In 1977, gunmen led by a charismatic Muslim leader stormed three locations in Washington, D.C., taking more
than 100 people hostage. Journalist Shahan Mufti examines the incident in a new book.
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. When I first looked at the new book by our guest, journalist Shahan Mufti, I was amazed I had no memory of the events he describes, which occurred when I was in my 20s. In March 1977, nearly 150 people were taken hostage in Washington, D.C., by a group of gunmen who stormed three different locations - the headquarters of a prominent Jewish group, the Islamic Center of Washington and the offices of the District of Columbia city government, where a councilman named Marion Barry took a shotgun pellet in his chest and had to be hospitalized. The assault that led to a two-day standoff was orchestrated by a Hanafi Muslim leader named Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. Among other things, he was outraged by a movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, financed by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that was premiering that day in New York. The attack also grew out of a bitter and violent dispute between Khaalis' group and the Nation of Islam, which Khaalis had once been a leading member of.
Mufti spent seven years researching the events, and he describes them in riveting detail. Shahan Mufti is a veteran journalist who was born in the United States and raised both in the U.S. and Pakistan. He's been a reporter in the U.S. and overseas and is the author of "The Faithful Scribe," a book that's both a personal memoir and a history of modern Pakistan. He's currently chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Richmond. His new book is "American Caliph: The True Story Of A Muslim Mystic, A Hollywood Epic, And The 1977 Siege Of Washington, D.C."
This book is a must read for everyone wanting to have a clearer understanding of the evolving of Muslim or Islam in America.
The author has done a fantastic job in chronicling the history in America and connecting the dots. Things don't just happen, things are made to happen. It is impossible to un-ring a bell.
Washington Afro-American reporter Stephen Colter remembered that he and Maurice Williams spent their lunch hour last Wednesday discussing one of Williams' deepest concerns - the role of a black journalist.
Both Williams, a 24-year-old reporter for WHUR radio news, and Colter covered the District government for small, predominantly black audiences and they debated whether it would be right for them to move to better paying jobs with wider audiences at white-owned newspapers and broadcast stations.
"He had decided that communications was it," recalled another friend of Williams, Drexel Yarborough, who had known him since childhood. "It was his effort to reach up by reaching within for the truth. He wanted to move faster, and was just getting to the point where he was really growing."
Williams and Colter never reached any conclusions during their luncheon discussion. They walked back to the District Building for a press conference in the City Council chairman's office. Just after they stepped out of the elevator on the fifth floor, the doors of the City Council offices swung open, a shotgun was fired and Williams, shot in the chest, spun around and fell.
"I keep hearing him say that last thing," Colter recalled. "He said, 'I'm shot.' He was just dead. It was no more Maurice."
Colter was among nearly 800 persons who joined Williams' parents, three brothers and other family members yesterday to mourn the death of the one person killed during last week's 36-hour armed takeover of the District Building by two Hanafi Muslims. Also in attendance at Turner Memorial AME Church at 6th and I Streets NW were Mayor Walter E. Washington, the entire City Council, D.C. Delegate Walter Fauntroy, coworkers from WHUR and other news media, and Iranian Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi, who helped negotiate an end to the Hanafi siege.
The frony of Williams' death, many of his friends said, was that Williams' brief life had been marked by conditions quite opposite of those that brought it to an end.
"The only violence in Maurice's life was the violence he saw and tried to stop. The most he had time to do was love," said Drexel Yarborough, whose friendship with Williams began in kindergarten at Whittier Elementary School in Northwest Washington. "Maurice was brillant enough to have an ever-listening ear, and that warranted his having something to say as a journalist."
Williams grew up in a neighborhood that was "middle class, but but not white collar necessarily," according to schoolmate Yarborough. Many of the residents were federal employees like Maurice's parents, Lillie and Otto Williams.
He was just entering kindergarten when, during the early 1950s, the family moved to the house in the 600 block of Somerset Street NW.
"When we first went to kindergarten there were three or four blacks" in the neighborhood, Yarborough remembered. By the time they entered high school, the area, like many Washington neighborhoods and the city itself, had undergone a racial reversal.
"There were some rough times. It went from peaceful to volatile to stable. Our parents did not even want us to walk from house to house by ourselves," during the years of change, Yarborough said.
Young Williams' education was in the settings of Whittier Elementary, Paul Junior High, and Coolidge High Schools. All were within blocks of the Williams' home - a home that encouraged and sheltered its four sons without smothering.
"I believe in an open home, I always wanted my children to do what would make them happy," Lillie Williams said last week.
At Coolidge, amidst the usual adolescent groupings that tell much about where a person came from and where he is going, Maurice was "with the in crowd, but not a hoodlum," remembered schoolmate Kevin Dennis, a City Council employee who was among those trapped by the gunmen for a day and a half.
Today’s post is from anEbony Magazinearticle published in 1953 that explored the growing popularity of Islam among Black American jazz artists. The article provides a window into the important connection between jazz and the spread of Islam among Black Americans from the 1940s onward — especially for those who identified with Sunni Muslim communities or the Ahmadiyya movement. It centers around the saxophonist Lynn Hope (also known as El Hajj Abdullah Rasheed Ahmad), who served as a leader and teacher of a Sunni Muslim community in Philadelphia that was affiliated with thehistoric Adenu Allahe Universal Arabic Association founded by Profe.... A few other iconic be bop jazz artists are also mentioned including Art Blakey and Ahmad Jamal, both members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community. The piece highlights Islam’s appeal as a potential antidote for the evils of white supremacy, anti-Black racism and racial oppression. The author recounts how Black Muslim jazz musicians like Hope and his band used their religious identity to subvert the discriminatory policies of segregation in the South. They were able to “pass” since Arabs and “Eastern peoples” were often designated as white in segregationist America. This was attractive to some, as it indicated one’s ability to reconnect to an affirming history and cultural identity, countering “any sense of inferiority as a Negro” as the article puts it. By allowing Black artists to pass, Islam also offered a potentially powerful survival tool.
Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص
In 1977, gunmen led by a charismatic Muslim leader stormed three locations in Washington, D.C., taking more
than 100 people hostage. Journalist Shahan Mufti examines the incident in a new book.
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. When I first looked at the new book by our guest, journalist Shahan Mufti, I was amazed I had no memory of the events he describes, which occurred when I was in my 20s. In March 1977, nearly 150 people were taken hostage in Washington, D.C., by a group of gunmen who stormed three different locations - the headquarters of a prominent Jewish group, the Islamic Center of Washington and the offices of the District of Columbia city government, where a councilman named Marion Barry took a shotgun pellet in his chest and had to be hospitalized. The assault that led to a two-day standoff was orchestrated by a Hanafi Muslim leader named Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. Among other things, he was outraged by a movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad, financed by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that was premiering that day in New York. The attack also grew out of a bitter and violent dispute between Khaalis' group and the Nation of Islam, which Khaalis had once been a leading member of.
Mufti spent seven years researching the events, and he describes them in riveting detail. Shahan Mufti is a veteran journalist who was born in the United States and raised both in the U.S. and Pakistan. He's been a reporter in the U.S. and overseas and is the author of "The Faithful Scribe," a book that's both a personal memoir and a history of modern Pakistan. He's currently chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Richmond. His new book is "American Caliph: The True Story Of A Muslim Mystic, A Hollywood Epic, And The 1977 Siege Of Washington, D.C."
Full article: 'American Caliph' revisits one of the most dramatic hostage crises ...
1973 Hanafi Muslim massacre - Wikipedia
American Caliph... Hamaas Abdul Khaalis
Jan 4, 2023
Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص
Maurice Williams WHUR Reporter
Friends Eulogize Newsman Slain in Hanafi Siege
Washington Afro-American reporter Stephen Colter remembered that he and Maurice Williams spent their lunch hour last Wednesday discussing one of Williams' deepest concerns - the role of a black journalist.
Both Williams, a 24-year-old reporter for WHUR radio news, and Colter covered the District government for small, predominantly black audiences and they debated whether it would be right for them to move to better paying jobs with wider audiences at white-owned newspapers and broadcast stations.
"He had decided that communications was it," recalled another friend of Williams, Drexel Yarborough, who had known him since childhood. "It was his effort to reach up by reaching within for the truth. He wanted to move faster, and was just getting to the point where he was really growing."
Williams and Colter never reached any conclusions during their luncheon discussion. They walked back to the District Building for a press conference in the City Council chairman's office. Just after they stepped out of the elevator on the fifth floor, the doors of the City Council offices swung open, a shotgun was fired and Williams, shot in the chest, spun around and fell.
"I keep hearing him say that last thing," Colter recalled. "He said, 'I'm shot.' He was just dead. It was no more Maurice."
Colter was among nearly 800 persons who joined Williams' parents, three brothers and other family members yesterday to mourn the death of the one person killed during last week's 36-hour armed takeover of the District Building by two Hanafi Muslims. Also in attendance at Turner Memorial AME Church at 6th and I Streets NW were Mayor Walter E. Washington, the entire City Council, D.C. Delegate Walter Fauntroy, coworkers from WHUR and other news media, and Iranian Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi, who helped negotiate an end to the Hanafi siege.
The frony of Williams' death, many of his friends said, was that Williams' brief life had been marked by conditions quite opposite of those that brought it to an end.
"The only violence in Maurice's life was the violence he saw and tried to stop. The most he had time to do was love," said Drexel Yarborough, whose friendship with Williams began in kindergarten at Whittier Elementary School in Northwest Washington. "Maurice was brillant enough to have an ever-listening ear, and that warranted his having something to say as a journalist."
Williams grew up in a neighborhood that was "middle class, but but not white collar necessarily," according to schoolmate Yarborough. Many of the residents were federal employees like Maurice's parents, Lillie and Otto Williams.
He was just entering kindergarten when, during the early 1950s, the family moved to the house in the 600 block of Somerset Street NW.
"When we first went to kindergarten there were three or four blacks" in the neighborhood, Yarborough remembered. By the time they entered high school, the area, like many Washington neighborhoods and the city itself, had undergone a racial reversal.
"There were some rough times. It went from peaceful to volatile to stable. Our parents did not even want us to walk from house to house by ourselves," during the years of change, Yarborough said.
Young Williams' education was in the settings of Whittier Elementary, Paul Junior High, and Coolidge High Schools. All were within blocks of the Williams' home - a home that encouraged and sheltered its four sons without smothering.
"I believe in an open home, I always wanted my children to do what would make them happy," Lillie Williams said last week.
At Coolidge, amidst the usual adolescent groupings that tell much about where a person came from and where he is going, Maurice was "with the in crowd, but not a hoodlum," remembered schoolmate Kevin Dennis, a City Council employee who was among those trapped by the gunmen for a day and a half.
Full article: Friends Eulogize Newsman Slain in Hanafi Siege - The Washington Post
Jan 4, 2023
Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص
Jan 4, 2023
Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص
Blacks Islamic History (blackislamichistory.blogspot.com)
Jan 7, 2023
Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص
Jan 8, 2023
Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص
Kofi Bilal Mahmud Eid AlFitr 1443 A.H.
Kofi Bilal Mahmud
Executive Director
Oppressed Peoples Online Word
Support OPOW: OPOW Needs Your Support - Oppressed Peoples Online Word...The Voice...
The Voice Of The Voiceless... A People Without A Voice Can Not Be Heard...
Paypal: jabal51@hotmail.com
Or Cashapp: $bilal1370
Mail: Little Deep Creek LLC
P.O. Box 1241
Conley, Ga. 30288
Support OPOW Today...An Appeal From The Executive Director Bilal Ma...
Thank you from all of us here at OPOW
Jan 8, 2023