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The riveting true story of Americas first homegrown Muslim terror attack, the 1977 Hanafi siege of Washington, DC.
On March 9, 1977, Washington, DC, came under attack. Seven men stormed the headquarters of Bnai Brith International, quickly taking control of the venerable Jewish organizations building and holding more than a hundred employees hostage inside. A little over an hour later, three more men entered the Islamic Center of Washington, the countrys biggest and most important mosque, and took hostages there. Two others subsequently penetrated the municipal governments District Building, a few hundred yards from the White House. When the gunmen there opened fire, a reporter was killed, and city councilor Marion Barry, later to become the mayor of Washington, DC, was shot in the chest. The deadly standoff brought downtown Washington to a standstill.
The attackers belonged to the Hanafi movement, an African American Muslim group based in DC. Their leader was a former jazz drummer named Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, who had risen through the ranks of the Nation of Islam before feuding with the organizations mercurial chief, Elijah Muhammad, and becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbars spiritual authority. Like Malcolm X, Khaalis paid a price for his apostasy: in 1973, seven of his family members and followers were killed by Nation supporters in one of the Districts most notorious murders. As Khaalis and the hostage takers took control of their DC targets four years later, they vowed to begin killing their hostages unless their demands were met: the federal government must turn over the killers of Khaaliss family, the boxer Muhammad Ali, and Elijahs son Wallace so that they could face true justice. They also demanded that the American premiere ofMohammad: Messenger of Goda Hollywood epic about the life of the prophelă5
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