Summary of American Caliph By Shahan Mufti: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of American Caliph By Shahan Mufti: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC

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Shahan Mufti's American Caliph tells the riveting true story of America's first homegrown Muslim terror attack. In 1977, seven men stormed the Washington, D.C., headquarters of B'nai B'rith International. The deadly standoff brought downtown Washington to a standstill.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215408117

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PROLOGUE

Seven men stormed the Washington, DC, headquarters of B'nai B'rith International. Attackers held more than one hundred people, mostly employees, hostage inside. Group's leader and spiritual master was a fifty-four-year-old man named Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. The issue of succession would eventually turn bloody and fracture Islamic civilization into Sunni and Shia. For the Hanafi Muslims of Washington, that man was Hamaas Abdul Khaalis.

A movie about the life of the Prophet Muhammad was to play in New York City that afternoon. The Hanafi Muslims stormed the District Building in downtown Washington, DC, just yards from the White House. A firefight broke out between the Hanafis and security. One guard was shot in the head and rushed to the hospital; a news reporter was killed. Carter directed the FBI to assist with the hostage situation.

The FBI code-named the crisis. DISTAK: District Takeover. The Hanafi headquarters was invaded by members of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. They left seven dead bodies inside the Hanafi MadhHab Center. The 1973 murders at the Hanafi Center made Khaalis a public figure.

In four years, The Washington Star and The Washington Post ran more than one hundred news stories about him. Most Americans were paying much closer attention to the news of Muslims in faraway lands. The Hanafi takeover of Washington remains, to this day, the largest hostage taking in American history and the first such attack by Muslims on American soil. The three-part synchronized attack that erupted in the heart of Washington, DC, on March 9, 1977, had been bubbling just under the surface for years. Hamaas Abdul Khaalis may have been acting under the Islamic title khalifa, but he, and his actions, were, above all, American. In a book published only months before the massacre in 1973, he was unequivocal about his feelings for America.

PART I

PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

On June 22, 1944, Hamaas Abdul Khaalis reported to the psychiatric ward of the Station Hospital at Fort Huachuca. It was a decisive moment in the war, and the 92nd was months away from deployment in Europe. The incentive to leave the army was greater that morning than ever before. Khaalis grew up in Gary, Indiana, on the southern tip of Lake Michigan. His father worked at the U.S.

Steel plant, which was the largest steel plant in the world at the time. Khaalis was preparing to go to college when he enlisted for World War II. His father was Sylvester McGhee, an authoritarian Seventh-day Adventist who had little tolerance for filth or messiness. Khaalis was a quiet, serious, and introverted loner who excelled at music. Purdue was not a welcoming place in the 1940s for a serious young Black man like Khaalis. He was one of only a handful of African Americans among the six thousand students.

At the end of his first semester he decided to volunteer for the military.