Sheik Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, leader of Jamaat Al-Fuqra, made frequent recruitment visits to the U.S., often seeking African-American converts to Islam. After Gilani founded Muslims of the Americas in Brooklyn 20 years ago, his followers fanned out to rural areas in New York, Virginia and Colorado to practice their religion. In 1992, Colorado SWAT teams raided a Muslims of the Americas settlement near Buena Vista, Colo., searching for evidence of workers' compensation fraud. Instead, they found evidence linking members to the firebombing of a Hare Krishna temple in Denver and the stabbing death of Rashad Khalifa, a controversial Muslim cleric in Tucson.
For "a religion of peace" these guys sure go in for contention and killing. |