(People's Weekly World was renamed to People's World and became online only, the article is now at https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/fbi-mosque-raid-sparks-united-outcry/)
FBI Mosque Raid Sparks United Outcry
by: Asad Ali
July 21 2006
People's Weekly World
PITTSBURGH — As the mostly African
American and Latino congregation was preparing for weekly Friday
prayers at Light of the Age mosque here on June 30, a dozen FBI
agents raided the building and lined up worshippers outside at
gunpoint. Agents ransacked the building and asked individuals
detailed personal questions, demonstrating intimate knowledge of
their private lives.
The agents had a warrant for a mosque
member over a parole violation, but he and his vehicle were already
seized outside hours before. Later a federal judge declared the man
was no threat and released him without bail. The formerly
incarcerated member had been pulled over in Utah for tinted windows.
Because he was “nervous” his van was searched, turning up pieces
of his wife’s permitted handgun. He was allowed to leave Utah and
spent the night at the mosque. The FBI also tried to charge a parole
violation in the State of Washington but the state wasn’t
interested.
The real target of the raid may have
been the unity of the local Muslim community and its allies. Over the
past years, foreign-born Muslims who were voluntarily interviewed by
the FBI noticed that African American mosques and personalities were
central to the FBI’s questions. The day after the raid, the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published erroneously that the mosque is not
part of the Islamic Council of Greater Pittsburgh, an umbrella group.
The prosecutor cited the article in court to justify the raid, and
sensationalized the alleged parole violations.
The raid and media coverage galvanized
the multiracial, multi-class Muslim community to respond. An
emergency outdoor leadership meeting was convened in a city park with
members of African American and foreign-born mosques.
A prescheduled cookout and piñata game
for the mosque’s working-class neighborhood was held with a high
turnout of support. A documentary crew making “The New Muslim Cool”
for PBS, about African American and Latino Muslim hip hop, was on
site.
It would take two weeks for the Islamic
Council to reach consensus, but the raided mosque and
African-American Muslim leaders organized an immediate response press
conference July 7.
A vacant lot next to the mosque was
packed with diverse supporters. Luqman Abdus-Salaam, the mosque
director who is also a hip-hop performer known as “B-Tree,” read
a statement asking why the FBI disrupted a community-service-oriented
multiracial mosque.
Tahir Abdullah, assistant director,
read a statement citing the FBI’s history of harassing African
Americans from the Muslim Alliance of North America (MANA), the
mosque’s national organization which is predominantly African
American in its makeup. Speakers from the foreign-born community and
the Nation of Islam also read solidarity statements. Leaders of civil
rights, economic justice and labor organizations were also present.
Khari Mosley, local Democratic Party
ward chair and League of Young Voters regional director, told
reporters the mosque is a community asset and asked why “we have a
war going on overseas, and poverty is escalating, yet we’re using
our resources to be Big Brother and to raid mosques in a police
state, Gestapo fashion?”