Detroit Imama -- H. Rap Brown... Radicalism In Other Forms

FBI: Former H. Rap Brown leads violent sect from prison

Islamic hate group involved in theft, firearms offenses

A Detroit imam shot and killed Wednesday in a gunfight with federal agents belonged to a Muslim separatist sect led by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, better known as 1960s militant H. Rap Brown, according to a federal complaint filed Wednesday.

Al-Amin is serving a life sentence at Supermax, a federal facility in Colorado known as the country’s most secure. The prison also houses an al-Qaida terrorist and Centennial Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph. Al-Amin was convicted of killing a Fulton County sheriff’s deputy in March 2000 and wounding his partner.
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Luqman Ameen Abdullah, imam of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, was killed Wednesday after he pulled a gun on federal agents arresting him on federal charges including conspiracy, receipt of stolen goods and firearms offenses.

Charges were also filed Wednesday against 11 of Abdullah’s followers.
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- Source / Full Story: FBI: Former H. Rap Brown leads violent sect from prison, Christian Boone, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 29, 2009 — Summarized by Religion News Blog

The FBI is trying to determine whether members of a radical Detroit-area Islamic group were homegrown jihadists or merely a “bunch of thugs with bluster,” a congressman said Thursday. One thing is certain: They are not mainstream Muslims, the agency said.

Luqman Ameen Abdullah skimmed 20 percent of the profit off the furs, electronics and other items his followers fenced, and he preached that it was OK for them to steal as long as they prayed, FBI agent Gary Leone wrote in an affidavit filed with a criminal complaint against 11 group members.
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The FBI says Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an imam, or prayer leader, of a local faction of Ummah, a group that seeks to establish an Islamic state within the U.S. Authorities say Abdullah preached hate for the government and encouraged his followers to commit violence, especially against police and federal agents.

According to the affidavit, Abdullah told a confidential FBI source that if the government messed with him, “it will be straight up war.”

Andrew Arena, the head of the FBI’s Detroit office, stressed Thursday that Abdullah’s mosque, Masjid Al-Haqq, was in no way representative of the Detroit area’s large Muslim community.

“This is a very hybrid radical ideology. I don’t know that I’d call it a religion,” Arena said.
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- Source / Full Story: Feds investigating Detroit Islamic group’s motives, Ed White, AP via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Oct. 29, 2009 — Summarized by Religion News Blog