Nawar asked Ganczarski for a blessing, investigators say.
Although the Germans lacked proof to arrest Ganczarski, who denied involvement in the attack, the widening investigation soon involved French, Spanish and Swiss police. It revealed Ganczarski's access to Al Qaeda's "hard core," in the words of a Swiss intelligence report dated last December.
Ganczarski called Mohammed's Swiss cell phone in Pakistan "numerous times" in the months before the Djerba attack, according to the report.
The phone call intercepts also pointed to a Swiss convert, Daniel "Yusuf" Morgenej, who had befriended the German in Saudi Arabia, authorities say. Swiss police questioned and released Morgenej. But Spanish and French investigators say he and Ganczarski remain suspected links in an intricate chain leading to the plot's accused money man, a Spanish exporter.
Moreover, the Djerba plot appears to have been part of a larger effort led by Mohammed to deploy converts. Padilla, the American who allegedly schemed to set off a radioactive bomb, was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 after arriving from Switzerland. In the preceding weeks, Padilla placed four calls to the same phone number for Mohammed that Ganczarski had called, according to the Swiss intelligence report.
Ganczarski was born in Gleiwitz, Poland. His family moved to Germany when he was 9. He dropped out of school and found work as a metallurgist in the Ruhr Valley. It was on the shop floor that a fellow immigrant, a North African, introduced him to the Koran, officials say.
"Ever since his youth, it appears he was greatly preoccupied with questions of faith," said a senior French law enforcement official.
His radicalization accelerated when he met a Saudi cleric visiting European mosques in search of Western-born acolytes. In 1992, Ganczarski received a scholarship to attend an Islamic university in Medina, Saudi Arabia, the senior official said.
Ganczarski spent three frustrating years in Medina. He took special courses to overcome his lack of schooling, but failed to enter the university, the senior official said. Yet his zeal did not seem to waver.
He traveled to Afghanistan in 1998 -- the first of four sojourns -- trained at an Al Qaeda camp and saw combat there and in Russia's breakaway republic of Chechnya, officials say.
Ganczarski met Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, who entrusted him with handling computers and communications, the senior official said. Bin Laden saw converts as "an especially potent weapon," the official said.
Returning from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks, Ganczarski persisted in trying to organize plots even after the Tunisian case drew attention to him, officials say.
An alleged accomplice from Duisburg has told French interrogators that Ganczarski began preparations for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Paris. Karim Mehdi said the two explored a technique developed by Mohammed in Afghanistan. It involved packing model planes with 3 or 4 kilos of explosives and diving them into a building by remote control, according to the senior French official.
"They got as far as acquiring material," the official said. "They did a lot of research on planes in Germany. You can pilot these planes from a mile away. The embassy is a double target -- you hit the French and Americans in one blow."
U.S. officials declined to comment, citing a policy of not discussing threats to embassies.
Mehdi also admitted scouting targets for a planned car bombing at tourist sites on Reunion island, a French territory in the Indian Ocean, officials say. Mehdi said Ganczarski was an "organizer and the financier" of the plot, according to French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who described the German as "a high-ranking member of Al Qaeda."
Ganczarski found refuge for a time in Saudi Arabia, where he took his family last November. But after this year's terrorist attacks on expatriate compounds in Riyadh put pressure on the Saudis, they expelled him to France. Under tough anti-terrorism laws, Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has accused Ganczarski in the Djerba attack based on his alleged ties to the plotters, and has at least two years to bring him to trial. Authorities are also interested in the fact that Ganczarski had phone numbers for two imprisoned members of the Hamburg cell that planned the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ganczarski's alleged access to the inner circle is not surprising. Al Qaeda has embraced true believers regardless of ethnicity. Just as many converts marry Muslim women, some terrorism suspects of Arab origin have European wives, who often equal them in ideological ferocity.
"The Ganczarskis, the Roberts, they show that the radicalization is here, not just in the Middle East," said Roy, the French scholar. If Al Qaeda's urbanized, globalized jihad continues to attract angry Europeans, the network could gain a "second wind," he said.
Robert, 31, could be a case in point. Like Ganczarski, the Frenchman represents a breed of blue-collar convert -- neither jailhouse recruit nor university radical.
He grew up in the French hamlet of Chambles. His studies ended at Anne Frank Middle School in Andrezieux, the industrial town just down the hill where his father worked at a glass factory. The teenager made Turkish friends doing spot jobs in textile plants and playing in the Turkish soccer league, which was popular with French and immigrant youths because it used the best field in town.
The Turks of Andrezieux, who describe themselves as moderate Muslims, remember Robert as a silent kid crouching off by himself in the mosque. Like many converts, he had struggled with "drinking, stupid things" and yearned for discipline and purpose, said Tekeli, 35, a veteran union activist.
"In Europe you have everything you need: work, health benefits, family," he said. "Yet something is missing. People find it in religion. And Islam is the religion that is growing. The French young people are more open than their parents."
Robert's stunned father called his change of faith "a betrayal," Tekeli said. But when Robert turned 18 and decided to study Islam in Turkey, his parents paid for the trip. Robert traveled to Konya, a center of tourism and religion that is a magnet for European converts.
When Robert returned to France in 1992, the French intelligence official said, he complained that Turkey was "too secular."
He went to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where in the mid-1990s he trained at a camp run by Al Qaeda, according to French and Spanish investigators.
He also married a Moroccan woman and began wandering between Europe and Morocco. They came to Chambles for an extended stay about seven years ago, living at his parents' house before renting apartments around the nearby city of St. Etienne, a fading landscape of shuttered arms factories and abandoned coal mines.
Robert had acquired a beard, traditional Islamic garb and the name Yacub. During visits in 1999 and 2000 to an Islamic bookstore in St. Etienne, he impressed the manager with his Arabic and his religious knowledge.
"He knew more than me," said the manager, Ahmed Abdelouadoud.
Robert's aggressive ideas caused conflict even at fundamentalist mosques, the intelligence official said. He became an itinerant late-night preacher in housing projects, Tekeli said.
He also got involved in the used-car racket in which Islamic extremists are active, buying cars in Europe for resale in Morocco. In 1998, he was jailed in Belgium on suspicion of auto theft.
That was nothing compared with his clandestine activity in Tangier, the Moroccan smuggling haven where Robert, by then a father of two, spent most of his time the last two years. He was convicted Thursday of recruiting several dozen young men for terrorist cells he set up in Tangier and Fez.
Robert's Al Qaeda credentials crossed cultural borders: The group made him its "emir." He led weapons training sessions in forests and deserts, according to the court's verdict.
Then came the May 16 suicide bombings that killed 45 people in Casablanca, the worst attack ever in Morocco, a kingdom that prides itself on its relative tolerance. Police rounded up hundreds of extremists, catching Robert in a forest at the wheel of a pickup truck with fake Dutch plates.
Authorities charged that he served as a leader of a network that had planned a coming wave of attacks on tourist and commercial targets. After initially confessing, Robert denied it all and said he had been tortured because police needed a foreign fall guy.
"I am the victim of a frame-up by the security services," he said in a statement relayed by his lawyer.
Robert also testified during his trial that he had worked as an informant for French intelligence, a claim French officials denied.
Investigators say Robert was part of a strategy of "training the trainers" -- a model of how an increasingly decentralized Al Qaeda will function. The network exported terrorism to Morocco through a handful of recruiters who quickly whipped locals into killing shape, officials say.
Robert also wanted to bring his war home to France, police say. He and Abdulaziz Benayich, a die-hard holy warrior with longtime ties to European terrorist cells, schemed about using a bazooka or rocket-propelled grenade on targets including a giant refinery and a plutonium shipment near Lyon, about an hour from Robert's hometown, investigators say.
When Spanish police captured Benayich in June in Algeciras, across the strait of Gibraltar from Morocco, he had shaved off his body hair -- as is done in a purification ritual that precedes suicide attacks.
"He was preparing for an attack," a Spanish police commander said. "Benayich is very dangerous."
Although some French officials feel Robert's threat has been exaggerated, he narrowly avoided the death penalty that was requested by prosecutors.
His old friends have watched the news reports. Robert looked exhausted in court, a pale figure surrounded by guards. He had shaved his beard. One day he wore the red and yellow jersey of Galatasaray, a Turkish soccer team.
At that moment, the "blue-eyed emir" resembled the 17-year-old his friends remember: crouched over the handlebars on his way to town, praying to Allah, gathering speed.
Appendix 4: Tablighi Jamaat convert and Saudi agent of influence claims to have converted thousands of U.S. troops
Global News Wire
August 3, 2003
JAMAICAN-BORN CANADIAN INTERVIEWED ON ISLAMIC MISSIONARY WORK AMONG US TROOPS
Interview with Dr. Bilal Philips, a Jamaican-born Canadian, by Mahmud Khalil in Dubai; date not given
(Khalil) How did you convert to Islam and when did that take place? (Philips) That was in 1972, four years after converting to communism in Canada out my belief in the establishment of justice and equality, only to discover that it was a mere verbal slogan that communism bragged about. During my search for a philosophy, through which I could apply justice and equality in words and deeds, I had the opportunity to learn about Islam. I traveled to London to study this religion under a missionary group (jama'at al-tabligh) for three months. But, I did not benefit much during that trip, as the group did not concentrate on the Islamic shari'a sciences. I returned to Canada and sought to obtain a scholarship in the land of the cradle of Islam.
During this period, I attended lectures by Shaykh Nasir-al-Din al-Bani, Ibn-Baz, Abu-Bakr al-Jaza'iri, and Hammadi al-Ansari. I then obtain the M.A. in the creed from King Sa'ud University in Riyadh. At the same time, I worked as teacher of Islamic education in "Manart al-Riyad" schools. (Khalil) How did you switch from teaching to preaching Islam to the US Forces stationed in Al-Khubar? (Philips) The idea came from Ali al-Shammari who had a strong urge to convert US soldiers into Islam. But, he did not speak English well. So he sought my help in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain. Since that date, I began giving religious lectures to US soldiers on Islam.
(Khalil) Was the matter confined to giving religious lectures, or did it go beyond that to persuading US soldiers to convert to Islam. And, when precisely did you begin your call and how long did it last? (Philips) I can say that we began our campaign to convert US soldiers to Islam after the end of the war in Kuwait and the withdrawal of the Iraqi forces. The campaign lasted five and a half months during which we formed a special team, which spoke fluent English. We set up a big camp in the US military barrack in Al-Khubar for this purpose called: "Saudi Camp for Cultural Information." (Khalil) Were you doing that with the official permission of the Saudi authorities and the US Forces Command? (Philips) No, but a considerable number of US officers and men asked us to deliver such lectures. So I can say that the US Army welcomed our work.
(Khalil) Why, in your opinion, did some US officers welcomed giving such lectures on Islam to their soldiers? (Philips) I believe it was to divert their soldiers' attention from other issues, as Saudi Arabia lacked entertainment places for these. The Christian missionaries accompanying the US forces tried, before the conversion of 11 US soldiers, to shut down the camp and stop the lectures we gave to the soldiers. In the meantime, the camp acquired the name of "conversion to Islam camp," especially since the number of soldiers who converted to Islam daily were about 15 to 20. This is in addition to the fact that many US soldiers bought copies of the Holy Koran in the English language.
(Khalil) Who were the members of the team that helped you in your work? (Philips) It was a special team whose members spoke fluent English. I recall that we expanded our work at the time to the point of operating for 24 hours. We obtained an apartment in the barrack and divided the team into groups working on rotation.
(Khalil) What were the means and methods used to persuade US soldiers to convert to Islam? (Philips) At first we prepared the soldiers mentally. A member of the team with experience in broadcasting and American psychology undertook that job. He called in 200-250 soldiers. Once he prepared them psychologically, I began giving the lectures and opened the floor for discussion on different issues. In my answers to their questions, I often linked the topics to the call for conversion to Islam.
(Khalil) Were there special factors that helped you persuade the Americans to convert to Islam? (Philips) Of course; foremost, the sense of security felt by the soldiers and the Arab and Islamic hospitality accorded to them throughout their presence in Saudi Arabia. They often spoke to us about these things with great admiration, comparing them customs in the United States. We also arranged visits to Saudi families in their homes to get a close look at Muslim family life. They were stunned by the standard of Saudi culture and education. Perhaps, seeing us performing prayer as a group in mosques, to which we organized visits, had a big effect on them and many of them converted to Islam. Many of them became Muslim for these reasons.
(Khalil) How many US male and female soldiers converted to Islam during those five and a half months? (Philips) We registered the names and addresses of over 3,000 male and female US soldiers.
(Khalil) Was their conversion to Islam out of conviction or mere fashion, as is the usual case with Americans who get infatuated with everything new? (Philips) They converted to Islam out of conviction and most of them were youths who did not hear about Islam before.
(Khalil) Did you keep the channel of communications with them open after their return to the their homes? (Philips) After preparing a list of names and addresses, we worked out a plan according to which Islamic centers all over the United States were asked to follow up on the ones nearest to them. This continued successfully until 1994. Then my contacts with those following up on their affairs in the United States stopped. So since then I had no knowledge about their progress in this field.
(Khalil) Do you believe that you are a wanted man by the US authorities, especially after 11 September, for converting so many US soldiers to Islam? (Philips) Had I been wanted I would have been arrested a long time ago.
Still, this did not stop some harassment, which I am not ready to discuss.
(Khalil) Why were you harassed? (Philips) The United States considers any serious Islamic action as contrary to its cultural principles. I am one of those who believe that the clash of civilizations is a reality. So I say that western culture led by the United States is enemy of Islam, as it seeks to oblige the Islamic culture to accept its secular system.
(Khalil) Are you a supporter of al-Qa'ida Organization? (Philips) Absolutely not, and I have said it in several of my articles.
My stand here is based on the fact that al-Qa'ida is a misled, deviate, and terrorist group that has nothing to do with Islam. Its terrorist acts conflict with the Islamic shari'a. This is the same path that was followed by the communists in killing people. I know this for a fact, as I was a communist.
(Khalil) What is your reply to the reports that say that you persuaded a number of US officers, whom you converted to Islam, to volunteer to train fighters in Bosnia and that some of them actually took part in the war there? (Philips) First of all, these were not officers, but US Army experts. It is also not accurate that I persuaded them to do that. My role was confined to encouraging them to train Muslim American volunteers and go to Bosnia to help the mujahidin and take part in the war at the request of the Bosnians to help them defend themselves. Some of these Americans remained there and married Bosnian girls. I believe that my encouragement to them was welcomed by these people, who new Islam through me. I kept in touch with them, and when I visited the United States I made it a point to pay courteous visits to them. So the talk that I was the one who persuaded them to do that, as mentioned in some US investigations and revealed by a person called Imad Salim who worked as translator for Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman, is not true.
Imad Salim used to coordinate with US intelligence. And, when Croatia closed its borders to Arab volunteers, there were a group of black Americans who completed their training and knew Islam through me. Imad Salim contacted Shaykh Umar Abd-al-Rahman and offered to use this group for sabotage acts inside the United States. The offer was made on the telephone, which apparently was tapped by US intelligence. Shaykh Umar replied by saying: "Avoid civilian targets." This was the expression under which he was sentenced to life. After this conversation, Imad Salim took the group to an apartment that was known to US intelligence and bugged by listening devices and cameras. The group was along with the American who trained them. He was the one who mentioned my name during the interrogation after denying his knowledge of any sabotage plans inside the United States. He said that he trained the group to go to Bosnia and that he was converted to Islam through me. This was how my name was involved in this case.
(Khalil) What was your relationship with the mujahidin in Bosnia? (Philips) My relationship was strictly religious and it ended a long time ago.
(Khalil) Did you visit Pakistan? (Philips) Yes, in the eighties to acquire information and studies on a doctorate thesis I was preparing then.
(Khalil) Did you meet with Usama Bin Ladin or Abdallah Azzam on that visit? (Philips) No.
(Khalil) Did you know Khattab when he was in Bosnia? (Philips) Who is this Khattab? I did not meet him and I didn't know any of these people.
(Khalil) Where did you meet with the US military experts? (Philips) In Al-Khubar, Tabuk, Dhahran, and also in the United States when I visited there. It was a courteous visit.
(Khalil) What was your biggest accomplishment in life? (Philips) It was my parents' conversion to Islam after 22 years of my call to them to become Muslims. This happened two weeks before my departure from Saudi Arabia. One of my best accomplishments also was my ability to present programs on Islam in English on Saudi and UAE television. This is in addition to the many works and books that I wrote on Islam in English. My recent accomplishment was the success of "Discover Islam Center," which we established in Dubai through which thousands of foreigners from different nationalities entered Islam.
***(Description of Source: London Al-Majallah in Arabic -- London-based Saudi-owned weekly; sister magazine of Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper providing independent coverage of Arab and international issues)
The year was 1947 and the place Kingston, Jamaica - where the famed 17th century Welsh buccaneer Captain Henry Morgan had his hideout - when Dennis Bradley Philips was born into a Christian family comprising his Dad Bradley (stauch Presbyterian) and Mom Joyce McDermott (a solid Anglican) to grow up as a confused Christian amidst a Presbyterian background, volatile communist and finally end up as a devout Muslim.
Little did Dennis know that, half a century later, he would wind up as an Islamic scholar, thinker and writer in the Heartland of Islam where his wanderings would end and he would settle down to a placid life running a publishing department churning out literature on various aspects of Islam to prevail on the ignorant about this religion. Or that he would change his nome de plume, "The name Dennis comes from the Greek word 'Dionysius' which is the name of the Greek god of wine and song and is definitely not appropriate for me. So I changed my name, while retaining my dad's name Bradley, to Bilal."
Today he is the author of more than 30 books on Islam, besides having translated six others and edited four others while also representing organizations like the Dar al Fatah Press in Sharjah (Director of the Foreign Literature Department), Discover Islam in Dubai (Director), Sharjah TV Channel Two and Satellite (Producer and Presenter of Islamic Programs), Ajman TV Channel Four, and Saudi TV Channel Two.
Yet the journey through those 50 years has been one that he would not exchange for anything because it has left him with a clear train of thought as to where his life was leading him. Because the confused growing years and adulthood saw him witnessing racism, joining the student movement and rebelling against authority that denied people their rights.
"In the late 1960s, while I was studying at Simon Frasier University in Vancouver, schools were in turmoil and I joined the student movement to fight for our rights, protest against the Vietnam war and Canada's complicity in it. Many of the Liberal Arts professors had a loaning towards communism and were advocating it through their teachings about Karl Marx and Lenin."
"I had become aware of oppression in America and read a lot on the country's history, specially about the native Indians who had decreased from eight million, at the time of arrival of the Europeans in America, to barely two million today. This fact, as well as slavery of blacks, destruction of American Black Panthers had me convinced of the crying need for changes including justice in Western society for which communism offered the answer through their promises of equitable distribution of wealth, equality of members of society. So I became a communism."
"I worked with the communist party in San Francisco in the USA for a year but became disillusioned with its activities and went back to Toronto in Canada where I got involved with the students organizations and communism all over again. Communism spoke about changes in the society but did not really have the tools for change because its economic system was a failure and it justified massive oppression in the name of the proletariat. Besides, I found many leading communists very corrupt on a personal level and these persons would stress that these things would change after the revolution though it became very obvious to me that these people would spread corruption if they gained power."
"I felt a need to search elsewhere and, for a while, experimented with some aspects of Hinduism including Yoga, macrobiotics (which dwells on choosing simple foods that were cooked well and chewed well to improve physical health), Buddhism and anything else that seemed to address the spiritual aspects of human existence."
"Then, at Christmas 1971, a friend of mine in a political youth organization with communist leanings, accepted Islam and that compelled me to begin to read about Islam and its topic which focussed on comparatively to Communism, Christianity, capitalism and so on. 'Islam: The Misunderstood Religion' by Mohammed Qutub made the biggest impact on me and 'Towards Understanding Islam' by Abul Alaa Maududi clarified the Islamic concepts in a very modern practical way."
"The first book dealt with the practical aspects and reading it convinced me that Islam offered the best solution for human needs as it combined the best of what Communism claimed to offer as well as better aspects of Capitalism, besides also higher spiritual principles found in Christianity, Buddhism and other religions. Islam demanded a change in any individual and a famous verse in the Quran says 'God will not change the condition of the people until they change what is within themselves'. This is what struck me about Islam."
"After about 6 months of reading and discussion, I had made my decision and embraced Islam in 1972."
"While studying in Simon Frasier University at Vancouver in Canada, I played the guitar in shows, nightclubs. When I went to Malaysia, I also performed onstage and became known as the Jimmy Hendrex of Sabah in East Malaysia. However, when I became a Muslim, I felt uncomfortable doing this and gave it up both professionally and privately," he said.
A year after embracing Islam in 1972, he applied and studied Islam at the Islamic University of Madeenah in Saudi Arabia as he wanted to learn about Islam from its classical sources instead of picking it up from cultural practices. While completing his MA at Riyadh University, he prepared and presented some programs on Saudi Television Channel Two called 'Why Islam' which focused on interviews with those who had converted to Islam from different backgrounds and their reasons for doing so.
With lack of literature to satisfy the queries of those seeking answers about Islam, including his own family members, he did some research and came out with his first book entitled 'Polygamy in Islam' which dealt with the subject of plural marriage in Islam on a historical and biological basis, while focusing on the rational behind the system. The writer's itch then took over and his second book 'Fundamentals of Islamic Monotheism' came into being, clarifying the unique aspect of Islamic belief in one god.
After completing his MA, he then worked in the religious department of the Saudi Arabian Air Force headquarters in Riyadh during the Gulf war (Desert Storm) where he lectured American troops on their bases in Bahrain and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. "Because the image of Islam is so distorted in America, I and five other Americans, for five and half months after the Gulf war, were involved in a project to clarify the doubts of this religion to half a million US troops based there, following which over 3,000 soldiers embraced Islam", he said.
He then visited the USA to help the converted soldiers and with the help of an organization called 'Muslim Members of the Military (MMM)' held conferences and activities to ultimately cause the establishment of prayer facilities for Muslims in all US bases internationally. The US administration became obliged to request the Muslim community to suggest candidates for chaplainey which resulted in appointing Muslim chaplains in the US military in subsequent years.
He said that some of the Gulf War Muslim converts went to Bosnia to train the Bosnians and fight alongside them in their struggle for survival in face of atrocities by the Serbs. He then traveled to the Philippines to lecture at different venues on Mindanao Island where he spoke about 'Islamization of Education among Muslims'. This led to development of a University in Cotobato City with Islamic orientation, where he set up a department of Islamic Studies on MA level to prepare teachers with Muslim orientation.
In 1994, he migrated to the Emirates at the invitation of Sheikh Salim al-Qasimi, where he joined a Dubai-based charitable organization known as Dar Al Ber and set an Islamic Information Center, now known as Discover Islam, in Karama to clarify misconceptions about Islam. Helping him in this effort were people from different nationalities including Uthman Barry (an Irish convert), Ahmed Abalos (Filipino convert) and Abdul Latif (from Kerala).
He said that in the past five years, about 1,500 people from America, Australia, UK, Russia, China, Germany, Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and Pakistan had converted to Islam at the center. "The reasons behind their converting were frustration and dissatisfaction, besides the need for a solid rational, spiritual foundation. Some also did it to marry Muslim while others chose to out of curiosity fuelled by exciting discoveries about Islam and its people," he said.
The last three years have seen him set up a department called Foreign Literature Department of Dar Al Fatah printing press for bringing out literature in foreign languages which aimed at clarifying the teachings of Islam to non-Arabic people.
One of his happiest moments came when his parents, who were both in their seventies and having spent their lives around Muslims in Northern Nigeria, Yemen, Malaysia, accepted Islam. This happened four years ago after they saw how society had deteriorated in America and the changes wrought in his life.
Today, he teaches about the historical aspects of Islam and a scientific study of the compilations of the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad since the Hadith refers to prophetic traditions about his way of life (which were compiled and recorded in texts and formed the basis of the Islamic religion).
Appendix 6: Saudi Gazette's Biography of Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips
"There is no time for holidays", says Bilal Philips, "when you realise how little time there is, and how much work has to be done for Islam."
Bilal Philips, once a Christian, is now an Islamic scholar. He received his B.A. degree from the Islamic University of Madina and his M.A. in Aqeedah (Islamic Philosophy) from the King Saud University in Riyadh. His deep study and understanding of Islam has won him the respect of ordinary Muslims as well as many learned scholars of Islam.
Born in Jamaica in 1947, he comes from a family of educationists. Both his parents are teachers, and one of his grandfathers was a church minister and Bible scholar.
Bilal came from a broad-minded family, and though he went to church regularly every Sunday with his mother, he was never forced to go. He says: "Going to church was a social event, more than a religious one. What was being taught went right over my head."
When Bilal was eleven, his family migrated to Canada and for the first time the sensitive boy began to feel that all was not right with the world.
"Most of the Canadians at that time were Euro-Canadians", he says, "and the Europeans, of course, had an idea of their own superiority. They had gone around and smashed up everybody else's society, so they had to justify the destruction of human civilisation by promoting their own superiority over others. Those feelings are expressed in much of their literature, in films, on television and so forth."
Growing up in an environment where one is different from everyone else and trying to rationalise it was hard for a little boy. Little discrimination hurt more as he became a teenager. "Later on", he says, "my parents told me about the struggle they had to go through; they had to face much more in society than I had to as a child at school."
Bilal's first contact with a Muslim society came when his parents moved to Malaysia in the capacity of teachers and advisors to the ministry of education under the Canadian Colombo Plan.
Though much happier there, Bilal hardly noticed that he was in a Muslim country. The British had been in Malaysia and had left their traces behind. His friends were either Euro-Asians or anglicised Muslim Malaysians. Bilal formed a rock group and began to play the guitar professionally. He had a motorbike and was quite popular and consequently his A-level studies suffered.
While in Malaysia Bilal's parents adopted an Indonesian boy who happened to be a Muslim. Mrs. Philips was quite aware of Islam and made it easy for him to fast and pray. Bilal understood that this boy was different once when opening the door to his new brother's room and he bumped his brother on the head as he prostrated himself in prayer. Not being interested in religion at that time, he did not pursue the issue.
Bilal's parents felt there were too many distractions in Malaysia for him, so they decided to send him back to Canada to the Simon-Frazer University in Vancouver.
Back in Canada, Bilal stepped right into the volatile student movements of the late sixties and early seventies. The drug culture and hippy movement was being propagated by such prestigious persons as Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary.
In certain classes the lecturers would pass marijuana cigarettes to the students. They would smoke together and then start the classes.
At this time Bilal's goal was to become a medical artist and thus combine his love for science and art. To this end, he had taken up biochemistry and had also received a scholarship from an art university.
Before he could fully pursue his goals, he found himself getting deeply entrenched in student politics. The seed sown during his childhood, the idea that something was amiss with Western society and things needed to be changed, bore fruit now. He began to get involved with student movements. There were sit-ins and strikes, sometimes there were more violent protests and the police would be called in.
Professors were introducing socialism into their classes. Impressed by this, Bilal began a detailed study of the work of Marx, and soon considered himself to be a Marxist-Leninist. "Socialism was presented as a programme for change of society", he says "rectifying injustices and making sure there are equal rights for all. This change was to be brought about by revolution."
His search for a political solution led him to California. Here he worked with black activist movements like the Black Panthers. "These movements were all black movements, the figures in the forefront were mostly blacks. Since the blacks were the most oppressed group at that time, naturally their voice was the loudest. However, they were widely supported by white college kids. Eventually everybody got on the bandwagon. There was a women's liberation movement followed by the gay liberation when the homosexuals started coming out of the closets."
Soon disillusion set in. "Many of these people were deep into drugs. They collected money for what they called defence committees and used much of the money to pay for their parties, their rents and their drugs. They were like leeches living off the people's donations."
During this period there also existed a "black movement known as the Nation of Islam" or, more popularly, the Black Muslims, founded by Elijah Muhammad, who concocted a religion called Islam but which was totally different from the real thing.
He taught that all black men were gods and all white men were devils. There was one major god who had come and taught Elijah, and Elijah was his prophet. At that time the autobiography of a former follower of Elijah, Malcolm X, was very popular. Malcolm X had left the Black Muslims after being its leading spokesman and had found real Islam. He was assassinated within six months of his conversion and had little time to use his rhetorical skills to promote the real Islam. Thus only a few who read his autobiography grasped the significance of his journey.
Bilal, who had read Malcolm X's autobiography, visited one of the temples of the Black Muslims. Though impressed by their organization and the fact that their women dressed modestly, he found their ideology useless.
Finding the movements in the States not relevant to the goals which he had in mind, Bilal returned to Canada.
By now he had dropped out after completing only two years of university and had linked up with a socialist-oriented group in Toronto. In the early seventies there was an influx of blacks from the States and from the West Indies into Canada. Bilal and his group were trying to educate the blacks as to their position in society and motivate them to make efforts to change the laws on discrimination. Bilal taught African history and social movements in the community centre organised by the group. He used his musical abilities to collect donations for the center. His art too followed the direction in which he was heading; he drew political cartoons for movement newspapers and posters for rallies.
In accordance with his desire to help society, he took up a job as a councellor for delinquent children.
At the same time, the young idealist was getting deeper into communism. The prevailing political theory at that time was that in an industrialised country like North America the revolution would have to take a different form from that of China and Russia. In these countries the impetus has come from the countryside and was composed mainly of peasants. But in North America the struggle would have to come from within the city and take the form of urban guerrilla warfare.
To be successful as an urban guerrilla warfare, one had to develop cells within the city and be mobile. In this kind of warfare the car was an essential instrument, and thorough knowledge of its working was a must. To this end, Bilal went back to a technical college to learn car mechanics.
Bilal's parents were opposed to the political direction in which their son was going and he and his father had many heated discussions about politics while his mother tried to keep the peace. Bilal, who had been staying temporarily with his parents, moved out and started living in a commune with like-minded youths.
After sometime he began to see a difference between himself and the people he was working with, and these differences were mostly in moral concepts. They wanted to build a new society but were not willing to change themselves.
Certain questions about socialism were beginning to trouble him, especially its ability to build a new society. "There seemed to be no moral foundation for communism and socialism", says Bilal. "If the masses of the people consider alcoholism, homosexuality, child abuse or whatever to be moral, then it is okay. In New York, it is now legal to possess marijuana, although its sale is still prohibited. In England homosexuals can now marry, this bothered me."
At this point Bilal contemplated going to China to learn guerilla warfare. But he learned that one of the ladies in the central committee of the group to which he belonged, who had been a very hardcore Communist, had accepted Islam. As Bilal had been an admirer of her previous Marxist-Leninist convictions, he decided to study some books on Islam to see what had swayed her.
The first was 'Islam, The Misunderstood Religion' by Muhammad Qutub. Muhammad Qutub was the brother of Syed Qutub, one of the leaders of the Ikhwan movement of Egypt. This movement had come in conflict with Gamal Abdul Nasser and his Socialism. Nasser hanged Syed Qutub and other Ikhwan leaders for their Islamic beliefs. Many other Ikhwan leaders fled to Saudi Arabia and settled in Makkah and Madina. "In fact", says Bilal, "many of the Islamic scholars in the universities of Saudi Arabia today come from that era." Muhammad Qutub is at present teaching in the University of Umm-Al-Qura in Makkah.
Muhammad Qutub's book was a comparison of Islam, Socialism, Communism and Capitalism from a social, economic and moral point of view. For a more spiritually-minded person it might seem a bit dry, but since Bilal was politically oriented it was right for him.
He became convinced that Islam was the best way to bring about an economic and social revolution in Western society. As he avidly read all that was available on Islam in English, another point began to impress him the revolution began not with the toppling of the existing socio-economic order but with the change of the individual himself.
Bilal had decided that if he became a Muslim he would do so totally; there would be no half measures for him. "My life at this time was already quite restrained, and the discipline of Islam did not present a major problem. However, it is standard that before one converts, Satan makes a great effort to dissuade one. By this time I smoked and drank only on rare occasions; however a voice inside me would say, 'are you ready to give up all these pleasures, you mean to say you'll never touch them again?' This put doubts in my mind and made me hesitate to declare my conversion."
From a political point of view Bilal was convinced, but from a spiritual point of view he found the idea of God, jinns and angels difficult to accept.
"In my heart a vague idea of God was still there", he says, "though it had been crushed by Communist philosophy, which demands total denial of God's existence. My scientific background also tended to hold me back from really accepting the concept of God."
Then Bilal had what may be termed as a spiritual experience. "I was lying down in my room and some friends were sitting at my desk reading. I was half awake, half asleep and then I began to dream. I dreamt I was riding my bicycle into a warehouse. The further I went inside, the darker it got. I began to get worried. I felt I had gone as far as I could. When I turned around I couldn't see the exit. I was in total darkness. At that time real fear came over me, a feeling of fear I had never experienced before. When I look back at it, I realise that it was the fear of dying. The feeling was that if I didn't get out of here, I would never get out. It was the end."
"I began to scream, help! Help me! I tried to shout at the top of my lungs, but the words would not come out, they just gurgled in my throat. My mind was screaming, there were people sitting in the room, yet nobody heard me."
"I continued to try for a while, until I realised that there was no hope. There was no one to help me. At that moment I gave up and resigned myself to death. When I gave up I immediately woke up."
This dream left a heavy impression on Bilal's mind. "Nobody could have taken me out of that situation, it was only God who took me out of that state of absolute despair, and brought me back."
Later he found confirmation of his belief when he read the following verse in the Noble Quran: "He is the one who takes your life in sleep. To some of you he gives it back when you awake, to some of you he does not." The dream left a strong impression on Bilal that God was real, and he consequently accepted Islam in February 1972.
He stopped playing music and gave up art, and went full-time into the study of Islam. He began the study of Arabic and soon learned to recite the Quran.
Bilal now began a study of Arabic and Fiqh (Islamic Law) with an Egyptian whose father had been a scholar and a follower of the Ikhwan Muslimoon movement.
Bilal had picked up so much information about Islam from different directions that he was confused and in order to resolve this conflict of information he decided he must go to the East, to the actual source of Islam, and immerse himself in Arabic and Islamic studies.
So he applied for a scholarship from the Islamic University of Madina. He was accepted and left for Saudi Arabia.
Living conditions in the University of Madina were quite primitive at the time. The students lived in abandoned army barracks. There was no hot water in the freezing winter and no air conditioning in the blistering summer. Twice Bilal was bitten by scorpions. He put his trust in God and went on with his studies.
From the point of view of learning all aspects of Islam, Bilal had come to the right place. "In terms of Islamic knowledge, the education in Madina University is more extensive than at any university in the West", he says. "In the west the method of education emphasises understanding, research and interpretation, whereas in the East emphasis is placed on memorisation and verbatim quotation."
For six years Bilal studied in Madina. The first two years were spent learning Arabic. He also gave lessons in English and in karate to Arab students.
In his final year he saw an advertisement for teachers at the Minarat-ul-Riyadh International School and sent a cutting to his parents, who had recently returned to Canada after teaching in South Yemen. They applied and were immediately accepted.
After completing his B.A. Bilal applied to the King Saud University in Riyadh for his Master's program and was accepted. As most of his classes were in the evening, he began to teach Islamic education at the Minarat-ul-Riyadh school's English section.
This was the first attempt to make a curriculum for Islamic education in English. The need for it was urgent because of the large number of Muslim expatriate children in the Kingdom who could only be reached through the medium.
Though the basic syllabus consists of Quran, Fiqh, Hadith, Tafseer and Tawheed. Sometimes Bilal spends three-quarters of his class discussing questions, which are of great importance to a young Muslim generation caught up in the mores of the West. The young students want to know why dating, drinking and dancing are okay for their counterparts in the West but not for them. Bilal then uses a relevant Quranic verse, Hadith, statistics and logic to explain the Islamic stand.
"About 15 to 20 percent of my students graduate seriously committed to Islam. They go back to Pakistan, England or the States and do serious work for Islam." Some of the boys he has taught were confirmed atheists, although from Muslim homes. It is gratifying to Bilal when these boys later, through teaching, become very active Muslims. "This makes all the headaches and trials of teaching worth it", he says.
Bilal has translated three books on Shiism from Arabic to English because he feels that there are not enough books on the subject in English from a Sunni point of view.
He has co-authored a book 'Polygamy In Islam' because he says, "This is an area in which non-Muslims often like to criticise Islam. Also many Muslim modernists, due to the influence of colonialism, deny this aspect of Islam. In fact, in some Muslim countries there is legislation against it."
He has also written a 'Tafseer on Soorah-ul-Hujuraat (No. 49)'. Among his works under publication is 'The Evolution of Fiqh' about the historical development of the different schools of law in Islam, the reason for their differences and how may they be resolved. Another is 'Usool At-Tafseer'. He is also pondering another refuting the theory of Rashad Khalifa that 19 is the miraculous numerical code of the Quran. Under revision is a book on Tawheed (Islamic unitarianism).
His interest in art has again surfaced and he has begun to explore the world of Arabic calligraphy.
Bilal feels there is still a lot of work to be done for Islam, especially in the West. His summers are spent teaching Islam and Arabic in the U.S.A. and Canada. He has also travelled extensively in Central and South America and the West Indies to teach Islam in the many Muslim communities scattered throughtout the region.
Bilal feels that Muslims can safeguard themselves and their religion in the West by setting up their own Islamic schools within Islamic communities. These days most Muslims in the States are busy chasing the American dream, their children are going to public schools where indirectly the principles of Islam are constantly under attack. Very few children, probably less than 10 percent, who go through the American school system remain practising Muslims.
Hijra (immigration to a Muslim environment), he believes is compulsory for Muslims if they cannot live like Muslims, and to stress this point he quotes from the Quran: "Those who died in a state of self-oppresion, the angels asked them, 'well, couldn't you migrate? Allah's earth is expansive', and these people will go to the hell."
"The priority of every Muslim", he says, "should be not where can I best find work, but where can I best practise Islam and find work."
Bilal's goal is still to change society for the better but the revolution must come through the spread and practise of Islam by each individual, and to this end he has devoted his life.
Research note from the Center for Security Policy: Early evidence suggests that some of the products of Alamoudi's chaplain efforts have damaged the national security of the United States and further compromised the chapliancy. The issue requires careful study, but as an interim report to the subcommittee, questions are raised that require official investigation and possible remedial action.
The U.S. must further investigate the role that foreign military services, particular those of Saudi Arabia, may have in the improper fraternizing, ideological training, and even recruitment of American service personnel.
? Capt. James "Yousef" Yee
On 10 September 2001 Captain James Yee (a.k.a. Yousef Yee) - the Muslim chaplain assigned to counsel al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - was detained after being found in possession of classified documents. As a result, there were reportedly five charges being considered for Captain Yee: sedition; aiding the enemy; spying; espionage; and failure to obey a general order. As of this hearing, the most serious charges were not filed, though Yee was charged with disobeying an order and improper handling of classified information. Among the classified documents reportedly found on Yee's person were: "a list of detainees and the names of U.S. prison personnel at Guantanamo" and a "drawing showing where certain prisoners and American personnel were located."
According to Capt. Thomas Crosson of the Southern Command in Miami, Yee "served as the 'Muslim adviser to the commander of the joint task force at Guantanamo'" As a prison chaplain, Yee had "extensive" and "private" contact with Muslim detainees.
The New York Times reported on 24 September that Yee converted to Islam in April, 1991 "after getting to know Egyptian army officers in vehicle maintenance classes with him at Fort Knox, Ky." Shortly after his conversion he was deployed to Saudi Arabia. The Times also reported that while in Saudi Arabia Yee "often visited a Saudi sponsored tent at the Khobar Towers military base to pick up Islamic books and texts translated into English." And in 1993 Yee told the Times that "the Saudi Air Force and the Saudi royal family paid for him and other Americans to make the pilgrimage to Mecca." It was two years later during his second pilgrimage that he began to search out a program in the Mideast that would teach him "Islamic theology and sciences and Arabic."
The Washington Post also noted that after Yee left the military he spent four years in Syria studying Islam and then returned to United States as a trained imam. He rejoined the military in the late 1990's as a "Muslim cleric" and was "endorsed" by the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council. What we still need to know: Was there a hostile foreign attempt to penetrate the U.S. Armed Forces through these means?
Alamoudi and the AMC chose and endorsed the first Imam in the United States Armed Forces. During the ceremony to mark the commission of Army Capt. Abdul Rasheed Muhammad as a chaplain, Alamoudi "presented [him] with the newest military insignia--a silver crescent moon." Alamoudi remarked at the time that Muslims "have a pioneer" in Muhammad and he promised that "more will follow." Specifically, he cited the U.S. Navy as the next service to be approached and acknowledged that "the Islamic community is also working with the U.S. Coast Guard to do the same."
This testimony does not imply that Capt. Muhammad committed wrongdoing. However, Muhammad's connections to Alamoudi, the Saudi Arabian government, and the Saudi funded Muslim World League (MWL) raise questions about further Wahhabi involvement with, or even co-optation of, the military chaplains program and Muslim troops in general. During an interview that was published in The MWL Journal in August 1994 Capt. Muhammad reportedly "expressed his great appreciation and thanks to the Government of Saudi Arabia, to the MWL and to all the Muslim brothers whom he had met during Haji [sic] for the great affection and valureable [sic] support expressed by them for the Muslims in the U.S. Army, and the Muslim community in the U.S.A. at large."
In October 1996, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs noted that the American Muslim Council and Alamoudi paid tribute on 8 August of the year to the "first Islamic chaplain to serve in the United States Navy,... Lieutenant Junior Grade Monje Malak Abd al-Muta Ali Noel, Jr."
According to the October 1996 WRMEA report "Alamoudi said that Noel's appointment was aided by the long-standing efforts of the AMC's Office of Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs to ensure that the United States is meeting the needs of Muslims in the military."