FBI targets American Black Muslims

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

LA Times, July 20, 2002
FBI Targets Black Muslims in Anti-Terrorist Watch

By PATRICK J. MCDONNELL, Times Staff Writer


SEATTLE -- The brawny man in the Muslim skullcap gestured toward a brick
apartment building across the street from where he was standing guard at
a shelter for homeless families.

"See that window over there?" said the man, Abdul-Hakim, pointing to an
upper floor. "The FBI watches me from that window."

The FBI will not comment. But a federal investigation of a possible
terrorist cell in the Pacific Northwest is focusing on a group of
African American converts to Islam, possibly opening a new chapter in
the domestic war on terrorism.

Across the nation, court papers suggest that FBI anxiety about radical
African American Muslims has reemerged in the last decade as the bureau
has concentrated on Islamic terrorism.

Federal investigations into the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and a
related plot to blow up New York landmarks discovered the names of black
Americans associated with the "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, now
serving a life term for his part in the bombing conspiracy. Among those
convicted in the same plot was U.S.-born Rodney Hampton-el, a former New
York clinic worker and ex-moujahedeen volunteer in Afghanistan.

"FBI scrutiny of African American Muslims has clearly increased since
the [1993] World Trade Center bombing," said Ihsan Bagby, a professor at
Shaw University in North Carolina who has studied the nation's Muslims.
"A lot of this is a combination of a focus on terrorism and an agenda
about black 'radicals' and Muslims--all lumped together."

full:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mosques20jul20.story

--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org



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