For nearly 20 years, members of an African-American Muslim group have sought refuge in a series of rural California sanctuaries, saying they want to pursue their religion in peace.
But the group has its roots in a militant international Islamic movement that federal agents have been tracking for years. Members in California have settled in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Fresno.
Today, the leader of that movement is at the center of the kidnapping of an American reporter in Pakistan. The case has focused new attention on the followers of Sheik Mubarik Ali Gilani, a once-obscure and still-shadowy religious figure who authorities have linked to Muslim extremists and terrorism in the United States and overseas.
It was Gilani whom Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl apparently was trying to meet in Karachi last week, when he was abducted. His captors have warned they will kill him if their demands are not met. They have also threatened to kill other Americans in Pakistan.
Gilani (sometimes spelled Jilani) is being held and questioned by Pakistani police and FBI agents. The Mercury News has learned that he was located after U.S. authorities provided information gleaned from communications between Gilani's office in Pakistan and a community of Gilani followers in Virginia.
A senior police officer in Lahore, Pakistan, told the Mercury News that the cleric had received ``a huge amount of money'' from California.
U.S. authorities have not reported that Gilani's American followers are currently involved in terrorism. But as part of a nationwide reassessment of potential threats since Sept. 11, the FBI is re-examining the group's history and activities, a law enforcement source said.
That includes taking another hard look at the community outside Fresno known as Baladullah. Members of Baladullah have denied a formal relationship with Gilani. It's not clear that everyone living at Baladullah is a Gilani follower. But some have a 20-year history of ties to Gilani followers in this country.
Their story stretches back to an inner-city neighborhood of Compton, extends through several remote locations in rural California and includes a time when Baladullah's founder, Khadijah Ghafur, was married to a man who authorities described as the leader of Gilani's movement on the West Coast, according to law enforcement sources and public records.
Spokesmen for Gilani's U.S. movement say they are law-abiding citizens whose New York-based organization is called Muslims of the Americas and includes several hundred adherents living in rural communities across the country.
U.S. authorities say at least some of Gilani's followers are part of a violent network called ul-Fuqra, involved in fraud and numerous acts of violence, including bombings and murder.
Most of those attacks targeted religious rivals and took place in the 1980s and early 1990s. But even in the past year, authorities have brought federal firearms charges against some Gilani followers.
Separately, state and local authorities are investigating the possible misuse of public funds by a Fresno charter school that is run by Baladullah founder Ghafur.
Spokesmen for Muslims of the Americas say they are being targeted because of racism and anti-Muslim prejudice. They and members of the Baladullah community refused repeated requests to comment for this article.
But official documents, law enforcement reports and experts paint an intriguing and contradictory picture of the organization and its leader Gilani.
Man of contrasts
The contradictions begin with Gilani himself.
Followers say Gilani is a respected Islamic teacher who sponsors charitable work in the troubled Muslim region of Kashmir. About 60, he has three wives -- two of them American-born. He lives in the northern Pakistani city of Lahore, where he operates a school called the International Qur'anic Open University and teaches a form of Sufi mysticism and a religious therapy called Koranic psychiatry.
Some Islamic scholars dismiss him as a minor cleric with a harmless following. But Pakistani authorities say that he has run training camps there for Islamist guerrilla fighters and that he has served as an emissary between Osama bin Laden and supporters in Saudi Arabia. Recent news reports have said that he may be linked to alleged shoe bomber Richard Reid.
Reports from Pakistan this week have linked Gilani both to Muslim extremists and Indian government officials -- two groups that are fundamentally at odds.
The U.S. State Department listed him on a 1999 roster of international terrorists.
And while Gilani is not considered part of Al-Qaida, U.S. authorities say that bin Laden lieutenant Wadi el-Hage helped some of Gilani's followers assassinate a Muslim cleric in Arizona in 1990. El-Hage is now serving a life prison term for his part in the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
Other Gilani followers have been implicated in at least 17 bombings and assassinations in the United States -- targeting Jews, Hindus and even fellow Muslims who apparently were considered rivals or dissenters, according to federal court testimony by Thomas Gallagher, an agent with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
In 1993, a group of Gilani followers in Colorado were convicted of a wide-ranging conspiracy that included defrauding the state of workers-compensation funds and plotting the Arizona cleric's murder. The complex investigation began four years earlier, when authorities searched a storage locker and found firearms, explosives, phony identification papers and plans for arson and murder.
But in recent years, some scholars suggest that Gilani's followers may have outgrown their militant roots. One analyst believes they simply shifted their focus -- to fundraising -- after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
``They knew they were being watched,'' suggested Yehudit Barsky, who tracks international terrorist groups for the American Jewish Committee.
A primary investigator in the Colorado case, Susan Fenger, said she traced at least $20,000 in state funds that Gilani's followers in Colorado Springs sent to his home base in Lahore.
Earlier this month, Muslims of the Americas representatives held a news conference to protest what they saw as a long-running smear campaign by U.S. officials and the news media.
``We can assure the United States government and all others concerned that the Muslims of the Americas has no sinister or evil designs against the United States nor any other group,'' they said. ``Our sheik does not condone nor teaches us to condone violence, especially against the innocent.''
A statement on the Muslims of the Americas Web site, which was recently taken offline, charged that a ``Zionist conspiracy'' has manipulated the U.S. government and orchestrated a campaign against Gilani and Islam as a whole.
American roots
Gilani first came to America around 1980 and began building a following in New York City.
It was a time when a number of African-Americans were discovering Islam as a source of both spiritual and social enlightenment.
``It's a great alternative to oppression and racism,'' said Yvonne Haddad, a Georgetown University scholar who has written books on the spread of Islam in the United States.
As he attracted more followers around the United States, they established a network of rural enclaves -- in places like Colorado, Virginia, South Carolina and upstate New York -- where they live in relatively spartan conditions, not unlike those of Baladullah.
Religious scholars say that's consistent with the principles of Sufism, a branch of Islam that emphasizes an inner struggle for enlightenment, while renouncing worldly concerns and material wealth.
Today, of course, there are many branches of Islam in the United States, as practiced by African-Americans and others. Scholars say Gilani's movement is a small faction, with several hundred followers. It is not associated with the Nation of Islam movement, whose leaders have included Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan.