Word: abdullah
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...police checkpoints through roadless sand dunes and hills in an army of Land Cruisers with no license plates and tinted windows. They carry Glock pistols, AK-47s and even a few M-16s. "I'm a wanted man. We're all wanted men, and we're all armed," says Abdullah, a tunnel owner who sleeps in a different place every night and says he would rather die than be captured...
...That will be tough. Abdullah's entire history is mysterious. Also known as Christopher Thomas, Abdullah established a criminal record in the late 1970s, when he was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a Mobile, Ala., police officer. In 1981 he was convicted in Wayne County of felony assault and carrying a concealed weapon...
...Islam and became the local leader of a Muslim sect known as the Ummah. In court documents, federal authorities describe the Ummah as a "nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting mainly of African Americans" who converted from Christianity while serving prison sentences. The Ummah's national leader is Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, a militant civil rights-era figure once known as H. Rap Brown. In 2001, al-Amin was convicted of fatally shooting two Georgia police officers; he remains in a federal prison...
...Federal authorities began monitoring Detroit's Ummah in 2007, using informants inside the group's main mosque. In court documents, authorities portray Abdullah, 53, as a mesmerizing figure whose sermons frequently included anti-U.S.-government rhetoric. He allegedly called his flock to wage a violent "offensive jihad" rather than a "defensive jihad" and taught that "every Muslim should have a weapon and not be afraid to use their weapon when needed." In January 2009, when Detroit officials evicted the Ummah from its mosque for failure to pay property taxes, police found firearms, knives and martial-arts weapons inside Abdullah...
...Since the Abdullah case, there has been a quiet debate in the broader Islamic community about whether the Ummah can be considered authentically Muslim. Says Ibrahim Aljahim, a Yemeni-American leader: "Islam is a peaceful religion, while these terrorists are nonbelievers and hypocrites." Nevertheless, the cases of Adbullah and Abdulmutallab have prompted protests from a community fearful of undeserved scrutiny. Abdullah's funeral, at a black mosque in a hardscrabble Detroit neighborhood, drew Muslims of Yemeni and Somali origin. Abdullah is believed to be the first imam to be killed by American law-enforcement authorities - spurring growing concern about...