(Wall Street Journal) Paul M. Barrett - In 1994, Mustafa Saied, then a junior at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, was invited by a friend from the United Arab Emirates to join the Muslim Brotherhood and entered a secretive community that was slowly building a roster of young men committed to spreading fundamentalist Islam in the U.S. Saied underwent a conversion to a less orthodox form of Islam in 1998. Today, his story offers a rare inside look at an extremist movement that flourished in the U.S. In December 1994, Saied and his friends attended a conference in Chicago sponsored by the Muslim Arab Youth Association that attracted some 6,000 people, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. At one point, six or seven masked young men dressed as Hamas militants ran down the aisles, waving the organization's green flags and shouting, "Idhbaahal Yahood!" ("Slaughter the Jews!"). Saied recalls his own reaction was, "Cool."
2003-12-24 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive