U.S. citizen on no-fly list discusses being stranded in Egypt and talks with FBI

Fairfax man finally returns to U.S. after being put on no-fly list in Cairo

After traveling to Yemen to find love and learn Arabic, Yahya Wehelie was stranded in Cairo for six weeks when the FBI put him on a no-fly list.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

By Ian Shapira

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 27, 2010; B01


Yahye Wehelie, 26, born and raised in Fairfax County, was supposed to have been home this spring, telling friends and family about his 18-month stay in Yemen: the technology classes, his quest for a Muslim bride, the wedding and reception that featured a DJ playing music by Michael Jackson and Celine Dion.

Instead, while on his way home in early May, Wehelie was stopped while changing planes in Cairo. It turns out he had been placed on the U.S. government's no-fly list. From that moment until last weekend, Wehelie, a graduate of Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, was stranded in Egypt, shuttling between a $16-a-night Cairo hotel room and a windowless room at the U.S. Embassy. There, he said, FBI special agents fed him Oreos and chips and told him he might never see Virginia again.

In his first extensive interview since his return home July 17, Wehelie said the FBI peppered him with questions about possible ties to terrorists. In about six exhausting sessions over his 11 weeks in Egypt, agents made Wehelie log his daily activities dating back several months. They asked whether he was a "devout" Muslim. They probed about connections he might have to Islamic radicals, including Sharif Mobley, an alleged al-Qaeda recruit from New Jersey whom Wehelie met on a street in Yemen.

And then their tone changed, morphing into entreaties to help protect his native land: Might Wehelie consider being a mole in the Muslim community when he got home?

"I've lived in Virginia my whole life," Wehelie said, dressed in loose jeans and a striped Ralph Lauren shirt. "I listen to rap. I play basketball. I watch football. I wasn't brought up the way these crazy people [terrorists] are brought up. I just want to live on with my life. I don't want to be an informant. I want to work for an IT company. I want to be a normal person."

Wehelie -- who says he was in Yemen because his mother sent him to learn Arabic and find a Muslim wife -- sees his experience as what could be described as a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he agonized for weeks over how to prove that he was no threat to his native land. But the government says it must maintain a tight watch over those who may have had contact with known terrorists, and Yemen has been a special point of concern in law enforcement circles of late.

Since Christmas, when a Nigerian man who had trained in Yemen tried to blow up an airplane landing in Detroit, about 30 Muslim Americans have been restricted from leaving, returning to or traveling within the United States, according to a log kept by the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.

"Several recent high-profile attempted terror plots against U.S. targets, including the attempted Christmas Day attack and the Times Square incident, remind us of the need to remain vigilant and thoroughly investigate every lead to fend off any potential threats," said Paul Bresson, an FBI spokesman, who declined to address Wehelie's case specifically. "The American public correctly demands that of us."

Bresson said the "FBI is always careful to protect the civil rights and privacy concerns of all Americans. . . . We are very mindful of the fact that our success in enforcing the law depends on partnerships with the Muslim community and many other communities."

Federal prosecutors in Alexandria and the FBI are still investigating Wehelie, according to his attorney, Tom Echikson. The family met Thursday with government officials, but Echikson would not discuss the talks. He said he is trying to get Wehelie removed from the no-fly list.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S attorney's office in Alexandria, said he could not confirm or deny any investigation into Wehelie's activities.

Wehelie's parents, Shamsa Noor and Abdirizak Wehelie -- Somali immigrants who studied at the University of the District of Columbia -- said they had been worried about the second-oldest of their six children, who they thought seemed adrift.

Yahye Wehelie had dropped out of Norfolk State University. By 2008, when he was working as a DHL delivery man, his parents urged him to learn Arabic so he could launch a more lucrative career and maybe find a Muslim wife.

Wehelie, who likes playing Xbox video games and reading Slam and Sports Illustrated magazines, pushed back.

"I was thinking, no, I didn't want to do it. . . . I didn't need to go to a foreign country to learn no foreign language," he said. "I was scared. I went on YouTube to see some clips of Yemen and didn't like what I had seen. I was like, man, this place is in the Stone Ages. I got mad. I actually got depressed.

"How could I match up with someone in Yemen?" Wehelie remembered complaining. "They won't understand American culture. I was going to have to man up."

In October 2008, Wehelie boarded a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight from Dulles and was soon ensconced in Yemeni society. He enrolled at Lebanese International University in Sanaa, the capital. He rented a one-bedroom apartment, played basketball and visited Internet cafes. Soon, he found a bride, a Somali refugee a few years his junior. Maryam was the sister of a friend of a friend -- a nurse.

He thought she was cute. They both liked spaghetti and walks in the park. More important, she made him curious about his Somali heritage.

"Other women who want to meet Americans are like, 'Oh, he'll bring me back to the States,' " he said. "She wasn't like that. . . . She wanted her Somali culture -- and I wanted to get back to that, too."

A year after Wehelie arrived in Yemen, the couple married. Some of his family showed up, including his youngest brother, Yusuf, who wound up staying long-term. Guests danced to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean." The couple posed in their wedding attire -- Yahye in a dark suit, Maryam in a gown with flowing train -- for souvenir photographs emblazoned with the words "With Love."

Soon, Wehelie got homesick. He wanted to return to the United States to file for permission to bring his wife home. Early this May, he and his brother boarded an EgyptAir flight to Cairo, where they expected to switch to a flight to New York.

But at the Cairo airport, airline officials told the brothers they couldn't make the transfer. They were directed to the U.S. Embassy.

Mystified, the brothers jumped into a cab, thinking the detour would last half an hour and they'd still make their flight. But at the embassy, they were told to wait, go get some lunch. When the brothers got back from Hardee's, they were told that FBI agents from Washington were flying in to see them.

Wehelie borrowed a cellphone and called his mother to say he might be delayed by up to four days. The brothers shuffled off to the nearby Garden City House Hotel, paying with money the U.S. government lent them. The brothers were given coupons for fast-food restaurants and plenty of time to check out the Nile and the Pyramids. After a few days, Yusuf was cleared to go home, but Yahye had to stay.

Wehelie said he met with two FBI agents in a small room at the embassy. The agents -- a man and a woman -- asked a barrage of questions: Do you pray every day? Have you ever met the following people? He took a polygraph test. He handed over passwords to his e-mail and Facebook accounts.

"The FBI, you think they're smart, but these people . . . they'll ask you the stupidest questions that are so irrelevant," Wehelie said. "I am cool with them trying to make screenings safe for my country and all U.S. citizens. I just think in my case, it took a little longer."

Back home in Burke, where the walls are decorated with artwork featuring the Koran, Wehelie's mother said she "felt guilty. I would wake up at 3 a.m. and pray to God to help me. I sent him there to be a better person for this country."

But in Cairo, the FBI's questions seemed designed to examine her son's possible ties to people with very different loyalties. When they showed Wehelie photographs of radicals, one looked familiar, if only vaguely. It was Sharif Mobley, a U.S. citizen accused of killing a hospital guard in Yemen after Mobley was arrested in a sweep of suspected al-Qaeda militants.

Wehelie told The Washington Post that he met Mobley once at random in Sanaa on Hadda Street, a popular spot for foreigners, but knew nothing about his past.

"I don't consider myself knowing this guy," he said. "I met him outside on Hadda Street. He came up to me and said, 'Are you American?' I said, 'Yeah, I am.' 'Well, cool dude, where are you from?' It was small talk."

As his sessions with the FBI wound down, Wehelie said, agents asked whether he might attend mosque services in the Washington area and report back on potential terrorist plots or security threats.

"I was like, 'Man, I don't know,' " he said. "It was very weird. I don't think that's right."

Finally, on July 17, Wehelie was allowed to fly to New York, but because he's still on the no-fly list, he could not continue on to Washington, so his parents picked him up at John F. Kennedy International Airport and drove him home. By morning, he was back playing video games on his Xbox.

Now he wonders whether he'll see the female FBI agent again. In Egypt, she told him she'd like to take him out for a meal -- "for a chitchat"-- when he got home.

"I said, 'Cool, it depends on if I have free time,' " Wehelie recalled. "I didn't want to be rude. I am willing to talk if it coincides with my schedule."

For American Muslims, Choosing to Wear the Veil Poses Challenges

Katherine Clark-Fritz for The New York Times

Sarah Ahmed prays at the Islamic Center of New Mexico as her niece, Khadijah Leseman, 6, stays close. Ms. Ahmed, an American Muslim, began wearing the veil after 9/11. More Photos »

By LORRAINE ALI

ALBUQUERQUE

HEBAH AHMED assessed the weather before she stepped out of her minivan. “It’s windy,” she said with a sigh, tucking a loose bit of hair into her scarf. Her younger sister, Sarah, watched out the window as dust devils danced across the parking lot. “Oh, great,” she said, “I’m going to look like the flying nun.”

Hebah, who is 32, and Sarah, 28, do wear religious attire, but of the Islamic sort: a loose outer garment called a jilbab; a khimar, a head covering that drapes to the fingertips; and a niqab, a scarf that covers most of the face. Before the shopping trip, they consulted by phone to make sure they didn’t wear the same color. “Otherwise, we start to look like a cult,” Sarah explained.

When Hebah yanked open the van’s door, the wind filled her loose-fitting garments like a sail. Her 6-year-old daughter, Khadijah Leseman, laughed. Hebah unloaded Khadijah and her 2-year-old son, Saulih, while struggling to hold her khimar and niqab in place.

The wind whipped Sarah’s navy-blue jilbab like a sheet on a clothesline as she wrangled a shopping cart. Her 3-year-old son, Eesa Soliman, stayed close at her side, lost in the billowing fabric.

Most people in the parking lot stopped to stare.

Image by (¯`·.¸¸.¤*¨¨*¤.๑۩۩۩๑Zeyneeep! via Flickr

If the sisters were aware that all eyes were on them, they gave no signs. In the supermarket, they ignored the curious glances in the produce section, the startled double takes by the baked goods and the scowls near the cereal. They glided along the aisles, stopping to compare prices on spaghetti sauce.

Two Hispanic children gasped and ran behind their mother. “Why are they dressed that way?” the girl asked her mother in Spanish. “Islam,” the woman said, also telling the child that the women were from Saudi Arabia.

Hebah, who is from Tennessee, smiled at the girl, but all that could be seen of her face were the lines around the eyes that signaled a grin. After nearly a decade under the veil, she and her sister know full well that they are a source of fascination — and many other reactions — to those around them.

Hebah said she has been kicked off planes by nervous flight attendants and shouted down in a Wal-Mart by angry shoppers who called her a terrorist. Her sister was threatened by a stranger in a picnic area who claimed he had killed a woman in Afghanistan “who looked just like” her. When she joined the Curves gym near her home in Edgewood, N.M., some members threatened to quit. “They said Islamists were taking over,” Ms. Ahmed said.

Her choice to become so identifiably Muslim even rattled her parents, immigrants from Egypt.

“I was more surprised than anything,” said her father, Mohamed Ahmed, who lives in Houston with her mother, Mervat Ahmed. He said he raised his daughters with a deep sense of pride about their Muslim background, but nevertheless did not expect them to wear a hijab, a head scarf, let alone a niqab.

Raised in what she described as a “minimally religious” household by parents who wore typical American clothes, Hebah used to think that women who wore a niqab were crazy, she said.

“It looked like they were suffocating,” she said. “I thought, ‘There’s no way God meant for us to walk around the earth that way, so why would anyone do that to themselves?’ ” Now many people ask that same question of her.

HEBAH AHMED (her first name is pronounced HIB-ah) was born in Chattanooga, raised in Nashville and Houston, and speaks with a slight drawl. She played basketball for her Catholic high school, earned a master’s in mechanical engineering and once worked in the Gulf of Mexico oilfields.

Image by khalilshah via Flickr

She is not a Muslim Everywoman; it is not a role she would ever claim for herself. Her story is hers alone. But she was willing to spend several days with a reporter to give an idea of what American life looks like from behind the veil, a garment that has become a powerful symbol of culture clash.

All that’s visible of Ms. Ahmed when she ventures into mixed company are her deep brown eyes, some faint freckles where the sun hits the top of her nose, and her hands. She used to leave the house in jeans and T-shirt (she still can, under her jilbab), but that all changed after the 9/11 attacks. It shook her deeply that the people who had committed the horrifying acts had identified themselves as Muslims.

“I just kept thinking ‘Why would they do this in the name of Islam?’ ” she said. “Does my religion really say to do those horrible things?”

So she read the Koran and other Islamic texts and began attending Friday prayers at her local Islamic Center. While she found nothing that justified the attacks, she did find meaning in prayers about strength, piety and resolve. She saw them as guideposts for navigating the world.

“I was really questioning my life’s purpose,” Ms. Ahmed said. “And everything about the bigger picture. I just wasn’t about me and my career anymore.”

She also reacted to a backlash against Islam and the news that many American Muslim women were not covering for fear of being targeted. “It was all so wrong,” she said. She took it upon herself to provide a positive example of her embattled faith, in a way that was hard to ignore.

So on Sept. 17, 2001, she wore a hijab into the laboratory where she worked, along with her business attire.

“A co-worker said, ‘You need to wrap a big ol’ American flag around your head so people know what side you’re on,’ ” Ms. Ahmed said. “From then on, they never let up.”

Three months later, she quit her job and started wearing a niqab, covering her face from view when in the presence of men other than her husband.

“I do this because I want to be closer to God, I want to please him and I want to live a modest lifestyle,” said Ms. Ahmed, who asked that her appearance without a veil not be described. “I want to be tested in that way. The niqab is a constant reminder to do the right thing. It’s God-consciousness in my face.”

But there were secular motivations, too. In her job, she worked with all-male teams on oil rigs and in labs.

“No matter how smart I was, I wasn’t getting the respect I wanted,” she said. “They still hit on me, made crude remarks and even smacked me on the butt a couple times.”

Wearing the niqab is “liberating,” she said. “They have to deal with my brain because I don’t give them any other choice.”

Her first run-in with public opinion came, ordinarily enough, while driving.

“A woman in the car next to me was waving, honking, motioning for me to roll down my window,” she said. “I tried to ignore her, but finally, we both had to stop at a light. I rolled down the window and braced myself. Then she said ‘Excuse me, your burqa is caught in your door.’ That broke the ice.”

Her sister Sarah started wearing a niqab around the same time, while completing her engineering degree at Rice University. The learning curve was steep; both sisters found they needed to carry straws for drinking in public, but eating was another story. Once Sarah forgot she was wearing a niqab and took a bite of an ice cream cone. “Humiliating,” she said, shaking her head.

Breathing wasn’t as difficult as they had imagined, but Hebah had a hard time contending with all the material around her.

“I kept losing things or leaving them behind,” she said. “But it’s like when you first put on high heels or a bra. It’s not the most comfortable thing, but there’s a purpose, and you believe that purpose outweighs the discomfort.”

WOMEN who cover totally, called niqabis, make up a tiny sliver of the estimated three million to seven million Muslims in the United States, yet they have come to embody much of what Westerners find foreign about Islam. Hidden under yards of cloth, they are the most visceral reminders of the differences between East and West, and an indisputable sign that Islam is weaving its way into American culture.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy is backing a bill to ban women from publicly wearing the niqab and its more conservative cousin, the burqa, which covers the wearer’s eyes with a mesh panel. Similar legislation is being considered in Canada and Belgium.

In the United States, there have been flashpoints: in 2006, Ginnnah Muhammad, a plaintiff in a small claims case in Detroit, refused the judge’s request to take off her niqab during court proceedings and so her case was thrown out. She later found herself in front of the Michigan Supreme Court, arguing for her right to wear the niqab in court. The high court upheld the judge’s action.

Ms. Muhammad and five other American niqabis were interviewed for this article, in addition to the Ahmed sisters. All of them made the decision to wear the niqab when they were single. And, although the Muslim faith does not require women to cover their faces, all believe the niqab gave them a bit of extra credit in the eyes of God. “The more clothes you wear, the closer you are to God,” Ms. Muhammad said.

Menahal Begawala, 28, was raised in Queens, the daughter of Indian immigrants. She began covering her face at age 19. “I suppose there is some part of me that wants to make a statement, ‘I am a Muslim,’ ” she said.

She is a former grade school teacher now living in Irving, Tex. “I think I blow perceptions because I speak English, I’m educated and it’s my choice to cover,” Ms. Begawala said.

Sarah Zitterman, who as a teenager was a blond California surfer, converted to Islam after living in Zanzibar as a student. In Africa, she felt more at peace with the call to prayer than she ever did at church back home in San Diego. Now 30 and the mother of three in Fresno, Calif., Ms. Zitterman said that being white and American has made her experience under the niqab a little easier.

“It’s less scary for others,” she said. “But the hardest is when kids are frightened. If there’s no men around, I’ll uncover and say ‘Hey, I’m just a mommy — see?’ ”

Most of the niqabis interviewed said that they have received almost as much criticism at their local mosques as at their local malls. Many Muslim Americans do not like being associated with the niqab, saying it gives non-Muslims the wrong idea about their faith.

“The idea of covering one’s face is challenging, even in our community,” said Edina Lekovic, communications director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council in Los Angeles. “For more-mainstream Muslims, the understanding is that you dress modestly and cover everything but your hands and your face. So for a woman to choose to wear niqab is above and beyond what the Koran calls for.”

SARAH and Hebah Ahmed live only a few miles apart in Albuquerque’s East Mountains — Hebah off a winding dirt road with her children and husband, Zayd Chad Leseman, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico; Sarah in a rural geodesic dome with her son and husband, Yasser Soliman, an engineer with Intel.

Hebah and her husband, who is from Moline, Ill., met as graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. By the time they were married in 2003, he had converted to Islam and taken the first name Zayd. People were often confused by the sight of the couple, she said, because he looks like “a corn-fed, Midwestern guy, then he’s walking with this covered women who’s dark — they can tell from my eyes.” She laughed and added, “They must wonder where he bought me.”

Mr. Leseman supports his wife’s decision to wear the niqab. “I am proud of my wife’s conviction to her beliefs, but it took some adjustment being out in public with her, especially with all the stares and comments,” he said.

Once, he said, “we wanted to go to my sister’s softball game, and my mother said ‘Yeah, right! Hebah will have to stay in the van.’ People think because her face is covered that her feelings are, too.”

The sisters make the 30-minute drive to Albuquerque a few times a week to grocery shop, attend prayers at the Islamic Center of New Mexico and drink smoothies at Satellite Coffee. The trunk of Hebah’s car is filled with pamphlets on Islam, English translations of the Koran and granola bars for her children.

When it comes to dealing with the public, she is a niqabi ambassador, friendly and outgoing. “I look at those run-ins with people as an opportunity to explain who I am and maybe shed some light on Islam,” Hebah said. “If they knew me or more about my faith, I’m sure they would think differently.”

She is used to explaining that a niqab is not a burqa and that no, she doesn’t wear it at home. In an all-female setting like Curves, one would not be able to identify a niqabi among the other women in workout gear. It does get hot under the jilbab, but as Sarah explained, it is “sort of like a self-contained air-conditioning unit that circulates cool air.”

Hebah has grown so used to her attire, she often forgets she has it on. “Sometimes I’ll pass a guy who’s looking at me, and I’m like ‘Is he checking me out?’” she said. “Then I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in a window and it’s like, ‘Uh, hello, Hebah — no.’ ”

WHILE driving on Interstate 40, heading home, Ms. Ahmed wedged her cellphone between her khimar and ear, then joked, “Look, a hands-free device.” Sarah rolled her eyes.

There are many types of niqabs, Hebah explained, pulling at least a half-dozen out of her closet. Pushing aside her worn copy of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” she made room for them on the bed.

Her niqabs were made by a seamstress in Egypt whom she met while visiting extended family, but many American niqabis buy their garments online. “You can’t get them here,” Hebah said. “I mean, the ones at the back of our local halal store — hideous.”

As she rummaged through her scarves, Khadijah tied one around her waist and twirled like a ballerina. Muslim women who cover usually wait until puberty to conceal their hair and bodies in public, but Khadijah likes to wear a hijab for dress-up — especially the pink one with sparkles.

Hebah said she wanted Khadijah “to be a confident female who is not victimized or abused.” She explained: “For me, the best way to do that is to do what I’m doing, and not just because Mama told her to, but because of her conviction. At the end of the day, she has to stand in front of God alone.”

When reminded that hers is a rocky path, and it would likely be the same for her daughter, Ms. Ahmed paused, then began to cry.

“People don’t understand,” she said, wiping a tear with the edge of her sleeve. “We’re really strong, but it takes a toll on you. Sometimes you think, ‘I just want to rest.’ ”

Sarah, helping her sister out, said: “We think of paradise at that point. Heaven is where we’re supposed to rest. That’s what gets us through.”

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TSA Targets Women Wearing Hijabs?

By Matthew Rothschild, January 7, 2010

Nadia Hassan is a frequent flyer. The forty-year-old MBA, who was born in Michigan, had never been hassled until Tuesday morning, January 5.

She was traveling with her five-year-old daughter and went to Dulles International to board a plane for Los Angeles.

She was in line to go through security.

“Before I could even get to the conveyor belt,” she says, “a lady in uniform comes up to me and asks me to remove my headscarf. I said, ‘No, I cannot, but you’re more than welcome to pat me down or search me.’ ”

The TSA agent stood there while she put her belt, shoes, coat, and laptop in the bins and went through the usual screening device with her daughter.

“But as soon as we went through the screening, she said, ‘Ma’am, can you come to the side for a full body pat-down?’ She did it right in front of four men, and she was touching me everywhere. And every article in my baggage was being checked for bomb-making materials.”

Hassan says she asked the man who was examining her bags what was going on.

“Ma’am, they just switched procedures on us this morning,” she remembers him saying. “Every woman wearing a head scarf must go through this type of search.”

The TSA denies this new policy, sort of.

“The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) current procedures for the screening of bulky clothing or headwear -- which have been in effect since 2007 -- remain unchanged,” it said in a statement. “The wearing of a hijab itself does not automatically trigger security checks. To ensure the highest level of security, passengers wearing loose fitting or bulky clothing -- including headwear -- may be subject to additional screening. In instances where passengers choose not to remove bulky clothing, including headwear, our officers are trained to offer a private screening area and may conduct a pat down search to clear the individual.”

Hassan calls the “additional screening” of women wearing hijabs “villainization.”

“I was born and raised in this country,” she says. “My father was a Marine and fought in the Korean War. We were taught to love this country. You’re targeting good Americans who just want to practice their faith and dress modestly.”

Hassan understands the need for “safeguarding Americans, myself included,” she says.

“But that morning I didn’t feel I was safeguarded or protected. I felt like I was being insulted. I felt like I was being targeted.”

In a separate incident on January 4, a Muslim woman with a Canadian passport was trying to fly from the airport in Halifax to Ohio to visit her husband. She believes she was held for questioning because she was the only woman wearing a head scarf, the Council on American Islamic Relations reports.

Nihad Awad, head of the group, objects to the policy of profiling women who wear headscarves. “Screening of passengers,” Awad said, should be based on an analysis of “people’s suspicious behaviors, not on their skin color or religious attire.”

Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine.

Study: Threat of Muslim-American terrorism in U.S. exaggerated

Image by danny.hammontree via Flickr

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Study released Wednesday by researchers at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill
• 139 people listed as "Muslim-American terrorism offenders" since 9/11
• Summarized research involving interviews of more than 120 Muslims in four U.S. communities
• Study: Ideology "that justifies the use of violence for political ends" is roundly condemned

(CNN) -- The terrorist threat posed by radicalized Muslim- Americans has been exaggerated, according to a study released Wednesday by researchers at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A small number of Muslim-Americans have undergone radicalization since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the study found. It compiled a list of 139 individuals it categorized as "Muslim-American terrorism offenders" who had become radicalized in the U.S. in that time -- a rate of 17 per year.

That level is "small compared to other violent crime in America, but not insignificant," according to the study, titled "Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans."

To be included on the list, an offender had to have been wanted, arrested, convicted or killed in connection with terrorism-related activities since 9/11 -- and have lived in the United States, regardless of immigration status, for more than a year prior to arrest.

Image via Wikipedia

Of the 139 offenders, fewer than a third successfully executed a violent plan, according to a Duke University statement on the study, and most of those were overseas. Read the report:"Anti-Terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans"

"Muslim-American organizations and the vast majority of individuals that we interviewed firmly reject the radical extremist ideology that justifies the use of violence to achieve political ends," David Schanzer, an associate professor in Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy and director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security, said in the statement.

In the aftermath of 9/11, however, as well as terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world, the possible radicalization of Muslim-Americans is a "key counterterrorism concern" -- magnified by heavy publicity that accompanies the arrests of Muslim-Americans, such as that seen in the wake of the November shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 people were killed. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, a Muslim born in Virginia, is charged in connection with that incident.

Other high-profile incidents include the charging of eight Somali-American men on charges related to what authorities say are efforts to recruit youths from the Minneapolis, Minnesota, area to fight for al-Shabaab, a Somali guerrilla movement battling the African country's U.N.-backed transitional government. At least two young men from Minnesota have been killed in Somalia, including one who blew himself up in what is believed to have been the first suicide bombing carried out by a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In addition, five Americans were arrested last month in Pakistan, and police have said they are confident that they were planning terrorist attacks. A Pakistani court Monday gave police two weeks to prepare their case against the five; authorities have said they plan to prosecute the youths under the country's anti-terrorism act.

But it is the Muslim-American communities themselves who play a large role in keeping the number of radicalized members low through their own practices, according to the study. Leaders and Muslim-American organizations denounce violent acts, for instance, in messages that have weight within communities.

In addition, such communities often self-police -- confronting those who express radical ideology or support for terrorism and communicating concerns about radical individuals to authorities. Some Muslim-Americans have adopted programs for youth to help identify those who react inappropriately to controversial issues so they can undergo counseling and education, the researchers said.

"Muslim-American communities have been active in preventing radicalization," said Charles Kurzman, professor of sociology at UNC, in the statement. "This is one reason that Muslim-American terrorism has resulted in fewer than three dozen of the 136,000 murders committed in the United States since 9/11."

However, "since 9/11, there has been increased tension among Muslim-Americans about their acceptance in mainstream American society," the study said. Muslim-Americans report feeling a stronger anti-Muslim bias from the media as well as from day-to-day interactions.

"While Muslim-Americans understand and support the need for enhanced security and counterterrorism initiatives, they believe that some of these efforts are discriminatory, and they are angered that innocent Muslim-Americans bear the brunt of the impact of these policies."

Steps can be taken to minimize radicalization among Muslim-Americans, the study said. The most important is encouraging political mobilization among Muslims, which helps prevent radicalization and also demonstrates to Muslims abroad "that grievances can be resolved through peaceful democratic means." Policymakers should include Muslim-Americans in their outreach efforts, and public officials should attend events at mosques, as they do churches and synagogues, the study recommended.

Also, Muslim-American communities should widely disseminate their condemnation of terrorism and violence, and those statements should be publicized, the study said. Law enforcement has a role to play as well, by making efforts to increase the level of trust and communication with such communities. This could include the cultivation of Muslim-American informants, the study suggested, a policy that could be developed and openly discussed with community leaders.

Governments can promote and encourage the building of strong Muslim-American communities and promote outreach by social services agencies, the study said. "Our research suggests that Muslim-American communities desire collaboration and outreach with the government beyond law enforcement, in areas such as public health, education and transportation."

And the Muslim-American community can promote enhanced education about its religion and beliefs, the study said. Increased civil rights enforcement can also be an important tool.

However, policies that alienate Muslims may increase the threat of homegrown terrorism rather than reducing it, the study said.

"Our research suggests that initiatives that treat Muslim-Americans as part of the solution to this problem are far more likely to be successful," said Schanzer.

Schanzer, Kurzman and Ebrahim Moosa, associate professor of religion at Duke, co-authored the study, which summarized two years of research involving interviews of more than 120 Muslims in four different communities nationwide -- Seattle, Washington; Houston, Texas; Buffalo, New York; and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. The study was funded by a grant from the Department of Justice.

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Little Support for Terrorism Among Muslim Americans

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by Richard Wike, Pew Global Attitudes Project, Greg Smith, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
December 17, 2009

Recent events such as the Fort Hood shootings and the arrest of five Muslim American students in Pakistan have raised questions about the threat of homegrown terrorism in the United States. However, the Pew Research Center's comprehensive portrait of the Muslim American population suggests it is less likely to be a fertile breeding ground for terrorism than Muslim minority communities in other countries. Violent jihad is discordant with the values, outlook and attitudes of the vast majority of Muslim Americans, most of whom reject extremism.

A Middle Class, Mainstream Minority Group

As the title of Pew Research's 2007 study suggests, Muslim Americans are "middle class and mostly mainstream." Compared with their co-religionists in other Western societies, they are relatively well integrated into mainstream society. Unlike Western Europe's Muslim populations, Muslims in the U.S. are generally as well-educated and financially well-off as the general population. Most (72%) say their communities are good or excellent places to live, and most believe in the American dream -- 71% say that in the U.S., most people who want to get ahead can make it if they are willing to work hard.

When asked whether they think of themselves first as an American or as a Muslim, 47% of Muslims in the U.S. think of themselves first in terms of their religion, while 28% identify themselves first as Americans and 18% volunteer that they identify as both. At 46%, French Muslims are about equally as likely as those in the U.S. to think of themselves first as Muslim. However, Muslim Americans are less likely to identify primarily with their religion than are Muslims living in Britain, Germany, and Spain.

Primary identification with religious affiliation is not unique to Muslims. Religious identity is almost equally as high among American Christians, 42% of whom say they think of themselves first as Christian. About half (48%) of Christians in the U.S. identify first as Americans, while 7% volunteer that they identify both with their nationality and their religion.¹

Roughly six-in-ten Muslim Americans (62%) say that the quality of life for Muslim women in the U.S. is better than the quality of life for women in most Muslim countries, while 7% say it is worse, and 23% believe it is about the same. French Muslims are equally likely to think that life is better for Muslim women in their country, while in Britain, Germany and Spain, Muslims are somewhat less likely to hold this view.

Many Muslim Americans share the concerns of the broader population about Islamic extremism. Roughly three-quarters (76%) are very or somewhat concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world, compared with 81% of the U.S. general population.² About six-in-ten Muslim Americans (61%) are also worried about the potential rise of Islamic extremism in the U.S., although this is lower than the level of concern among the general public (78%).³

Few Endorse Extremism

Very few Muslim Americans hold a positive opinion of al Qaeda -- only 5% give the terrorist organization a favorable rating, while 68% express an unfavorable view, including 58% who describe their view as very unfavorable. About one-quarter (27%) decline to offer an opinion.

Support for suicide terrorism among Muslim Americans is similarly rare: 78% believe that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets to defend Islam from its enemies can never be justified, and another 5% say these types of attacks are rarely justified. Fewer than one-in-ten American Muslims say that suicide bombing is sometimes (7%) or often (1%) justified.

Over the course of the decade, the Pew Global Attitudes Project has asked this same question of Muslim populations around the world, and results show that Muslims in the U.S. are among the most likely to reject suicide bombing. Among the populations surveyed recently, opposition to suicide bombing is highest in Pakistan (87% say it is never justified) -- a nation currently plagued by suicide bombings and violence by extremist groups. As recently as 2004, only 35% of Pakistani Muslims held this view. As Pew Global Attitudes surveys have documented, the growing rejection of extremism in Pakistan is part of a broader pattern in the Muslim world.

Most European Muslims surveyed agree that suicide attacks can never be justified. This view is especially prevalent in Germany, where 83% of the country's largely Turkish Muslim community say that suicide attacks are not justifiable. Most Muslims in Turkey, Indonesia, Jordan, Israel and Egypt agree, while fewer than half take this position in Lebanon and Nigeria. Palestinians are the clear outlier on this issue -- only 17% think violence against civilian targets can never be justified.

But Small Pockets of Support and Doubts About Sept. 11

Of course, although American Muslims largely reject extremist ideologies, results from the 2007 survey do reveal small pockets of support for extremism. And the survey found that younger Muslims in the U.S. are slightly more accepting of Islamic extremism than are older Muslims. Those under age 30 are more than twice as likely as those age 30 and older to believe that suicide bombings in the defense of Islam can often or sometimes be justified (15% vs. 6%). This pattern is consistent with findings from Europe -- Muslims under age 30 in Britain, France, Germany and Spain are slightly more likely than those in older age groups to endorse suicide attacks.

The survey also finds that native-born African-American Muslims are less likely than other U.S. Muslims to condemn al Qaeda completely. Only 9% express a favorable view of the organization, but at the same time, just 36% give it a very unfavorable rating.

And fewer than half of Muslim Americans -- just four-in-10 -- accept the fact that groups of Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks. Roughly a third (32%) express no opinion as to who was behind the attacks, while 28% flatly disbelieve that Arabs conducted the attacks. Fewer highly religious Muslim Americans believe that groups of Arabs carried out the attacks than do less religious Muslims. The survey also finds that those who say suicide bombings in defense of Islam can often or sometimes be justified are more disbelieving than others that Arabs carried out the Sept. 11 attacks.

---

<sub>1. Data for U.S. Christians from 2006 Pew Global Attitudes survey.
2. U.S. general public data from April 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
3. U.S. general public data from April 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.</sub>

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Muslims in the military seek bridge between worlds - washingtonpost.com

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By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 11, 2009

U.S. Muslim service members say they stand out in both their worlds.

Among fellow troops, that can mean facing ethnic taunts, awkward questions about spiritual practices and a structure that is not set up to accommodate their worship. Among Muslims, the questions can be more profound: How can a Muslim participate in killing other Muslims in such places as Iraq and Afghanistan?

Just 3,557 members of the 1.4 million-member U.S. armed forces describe themselves as Muslim, and followers of Islam said the military is just starting to accommodate them by recruiting Muslim chaplains, creating Muslim prayer spaces and educating other troops about Islam.

Active and retired Muslim service members recalled difficulties concerning their religion but said they cannot relate to the extreme isolation and harassment described by Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the suspect in last week's Fort Hood slayings. They also said they hope the killings do not roll back the progress they have seen.

Joshua Salaam, 36, said superiors told him when he joined the Air Force that he could not take time for regular prayer. He remembered being warned at a briefing for a posting in Qatar not to go to mosques because of potential violence. Once he arrived, other service members told him that Muslims there wore baggy clothes because Islam calls for them to avoid public bathrooms.

"They are the enemy," is how Muslims were sometimes characterized, he said.

But Salaam said he received many awards in the Air Force. He wore his "kufi" -- a rounded cap popular with some African American Muslims--on base and came to like being a "cultural translator" for both sides.

"As a Muslim growing up in America, we've been doing that our whole lives anyway," he said.

Interviews with Muslims revealed a range of experiences. Some choose to keep their faith private; others seek out superiors and chaplains who can help them worship even on duty. Some blamed other Muslims for not working to fit into military culture.

Sgt. Fahad Kamal, 26, attended the same Texas mosque as Hasan, the Islamic Center of Killeen, and reenlisted at Fort Hood after serving as a combat medic in Afghanistan. He said he experienced the rare insult from other soldiers about his religion and described one occasion during basic training when someone called him a "terrorist."

"I knew he was just kidding, but the drill sergeant overheard him. He made him apologize in front of the entire company" and do push-ups. "I felt guilty, because I knew he was just joking. But I was also happy to see how seriously they took it."

Kamal, whose family left Pakistan for Texas when he was a boy, said he didn't find the Army anti-Muslim. "We've got a president whose middle name is Hussein. He comes from a Muslim background. Our soldiers are from every race and culture," he said.

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said this weekend that he was worried about a possible backlash against enlisted Muslims. "It would be a shame, as great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well," he told CNN.

In a broadcast Monday night, Virginia Beach religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said the military overlooked Hasan's troubles because of a politically correct refusal to see Islam for what it is. "Islam is a violent -- I was going to say religion -- but it's not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of governments of the world and world domination."

One of the best-known allegations of anti-Muslim harassment in the military involved James Yee, a former Muslim Army chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was accused of spying and held in solitary confinement in 2003. The charges were dropped, and Yee wrote a book contending that they were a result of anti-Muslim sentiment among intelligence officials at the military prison.

An Army spokesman said complaints of religious discrimination are rare: 50 across the entire Defense Department in the past three years. But the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which works for religious pluralism in the military, said it had received 16 complaints since Thursday from enlisted Muslims.

Saleem Abdul-Mateen, a Washington native who was in aviation electronics in the Navy from 1975 to 1995 and is a national leader of a veterans group, said he straddles two worlds. "Today, a [Muslim] brother said to me, 'You know, if we're about peace, why are we fighting another country?' And that's valid. But you have to support the country when it's right and when it's wrong," Abdul-Mateen said.

Doug Burpee, who took the call name "hajji" as a helicopter pilot, said he "never had a problem in 26 years." Although he loves to engage in academic discussions about religion, he said, he kept his prayer invisible and thinks that Muslim service members, like others, have to compromise to fit into military life.

"There are Muslims who stop in their footprints to pray, and those people might have a problem," he said. "But if you're going to join -- join. If Muslims don't fit in, it's their fault."

Shareda Hosein, who is a Muslim chaplain at Tufts University and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, said being a Muslim is easier in the military in some ways than in general society because of the rules governing behavior. That said, she described a double existence of a sort.

"When I'm in uniform, I feel totally relaxed. I look like every other person. I get thank-yous at the supermarket, the gas station. But when I'm in civilian clothes, my hijab, I get scrutiny. Sometimes looks and stares speak loudly. Little do they know who I am."

Staff writer William Booth contributed to this report from San Antonio.

Complications Grow for Muslims Serving in U.S. Military - NYTimes.com

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By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Abdi Akgun joined the Marines in August of 2000, fresh out of high school and eager to serve his country. As a Muslim, the attacks of Sept. 11 only steeled his resolve to fight terrorism.

But two years later, when Mr. Akgun was deployed to Iraq with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the thought of confronting Muslims in battle gave him pause.

He was haunted by the possibility that he might end up killing innocent civilians.

“It’s kind of like the Civil War, where brothers fought each other across the Mason-Dixon line,” Mr. Akgun, 28, of Lindenhurst, N.Y., who returned from Iraq without ever pulling the trigger. “I don’t want to stain my faith, I don’t want to stain my fellow Muslims, and I also don’t want to stain my country’s flag.”

Thousands of Muslims have served in the United States military — a legacy that some trace to the First World War. But in the years since Sept. 11, 2001, as the United States has become mired in two wars on Muslim lands, the service of Muslim-Americans is more necessary and more complicated than ever before.

In the aftermath of the shootings at Fort Hood on Thursday by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan of the Army, a psychiatrist, many Muslim soldiers and their commanders say they fear that the relationship between the military and its Muslim service members will only grow more difficult.

On Sunday, the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., said he worried about a backlash against Muslims in the armed forces and emphasized the military’s reliance on those men and women.

“Our diversity, not only in our Army but in our country, is a strength,” General Casey said Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

It is unclear what might have motivated Major Hasan, who is suspected of killing 13 people. Senior military and law enforcement officials said they had tentatively dismissed the possibility that he was carrying out a terrorist plot. He seems to have been influenced by a mixture of political, religious and psychological factors, the officials said.

Muslim leaders, advocates and military service members have taken pains to denounce the shooting and distance themselves from Major Hasan. They make the point that his violence is no more representative of them than it is of other groups to which he belongs, including Army psychiatrists.

“I don’t understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him,” said Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America. “The Army has had at least as much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as the Muslim community.”

That sentiment was echoed by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who told “Face the Nation” on CBS that the shooting was “not about his religion — the fact that this man was a Muslim.”

Yet also Sunday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, announced on “Fox News Sunday” that he would hold hearings to explore whether Major Hasan’s actions constituted terrorism.

Whatever his possible motives, the emerging portrait of Major Hasan’s life in the military casts light on some of the struggles and frustrations felt by other Muslims in the services. He was disillusioned with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he perceived to be part of a war on Islam, according to interviews with friends and relatives.

He had been the subject of taunts and felt singled out by his fellow soldiers for being Muslim, friends and relatives said. His uncle in Ramallah, West Bank, Rafik Hamad, said Major Hasan’s fellow soldiers had once called him a “camel jockey.”

That term, like “haaji” and “raghead,” has become a more common part of the lexicon among soldiers on the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, several Muslim servicemen said in interviews. They spoke about the epithets philosophically, saying they understood using them was a survival tactic to dehumanize the enemy.

But for Muslim soldiers, particularly those who speak Arabic, the struggle to distance themselves from those they fight has often proved more difficult in these wars.

Amjad Khan, who served in the Army for eight years and was deployed to Iraq, said he had tried to get used to the way his fellow soldiers talked about Iraqis.

“It gets to you sometimes,” said Mr. Khan, 32, from Queens, who is of Pakistani descent. “But the more personally you take things, the more you’re going to have a hard time surviving.”

For Mr. Khan, the most difficult part of his wartime service came before he was deployed, when a senior officer found his Islamic faith cause for suspicion.

“He said, ‘I have to watch my back because you might go nuts,’ ” Mr. Khan recalled.

Since Sept. 11, the nation’s military has actively recruited Muslim-Americans, eager to have people with linguistic skills and a cultural understanding of the Middle East. Some 3,557 military personnel identify themselves as Muslim among 1.4 million people in the active-duty population, according to official figures. Muslim advocacy groups estimate the number to be far higher, as listing one’s religious preference is voluntary.

Many Muslims are drawn to the military for the same reasons as other recruits. In interviews, they cited patriotism, a search for discipline and their dreams of attending college. Some Muslims said they had also enlisted to win new respect in a country where people of their faith have struggled for acceptance.

But if military service has brought approval among non-Muslims, it has sometimes invited a markedly different response among Muslims.

In the South Asian and Arab immigrant communities where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are deeply unpopular, Muslim military members have often felt criticized for their service, Muslim chaplains, military members, veterans advocates and others said in interviews.

Some return exhausted and traumatized from their tours, only to hear at their local mosques that they will go to hell for “killing Muslims,” said Qaseem A. Uqdah, the executive director of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

“Imagine you are 20 years old and you hear you’re going to purgatory,” Mr. Uqdah said. He argued that Muslim groups must work harder to help their veterans cope with coming home. “We are failing as a community here in America.”

During the first gulf war, Muslim scholars in the United States debated whether members of their faith could righteously engage in combat in a Muslim country on behalf of the United States military. The consensus was yes, provided the conflict met the Islamic standard of a “just war.”

“In the Koran it says that war is to end the state of oppression and to uplift the oppressed,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles.

But he and others interviewed said it has been increasingly difficult for Muslims to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as accounts have emerged of the killing of civilians, the corruption of American-backed local governments, and prisoner abuses like that of the Abu Ghraib scandal .

“Is it an army that defends the oppressed, or have you slipped into becoming the oppressor?” asked Mr. El Fadl, who has counseled Muslims conflicted about enlisting. “People from the military who contact me, that’s what I find they’re torn up about.”

And yet more than 3,500 Muslims have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department figures provided to The Times. As of 2006, some 212 Muslim-American soldiers had been awarded Combat Action Ribbons for their service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and seven had been killed.

Too many Americans overlook the heroic efforts of Arab-Americans in uniform, said Capt. Eric Rahman, 35, an Army reservist who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Iraq at the start of the war. He cited the example of Lieutenant Michael A. Monsoor, a Navy Seal who was awarded the Medal of Honor after pulling a team member to safety during firefight in 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq.

Lieutenant Monsoor died saving another American, yet he will never be remembered like Major Hasan, said Captain Rahman.

Regardless, he said, Muslim- and Arab-Americans are crucial to the military’s success in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Take a look at these conflicts,” he said. “We need those skill sets, we need those backgrounds, we need those perspectives.”

Eric Schmitt, Damien Cave and Catrina Stewart contributed reporting.

Ben Ali, 82, Whose Chili Bowl Became a D.C. Landmark, Dies - washingtonpost.com

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Chili Bowl Founder Satisfied Craving for Food, Friendship

By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 9, 2009

If the rest of the world sees Washington as a place of large monuments and gleaming public buildings, many of the people who actually live in the city build their lives around smaller, more humble institutions. For them, one of the most important addresses in town is Ben's Chili Bowl, a simple diner famous for its down-home menu of chili, half-smokes and fries.

Ben Ali, who founded the restaurant in 1958 and created its unmatched chili recipe, died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at his home in the District. He was 82.

His family-run diner on U Street NW has been one of the most enduring institutions of Washington, a place where families meet after church and where night owls come to talk, flirt and, not least, eat.

The landmark eatery opened when U Street was the city's glittering "Black Broadway," a strip of nightclubs and theaters that catered to Washington's black middle class and helped define the city's pulse and taste. It became a steadfast symbol of Washington's perseverance through good times and bad, feeding the dignitaries who came to Washington as well as the ordinary folks who call the District home.

In a statement, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty called Ben's Chili Bowl "one of the greatest treasures in the District of Columbia."

On Jan. 10, the restaurant received perhaps its greatest publicity boost when Fenty and president-elect Obama dropped by for a half-smoke -- a smoked sausage that is often called the signature food of Washington. Mindful of a sign that warned, "Who eats free at Ben's: Bill Cosby. No one else," Obama paid for his $12 tab with a $20 bill, leaving the change as a tip. The president's name has been added to Cosby's as the only patrons allowed to dine without paying.

Mr. Ali, a Trinidadian immigrant who had studied dentistry at Howard University, tried several careers before opening the diner with his Virginia-born fiancee, Virginia Rollins, on Aug. 22, 1958. They were married seven weeks later.

He thought Washington might be hungry for the kind of spicy dishes he had known while growing up in the Caribbean and cooked up the first batches of chili on his own. His recipe remains a closely guarded family secret.

At first, the chili was served only atop hot dogs, hamburgers and half-smokes. Mr. Ali's chili topping proved so popular that he began to serve it in bowls. This March, Bon Appétit magazine ranked Ben's chili as the best in America.

"No reasonable discussion of great chili joints can take place without mention of this U Street institution, open since 1958," Andrew Knowlton wrote in the magazine.

Michael Stern, who with his wife, Jane, might be the country's foremost expert on down-home food, has called Ben's half-smoke "sensational" and the chili "positively addictive."

But it wasn't merely the food that made Ben's Chili Bowl a local institution. In its early days, residents of the surrounding Shaw neighborhood sat alongside entertainers Duke Ellington, Dinah Washington and Redd Foxx, and Ben's became a favorite late-night gathering place. Bill Cosby became a loyal customer in 1959, when he was in the Navy, and later courted his wife, former University of Maryland student Camille Hanks, at Ben's.

In 1968, when riots and fires devastated swaths of downtown Washington, the offices of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee were across the street from the Chili Bowl. Mr. Ali was able to keep his restaurant open during the height of the unrest, serving protesters, police officers and firefighters alike. According to his family, Mr. Ali used a bar of soap to write "Soul Brother" on the window. The restaurant was untouched through the riots.

As the neighborhood deteriorated and other businesses shut down throughout the 1970s and '80s, Ben's Chili Bowl stayed open, but with shorter hours. As drug dealing proliferated nearby, Virginia Ali told The Washington Post in 2003, the restaurant stopped selling cakes and pies because addicts were drawn in by the sweets. The D.C. police conducted surveillance on drug dealers from an upstairs window in the restaurant.

After construction began on Metro's Green Line in the 1980s, Ben's Chili Bowl sat above a 60-foot crater and was one of the few active businesses on the street. The restaurant was reduced to only two employees, besides Mr. Ali's family, yet it continued to attract a loyal and international clientele.

After the Green Line opened in 1991, U Street became chic again, and Ben's Chili Bowl was at the center of the neighborhood's rebirth. Celebrities ranging from Shaquille O'Neal to Hillary Rodham Clinton began to show up, and Cosby sang the restaurant's praises on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

When Ted Koppel retired in 2005 as host of the ABC News show "Nightline," his farewell party was held at Ben's. The restaurant was featured in the films "The Pelican Brief" and "State of Play." By the late 1990s, no D.C. politician would dream of running for office without dropping into Ben's for a ritual half-smoke and milkshake. Former mayor Anthony A. Williams mentioned the restaurant in an inaugural address and called Ben's the "restaurant where my constituents would most likely run into me."

Former mayor and current D.C. Council member Marion S. Barry first visited the Chili Bowl in 1966.

"I'll tell you how much of an institution Ben's Chili Bowl is," Barry told The Post in 1998. While visiting Accra, the capital of Ghana, Barry met the city's mayor, who was an alumnus of Howard University. "The first thing he said: 'Glad to have you in Accra. Is Ben's Chili Bowl still there?' "

Mahaboob Ben Ali was born June 13, 1927, and grew up in San Juan, Trinidad. His grandparents were from northern India.

In 1945, Mr. Ali came to the United States as a student.

"I came here to become a doctor," he said in a February interview with the News India-Times. "I knew Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wordsworth. I had studied in the British system. I could quote any of the poets."

While studying at the University of Nebraska, he said, he fell down an elevator shaft and broke his back. After months of convalescence, he attended four other colleges before graduating from Howard. He dropped out of Howard's dental school, then waited tables, ran an import business, sold real estate and drove a taxi. Even after opening Ben's Chili Bowl, he held other jobs, most notably as a motivational speaker, teaching sales skills to military officers and others.

In case any of his three sons took over Ben's Chili Bowl, Mr. Ali gave them all the middle name of Ben. His two younger sons, Kamal and Nizam, now operate the restaurant, a location at Nationals Park and a recently opened annex, Ben's Next Door.

In addition to his wife and sons, survivors include a son, Haidar Ali, a Los Angeles musician who performs under the name Sage Infinity; a brother; two sisters; and three grandchildren.

When Mr. Ali and Virginia Rollins were married October 10, 1958, she converted to his Muslim faith. Although Mr. Ali was reluctant to admit it in public, he firmly obeyed the Islamic prohibition on pork. Throughout his life, he never tasted the hot dogs and half-smokes that made his restaurant famous.

Back From the Suburbs to Run a Patch of Somalia - NYTimes.com

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By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

ADADO, Somalia

ABOVE the shimmering horizon, in the middle of a deserted highway, stands an oversize figure wearing a golf cap, huge sunglasses, baggy jeans, and an iPhone on his hip, not your typical outfit in war-torn Somalia. But then again, Mohamed Aden, the man waiting in the road, is not your typical Somali. The instant his guests arrive, he spreads his arms wide, ready for a bear hug.

“Welcome to Adado,” he says, beaming. “Now, let’s bounce.”

Mr. Aden, 37, is part militia commander, part schoolteacher, part lawmaker, part engineer, part environmentalist, part king — a mind-boggling combination of roles for anyone to play, let alone for a guy who dresses (and talks) like a rapper and recently moved from Minnesota to Somalia in an effort to build a local government.

Think of him as the accidental warlord. And a shard of hope. In less than a year, Mr. Aden, who was born in Somalia and emigrated to the United States at age 22, has essentially built a state within a state.

With money channeled from fellow clansmen living in the United States and Europe, he has transformed Adado and its surroundings in central Somalia, which used to be haunted by bandits and warring Islamic factions, into an enclave of peace, with a functioning police force, scores of new businesses, new schools and new rules.

Somalia is one of the most violent countries on the planet, and at times Mr. Aden has had to speak with the business end of a machine gun. His patch — which encompasses around 5,000 square miles and a few hundred thousand people, most of them desperately poor nomads and members of his own Saleban clan — is now one of the safest parts of this broken nation.

Even outsiders are noticing.

“When I landed here, I was taken aback, in a good way,” said Denise Brown, a United Nations World Food Program official who visited Adado in March. “I didn’t see what I usually see in Somalia: destitution, chaos, needy people.”

Mr. Aden does not get much help from the United Nations or the internationally supported transitional government of Somalia, which is led by moderate Islamists and preoccupied with beating back an intense insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu.

Most of what Mr. Aden has accomplished he has accomplished on his own, in distinctly Somali fashion. His police officers carry rocket-propelled grenades. Parked in front of the police station are two enormous tanks.

“My Cadillacs,” Mr. Aden calls them.

But however playful or flamboyant he may come across, Mr. Aden seems to have hit upon a deeper truth. People want government, he says, even in Somalia. “They’re begging for it,” he said.

His experiment of building a small local government from the bottom up, relying on that one feature of Somali society that has bedeviled just about all national governance efforts to date — the clan — may have wider implications for the rest of the country, which seems to export trouble continuously, most recently in the form of pirates. Many pirates are actually from Mr. Aden’s area, and one pirate whose nom de guerre is Son of a Liar is building a huge house in Adado — right behind the police station.

“I’d take these guys on, but I can’t right now because I don’t have the resources,” Mr. Aden said. “Besides, you can’t just wipe out a whole line of work for thousands of young men. If you take something away, you must replace it with something else. Otherwise, more problems.”

WHAT drove him to give up a comfy life with his wife, Shamso, and their five boys in Burnsville, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb? How was he able to make the transition from running a small health care business to being “president,” which is what his constituents in Adado call him?

“When I first arrived, I was afraid,” he recalled. “I didn’t know how the people would react to me, if they would trust me. That first year I was focusing on muscle. Without muscle, you can’t do anything.”

Of course, there’s much about America he misses.

“SportsCenter, Subway, AC, even winter,” he says.

But in a way he didn’t have a choice. He came to Adado last year for what he thought would be a few weeks, to help out with a killer drought. He organized water trucking and emergency food deliveries and channeled tens of thousands of dollars from middle class Somalis in the United States to nomads dying of hunger and thirst.

Afterward, Adado’s elders, impressed by how fast he could work, turned to Mr. Aden and asked: want to be our leader?

“We needed a man of peace and he is from a peaceful place, Minnesota,” said one elder, Mohamed Ali Farah.

It did not hurt that Mr. Aden had a pipeline to overseas cash and a college degree from Minnesota State in management information systems. With the elders firmly behind him, he was able to form a well-armed police force of several hundred fellow clansmen who are fiercely protective of him — essentially his own private army, which has made it difficult for the extremist Islamists wreaking havoc in other parts of Somalia to establish a beachhead here.

People who have challenged his authority have paid the price. Last summer, his police officers shot to death four men who violently refused to vacate a piece of property that Mr. Aden’s administration ruled belonged to someone else.

“I knew there were outliers, people with their own rules,” he said. “I knew I had to challenge them, sooner or later.”

Nowadays, from Adado’s dusty town square, he hands down new laws, like a recent one saying that anyone who cuts down a live tree has to pay a fine of 100 camels.

The orderly refuge he has carved out has become a magnet for displaced families fleeing the relentless bloodletting in Mogadishu, and at noon each day, the metal roofs of thousands of new homes sparkle like mirrors scattered across the desert.

Mr. Aden grew up in Mogadishu, the son of a military mechanic, the firstborn of 10. He fled Somalia with an uncle in 1992, a year after the central government collapsed and his friends split into rival militias. “I didn’t see myself in this war,” he said.

But the war saw him. He was shot in the ankle by a stray bullet. Soon he packed up for Kenya and then on to Miami, where he lived in a homeless shelter. He eventually took a Greyhound bus to Minneapolis, the promised land for Somali immigrants and home to the largest Somali community in the United States. There he put himself through college parking cars and working in a factory, always keeping abreast of politics back home, hoping to jump in one day. Yet when finally presented with the opportunity, he turned down the Adado elders twice before relenting.

“It was hard for my wife and kids,” he said. “But I’m doing something big here, and they know that.”

HE spends his days in a large house in the center of town, where he has rigged up a small command center with a laptop, his iPhone and an Internet connection. As chairman of Himan and Heeb Administration, the province where Adado is located, he often meets with elders on his living room carpet, and he has had to straddle a delicate religious line, respecting the conservative Muslim culture here without coming across as phony. This spring, central Somalia was hit again by a devastating drought, and the elders asked him to lead a rain prayer. “I ain’t no imam,” he grumbled at first, though he eventually agreed to do it.

Mr. Aden seems to be a naturally upbeat person, but the one thing that drags him down is the drought. During a drive across the skinned landscape of his area a few months ago, he came upon a young man lying under a lean-to of sticks and blankets. The man was in bad shape, very thin, sweaty and empty-eyed. People said he had typhoid. And tuberculosis. And malaria.

Mr. Aden looked down at him and said he would pray. “There’s really nothing else I can do,” he said. “There’s no 911 out here.”