Detroit Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah Assassinated by FBI Agents

Pan-African News Wire editor, Abayomi Azikiwe, is also a broadcast journalist. He has hosted and co-hosted radio programs on five different stations since 1999. (Photo: Dale Rich).
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Detroit Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah Assassinated by FBI Agents in Dearborn

11 arrested on complaints while community expresses shock and disbelief at federal claims

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Detroit

A well known African American Islamic leader in Detroit who headed the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque on the city’s west side, was shot to death by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on October 28 at a warehouse in Dearborn. Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, was killed during the course of a series of raids by both federal agents and local police departments resulting in the arrests of 11 people.

Corporate media reports on the killing of Imam Abdullah and the arrests of the others, has been framed as a “counter-terrorism’ operation. This is being done despite the fact that the raids were conducted based on criminal complaints that have no specific allegations of violations of federal law or acts of terrorism.

In a joint statement issued by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, it states that “The eleven defendants are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years and known to be armed.”

However, many people who knew Imam Abdullah and the members of Masjid Al-Haqq say that the group worked to rid the severely oppressed community where the mosque existed of the social ills resulting from years of exploitation and neglect.

Even the mosque itself fell victim to the economic crisis that is worsening in Detroit. On January 20, Masjid Al-Haqq was evicted from the building where they had been housed for years as a result of tax foreclosure. The mosque relocated at a home on Clairmount which was also raided on October 28.

Dawud Walid, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Michigan chapter, said of Imam Abdullah that “I know him as a respected imam in the Muslim community.”

Walid continued by saying that “We have no information about illegal activity going on at that mosque. Of Imam Abdullah, Walid said he “would give the shirt off his back to people. The congregation he led was poor. He fed very hungry people in the neighborhood who were Christian. He helped and assisted a lot of troubled youth. People would come up to him who were hungry and he would let them sleep in the mosque. He would let them in from the elements.” (Detroit News, October 29, p. 15)

The CAIR leader said that “They have no linkage to terrorism nationally or internationally. What in the world does Islam have to do with these charges? Why is religion being brought into play?”

Resurrecting Cointelpro

Not only is the FBI and the corporate media utilizing the false construct of “Islamic extremism,” it is also attempting to draw a direct link between the revolutionary movements that emerged during the 1960s with the arrest of the Masjid Al-Haqq members and the death of Imam Abdullah.

Because of a close relationship between Imam Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, and Imam Abdullah during previous years, the role of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) have been evoked in news coverage of the FBI and police raids. Imam Al-Amin was a field organizer for SNCC and would later serve as national chairman of the civil rights and black power group in 1967-68.

Al-Amin, who is currently serving a life sentence in Georgia after being convicted in the death of a deputy sheriff and the wounding of another in Atlanta in 2000, also briefly held the position of Minister of Justice in the Black Panther Party during 1968. Imam Al-Amin served as SNCC chair during a period of extreme repression against the organization in 1967-68.

Al-Amin has always maintained his innocence in the deaths of the law-enforcement officers in Atlanta and has sought to win an appeal of his case for many years. Reports from the Georgia prison system where he is being held indicate that he has been harassed and placed in isolation on numerous occasions.

It was the organizing work of SNCC that was partly blamed by the FBI and the corporate media during 1967-68 for the urban rebellions that erupted in over two hundred cities. The Black Panther Party would suffer the brunt of the Counter Intelligence Program (Cointelpro) operations that were directed against the African American community.

Over two dozen members of the BPP were killed between 1968 and 1971 when former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had labeled the organization as the most dangerous threat to the national security of the United States. Hundreds of Panthers and other revolutionaries of the time were arrested and railroaded through the courts. Many others were driven into exile abroad and forced underground inside the United States.

According to the FBI complaint, which consist of 45 pages of highly spurious allegations, Abdullah “calls his followers to an offensive jihad” and that they should “have a weapon and should not be scared to use their weapon when needed.”

Nonetheless, David Nu’man, who lives in Detroit and considered Imam Abdullah a friend, stressed that he is very skeptical about the claims made against the Islamic leader and his followers. “It doesn’t seem to be of his character.” (Detroit News, October 29, p. 15)

Ron Scott, who was one of the founding members of the Detroit chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, spoke to the Pan-African News Wire about the death of Imam Abdullah and the arrests of the Masjid Al-Haqq members.

Scott, who is now the spokesperson for the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality and a media host on the locally broadcast “For My People” television show as well as the “Fighting for Justice” radio program aired every week, expressed disbelief at the allegations made against Abdullah and the others that were arrested.

“This reflects a standard of repression that we have not seen in a long time,” Scott told the Pan-African News Wire on October 29. “There should be an independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Imam Abdullah.”

The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) discussed the killing of Imam Abdullah at their weekly meeting held on October 28 in Detroit. In a telephone call to the offices of the Council of American-Islamic Relations on October 29, a MECAWI representative expressed the organization’s condolences and solidarity with the Islamic community.

MECAWI offered its support to any protest efforts geared towards seeking justice in the death of Imam Abdullah and the arrests of the other Muslim members of Masjid Al-Haqq. Walid, the executive director who took MECAWI’s call, expressed his appreciation for the sympathy and concern conveyed by the anti-war organization.

Backdrop to the death of Imam Abdullah

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, repression against the Islamic, Middle-Eastern and South Asian communities in the U.S. has escalated at an alarming rate. A number of people have been attacked and even killed in racist violence.

Many more people from these communities have been imprisoned unjustly and deported. A number of charitable organizations have been taken into court for allegedly funding “terrorist” groups and some have been forced to shut down by the U.S. government.

Even the CAIR has been targeted by these governmental efforts. In Texas during 2007, members of an Islamic charity were put on trial for supposedly funding Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Since conversion to the Islamic faith has been taking place within the African American community at a phenomenal rate over the last few decades, both the scrouge of anti-Islamic hysteria and racism has been utilized by the federal government to enhance the repressive apparatus in the United States. This pattern of surveillance, harassment and entrapment is utilized in a desperate attempt by Homeland Security and the Pentagon to build support for the ongoing wars of occupation against Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In addition to these Middle-Eastern and Asian nations, the countries of Sudan and Somalia on the African continent, which are predominantly Muslim, have also been focal points for U.S. imperialist intervention over the last several years. Many of the developing nations that have been identified by the U.S. imperialists for destabilization and occupation have majority Muslim populations of people of color.

Consequently, anti-war, civil rights and human rights organizations should view the current wave of repression against the Islamic community as having both a domestic and foreign policy objective. By demonizing the Islamic community, whether the Muslims are of African, Middle-Eastern or Asian descent, it provides a mechanism for the repressive apparatus of the state to justify the continuation and escalation of military involvement abroad.

At the same time, the increasing repression against the African American, Islamic, Latina/o and other working class communities inside the United States is designed to hamper the ability of people to organize against the growing economic crisis that is disproportionately affecting the oppressed people inside the domestic confines of the country.

Nonetheless, the fight against this wave of repression can potentially bring together workers and the oppressed from broad sections of the United States in alliance with the developing countries that are under increasing threat by U.S. imperialism.