Historical background of this group tracing its origins back to the 1920s: Darul Islam's founding members came from the Islamic Mission of America, which was founded in 1924 by Sheikh Daoud Ahmed Faisal and based out of the State Street Mosque in Brooklyn, New York. His thinking, which derived “as much from Franz Fanon's anticolonialism as the literature of Islamic revivalism,” held that African-Americans “needed to totally transform themselves-their language, dress, customs, and even their daily interactions-in a ritual of purification that would cement them to the real foundations of the worldwide Islamic revival that was occurring across the Atlantic.”. However, Faisal did not advocate for complete withdrawal from American society, nor disloyalty to it. Unlike some organizations that taught African-Americans that they were originally Muslim (such as the Moorish Science Temple), the Islamic Mission did not instruct followers to resist the military draft, but “permitted its male followers to join.”3 In this way, “Faisal thought that blacks should reclaim their Islamic heritage and also lay claim to an American allegiance.”4 Though the Islamic Mission originally brought together Muslim immigrants and American-born converts in one congregation, over time “the fraternal atmosphere” at the State Street Mosque “degenerated into two thinly disguised factions, the new Americans (Arab Muslim immigrants) and the new Muslims (African-American converts).”5 With this degeneration in social relations, Rijab Mahmud and Yahya Abdul Karim led a group of African-American converts away from the State Street Mosque, and founded a new mosque in nearby Brownsville, Brooklyn in 1962. This breakaway group's members relied on the religious counsel of a Pakistani religious instructor, Hafis Mahbub, who was affiliated with the Tablighi Jamaat. The new group “set out to build an urban community governed under the sharia,” calling it Darul Islam.6 Darul Islam is an Arabic term meaning “abode of Islam.”. . .Imam Yahya Abdul Karim led the overall movement; individual communities had their own imams responsible for day-to-day operations. By the 1970s, the movement had “formed a federation of mosques around the country.”20 There were around twenty Darul Islam mosques in the New York area alone,21 with affiliates in Canada and the Caribbean. . . In the 1960s, Sunni Muslims “began to worship openly in New York state correctional facilities.”22 Of particular importance to Darul Islam, Muslims in the Green Haven prison were not “recognized by the administration as a legitimate religious community deserving an area designated as a mosque.”23 Thus, they reached out to Abdul Karim, the first spark that eventually led to Darul Islam's Prison Committee and its prison dawah activities. With Darul Islam's assistance, the Green Haven prisoners created their own mosque, calling it Masjid Sankore. Sheik Ismail Abdul Rahman, who acted as Darul Islam's emissary to Green Haven, noted: “When you walked in there [Masjid Sankore], it was another world. You didn't feel like you were in Green Haven in a maximum security prison. Officers [prison guards] never came in. It was like going to any other masjid on the outside; you felt at home.”24 The conditions of worship were transformed there, and over time the changes at Green Haven spread to other correctional facilities; it became the model for Darul Islam's prison work moving forward. In 1975, the New York State Department of Corrections “offered to hire Muslim chaplains as direct employees of its Ministerial Services Division.”25 Abdul Karim balked at the offer out of concern that direct payment from the corrections department would compromise the autonomy of Darul Islam's Prison Committee. The movement pulled back on its prison dawah for a short time, only resuming it in 1978. Darul Islam Splinters In 1978, Pakistani sheikh Syed Gilani began preaching at the Islamic Center in New Jersey.26 His charisma led to a growing following that included Abdul Karim and other Darul Islam leaders. Al-Amin Abdul Latif, president of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York City and a former high-ranking Darul Islam member, said in 1993: “The brothers fell in love with [Gilani]. Yahya and the leadership accepted him. When he [Abdul Karim] did that, we had problems with that. For many of us, loyalties were very strong. That caused a split in the Dar.”27 In 1980, Abdul Karim abdicated his leadership of Darul Islam to follow Gilani, and the movement fractured. Sheik Gilani named his group Jamaat al-Fuqra, meaning “community of the impoverished.” Al-Fuqra is an incredibly controversial organization today; members have attacked ethnic Indians and Indian sects, and the group has also been linked to an attack against a Muslim leader in Tucson, Arizona. Al-Fuqra has bought and developed a number of properties in rural regions of the U.S., maintaining its headquarters in Hancock, New York. Al-Fuqra members are said to receive weapons and other military-style training on these properties. One analyst has warned that the group, now known as the Muslims of the Americas, is “capable of committing violence toward any proponent of a belief set that does not match their own.”28 However, several mosques that were a part of the Darul Islam federation stayed loyal to the movement's ideology and organizational structure, including the Universal Islamic Brotherhood in Cleveland, the Ta'if Tul Islam ministry in Los Angeles, and the West End Community in Atlanta.29 Jamil al-Amin ended up leading this group, which took on the moniker of the National Ummah, or al-Ummah. . .: The Darul Islam Movement in the United States