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http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2005/10/jamaat-ul-fuqra-in-virginia-part-1.html
A related link regarding UK:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2005/10/england-begins-to-fight-back.html
One guy's journey:
Monday, October 10, 2005
Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia, Part 1
During the Beltway Sniper crisis, back in the fall of 2002, a series of articles in The Washington Times described John Allen Muhammads conversion to Islam, and his later break with the Nation of Islam (the articles are no longer available, but extracts have been preserved here). Apparently the NOI was not militant enough for Mr. Muhammad, and he left it to become involved with a group called Jamaat ul-Fuqra (Arabic for community of the impoverished), a terrorist organization founded by a notorious Pakistani cleric, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani.
What drew my eye in the article was the mention of a Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound in Red House, Virginia. Red House?! I know Red House a small village in rural Charlotte County.
Red House, Va.
Red House, Va.
Ever since then Ive been curious to know more about the Red House compound. This past Saturday afternoon, carrying a digital camera and a great apprehension about possible encounters with some reportedly very dangerous people, I drove up there.
But first: some background on Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The group was founded in New York by Sheikh Gilani in New York in 1980. Its current headquarters is in Hancock, New York, and it has various compounds, or Jamaats, scattered throughout the United States and Canada, notably in Colorado, New York, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia. Most of the adherents are reported to be American-born Black Muslims who follow a strict Islamist ideology.
Sheikh Gilani, you may remember, is the cleric with whom Daniel Pearl had arranged an interview back in January of 2002. Unfortunately, Mr. Pearl was betrayed by his sources, and then abducted and beheaded. Sheikh Gilani was arrested later that month and languishes in Pakistani custody.
So this is the kind of people we are dealing with here. They launder money, smuggle firearms, plan and carry out assassinations and bombings, and conduct intense Islamist indoctrination, including inside American prisons.
According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal:
The JF, in its early phase, sought to counter what is perceived as excessive Western influence on Islam. It also concluded that violence was a significant aspect in its quest to purify Islam. In its ideological moorings, the Fuqra regards as enemies of Islam all those who do not follow the tenets of Islam as laid out in the Koran, including those Muslims who they consider as heretics as well as non-Muslims. One of Gilanis works published by the Quranic Open University in the US and seized in a 1991-investigation instructed his cadres that their foremost duty was to wage Jehad against the oppressors of Muslims. Members of the group are described as Islamist extremists with much hatred toward their enemies.
Fuqra members were actively conducting jihad operations across North America in the 80s and 90s:
In the 1980s, they carried out various terrorist acts, including numerous fire-bombings across the United States. JFs early targets in North America were ethnic Indians and targets linked to various Indian sects. In July 1983, Stephen Paul Paster, a front ranking JF member, was responsible for planting a pipe bomb at a Portland hotel owned by followers of the Bhagwan Rajneesh cult. After his arrest in Colorado, Paster served four years of a 20-year prison sentence for the bombing
After the Portland bombing, two Fuqra cadres allegedly killed Mozaffar Ahmad, a leader of the minority Ahmadiyyah sect in Canton, Michigan. Both the suspects reportedly perished in a fire they had set at the Ahmadiyyah mosque in nearby Detroit. The JF is also reported to have been involved in the killing of three Indians on August 1, 1984 in a suburb of Tacoma, Washington. Besides, the JF is suspected to be involved in a series of fire bombings of Hindu and Hare Krishna temples in Seattle, Denver, Philadelphia and Kansas City.
US officials in 1989, during a search of a storage locker in Colorado Springs, recovered a large cache of armaments and documents with multiple links to the JF The documents, including maps and lists, contained details of potential JF targets and victims in Los Angeles, Arizona and Coloradooil and gas installations and electrical facilities, US. Air Force Academy and other military sites, people in 12 US states and Canada with Jewish or Hindu-sounding names. Various JF publications were seized during this search. Titles of some of the publications seized included "Guerrilla Warfare", "Counter Guerrilla Operations", "Understanding Amateur Radio", and "Fair Weather Flying," and "Basic Blueprint Reading and Sketching."
In 1991, JFs plans to bomb an Indian cinema and a Hindu temple near Toronto were unsuccessful. Five JF cadres were arrested at the Niagara Falls border crossing after US Customs agents searched their cars and found visual evidence and plans of the interiors of the targets and a description of time bombs
In the 1990s, JF was more often than not operating under the guise of two front groups, Muslims of the Americas and Quranic Open University. The latter portrayed itself as a religious and charitable educational institution dedicated to studying the Quran.
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One of the persons convicted in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 was Clement Rodney Hampton-el, a Fuqra member. JF was linked in a Congressional testimony to the planning of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
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A media report has indicated that the JF is also being probed for links with Richard Reid, a Briton, accused of trying to use explosives in his shoes to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner on December 22, 2001.
A Defense Watch article in 2002 outlines the activities of the Red House compound:
Surveillance reports of the compounds note that the residents remain in a fluid state and are continuously on the move. For the past several years, law enforcement authorities observing the Red House, VA compound have voiced concern that this pattern may be designed to create a series of safe houses in the rural areas of southern Virginia.
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The Red House, Va., compound was under surveillance by law enforcement prior to the 9/11 attacks for stockpiling weapons. Three members of the compound, including leader Vincente Pierre and his wife Tracy Upshur, were later arrested for illegal arms purchases.
A February 2002 article in The Daily Excelsior of India reported that
Muslims of the Americas operates communes of mostly black, American-born Muslims in Binghamton, New York; Badger California; York, South Carolina; and Red House, Virginia, law enforcement officials said. But there are also some non-Muslims in the group.
The money laundering scheme in Virginia, officials said, is similar to a 101-acre Colorado operation that was shut down in 1993.
Five Al-Fuqra members were convicted there of defrauding the Government of approximately 350,000 dollars through bogus workers compensation claims.
But the most alarming aspect of ul-Fuqra is its propensity for violent and radical jihad:
Doug Wamsley, a deputy district attorney in Jeferson county, Colorado, who participated in raiding the 101-acre commune in Colorado, said the initial search of the commune turned up bombs, weapons and plans for terrorist atacks.
"When we executed our search warrants," he said, "we found a cave with 30 firearms in it. Most of those firearms were military knockoffs, like AK-47s. We also found ammunition6000 rounds."
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So this is all I knew as I drove through Rustburg toward Red House on a gloomy Saturday afternoon....
A related link regarding UK:
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2005/10/england-begins-to-fight-back.html
