Word: sheiks
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Salem was part of the inner circle around Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind, fiery Egyptian cleric who has been spiritual mentor both to the accused World Trade Center bombers and to members of the new ring. In fact Salem served for a time as Abdel Rahman's bodyguard. He is said to have turned informant partly for money (the FBI reportedly has recommended that he be given a $250,000 bonus for his help), but largely because he thought terrorist killings were betraying, not furthering, the cause of Islam and were likely to prompt a worldwide backlash against Muslims...
Otherwise, though, the two groups seemed to be connected only tangentially, through Sheik Abdel Rahman. Members of both groups worshipped at the Jersey City, New Jersey, mosque where Abdel Rahman preaches fiery sermons. Mahmud Abouhalima, an alleged member of the World Trade Center gang, once served as Abdel Rahman's driver. Siddig Ali was Abdel Rahman's interpreter...
...however, has yet alleged that Abdel Rahman gave either group any actual directions. The FBI did get a court order allowing it to record some conversations between Abdel Rahman and members of the ring broken up last week. Some agents then wanted to arrest the sheik, and prepared an affidavit in support. The debate on whether to order the arrest went all the way to Attorney General Janet Reno. The consensus of superiors who reviewed the document and the evidence it contained, however, was that the agency just did not have enough to link Abdel Rahman to the plot...
...optimistic about the future, on either side. He sees Americans clinging to their Arab stereotypes -- the fat grasping sheik, the crazy fundamentalist bomber. Meanwhile, "most Arabs today, including cultivated ones, have no hope of any kind of cultural exchange between them and the West. The mood is so desperate. The fundamentalist movement is in a sense an act of desperation: 'The West won't listen to us, so we turn away from them.' That's the most discouraging thing, to me -- the wholesale condemnation of America and the West, without trying to discover that America is a very contradictory, various...
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