San Francisco, USA - Abdul Saleh and Abdulla Dabashi witnessed the tactics of Islamic fundamentalists in their native Yemen. But nothing in their experience there compares with the violence and intimidation under the guise of religion that unfolded last week in their Oakland market.
About a dozen black men, wearing bow ties, entered the San Pablo Liquor store on Thanksgiving eve, accused the clerk of selling alcohol to African Americans in violation of Islamic law -- and tore the store apart.
They smashed display windows and shelves of liquor bottles, terrorized and threatened the store clerk and wrought an estimated $10,000 in damage to the place, police say. The group then headed 12 blocks to the New York Market and carried out a similar vigilante sentence.
Five days later, the New York Market was burned in a suspicious blaze, and store owner Abdel Hamdan was abducted and found in the trunk of a car in El Cerrito about 12 hours after the incident.
To San Pablo Liquor owners Saleh and Dabashi, the actions were more outrageous than anything they'd ever seen carried out by the most adherent zealots in their native land.
"There was nothing like this kind of violence, and even if you are a bad person, judgment comes from God, not from a brother Muslim,'' Dabashi said.
Two men, Yusuf Bey IV, 19, and Donald Eugene Cunningham, 73, both associates of the group that runs Your Black Muslim Bakery, about a mile north of San Pablo Liquor along San Pablo Avenue, were arrested Tuesday in connection with the mayhem at the stores.
They were identified in a videotape of the incident captured at Saleh's store. On Thursday, both men were charged with vandalism and false imprisonment. The charges include hate crime enhancements that bring longer prison sentences if the men are convicted. Bey is the son of founder Yusuf Bey. Oakland police have yet to serve arrest warrants on four other people allegedly involved in the assault. There have been no arrests made in the kidnapping or the fire.
The local chapter of the Nation of Islam, which is unaffiliated with Bey's organization, decried the attacks and held a news conference to condemn the acts and to distance the organization from suspicion.
Although representatives of the bakery have denied any involvement in the assaults, Saleh is taking precautions against its happening again.
Since the attack, nearly a dozen men have been on duty at his store most of the time, and at least a few of them have armed themselves. They give every person who walks into the store the once-over, but their demeanor becomes friendly when they recognize their regular customers.
Muhammad Jihad, an American-born black man and convert to Sunni Muslim who walked into the store Tuesday afternoon, said there was a sentiment among some Black Muslims in Oakland that Arab immigrants exploited the plight of poor African Americans by engaging in business dealings that would be outlawed under the religious laws of their home nations.
"There are people who are angry with family members who abuse alcohol and drugs, but there has to be a better way of going about things,'' said the 25-year-old Oakland native.
In countries that observe Islamic law, there are religious courts that mete out justice for violations of that law. But under Islamic teachings, Muslims follow the laws and covenants of the lands where they live, explained Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley lecturer who teaches a class on Islamic law.
It is the duty of Muslims to counsel other Muslims about righteousness or even to establish a boycott or leaflet the neighborhood asking people to change their behavior, said Bazian, who is also an imam at an Oakland mosque.
"That's much different from trying to compel them; that's an authority held by the people within the state structure,'' Bazian said. "You can't be judge, jury and executioner. Taken in isolation after 1,400 years of Islamic law, it flips the law upside down.''
Bazian doesn't consider the Oakland attacks as the product of a religious disagreement, but as the dynamics of inner-city race relations and the problems that crop up between African Americans, who have traditionally occupied the bottom rungs of the social ladder, and newly arrived immigrants.
Indeed, when the Rodney King verdicts touched off a riot in Los Angeles in 1991, communities of wealthy whites weren't the ones targeted for violence. It was Korean business owners who ran many of the businesses in the central part of the city.
And scapegoating an immigrant group for the woes of an entire community simply doesn't follow a logical course of thinking.
"Muhammad counseled people against extremism and said if you want to hold someone to a higher religious standard, hold yourself to that standard,'' Bazian said.
"This is a sad situation because in the minds (of the Oakland vandals) this is a way of fixing a community that is crumbling around them, but intimidation, even from a historical approach, isn't going to work.''