Word: omar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...world has felt the power of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman's words before. In 1980 youthful members of a militant fundamentalist group in Egypt called Jihad (Holy War) were secretly forming a new cell and sought out their spiritual leader for guidance. What, they asked the sheik, would be the fate of a ruler who ignored the law of God? Abdel Rahman's reply: "Death...
...started to smoke, but never once lit a cigarette in front of his stern father, a powerful weight lifter who would have disapproved. As a teenager, Abouhalima began to hang around with members of the outlawed al- Jama'a Islamiyya, or Islamic Group, which considered the blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman its spiritual guide...
...time he returned from Afghanistan in July 1990, Abouhalima was in his radical prime. (Sheik Omar arrived the same month, probably by coincidence.) Neighbors recall Abouhalima wearing fatigues and army boots. He reportedly joined several future defendants at a rifle range in a Connecticut forest, where they wore traditional Muslim clothing, knelt repeatedly in prayer -- and practiced shooting AK-47 rifles from the hip. While Abouhalima regularly moved his family to different dwellings in New York and New Jersey, his spiritual life revolved around two mosques in working-class immigrant neighborhoods: Abu Bakr in Brooklyn and al-Salam in Jersey...
...recalls that many listeners were Egyptian expatriates, like Abouhalima, who had undergone college training for a profession but were forced to take menial jobs in America. Some felt demeaned. Most were alienated, lonely, and suffered from guilt at having abandoned Egypt. "It was easy for a speaker like Sheik Omar to exploit those feelings," says the observer, "and that is exactly what he was doing...
...bodyguard and driver, a fact that Abouhalima has confirmed to the New York Times despite the sheik's claim that he doesn't know the man. The sheik's sponsor in America was Shalabi, Abouhalima's boss at the Afghan recruitment center in Brooklyn. Before long, Shalabi and Sheik Omar became entangled in a struggle for leadership of the Muslim circle. In March 1991 Shalabi was found shot and stabbed to death on the floor of his apartment...