American Caliph by Shahan Mufti

One of Publishers Weekly' s Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 A New York
Times Book Review Editors' Choice
The riveting true story of America's 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 B'nai B'rith International, quickly taking control of the
venerable Jewish organization's 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 country's biggest and most important
mosque, and took hostages there. Two others subsequently penetrated the
municipal government's 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 organization's mercurial chief, Elijah Muhammad, and
becoming Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 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 inone of the District's most
notorious murders. As Khaalis and the (...)

Shahan Muftiis the chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of
Richmond and a former daily news reporter for The Christian Science
Monitor . He is the author of The Faithful Scribe: A Story of Islam, Pakistan,
Family, and War, and his writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The
New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The Nation, among other
publications.

Picador
On Sale: Nov 21/23
5.38 x 8.25 • 400 pages
16 Pages of Black-and-White Images; 2 Black-andWhite Images in Text / Notes, Index
9781250872630 • $27.00 • pb
History / US / 20Th Century