From golden age to an embattled faith

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STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF ISLAM

By Stevenson Swanson
Tribune national correspondent
Published February 8, 2004

Islam once was at forefront of civilization

GRANADA, Spain -- As the fiery orange sun sinks behind the mountains, the stones of the 800-year-old Alhambra take on a rosy glow. Against the backdrop of the snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada, the fortress' rugged towers stand out in the gathering dusk.

As the lights of this long-ago capital of al-Andalus--Islamic Spain--blink to life, about 30 men kneel in neat rows inside a whitewashed mosque atop a hill facing the Alhambra. Palms held upward, they recite the evening prayers and bend forward until their heads touch the floor. Behind a thin screen, the shadowy outlines of the women of the mosque move in the same time-honored rhythms.

These two hilltop edifices represent the past and present faces of Islam.

The Alhambra fortress, which the Moorish rulers of southern Spain began to construct in 1238, recalls the splendor and achievements of the golden age of Islam, when the youngest of the three great monotheistic religions held sway from the Straits of Gibraltar in the west to the banks of the Indus River in the east.

Across the ravine, the humble mosque, whose plain white walls and red tile roof make it virtually indistinguishable from its neighbors, testifies to the renewed vigor of Islam, a fast-growing religion with a worldwide membership of about 1.2 billion, including 2 million to 4 million in America, although some Muslim groups put the figure at 7 million.

It is the first new mosque in Granada in more than 500 years, yet its opening in July came at a time of profound questioning about the meaning and direction of Islam. The Koran, Islam's holy book, preaches peace and charity, but to some Western ears, the loudest voices in the Muslim world extol hate and violence.

Islam is hardly unique as a religion that has been twisted to justify killing. Historical circumstances help explain how terrorists have commandeered Islam as their cause.

Unlike some religions, Islam does not have a clearly defined hierarchy to pronounce authoritatively on matters of doctrine and interpretation. Backed by radical imams, Islamic militants can claim that their interpretation of Islamic teachings is at least as valid as others. Also, Islam recognizes no separation between church and state. That makes it easy for terrorists to cloak their political causes--over Palestine or the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia--in religious rhetoric. And the concept of jihad, which signifies much more than holy war, provides another convenient cover for killers and suicide bombers.

But scholars who have studied Islam and terrorism say none of these factors would matter if the Islamic world were not still suffering from a centuries-old crisis of confidence, born of the loss of its place at the forefront of world civilization.

"A conquering civilization doesn't have terrorism," said Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. "The conquered have terrorism. If you look on the map, the question of Palestine, of Kashmir, of the southern Philippines, of Chechnya, they are all places where Muslims are trying to protect their land or their culture, and they are losing. They only have recourse to these horrible means."

Islam's current sense of itself as an embattled faith stands in stark contrast to its past. For at least 500 years, the Islamic world was the driving force in human development. While Europe struggled to emerge from the chaos left by the collapse of the Roman Empire, Muslim scientists, engineers and architects were the most advanced in the world, and Muslim rulers nurtured a cosmopolitan culture that was often remarkably tolerant of the Jews and Christians who lived in its midst.

The youngest of the three closely related faiths that believe in one god, Islam was born in the unpromising desert landscape of the Arabian Peninsula.

In 610, a 40-year-old businessman was on a monthlong spiritual retreat on Mt. Hira, near the Arabian city of Mecca, when the archangel Gabriel appeared to him and uttered the command, "Iqra"--"Recite."

God's words began to pour from the man's mouth.

Over the next 22 years, Muhammad ibn Abdullah received many such revelations, which his followers later wrote down, forming the Koran.

Christian and Jewish readers of the Koran are struck by the familiar names they encounter. Adam, Eve, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus all figure into Muhammad's revelations, sometimes in ways that coincide with the Bible and sometimes in ways that are strikingly different.

"The three [religions] came from essentially the same place," said Frank Peters, a professor of Middle Eastern studies and religion at New York University. "They all worship the same God, as they all admit."

But to Muslims, Jesus is a prophet, not the son of God. And, although they accept the Jewish Torah and the Christian Gospels as inspired texts, they believe that these writings became corrupted with errors and falsifications. They see the Koran as the true word of God, delivered to Muhammad, who is God's rasul, or messenger. "This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt," God declares at the beginning of the Koran.

Expansion, fissures

By the time of his death in 632, Muhammad had won believers in much of present-day Saudi Arabia. His successors vastly expanded the borders of Islam, conquering Egypt, Palestine, Syria, North Africa and present-day Iraq and Iran. So rapid was Islam's growth that in 711, 101 years after Muhammad received the first revelation, an Islamic army invaded Spain.

And yet, within the first century of Islam's growth, the first important fissure in the new religion also appeared. Following Muhammad's death, the leadership of the Islamic community passed to a series of his closest companions and only later to his closest male relative, his cousin and son-in-law Ali.

A minority of Muslims, who became known as Shiites, believe that Ali and his descendants were the rightful successors of Muhammad. The majority, known as Sunnis, accept that the prophet's companions took over after his death.

This division is the most important but hardly the only split among Muslims, mirroring the spectrum of conservative, moderate and liberal sects within Christianity and Judaism.

As Islamic rulers took control of the Middle East, they devised laws--called dhimma--that allowed non-Muslims to practice their religion, in keeping with the Koran's teachings that Jews and Christians should be accepted as ahl al kitab--people of the book.

Great leap forward

The conquest of the eastern Mediterranean gave Muslim scholars access to the written legacy of the ancient world. The works of Aristotle, Plato and other Greeks would serve as the springboard for Arabic science's great leap forward.

"Within about 150 years, they had translated the whole of Greek science into Arabic," said Peters, author of "Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians." "Talk about technology transfer. They just sucked the technological gut out of it and then assimilated it enough to begin to build on it."

Starting in the 9th Century, the Islamic world was the center of scientific discovery for at least 500 years. Arab astronomers plotted star locations to fractions of a degree. Islamic mathematicians pioneered a new field called algebra. Muslim physicians were the first to use catgut to close incisions.

Not just Islamic scientists and writers flourished in this era. Jewish and Christian intellectuals shared in the achievements; the great Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides, born in Islamic Spain, wrote almost all of his major works in Arabic.

Left behind

But with the coming of the Renaissance in 14th Century Italy, the prophet's religion was about to be eclipsed. A resurgent Europe soon raced ahead of the Islamic world.

Exactly why Islam did not keep up with the West is a matter of continued scholarly debate, but one often-cited reason is Muslims' relative lack of interest in Europe and, later, America. They viewed the West as a backward hinterland of barbarians best-known for their largely ineffective attacks on the Holy Land in the Crusades during the Middle Ages.

"It was a judgment that had for long been reasonably accurate," Middle East expert Bernard Lewis said in "What Went Wrong?: The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East." "It was becoming dangerously out of date."

The Renaissance, the Reformation and the scientific revolution of the 17th Century "passed virtually unnoticed in the land of Islam," Lewis wrote.

Through the long centuries of decline, Muslims adopted various approaches to try to catch up with the West. After World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Kemal Ataturk established the officially secular state of Turkey, an attempt to reproduce the West's separation of church and state.

That ideal is novel in Islamic societies, in part because Muhammad himself was not only a prophet but also a ruler, first in Medina and later in Mecca.

"In Islam, it is God and not the people who gives a government legitimacy," Karen Armstrong, a noted religion scholar, wrote in "Islam: A Short History."

On the other hand, some Muslims have taken an approach diametrically opposed to that of Ataturk and other secularists. The answer to Islam's woes, they say, is to reform the faith, purifying it of later accretions that prevent Muslims from achieving the perfect islam, or surrender to God, of Muhammad and his earliest followers.

Among many movements of this type, one of the most consequential for the modern world began in the mid-18th Century, when Muhammad ibn Abdel-Wahhab attracted followers by calling for a radical reform of the religion. The ideal, Abdel-Wahhab declared, was to recreate the pure faith of the first Muslims in the 7th Century.

In practice, that meant not only following Muhammad's injunctions to pray five times daily, fast during Ramadan and make the pilgrimage to Mecca, but also punishing thieves by cutting off their hands and other measures that strike many Westerners as Draconian.

Wahhabism was adopted by the Saud dynasty, and, since the establishment of the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the early 20th Century, this exceptionally conservative form of Islam has been the official religion of the state. It has also been the beneficiary of Saudi largess, which has funded Wahhabi efforts to win more converts throughout the Muslim world.

To Americans, the most infamous Wahhabi is Osama bin Laden, the extremist leader of the terrorist network Al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bin Laden, a Saudi, harbors deep hatred for America, in part for stationing troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the Persian Gulf war in 1991. For bin Laden and his followers, the presence of infidel troops in the country that contains the two holiest places in Islam--Mecca and Medina--is an affront to the faith.

Wahhabism is an example of a fundamentalist movement, a development that has surfaced in other monotheistic religions. Some Christians and Jews seek to renew their religions by returning to the roots of their faiths. And some Christians and Jews, like some Muslims, transform their zeal into violence and become religious terrorists.

"All three religions can be used to justify, in the terrorists' minds, terrorism and violence," said Jessica Stern, a Harvard University lecturer and author of "Terror in the Name of God," which examines the sources of religious violence in the three monotheistic faiths. "If you look at the Old Testament, it's very violent. If you're looking for violence, you can find it."

An important common denominator among religious terrorists is a sense of humiliation, Stern said. For Muslims, that can mean many things, from Israel's defeat of Arab nations in the 1967 Six-Day War to the corruption and unrelenting poverty of most Middle Eastern countries, which stand in stark contrast to the thriving economies of other parts of the developing world, such as the Far East.

Jihad and martyrs

Muslim terrorists have a ready concept to explain their actions--jihad, which most non-Muslims think means "holy war."

In fact, jihad means struggle, and Muslim tradition says Muhammad distinguished between two types of jihad. The greater struggle is within oneself to resist evil, or within the Muslim community to reform error. The lesser form of jihad, according to the prophet, is warfare against infidels, which Muslim scholars have argued should be waged under strictly defined conditions, one of which calls for sparing non-combatants, such as women and children.

But the Koran can be contradictory on many matters, including jihad. "Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them," reads one verse, seemingly an open invitation to wage war. Other verses counsel avoiding jihad, including one that calls for patience in dealing with non-Muslims: "Call unto the way of thy Lord with wisdom and fair exhortation, and reason with them in the better way."

The argument for a modern-day jihad against the West finds its philosophical foundation in the work of an Egyptian writer, Sayyid Qutb, who lived briefly in America and saw the separation of religion and state as the root of the West's moral decadence. The West, he argued, had inflicted its ills on Muslims through colonization, and the only cure was the establishment of a pure Islamic state. Qutb's radical vision, a core tenet of the Muslim Brotherhood, was anathema to a secular ruler like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ordered Qutb's execution in 1966.

The Brotherhood spread its beliefs across the Muslim world, despite government crackdowns, and Qutb's anti-Western positions have become articles of faith among Islamic terrorists, especially Al Qaeda.

Lacking large armies to fight conventional battles, Al Qaeda and similar organizations have resorted to suicide missions to spread terror, a tactic that would seem to be forbidden by the Koran. "And do not kill yourself, for God is indeed merciful to you," the Koran commands. A widely accepted belief in Islam holds that those who commit suicide will spend eternity in hell.

But terrorist leaders and the radical religious figures who support them have long argued that suicide bombers are really martyrs dying in service of their faith. And the Koran is clear about what awaits martyrs in the afterlife: "Think not of those who are slain in the cause of God as dead. Nay, they live in the presence of the Lord and are granted gifts from him."

The Muslim vision of the afterlife resembles the Christian version in that those who are saved dwell with God, but the Koran also spells out some specific rewards--abundant fruit and wine, served by beautiful, dark-eyed virgins called houris.

This vision of what awaits a martyr gives militant extremists such as bin Laden a powerful inducement to recruit new jihadis, or warriors, to carry out their one-way missions.

Status of Islam

This small minority of Muslims has caused many in America and Europe to regard Islam with fear and suspicion. Some American Muslims were the victims of anti-Muslim violence in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the government detained or deported hundreds of Muslims, a move civil liberties groups decried.

Extremists such as Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a cleric serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up several New York landmarks, have found adherents in America, but a 2001 survey found that 70 percent of American Muslims strongly agreed that Muslims should participate in American institutions and the political process.

Although most American Muslims bring their faith with them from their native lands, as many as 30 percent of Muslims in the U.S. are converts.

In Europe, Muslim immigrants are also facing scrutiny and coming into conflict with authorities over such issues as the height of minarets at mosques or, as in France, the wearing of the hijab, or head scarf, in schools.

As a small step toward making Islam less threatening, the leaders of the new mosque in Granada have decided to leave the curtains of the mosque's prayer room open during services. Drawn by the mosque's stunning view of the Alhambra, crowds of curious onlookers peer at the men of the mosque as they bow toward Mecca.

"I think it is very necessary that Western people should have firsthand knowledge of how Muslims really live and believe," said Abdalhasib Castineira, the director of the foundation that built the mosque. "This is one little service that we can render to clarify these ideas that people have about Islam, mainly negative notions."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0402080264feb08,1,7103114.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

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Note from the editors

Published February 8, 2004

Many Muslims see America's war on terror as a war against Islam.

And many Americans see Muslims as suicide bombers who murder innocents and target Americans.

Islam, the world's fastest-growing religion, preaches tolerance, non-violence and respect for human life. But a struggle for the soul of Islam is under way, one that poses challenges for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Radical elements of the religion, bent on attacking America and its allies, use Islam and the notion of holy war to justify assaults by suicide bombers who believe a ride on a Jerusalem bus will buy them a trip to paradise.

The radicals who stoke the fires of violence aren't many. But their influence extends far beyond their numbers. They form a magnetic field of militancy that threatens to pull the entire religion rightward.

Mainstream Muslim leaders insist they don't back their radical brethren. Nowhere in the Koran, Islam's holy book, these leaders say, is there any justification for the pageantry of terror that plays out in headlines nearly every day.

But the volume of these objections is hardly thunderous.

Part of the reason is fear. Muslims who speak out risk retaliation from radicals or ostracism from tightly knit Muslim communities.

The growing popularity of Islam should not be underestimated. Politically, culturally and spiritually, its increasing influence is felt in nations around the world. In some countries, radical Islamic groups deliver the health care, education and jobs often neglected by corrupt governments backed by generations of American administrations.

So, do most Muslims really hate America? Or does their tepid response to radicals stem from their resentment of America's unquestioning alliances with discredited Muslim leaders and with Israel, a nation despised in much of the Islamic world? And how can Islamic and Western cultures coexist?

To address such questions, the Tribune sent reporters around the globe to understand the unfolding drama within this great religion. Throughout the year, we will publish their reports. The first story explores the struggle between moderates and conservatives for control of a suburban Chicago mosque.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-040208islam-note-story,1,1521450.story?coll=chi-homepagepromo451-fea

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Hard-liners won battle for Bridgeview mosque

By Tribune staff reporters Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Kim Barker, Laurie Cohen, Stephen Franklin and Sam Roe
Published February 8, 2004

Sheik Jamal Said stood before the packed mosque and worked the crowd like an auctioneer.

Speaking Arabic, the prayer leader asked for a donation of $10,000. No one responded. He asked for $5,000, and three men raised their hands.

Hundreds of men sat cross-legged before him in the main prayer hall. Women filled the basement, listening over a loudspeaker. All but the youngest girls wore head scarves.

When Sheik Jamal lowered his request to $2,000, more hands shot into the air. The crowd declared, "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great." $1,000? More hands. $500? Even more. In less than five minutes, he raised $50,000.

While religious leaders often mine congregations for charity, this scene at the Mosque Foundation in suburban Bridgeview stands out for two reasons.

The recipient of the worshipers' generosity was Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist accused by the U.S. government of aiding terrorists. And the prayer leader's passionate appeal is a reflection of the ascendancy of Muslim hard-liners at the mosque, one of the most outspoken and embattled in the U.S.

The mosque did not become this way without a struggle. Relying on hundreds of documents and dozens of interviews, the Tribune has pieced together the details of a bitter fight in Bridgeview that saw religious fundamentalists prevail over moderates.

The story is a rare look inside the transformation of an American mosque, the role of Middle Eastern money in shaping Islam and the tensions many Muslims feel as they try to create enclaves in the U.S.

It also provides insight into the wave of fundamentalism sweeping many parts of the world, creating divisions between East and West, between Arab governments and militants, and within Islam itself.

Some critics inside and outside the religion charge that Islamic fundamentalism fosters intolerance and militancy, and that religious leaders have not done enough to distance Islam from terrorist acts.

Among the leaders at the Bridgeview mosque are men who have condemned Western culture, praised Palestinian suicide bombers and encouraged members to view society in stark terms: Muslims against the world. Federal authorities for years have investigated some mosque officials for possible links to terrorism financing, but no criminal charges have been filed.

Mosque leaders deny encouraging militancy and have denounced terrorism, including the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They shun the fundamentalist label, saying they follow the true form of Islam and others do not. They point out that an elected board sets mosque policy; if the worshipers wanted a more liberal mosque, they would vote for one.

"It's an election, a democratic process," mosque President Oussama Jammal said.

The mosque now attracts thousands of worshipers--most of them Palestinian-Americans--by offering pro-Palestinian sermons, a spiritual refuge and a strict version of Islam. The ultraconservative Saudi Arabian government partially pays the salary of prayer leader Sheik Jamal.

Moderate Muslims still pray at the mosque, but some say conservatives have created an environment that is overly political, too rigid in its interpretation of Islam and resistant to open debate. These members also worry that the Muslim Brotherhood, a controversial group with a violent past, has an undue influence over the mosque. Despite these concerns, the critics largely remain silent, fearful of being called "unIslamic" by mosque leaders.

The struggle over the mosque can be seen through the lives of three men: Khalil Zayid, a simple peddler who raised money for the mosque going door to door; Jamal Said, the charismatic prayer leader who believes that true Muslims should not listen to modern music or celebrate Thanksgiving; and Omar Najib, a former mosque attorney who once helped hard-liners take control of the mosque but now regrets what he did.

"I feel sorry," Najib said recently. "My faith has been hijacked by a few extremists."

The peasants' story

The story of the mosque begins thousands of miles away, in the Palestinian village of Beitunia, where olive trees grow on stony hillsides and pines are bent by the wind.

Hundreds of peasants left the village for Chicago in the early 1900s, hoping to make a better living. They earned money as salesmen, shopkeepers and factory workers. Many could not read or write English.

Beitunia farmer Khalil Zayid arrived in 1939 and rented a room along 18th Street in the heart of the Arab community on the South Side. The 27-year-old did not speak English and had never rung a doorbell, but friends from Beitunia gave him a suitcase filled with women's undergarments and taught him how to sell door to door.

As the oldest of four brothers, Zayid sent much of his money back to Palestine. "That was one of the goals--make money so you could buy more land back home," recalled Miriam Zayed, one of Zayid's daughters.

Like many in the Islamic world at the time, Zayid and the other Beitunia immigrants practiced a form of Islam that allowed Muslims to socialize freely. They viewed their religion as an important part of life, but not all of life. Men and women could mingle. The women wore short sleeves and did not cover their hair. The men sometimes ran liquor stores even though many Muslims believed Islam forbade selling alcohol.

While they wanted to succeed in America and fit into society, they also wanted a place of their own to practice their religion and hold on to their culture. But in all of Chicago, there was no real mosque or official religious leader for Arab Muslims.

In 1954, about 30 families from Beitunia, including Zayid's, decided that something needed to be done. They formed the Mosque Foundation and started raising money for a proper place of worship.

Zayid stepped forward to become the group's first prayer leader, holding services in a storefront. He had no formal Islamic training, but he considered himself a religious man.

He became a justice of the peace so he could perform Muslim weddings. He learned to wash the dead in the Islamic tradition, cleansing the bodies with water, wrapping them in white cloth and dabbing them with perfume. He asked his brother back home to mail him the long jacket and tall white cap worn by Palestinian sheiks.

Zayid could not drive, so his daughter Miriam shuttled him from house to house to ask for money to build a mosque. The women held bake sales and sold candy bars in front of grocery stores. The money trickled in.

In the early 1970s, Zayid and the other immigrants started looking for property. They settled on Bridgeview, a village just southwest of Chicago with six Christian churches and plenty of inexpensive land.

There, Zayid and others drove down a bumpy dirt road to look at a piece of property, between railroad tracks and a trailer park, in the shadow of heavy industry. Through his thick glasses, Zayid surveyed an empty lot covered with garbage.

After 19 years of work, this was all the Beitunia families could afford.

A new wave

Eventually, a mosque was built--but not because of the Beitunia immigrants, the bake sales and the candy bars.

It took a new wave of immigrants. These people were more political and educated--doctors, not farmers; scientists, not salesmen. A few were Islamic scholars.

They were among the hundreds of thousands of Muslims immigrating to America in the 1960s and 1970s. Some had been uprooted by Israel's 1967 takeover of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a traumatic defeat for Muslims that rippled through the Middle East. After facing such humiliations and living under oppressive Arab regimes, they increasingly turned to Islam for political strength.

When the new immigrants arrived in Chicago, they vowed to restart the Bridgeview mosque project by raising money from their wealthy connections in the Middle East. Those promises helped them win election to the mosque board of directors, and by 1978 they led the building effort. The Beitunia families welcomed the newcomers' help.

One of the new leaders was a Palestinian named Omar Najib, who had studied in Egypt and earned a law degree at DePaul University. He frequently carried a briefcase and always wore a jacket and tie to prayers on Fridays, the holiest day of the week.

The 35-year-old Najib, the only Muslim lawyer mosque leaders knew, became the mosque's attorney and helped write its constitution. Other mosque officials fired off telegrams overseas and traveled to the Middle East several times, targeting countries such as Saudi Arabia, which had started giving away its new oil wealth to help spread its rigid form of Islam.

One mosque fundraising brochure warned that Chicago's Muslims were at risk of "melting in the American society, culture and lifestyle." A plea to a Saudi charity asked for money "before it becomes too late and we may lose our children because they are living in an unIslamic society."

Such pleas illustrate the tug of war that faced many mosques in America--between the forces of assimilation and Islamic traditions, between the new country and the old.

The money poured into Bridgeview, more than $1.2 million in all, according to mosque records. Kuwaiti donors gave $369,000. The Saudi government donated $152,000. The religious ministry of the United Arab Emirates contributed $135,000.

Soon, a small group of Beitunia men and newcomers, including Zayid the peddler and Najib the attorney, held a groundbreaking ceremony. Afterward, Najib invited everyone to his home for a traditional Palestinian celebration meal of lamb, cauliflower and rice.

In the fall of 1981, just in time for Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar, the mosque opened its doors. It was a modest building, white brick with a copper dome and a prayer hall facing Mecca, surrounded mostly by empty fields.

The Beitunia families finally had realized their dream. Or so they thought.

Deepening rift

Almost immediately, the new mosque leaders made major changes.

They removed Khalil Zayid as prayer leader and replaced him with someone who had more training, Ahmad Zaki Hammad, a conservative Islamic scholar from Egypt. He quickly angered the congregation's women by chastising them for smoking.

Then the mosque leaders asked religious authorities in Jordan to send an assistant prayer leader. The authorities sent Masoud Ali Masoud, a 57-year-old Palestinian who worked for Jordan's religious affairs ministry.

He also belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that believed in spreading a strict form of Islam and creating states governed by Islamic law.

The Brotherhood had gained notoriety for repeatedly attempting to overthrow the Egyptian and Syrian governments. It spawned two violent Islamic groups: the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, offshoots created by former Brotherhood members who believed the Brotherhood was not militant enough. And Brotherhood members would go on to form the militant Palestinian group Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1995.

But the Brotherhood also organized political protests and ran charities, and many supporters, including Masoud, saw the group as a peaceful movement aimed at restoring Islam's greatness in the world. The Brotherhood did not operate openly in America, though its members quietly influenced some Muslim groups.

Soon, mosque leaders--adhering to a strict interpretation of Islam--told the congregation's women to cover their hair and wear looser clothing. During social events, the women were separated from the men.

As the rift deepened between the two mosque factions, Najib, the lawyer, prepared documents that would turn the deed of the mosque over to the North American Islamic Trust. A non-profit organization based in Indiana, NAIT sought to help build and preserve mosques, often lending them money and taking title to their properties. The group would eventually hold the deeds to about 300 U.S. mosques--1 in 4 in the nation.

Najib argued that giving the mosque's deed to NAIT would forever preserve the building as a mosque. He urged a group of old-timers--the American Arabian Ladies Society, which had gained part ownership of the mosque property through bake sales and other fundraisers--to sign on to the plan.

But the old-timers did not want the mosque turned over to an outside group with a growing reputation for fundamentalism. "We felt very bad," recalled Soraya Shalabi, one of the Beitunia immigrants. "It was like a broken heart."

Increasingly distressed, the Beitunia families decided to fight back.

Emotional conflict

The battle became emotional and violent. In November 1981, police were called to the mosque when opponents of the new leadership allegedly surrounded and harassed the leaders. One foe threatened to put 30 silver bullets in the mosque president's head, a mosque leader said in a letter to police.

Soon after, a meeting at a nearby restaurant turned into a fist fight. Another time, 80 opponents forced their way into the mosque in a dispute over whether they could hold a meeting there. One man allegedly wielded a knife.

An anonymous group of Beitunia sympathizers put out fliers. "Islam is our religion," one said. "It is the Islam of flexibility and commitment to faith rather than fundamentalism and tension."

Another flier alleged that "the essence of NAIT is the [Muslim] Brotherhood," which had started its "deliberate and distorted means of dividing the community and tearing down what we have been attempting to build for one-half of a century."

The Beitunia faction began a whirlwind membership drive. They wanted to sign up hundreds of new members to force mosque officials to drop plans to align with NAIT.

But mosque leaders did not immediately accept new members, arguing that they had the authority to screen applicants to ensure that they were devout enough, court records show.

In the fall of 1981, the NAIT deal was signed. The same day, the mosque women's group sued to block the agreement. The women and their male supporters said the new leaders had deceived members about their true agenda.

"It is obvious that the board stole the mosque from its members," one filing said.

Najib represented the mosque in court. In filings, he said the lawsuit was based on a "personal and tribal vendetta." He argued that Zayid was uneducated, could not read English and lacked the qualifications to be the mosque religious leader.

The case featured evidence rarely heard in a Chicago courtroom, including the mosque leadership's view of what made a good Muslim. Hammad, the mosque prayer leader, testified that if men missed more than three Friday prayers in a row without a valid excuse, they would no longer be considered Muslim.

After 26 days of testimony, a Cook County judge ruled in 1983 that the newcomers had not acted improperly. In a later hearing, he described the case as simply a "bitter factional dispute between two religious corporations."

The hard-liners were now firmly in control.

Years of growth

Over the next dozen years, Muslims flocked to the Bridgeview mosque. In 1982, only 75 people went to Friday prayers. By 1993, 800 people would attend.

A whole new community sprang up. The area became an upscale enclave, featuring new houses with Arabic script over the doors and sparkling chandeliers.

Mosque leaders built two schools and started a youth center for basketball and religious classes. New clothing stores, groceries and restaurants opened in Bridgeview. A floor-covering store turned into a Middle Eastern restaurant. A music store became an Islamic hair salon.

Men who attended the mosque grew their beards and traded their T-shirts for long tunics. Women draped themselves in loose, ankle-length robes.

Cook County was fast becoming home to more Palestinians than any other part of the nation. And the mosque was now one of the area's largest Islamic centers.

Village leaders knew little about Muslims and their religion. Bridgeview was populated mainly by Christians, and its trustees often referred to the mosque as "the Muslim church."

Most non-Muslims moved away from the mosque neighborhood, frustrated by traffic jams on Fridays and the call to prayer that rang out over mosque loudspeakers. Muslims were happy to take their places.

"It was convenient to live here," recalled Zakaria Khudeira, who moved in two blocks from the mosque. "You could dress the way you wanted. The children wouldn't be called names."

Some immigrants moved there to be near relatives. Some felt persecuted by the backlash against Muslims during the first gulf war. Others wanted to protect their families from what they saw as the increasing immorality of American culture.

Jeanean Othman came to the mosque because of her oldest daughter. Othman worried about the 3rd grader's fitting in at a public school and enrolled her in one of the mosque Islamic schools. Othman, who had only prayed at home before, started attending the mosque and covering her hair.

"I started to understand that this was a way of life," she recalled. "For me, this mosque became a place of tranquility."

Still others joined the mosque because they liked the pro-Palestinian politics, sermons in Arabic and what they saw as its authentic interpretations of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

"The community was serious about Islam," worshiper Seema Imam recalled. "It was easier to practice the faith here."

But another major draw was the mosque's fiery, young religious leader, Jamal Said, known to worshipers as Sheik Jamal.

The prayer leader

An imposing man with a bushy brown beard, Sheik Jamal mesmerized worshipers with his eloquent sermons and ardent pleas to help oppressed Muslims. He was greatly admired by mosque-goers, who frequently came to him to settle everyday domestic disputes.

As a child, he was inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. Growing up on the West Bank, he learned about a nearby graveyard for Brotherhood members who had died fighting for a Palestinian homeland. He later brought his own children to the cemetery to pay homage to the fighters, according to a tape of a speech he gave at a Muslim conference in 2000.

During the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, his family moved to Jordan, where he would always maintain ties, eventually building a large house in an upscale neighborhood in Amman.

After studying Islam at a Saudi Arabian university, he came to Chicago to teach Arabic to African-American Muslims. In 1985, at age 28, Sheik Jamal became prayer leader in Bridgeview. Part of his salary would be paid by the government of Saudi Arabia--a stipend that totaled about $2,000 a month by 2004, according to Saudi Embassy officials in Washington.

Many at the mosque were already familiar with his views. As a guest speaker several years earlier, he had given a memorable sermon in which he criticized the mosque women for not dressing modestly.

As prayer leader, he preached that America was a land of disbelievers, where families were not valued, according to mosque-goers. He told worshipers that they should not celebrate Valentine's Day and Thanksgiving because those were not Islamic holidays. He told teenage boys and girls not to mingle.

Over time, Sheik Jamal developed a national reputation and easily attracted prominent Muslim activists to Bridgeview.

Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden's spiritual mentor, visited the mosque in the mid-1980s as part of a national tour to recruit supporters for the U.S.-backed Afghan war against the Soviet Union. At least three Bridgeview men signed up.

Sheik Jamal also raised money with skill, collecting as much as $1 million in a year from worshipers. Most of the money was passed along to Muslim charities, which then sent it overseas, according to the mosque's annual reports.

His congregation was most willing to contribute to Palestinian causes. Many worshipers felt that America blindly supported Israel and ignored the plight of Palestinians. Some had fled the fighting or lost relatives in the ongoing conflict.

For many Palestinian Muslims throughout the world, the battle for a homeland had changed from a secular movement to an Islamic one. Sheik Jamal tapped into that philosophical switch, preaching in support of Palestinians.

He raised money at one national Islamic conference by asking people to donate in the memory of a Palestinian suicide bomber, according to his speech in 2000, taped by terrorism researcher Steven Emerson and translated by the Tribune.

Within the mosque itself, using violence to win a Palestinian homeland caused debate; not everyone supported suicide bombers or militant groups such as Hamas.

One of Sheik Jamal's fellow mosque leaders, Muhammad Salah, drew scrutiny for his Palestinian fundraising activities. In 1993, while part of the mosque's eight-member executive committee, Salah was arrested at a Gaza Strip checkpoint and accused of financing Hamas military operations. He was sent to an Israeli prison for five years.

In a statement to Israeli authorities that he later retracted, Salah said a religious leader in America recruited him into the Muslim Brotherhood, which led to his involvement in Hamas.

The man he named: Sheik Jamal.

Under scrutiny

With more and more questions being raised about Hamas fundraising, the mosque neighborhood turned into a surveillance site.

By the late 1990s, federal agents were knocking on doors, trading leads with investigators in other cities and flying to Israel to interview authorities. At FBI offices in Chicago, investigators hung on the wall a 30-foot-long chart listing the names of people and organizations nationwide believed to have ties to Hamas.

Muslims in Bridgeview complained that they were being treated unfairly. Rumors flew that FBI agents were spying on residents, cruising the neighborhood in unmarked cars.

Agents wanted to investigate the mosque itself, viewing it as a "gold mine" of information that could help their inquiry into terrorism financing, recalled Mark Flessner, the former prosecutor who led the investigation. But higher-ups at the Justice Department rejected probing the mosque. "The department was afraid of political controversy and backlash from Islamic groups," Flessner said.

Still, the government took several steps. A Chicago grand jury started hearing evidence about alleged Hamas fundraising. The government designated Salah a terrorist, seized his money and filed a lien against his home. Authorities also seized the bank accounts of the Oak Lawn religious group where Salah worked, the Quranic Literacy Institute, founded by Hammad, the former mosque prayer leader.

But no criminal charges were filed, and the investigation stalled. Only after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did the government's interest in Hamas--and mosque leaders--pick up.

The grand jury investigation restarted, and the FBI reinterviewed mosque members, asking about Salah and others.

Federal officials also closed three Islamic charities operating near the mosque that were suspected of aiding terrorists. All three received donations from the mosque, and the head of one of the charities was a mosque director. No criminal terrorism charges were filed against the charities.

The government prevented another mosque director from returning home from Jordan. Authorities said that he was a security risk and that the south suburban organization he headed, the Islamic Association for Palestine, was part of Hamas' propaganda wing. No charges were filed against him or the organization.

Mosque President Oussama Jammal blasted the government actions as a witch hunt, saying a "Zionist agenda" was behind the moves. "The majority of Palestinians are living here in the south side of Chicago. That's why they are targeting us."

More than ever, the mosque community felt under siege. The day after the Sept. 11 attacks, a pro-American rally in nearby Oak Lawn turned into an angry march on the mosque. About 100 police officers were called to cordon off the area, keeping protesters two blocks away.

Many Muslim parents kept their children home from school the next day, and Sheik Jamal urged the women not to leave their houses.

In October, Chicago's top federal law-enforcement officials drove out to the mosque for an unusual town hall meeting. Five hundred people crowded into the basement, men on one side, women on the other. They listened as authorities explained that they were there simply to promote better relations with the community.

But when questioned, the officials made a statement that some in the audience found unsettling: They would neither confirm nor deny that they were investigating the mosque. To comment, the officials said, would violate government policy.

The mosque today

Most of the Beitunia immigrants who had dreamed of their own mosque are now gone. The congregation's first prayer leader, Khalil Zayid, worshiped there until he died in 1988. He was never allowed to lead prayers at the new mosque.

Many of the early leaders' children attend other mosques or pray at home. Leila Diab, the daughter of a founder, rarely prays in Bridgeview. She said she tried to meet with Sheik Jamal several years ago, but he insisted that she cover her hair, and she refused.

"This face of Islam is not representative of Islam," she said. "It is very detestable to me."

Meanwhile, mosque attendance is booming. Friday prayers are so crowded that dozens cannot get inside, forcing them to place their prayer rugs on the front lawn. As many as 2,000 attend Friday prayers. Bridgeview remains one of the most popular of the Chicago area's 50 mosques.

Sheik Jamal and other mosque leaders still pursue a controversial agenda.

In March 2002, the mosque hired a new assistant prayer leader--the same man who had run the local office of an Islamic charity until it was closed by the federal government for alleged terrorism ties. Even a few board members questioned whether he should have been hired so quickly.

At a prayer service last May, Sheik Jamal raised $50,000 for Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, a former professor at the University of South Florida who is charged with being the U.S. leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. To rally donors, the sheik called Israel "a foreign, malignant and strange element on the blessed land."

Al-Arian denies the charges against him. Oussama Jammal, the mosque president, defended the fundraising for Al-Arian. "We raised for his legal defense. That's allowed under U.S. law," he said. "If people were against this, they wouldn't have paid."

In December, at an Islamic conference in Chicago, Sheik Jamal said that Muslims should not listen to contemporary music and that women should not travel long distances without chaperones. He also praised Sayyid Qutb, whose writings helped lay the foundation for Muslim Brotherhood beliefs.

The mosque remains so conservative, several former leaders said, because more and more mosque officials are Brotherhood members.

Mosque leaders declined to comment on the Brotherhood, but director Bassam Jody noted that most of the mosque's 24 directors belong to the Muslim American Society--a group with strong ties to the Brotherhood. The mosque vice president runs the society's local chapter.

In an interview in Cairo, Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef said he and other Brotherhood members helped create the society and that it follows Brotherhood philosophy. The society said it is independent but influenced by the Brotherhood and other groups.

Sheik Jamal declined to be interviewed for this article. Several times in the past few months, he has told worshipers that those who criticize mosque leaders to outsiders are "hypocrites"--a condemnation that in Islam could cause someone to be shunned.

With the sheik setting the tone, the mosque community is more conservative than ever.

Many women believe that not even three hairs should show beneath a head scarf. Men and women are often separated at weddings. Many worshipers refuse to finance their homes with mortgages, believing that interest payments are banned in Islam.

Some mosque members worry that their children are being taught to reject American society. They also complain that the mosque remains focused on what goes on abroad at the expense of local issues, such as drugs and domestic abuse.

The mosque youth center, which once featured basketball games, is now a neglected building with broken windows. A sticker on a door advises, "Don't Get Caught Dead Without Islam," but the center was shut down last year because of building and fire code violations.

When Najib was mosque attorney in the 1980s, he believed that the newcomers would keep the mosque free of politics. Now he regrets ever representing them. "It was just plain blind stupid," he said.

He is uncomfortable with Sheik Jamal's social and political views, especially his calls for Islamic states.

Yet he still hopes the mosque will change. In April, he ran for a seat on the board, typing up his platform and handing it out to mosque members. It was the fifth time he had run.

Each time, he vowed to be a voice for the moderates. Each time, he lost.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-0402080265feb08,1,7392742.story?coll=chi-site-nav

[abdulhakeem]

The mosque and several noted Islamic groups

Published February 8, 2004

The following organizations, tied to the Bridgeview mosque or its board members, have come under scrutiny from federal authorities. The groups and individuals have denied any connection to terrorism. None of the groups has been charged with terrorism-related crimes.

AL-AQSA EDUCATIONAL FUND

Mississippi: Mosque prayer leader Jamal Said was treasurer of the group in the mid-1990s. Its executive director, Abdelhaleem Ashqar, was described by the FBI as a Hamas activist and was indicted last year on charges of refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating Hamas fundraising.

BENEVOLENCE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION

Palos Hills, Ill.: The mosque gave the group more than $79,000 since 1993. The U.S. closed it in December 2001, alleging that it aided Al Qaeda and other militant groups, in addition to doing charity work. Authorities charged leader Enaam Arnaout with aiding terrorists; he pleaded guilty last year only to defrauding donors. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.

GLOBAL RELIEF FOUNDATION

Bridgeview, Ill.: The mosque gave the foundation more than $120,000 since 1992. Top officer Mohamed Chehade is on the mosque board. The U.S. closed Global Relief in December 2001, alleging that it aided Al Qaeda, in addition to doing charity work.

HOLY LAND FOUNDATION FOR RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT

Texas: The mosque gave it more than $175,000 since 1991. The U.S. closed it in December 2001, alleging that it helped Hamas, in addition to doing charity work. The mosque then hired Kifah Mustapha, who had run the charity's local office.

ISLAMIC ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINE

Oak Lawn, Ill.: Longtime mosque board members Rafeeq Jaber and Sabri Samirah have led the group. Samirah was prevented from returning to the U.S. last year because of an alleged risk to national security. Authorities have called the group part of Hamas' U.S. propaganda wing.

QURANIC LITERACY INSTITUTE

Oak Lawn: Early mosque prayer leader Ahmad Zaki Hammad helped found the group, which allegedly sent money to Hamas with the help of mosque board member Muhammad Salah. Salah was accused of funding Hamas and jailed in Israel. The U.S. seized bank accounts of the group and Salah in 1998. Salah is now a target of a federal grand jury investigation in Chicago.

Sources: Federal court records, state corporate filings, mosque annual reports and Tribune reporting Chicago Tribune

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-040208islam-groups-story,1,4602780.story?coll=chi-site-nav

[AbuMubarak]

:)

[Mary Carol]

Originally posted by abdulhakeem
Hard-Liners Won Battle For Bridgeview Mosque


Letter to the editor:

Muslims Feel Threatened By Article

Mohammed Sahloul, Board member
Mosque Foundation
Published February 17, 2004

Oak Lawn -- In the article "Hard-liners won battle for Bridgeview mosque," the writers followed the same lines of misinformed accusations against the Mosque Foundation and the Muslim community in the southwest Chicago area. These accusations reinforce the stereotyping against Muslims, label any immigrant American Muslim who sends donations to his or her family in the land of origin as "terrorist" or "aiding" the terrorists, and brand this community of American Muslims as practicing "a strict version of Islam."

Your article represents another media effort to link the Mosque Foundation, its leaders, its Imam, its worshipers and the whole Muslim community in the U.S. to extremism and terrorism. It presented the basic Islamic rulings in worship and personal dealings as very "rigid," "conservative" or a "hard-line" version of Islam.

It strikes me as another step to discredit all Muslim institutions, including houses of worship, schools, charitable organizations, financial institutions, political and social organizations, and to discredit prominent Muslim leaders and activists.

It casts doubts on even the most basic activities of American Muslims, like holding prayer in the proper Islamic way and abiding by the Islamic rules of modesty and Islamic attire.

It reinforces stereotyping of Muslims in America as extremists, promotes discrimination based on ethnicity, national original, appearance and faith; it endangers the lives of Muslim children, women and men; and it creates a rift in American society between American Muslims and their fellow Americans.

The Mosque Foundation has spent $1 million on its youth center in the past five years, the first youth center among all Muslim institutions in the U.S. It is now being remodeled and expanded, and is not a "neglected building with broken windows," as you describe.

The mosque spends annually $160,000 on needy people in the Chicago community and $215,000 to operate a weekend school to teach about 600 students their heritage and faith. Each year, we also hold several blood drives, food drives, free meals at Ramadan, clothing drives and countless interfaith meetings with our fellow Christian and Jewish neighbors.

The mosque encourages worshippers to perform their civic duties, register to vote and be active participants in the American public life.

We collect funds for worthy causes because this is an essential part of our religion and all religions. For example, we collected funds for Iranian earthquake victims, Turkish earthquake victims, the Catholic Theological Union, reconstruction of mosques burned by arsonists in Georgia and needy Palestinian children and families (who are also supported by the United Nations and many Christian churches in the U.S.).

All of the funds raised followed the policies drafted by the U.S. Justice Department and went to U.S.-based, tax-exempt, non-profit organizations. We never raised any funds to support any terrorist organization or suicide bomber, or in the memory of a suicide bomber.

It is disheartening to see that your newspaper has fallen into the same trap as other media outlets, rehashing old accusations originated by different anti-Muslim groups.

My three children are scared to go to their schools and to the mosque because of your article. The sense of hopelessness and disappointment has intensified in this targeted community of peace-loving American Muslims to a level I have never seen since the terrorist action of Sept. 11, 2001. We fear another backlash against our community from ill-informed readers of your article, and we expect another wave of hate crimes against our houses of worship, schools, families and institutions.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-0402170056feb17,1,2916931.story?coll=chi-newsopinionvoice-hed

[Mary Carol]

How Saudi Wealth Fueled Holy War

Charity leader funded fighters to spread and defend Islam

Sam Roe, Laurie Cohen and Stephen Franklin

Published February 22, 2004

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Muslim forces were gathering near a small town in Bosnia, and commanders were moving fighters to the front. The man in charge wanted the very best soldiers available, so he handpicked six of his favorites and ordered them to the area immediately.

The mission was indisputably military, but the man calling the shots was not a captain with the army or a general back at command headquarters. He was the person helping finance the battle: Adel Batterjee, a wealthy Saudi businessman aiding the operation 2,000 miles away from his home in Saudi Arabia.

This was not the only battleground in which Batterjee played a major role. During the past two decades, he has financed Muslim fighters in some of the world's most volatile areas, including Afghanistan, Chechnya and Sudan. And he has done so with the help of U.S. citizens, establishing a major charitable operation just outside Chicago to collect donations to fulfill his dream of creating Islamic states and spreading Islam around the globe.

Batterjee stands at the forefront of one of the great religious movements of our time. Since Saudi Arabia's oil boom in the 1970s, wealthy Saudis have poured billions of dollars into Islamic causes worldwide. They have constructed hundreds of mosques, funded thousands of Islamic schools and distributed millions of Korans.

Much of what the Saudi money has done in the name of the world's fastest-growing religion is admirable and within the bounds of mainstream philanthropy.

But in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, with 15 of the 19 hijackers proving to be Saudi citizens, questionable practices by Saudi charities have come to light--practices such as Batterjee's use of charitable dollars to fund Islamic military operations.

Also of concern, and not only to Westerners, is the ultraconservative brand of Islam that the Saudis embrace and often seek to export. Some Muslim organizations have gone so far as to refuse Saudi money, on the grounds that they do not accept the Saudi version of Islam.

The United States has frozen the U.S. assets of two Saudi relief organizations, including Batterjee's, because of suspected links to terrorism.

Even Saudi Arabia itself, a highly insular society, has publicly cracked down on its 240 charities. For decades, the Saudis sent money abroad with little oversight, but after Sept. 11 and subsequent terrorist attacks on its own soil, the kingdom has taken unprecedented steps to rein in charitable donations and other activities that might be linked to terrorism.

The Saudis have arrested 600 terrorism suspects, removed dozens of preachers for extremism, restricted the flow of donations overseas and even banned a tradition central to Saudi identity: the collection of alms in mosques.

Today, the practices of the charities remain largely mired in ambiguity, with extensive investigations by U.S. authorities finding only sketchy evidence of wrongdoing and no proof that Saudi money financed the Sept. 11 hijackings. For many Muslims, the inquiries are just further indication that America's war on terrorism is unfairly targeting Islamic groups.

Drawing on court, charity and intelligence documents, the Tribune has detailed the rise and fall of Batterjee's charity, Benevolence International Foundation, providing insight into how Saudi charities work, the power they wield in spreading Islam and how one used its assets to wage war.

The tale of Batterjee's organization, which closed in 2002, spans 20 years, four continents and many battlefields.

At Batterjee's side was Enaam Arnaout, a passionate and shrewd man whose job was to run the day-to-day operations of the charity without tipping off authorities. In pursuit was star federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who had vowed not to personally try a case for a year but changed his mind and went after Batterjee's charity.

Batterjee, who declined to be interviewed for this report, advocates armed confrontation in the name of Islam--not just to defend the religion but to spread it as well.

In a book he published in 2002, portions of which were translated by the Tribune, he writes that "the pinnacle of Islam" is jihad, which he defines as use of force for religious purposes. Muslims, he states, are in a "vicious confrontation" with their "enemies, including the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus and idol worshipers from the East and West."

Such views are controversial among Muslims, reflecting the growing debate over Islam's place in the modern world and the role of militants in shaping the religion.

New power brokers

On a Wednesday night in Jiddah, a bustling port along the Red Sea, thousands of customers filled the Herra mall, one of the city's modern shopping centers. Teenage girls chatted on cell phones, families crowded into the food court and young Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians lined up at Starbucks.

Also present were the mutawain, or the religious police. Five of them--three in long white robes and two in brown police uniforms--slowly patrolled the mall corridors, looking for unmarried couples talking, women not properly covered by the traditional black gown and stores not shutting promptly at prayer time.

When a middle-age woman walked out of a jewelry store with her hair partially uncovered, the police quickly encircled her. Looking annoyed, the woman adjusted her black scarf and moved on.

Such contradictions abound in Jiddah--Adel Batterjee's hometown--and in Saudi Arabia as a whole. The nation offers all the comforts and conveniences of modern life but with the strict religious rules and tribal traditions of centuries past.

Women are not allowed to drive, but they can become doctors. Record stores sell American rap music, but authorities use felt-tip pens to black out women's shoulders, legs and cleavage on each CD cover.

Though many Saudis are fabulously wealthy, many others are poor and live in drab apartment buildings. A volatile oil market and a population boom have dropped the per capita income to only $7,000.

Religion, more than anything, defines Saudi life. The country is home to Islam's two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, where Islam's prophet, Muhammad, lived in the 7th Century. Muslims face Mecca when they pray, and a basic tenet of Islam is that all Muslims should try to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once.

Islam is not just the dominant religion in Saudi Arabia; all others are banned. Most Saudis follow the orthodox teachings of Muhammad ibn Abdel-Wahhab, an 18th Century religious reformer who wanted to cleanse Islam of impurities and return to the "true" teachings of the prophet. This called for no drinking, dancing or music.

For much of the past 100 years, the people of Saudi Arabia and their religious practices attracted little notice in the world. The nation was a vast desert, with few paved roads, or homes with electricity, or goods to trade, except for camels and dates.

Then, in 1938, oil was discovered--the largest known reserves in the world.

The Saudis launched a major modernization effort, constructing schools, highways, apartments and hotels. Entire towns rose from the desert, and by 1973, Saudi Arabia was synonymous with wealth. That year, it and other Arab nations imposed an oil embargo that doubled oil prices and plunged the West into an energy crisis.

But even as the Saudis were being recognized--and reviled--in the West as the world's new power brokers, they were quietly pursuing another path to influence: They were using their newfound wealth to spread Islam around the world.

In the Chicago area alone, the Saudis were helping build mosques in Northbrook and Bridgeview and helping establish the American Islamic College on the North Side and the East-West University on South Michigan Avenue.

But it was in Afghanistan where Saudi money had a profound global impact. When Soviet tanks rolled into the Muslim nation in the winter of 1979, the Saudi government began funneling billions of dollars to the front to repel the communist invaders.

A wealthy Saudi businessman named Osama bin Laden also aided the Muslim fighters, as did the U.S. government, which contributed several billion dollars in weapons. President Ronald Reagan called the Muslim soldiers "freedom fighters."

Among the first journalists to report on the fighters was Jamal Khashoggi, a young Saudi working at a daily newspaper in Jiddah. One day, a dignified-looking man came to the reporter's office and said he enjoyed his stories. He wondered whether the reporter would like an inside tour of the Afghan war zone.

"Come with me, and you'll get some scoops," he said.

The man was philanthropist Adel Batterjee.

Joining the fight

The Batterjee name was well-known in Jiddah, as the family owned a wide variety of businesses: health-care companies, a computer firm, an ice cream factory. One business, Saudi German Hospitals, was on a long boulevard called Batterjee Street. The family was also politically connected. Adel Batterjee's uncle was Hisham Nazer, the Saudi planning minister who would go on to become the country's influential oil minister.

Like many wealthy Saudis, Adel Batterjee left home as a teenager to study in America. He enrolled at the University of Kansas and graduated in 1968 with a math degree and a C average. He then returned to Saudi Arabia, where he worked in the burgeoning oil industry before branching out to other fields, including banking and technology.

He also became interested in one of the great Muslim causes of his day: the Afghan-Soviet war. For generations, Muslims had suffered devastating military defeats, but the war offered an opportunity to recapture past glories by waging jihad, or the armed struggle against Muslim oppressors.

Thousands of Arab men were descending on Afghanistan to help their outmatched Muslim brothers. "Just to come and get the dust of the ground on your boots was a very great thing," recalled Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a Saudi who joined the fight and a friend of Adel Batterjee's.

At first, Batterjee only listened to news reports and donated some money. But after hearing a moving speech by a prominent Muslim fighter in nearby Mecca, Batterjee decided to become personally involved. And by the time he walked into Khashoggi's newspaper office in the mid-1980s, he had become an important figure in the jihad movement.

The reporter accepted Batterjee's offer of a tour of Afghanistan, and within a month the two were in Peshawar, Pakistan, a dusty border town that served as a staging ground for fighters moving to the Afghan front. Several Saudi relief groups had set up shop there, including Batterjee's, which at the time was called the Islamic Benevolence Committee.

The charities were busy aiding the thousands of war refugees streaming into the city, but they were also helping train, house and transport the Muslim fighters, or mujahedeen. Batterjee's charity, which had dozens of employees, was no different. In fact, Abdullah Azzam, the inspirational leader of the Afghan jihad, hailed Batterjee's organization as being "at the forefront" of the jihad movement, according to a report Azzam wrote for an aid group he operated.

Batterjee showed Khashoggi around his charity, telling the reporter that he frequently flew in from Saudi Arabia to oversee operations. "He was completely consumed by the Afghan jihad," Khashoggi recalled.

As a charity leader, Batterjee, then in his early 40s, commanded respect. Many employees called him "sheik," a term of honor, while some of his workers ironed his clothes and addressed him only when spoken to first.

One young mujahed who admired Batterjee was Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian who was drawn to Muslim causes ever since his older brother, a noted Islamic militant, was gunned down by Syrian police in 1980.

The young fighter met Batterjee one day when Arnaout picked him up at the Islamabad airport and drove him to Peshawar. Batterjee liked the way Arnaout drove, so he offered him a job at his charity.

It was the start of a long relationship.

The Mountain Camp

For Batterjee, waging jihad involved more than taking on superpowers. It also entailed mundane tasks and headaches: Did the fighters have coats? Was a new car needed?

These were the day-to-day details the Saudi financier often confronted, particularly at a remote training center he financed in Afghanistan called the Mountain Camp, according to records provided to the Tribune by French terrorism researcher Jean-Charles Brisard.

Batterjee's camp opened about 1990, shortly after Muslim forces drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But then the Muslims began fighting each other for control of the country, splitting into seven guerrilla factions.

Batterjee sided with the most anti-Western faction, the Party of Islam, headed by fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The U.S. government also aided Hekmatyar, hoping he could help rid the country of the remnants of Soviet influence.

With the help of Batterjee's charity, Hekmatyar's guerrillas established the camp to train their special forces. It consisted of tents for about 150 fighters, an infirmary, a mosque and a bakery.

Chosen to oversee all this was Enaam Arnaout--the young Syrian driver Batterjee liked so well. When the camp needed money for supplies, Arnaout or other leaders would phone or write Batterjee in Saudi Arabia.

In one letter, Arnaout asked Batterjee to send $20,000 and to talk with the new recruits coming from Saudi Arabia. "Please remind the brothers to purchase shoes and jackets from your location," he told Batterjee, "because they will be going to very cold regions."

During a particularly troublesome week in which fighters quarreled with the cooks and three soldiers deserted, Batterjee came to inspect the troops, stayed a few hours, then left.

Over time, Batterjee became disheartened with the Afghan civil war, which pitted Muslim against Muslim, Khashoggi recalled. "He didn't want to be part of that butchering," he said.

Fed up, the Saudi financier decided to quit Afghanistan.

Billions of dollars

The financial system that allowed Saudi philanthropists such as Batterjee to do their work was vast, complex and extremely well-funded.

Billions of Saudi charitable dollars changed hands, with the money originating from a variety of sources, including the king himself, thousands of members of the royal family, numerous millionaires and millions of average Saudis. Most of these people donated for religious reasons, fulfilling the Islamic requirement that Muslims give 2.5 percent of their annual net worth to charity.

But for the oil-rich Saudi royal family, the motives for giving were also political. Donating generously to Islamic causes abroad not only increased the kingdom's stature in the world but also helped win allies against periodic threats to the Saudi crown.

The Saudis feared that the Soviets would encroach on Middle East oil fields; that the push for a secular, pan-Arab nation in the 1960s would spell the end of monarchies; that the revolution sweeping Iran in the 1970s would hurt Saudi Arabia's bid to become Islam's worldwide voice; and that religious zealots within the kingdom would try to overthrow the Saudi government.

To gain control over the mounting charitable donations, Saudi government officials became heads of some of the charities. Other groups, such as Batterjee's, remained private ventures.

When the money was distributed abroad, it often went to needy Muslims in nations at war. But some funds went to those who simply asked. When a Muslim student organization in America wanted to save a financially strapped mosque in Gary, Ind., the group appealed to the Saudi king and secured the necessary aid.

The Saudis would eventually help establish at least 1,500 mosques abroad. They would also aid 2,000 Islamic schools, sponsor summer camps for children, supplement the salaries of many prayer leaders and spend millions of dollars on Muslim research centers and endowed teaching positions at some of the world's top universities, including Harvard and Oxford.

So much money went out, from so many Saudi sources, that even Saudi leaders did not know how much was spent and exactly who was on the receiving end. Estimates on the total would be put in the tens of billions.

And while the Saudis would insist that strings were not attached to their giving, some Muslim groups would think otherwise.

Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina would become upset when the Saudis tried to impose dress codes. The mosque in Northbrook, the Islamic Cultural Center of Greater Chicago, would reluctantly halt coed folk dancing in the basement, partly because of Saudi complaints. And the American Society of Muslims, the 1.5 million-member African-American group based in Chicago, would quit taking Saudi money because of unacceptable demands.

"They wanted to tell me what to teach in the schools and what to use as curriculum," recalled W. Deen Mohammed, the former head of the association. "Our leaders won't accept that."

Others would assail the Saudis for publishing hate-filled books. One religious encyclopedia, published by a Saudi charity, called Jews "humanity's enemies; they foment immorality in this world."

Over time, the Saudis' freewheeling spending and strident beliefs made the kingdom vulnerable to criticism that it was systematically encouraging Islamic extremism.

And that made someone like Batterjee an increasingly logical target.

Ominous problems

When a despondent Batterjee left Afghanistan, it was by no means the end of his support for jihad. From 1992 to 2000, his charity collected twice as much in donations, opened offices in 10 nations and moved into several regions where Muslims were at war.

Bosnia-Herzegovina was the focus of this rapid growth, with Batterjee taking on a clear military role.

Beginning in 1992, after Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Serb nationalists started expelling and killing Bosnian Muslims and Croats in what became known as ethnic cleansing. Newspaper photographs of starving Muslims in concentration camps evoked images of the Holocaust and sparked worldwide outrage.

Like other Islamic charities, Batterjee's group helped Muslim refugees and orphans. But it also provided boots, uniforms and walkie-talkies to units of the Bosnian army, including the Black Swans, an elite Islamic fighting force that prayed daily and barred alcohol and swearing.

On one occasion, U.S. government filings state, Batterjee handpicked six fighters and ordered them sent from Croatia into neighboring Bosnia.

Overseeing the charity's operations in Bosnia was a familiar figure: Enaam Arnaout, Batterjee's right-hand man. He helped transport many Arab men pouring into the Balkans to join the fight. Some injured fighters were flown all the way to Jiddah to be treated at Saudi German Hospitals, run by the Batterjee family.

With Batterjee's charity growing, he increasingly looked to America for money. In 1992, he decided to open a fundraising office in the Chicago area, home to several hundred thousand Muslims. He filed state incorporation papers and changed the name of his charity to Benevolence International Foundation.

But with rapid growth came problems, some of them ominous.

In the spring of 1993, as part of a wider crackdown on extremists, Saudi authorities brought Batterjee in for questioning and closed his charity's headquarters in Jiddah.

Exactly why the Saudis were concerned about Batterjee remains unclear, but Sudan appeared to play a role. The African nation had become a haven for Osama bin Laden, by now one of the biggest critics of the Saudi royal family. And Batterjee had opened an office in Sudan shortly after bin Laden had moved there.

About the same time he was questioned in Saudi Arabia, Batterjee removed his name from the charity's U.S. paperwork. Arnaout went to the Chicago area to manage the entire charity from there, working out of a rented office in suburban Palos Hills.

With Arnaout now officially in charge, Batterjee was forced to oversee operations from behind the scenes, U.S. government documents and interviews show. Arnaout kept him abreast of developments, faxed him important documents and instructed employees not to offer outsiders information about the Saudi financier.

Charity officials also became uneasy about the increasing gap between their stated mission and their actual activities.

While the charity's public literature implied that it was strictly a relief group, one internal record said that "from its first day, [the charity] aimed to support jihad and mujahedeen." Another said the mission was "to make Islam supreme on this Earth."

One top charity official, Suleman Ahmer, feared that the organization was misleading donors. In a 1999 e-mail message to director Arnaout, he complained that the group was claiming that 100 percent of a special fund was going to orphans when the figure was actually much lower.

The statement was dishonest, he said, and he did not agree with what Batterjee had "taught" Arnaout about such practices. "May Allah forgive him," he wrote.

Despite the concerns, Batterjee's charity continued to prosper, collecting $3.3 million in donations in 2000--more than ever before.

Then came 9/11.

Mounting pressure

Patrick Fitzgerald had just arrived on a flight from New York to Chicago when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were struck. He hurried to his hotel room, turned on the television and watched the second tower fall.

Fitzgerald was only one week into his job as the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He had earned a reputation in New York as an aggressive federal prosecutor with a superb memory and a fierce work ethic. After helping win convictions in the 1993 World Trade Center attack and the 1998 African embassy bombings, he was viewed by many as the nation's top expert on Islamic terrorism.

As much as Sept. 11 horrified him, he said he would not personally try a case in Chicago for a year so he could focus on his administrative duties. But in the ensuing weeks, with the nation's attention increasingly focused on terrorism, he decided to take on Batterjee's organization.

The charity was not unknown to U.S. authorities. The FBI had picked through its garbage as early as 1999, and a 1996 CIA report said Batterjee's group and 14 other Islamic relief organizations "employ members or otherwise facilitate the activities of terrorist groups operating in Bosnia."

U.S. authorities also had been concerned about Saudi charities in general, traveling to the kingdom in 1999 and 2000 to urge the Saudi government to curb the groups. But the Saudis did little, and the United States did not push the matter because of a long political understanding: America would defend the kingdom militarily and not meddle in its internal affairs if the Saudis remained a loyal oil supplier and Middle East ally.

When Fitzgerald began poring over documents in the Batterjee case, he recognized some of the same names from his previous terrorism investigations: Salim. Bayazid. Khalifa. "Those names jumped off the page," he recalled.

With the heat on Muslim militants, managers at Batterjee's charity started scrambling.

One e-mailed Arnaout in November 2001 to say that about half of the charity's expenditures in Bosnia were not on the books and that he feared authorities would find out.

Arnaout decided to handle the problem in person, but shortly after he left for Bosnia, federal agents raided his home in suburban Justice and the charity office in Palos Hills. The U.S. also froze the charity's assets.

He flew back to the United States, and soon after, Bosnian agents raided his apartment and several other homes there.

Arnaout phoned his top aide in Bosnia to assess the extent of the latest raids. "Have they come to your house?" Arnaout asked, according to U.S. transcripts of secretly recorded conversations.

The aide answered yes.

"And your father's house?"

"Yes."

"And your mother's house?"

"Yes."

"And your in-laws' house?"

"Everyone."

In a call to his brother, Arnaout said he feared U.S. officials were trying to determine whether the charity was linked to anyone in Saudi Arabia. And much to Arnaout's consternation, Batterjee persisted in wiring money from the kingdom.

"By God, he does not understand me," Arnaout told his brother. "It appears he is becoming senile a little bit sometimes."

Weary and frightened, Arnaout was not sure what to do. In a phone conversation, Batterjee suggested that Arnaout move to Saudi Arabia.

But it was too late. On April 30, 2002, Arnaout was arrested.

Connecting the dots

That fall, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft arrived in Chicago to announce terrorism charges against Arnaout--the first time in a decade that an attorney general had come to the city to announce an indictment.

Before a packed news conference at the Dirksen Federal Building, Ashcroft and Fitzgerald said Arnaout had spent at least 10 years funneling charity money to bin Laden's terrorist network, Al Qaeda, and to other armed groups.

Ashcroft pointed to "an archive of incriminating documents," including a purported list of donors and fundraisers for Afghan fighters. The name appearing most on the list of fundraisers was bin Laden. Next was Batterjee.

But for the time being, authorities named Batterjee only as an unindicted co-conspirator.

When Fitzgerald began piecing together the evidence, he saw a charity that had many contacts with alleged members of Al Qaeda's network. One alleged member once headed the charity's office in Chechnya; another traveled to Bosnia under the guise of being a charity director.

But as the court case progressed, it became increasingly clear that Fitzgerald was having trouble connecting the dots.

One link Fitzgerald cited involved Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, the friend of Batterjee's who participated in the Afghan-Soviet war. In a news release, Fitzgerald pointed to an FBI affidavit that linked Khalifa to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and other terrorist plots.

The main evidence the prosecutor offered tying Khalifa to Batterjee's charity was that several years before, someone in the charity's Palos Hills office called a telephone number that was, according to the affidavit and news release, "associated" with Khalifa.

While Fitzgerald viewed this example and others as solid evidence, the judge handling the case did not. She made several rulings that indicated the case was not going in the prosecutor's favor.

Fitzgerald decided to cut a deal. Arnaout agreed to plead guilty to a racketeering charge, admitting he had defrauded donors by diverting almost $316,000 to fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya. In return, prosecutors dropped the terrorism count--ending the only U.S. terrorism charge brought against a top official of a Saudi charity.

Arnaout was sentenced to 11 years in prison. At a news conference afterward, Fitzgerald did not mention the man who was truly in charge of the charity: Batterjee.

`A touchy subject'

Forty-five minutes north of Jiddah, just off a long desert highway, is Sultana's, a large outdoor fish restaurant with neon signs, small fountains and kiddie rides. It is run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, whom Fitzgerald characterized as a prominent terrorist operative linked to Batterjee's charity.

On this night, Khalifa greets diners, monitors the kitchen and sits down to the house specialty: barbecued parrotfish. He mocks U.S. authorities for their unproven accusations against Batterjee and himself.

"They don't like to admit they are mistaken," he says. "They don't like to accept all the evidence in the world."

Since Sept. 11, the United States has frozen the assets of 20 Islamic charities worldwide, but only one other Saudi charity besides Batterjee's has been affected: Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, one of the larger relief organizations in the kingdom. The assets of eight of its offices have been frozen.

The Saudis say they have audited all of their charities, banned them from sending money abroad and closed Al-Haramain offices.

One person who has faced increased scrutiny since Sept. 11 is Batterjee. At the request of the United States, Saudi officials interviewed him several times and checked his bank accounts and wire transfers, according to Adel Al-Jubeir, spokesman for Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler.

Nothing improper was found, the Saudi spokesman said. "Why do you want us to convict someone who you . . . don't have evidence on?"

Today, Batterjee lives in Jiddah in a large white house surrounded by palm trees, flowering bushes and a 6-foot-high wall. A gold plaque next to the iron gates says: "The home of Adel Al-Jalil Batterjee."

His charity activities have been curtailed, with Arnaout in prison and the U.S. Treasury holding the group's assets. Batterjee, 58, spoke only briefly to the Tribune, saying, "This is a touchy subject, and there are a lot of things you don't know about."

In his 2002 book, Batterjee writes that the West is morally corrupt and that its war on terrorism is just an excuse to try to stop Muslims from spreading Islam. He says Muslims have tried to peacefully expand Islam throughout the world, but those attempts have always met armed opposition. So Muslims have a right to fight back.

More and more clashes with the West are inevitable, he writes, predicting that they will culminate in a final military encounter. "Does any doubt remain that the great confrontation . . . is certainly coming?"

- - -

Saudi philanthropist's aid to Muslim fighters

Adel Batterjee, a wealthy businessman in Saudi Arabia, founded a charity in the mid-1980s that became Benevolence International Foundation. The charity has provided food, shelter and medicine for needy Muslims around the world. It also has supported Muslim fighters in several nations, according to documents and interviews.

ADEL BATTERJEE

Adel Batterjee, a wealthy businessman in Saudi Arabia, founded a charity in the mid-1980s that became Benevolence International

Foundation. The charity has provided food, shelter and medicine for needy Muslims around the world. It also has supported Muslim fighters in several nations, according to documents and interviews.

Age: 58

Profession: Businessman, author and philanthropist

Home: Jiddah, Saudi Arabia

- He has been an outspoken supporter of creating Islamic states--by force, if necessary.

- Batterjee incorporated Benevolence International Foundation in Illinois in 1992 and opened a fundraising office in Palos Hills the next year.

- The U.S. froze the charity's assets in December 2001, citing suspected links to terrorism, and Benevolence closed its doors several months later. The charity has denied any links to terrorism.

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

Early 1990s: During the Bosnian war, Batterjee's charity gives military supplies to the Black Swans, an elite Islamic unit of the Bosnian army. The charity also helps transport Muslim fighters from Afghanistan to Bosnia and flies injured soldiers to Saudi Arabia to be treated at a Batterjee family-owned hospital.

1992: Batterjee handpicks several soldiers for battle.

CHECHNYA

Mid-1990s: The charity establishes operations with the help of Batterjee's contacts with a top Islamic leader. The charity provides uniforms and anti-mine boots to Chechen rebels fighting the Russians.

1998: The charity hires Saif ul Islam to run its Chechnya operations. He is described by the U.S. government as a high-ranking Al Qaeda military commander, but he has not been charged.

AFGHANISTAN

1980s: During the Afghan-Soviet war, Batterjee and Osama bin Laden are among the top fundraisers for Muslim fighters, documents indicate.

Early 1990s: During the Afghan civil war, Batterjee helps finance the Mountain Camp, an Islamic military training center where he also inspects troops.

SUDAN

1991: Batterjee's charity aids bin Laden supporters who are training Sudanese soldiers to battle Christian rebels, according to court filings by Enaam Arnaout, Batterjee's right-hand man. The U.S. claims the charity followed bin Laden to Sudan specifically to aid Al Qaeda. Batterjee was chairman of Al Shamal Islamic Bank in the capital of Khartoum as recently as 2002. The U.S. alleges that years before Batterjee became chairman, bin Laden invested $50 million in the bank -- a claim the bank has denied.

Sources: Tribune reporting, court records

Chicago Tribune
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

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