Posted on 03/30/2003 8:23:11 AM PST by OutSpot
LOS ANGELES -- The soldier held in a grenade attack against his fellow 101st Airborne soldiers once worshipped at the largest mosque for black Muslims in Los Angeles, a mosque once visited regularly by Muhammad Ali and that continues to count celebrities and sport stars among its worshippers.
Sgt. Asan Akbar reportedly uttered anti-American statements after his arrest for Sunday's attack on a brigade command center that killed two, including an Air Force major who died of his wounds Tuesday, and injured 14. Many who attend services at the mosque stressed that they are taught nonviolence.
"Our children were taught peace and love for humanity," said Sabreen Abdul Rahmaan, who has attended the Bilal Islamic Center for 35 years. "He had to get that violence from someplace else."
On Tuesday, the Army said Akbar will be moved to Germany after a military magistrate found probable cause he committed the crime.
Akbar reportedly told his mother he feared persecution because he is a Muslim. According to the Los Angeles Times, soldiers overheard Akbar declare: "You guys are coming into our countries and you're going to rape our women and kill our children."
Michael Henderson, who has worshipped at the mosque for 20 years, said he was saddened to hear that any violence was linked to a member of the mosque.
"Islam teaches us that the real holy war is the fight for righteousness over evil in ourselves," Henderson said. "That's a battle I fight every day."
The center was Los Angeles' first mosque, opened in the 1950s along a street already famous for its jazz and blues clubs.
"At one time, this was the most famous street in Los Angeles for blacks," Rahmaan said.
Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Count Basie and Lionel Hampton stayed and played at the nearby Dunbar Hotel and at the Elks Club, now the site of the mosque. Ali visited for days at a time during the 1970s and '80s, staying in a travel trailer parked on the center's grounds.
"He spent a lot of time here, man," said Mohammed Akbar Lee, 73, who likes to strum a red Flying V electric guitar while guarding the gate at the center. "We hung out."
The mosque remains a regular stop for Los Angeles politicians during election campaigns.
Henderson said he has knelt for prayers alongside Los Angeles Lakers basketball stars and other professional athletes.
"You'll see everybody here, if they're Muslim, at some time or another," he said.
Akbar spent time there as a teenager during the 1980s when the family moved back to Los Angeles, his birthplace, after about eight years in Louisiana.
The family lived in a small house across the street from the mosque, with Akbar often accompanying his mother to Friday services.
People remember him as a quiet, withdrawn boy, who skipped pickup basketball games after school, choosing instead to read books.
"He was never involved in the usual kid scuffles," said Abdul Karim Hasan, the imam, or leader, of the Bilal mosque since 1971. "He was withdrawn. It was always like he was in deep thought."
Today, a metal fence circles the center, which occupies an acre lot. A few wood-frame buildings and mobile homes ring the dirt parking area. The old mosque was torn down in the mid-1980s and replaced with a wooden, one-story building with a single minaret. A large new school is rising where the old mosque once stood.
When it opens later this year, the school will teach the tenets of Al-Islam, a brand of Islam espoused by W. Deen Mohammed, son of the late Elijah Mohammed, founder of the Nation of Islam. Deen Mohammed renamed the organization the American Muslim Society.
The racially divisive beliefs of the original Nation of Islam, now led by Louis Farrakhan, are not espoused by the American Muslim Society.
"When the honorable Elijah Mohammed died, we elected his son to be the leader of the community," Hasan said. "He redirected us to where we are now -- mainline, mainstream Islam."
There are thousands of followers of Al-Islam who worship in four affiliated mosques. Bilal is one of two in South Central Los Angeles. There is another in Compton and one in Long Beach, Hasan said.
Mainstream black Muslim organizations have about 500,000 worshippers nationwide, according to a recent survey by Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C.
When Hasan arrived in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, the community around the mosque already was starting to change. The end of segregation meant a decline of black businesses. Hispanic immigration was changing the face of the district.
Today, most of the restaurants and stores have signs in Spanish. An image of the Virgin of Guadalupe covers a wall across the street from the mosque.
"The population here is now around 50-50, black and Hispanic," Hasan said. "But that's fine with us. We're a religious community that's open to everyone."
Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Need we say more....
Yeah right.
Here's a happy thought from Middle East expert Daniel Pipes:
Islamists constitute a small but significant minority of Muslims, perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of the population. Many of them are peaceable in apearance, but they all must be considered potential killers.
How does 400,000 to 800,000 -- in our country -- potential killers sound?
Meet an Islamist -- peaceable in appearance, killer
America's Fifth Column ... watch Steve Emerson/PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8Mb File Here (Requires RealPlayer)
I find any religion which brands its followers as "evil" repugnant. What kind of religion is it that they "fight a battle everyday?"
Islam is the opposite what America is all about.
No matter what we think of Islam, the non-violent version must survive and be supported by all of us or we will threaten the religious freedoms of our entire nation. The left would love nothing more. I'll defend the rights of Muslims as if they were fellow Christians. I won't defend murderers. Differentiating between the two is getting tougher, no doubt. But it is vital!!!!
The non-violent version has a right to practice their beliefs ---but not really a right to survive. Look at the religion of the Shakers ---it didn't survive but it doesn't matter, there are other religions that have come and gone and in the end their survival wasn't important to us as a country.
I think it's more like the rights of American Nazis and American Communists. They too have certain rights, they have freedom of their belief ----but we just won't allow them to impose their beliefs on the rest of us ---and much of their beliefs would demand the overthrow of the US Constitution which we will demand be kept in place.
I knew a Pakistani Muslim while I was in the Air Force. He told me he did not consider black American Muslims to be real Muslims. That was just his opinion. I don't know if most have that opinion.
It is in our best interests to protect the religious freedom of all people. We should not take that lightly.
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