Muslim in America: a 'voyage of discovery' - CNN Excerpt

February 9, 2009 -- Updated 2207 GMT (0607 HKT)

Muslim in America: a 'voyage of discovery'


By Jessica Ravitz
CNN
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Hailey Woldt put on the traditional black abaya, expecting the worst.

The last time she'd worn the Muslim dress that, with a head scarf, covered everything but her face, hands and feet, she was in Miami International Airport, where the stares were many and the security check thorough.

This time, she was in a small town called Arab. Arab, Alabama, no less.

"I expected people to say, 'What is this terrorist doing here? We don't want your kind here,' " said Woldt, a 22-year-old blue-eyed Catholic, recalling her anticipation before stepping into a local barbecue joint. "I thought I wouldn't even be served."

Instead, Woldt's experiment in social anthropology opened her own eyes. Apart from the initial glances reserved for any outsider who might venture through a small-town restaurant's doors, her experience was a pleasant one.

On her way to the bathroom, Woldt said, "One woman's jaw dropped, but then she smiled at me. ... That little smile just makes you feel so much better."

This unexpected experience has just been one of Woldt's takeaway moments on her current journey. She is one in a team of five mostly 20-something Americans, led by an esteemed Muslim scholar, who are crisscrossing the nation on an anthropological mission. Their purpose: to discuss American identity, Muslim identity, and find out how well this country upholds its ideals in a post-September 11 world.

Leading this six-month charge, which began in the fall, is Akbar Ahmed, the Islamic studies chairman at American University in Washington. His drive to do this was beyond academic.

"As a social scientist ... as a Muslim, it was almost my moral duty ... to be involved in some way in the exercise of talking about, explaining, debating [and] discussing Islam," explained Ahmed, 65, who took a year's sabbatical to focus his energies. "After 9/11, Islam became the most talked-about, controversial, debated, hated and, really, mystified religion in America. I just couldn't sit it out."

So Ahmed devised the project that's been dubbed Journey into America. This "voyage of discovery," as he called it, is an offshoot of a 2006 endeavor that took him, and a few of those traveling with him now (including Woldt), into the Muslim world abroad. That initial trip involving visits to mosques, madrassas (religious schools) and private homes from Syria to Indonesia became the basis of Ahmed's book, "Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization."

He said during the recent Atlanta, Georgia, leg of the journey that although the trip abroad helped answer many questions about how Americans are viewed overseas, it failed to paint a complete picture.

"These questions Americans were asking [about Muslims] could not be answered without Americans looking at themselves ... and looking at Muslims in the context of their own culture and society," the professor explained. The group needed "to talk to Muslims and examine what they knew about American culture, American society and how they actually adjusted or assimilated or integrated -- or not -- into larger American society."

To that end, the team has hung out with a black Muslim rapper in Buffalo, New York; met with Latino Muslims in Miami, Florida; and swapped stories with refugees, dotting the country, from places as diverse as Bosnia, Afghanistan and Somalia. Photo See photos from their journey »

They've withstood the winds at Ellis Island in New York and on the shores of Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts, walked the neon-splattered streets of Las Vegas, Nevada, and navigated the country roads of the South.

Along the way, they've weighed in with academics, other religious leaders, law enforcement officials and activists. Many of the group's meetings and visits are chronicled in their blog.

The importance of this work became apparent to Frankie Martin years ago.

The 25-year-old Episcopalian, whose father works for the government, was living in Kenya when U.S. embassies in East Africa were bombed in August 1998, killing hundreds and highlighting the threat of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

"I remember coming back to the U.S. and talking about these issues [relations between Islam and the West], and people were just blank," he said. Then, September 11 rocked the United States, and he entered college at American University "wanting to know why this is happening and what could be done about it.... I wanted to learn more about the Muslim world, understand the religion of Islam and improve relations."

Part of the process involves pushing themselves to stand where they've never stood before.

At October's Muslim Day parade in New York, Craig Considine, 23, threw himself into the middle of protesters to witness and film a volley of venomous words. Among them were insults against Prophet Mohammed, which prompted heated rhetoric from both sides, as people hurled taunts at each other.

The young filmmaker said he didn't feel a thing until he walked away, turned his camera off and allowed himself to think.

"Both sides, the protesters and the responders, were all Americans and completely failed to see eye-to-eye," he explained. "I was just very disappointed. ... I don't think I've ever seen hatred like that in my whole life."

Jonathan Hayden, who's worked for Ahmed for nearly five years, pointed out that even the less heated moments can be enlightening.

He told the story of answering a tear-filled question posed by a Midwestern woman who admitted that she'd never met a Muslim.

" 'Do they love their children?' " Hayden, 30, remembered her asking. "We were able to tell her that, yes, they love their children. ... But the fact that she asked that question told us so much."

The group's central goal is to highlight the need to understand Islam, something they hope to further accomplish through a book Ahmed will write and a documentary they hope to produce.

"The Muslim world population is 1.4 billion people. By the middle of the century, one out of four people will be Muslim. ... [There are] 57 Muslim countries today. Think of the number," Ahmed said. "America -- as a superpower, as a world leader -- needs to be able to interact in a positive way with one-fourth of the world's population."

He estimated that there are 7 million Muslims and counting in the United States today. And their dreams and hopes, Ahmed and the others are convinced, aren't any different from those of their neighbors.

Sheikh Salahadin Wazir, who had dinner with the group and invited its members to his Atlanta-area mosque for Friday afternoon prayers, praised the project.

"It's important to hear what Muslims are all about from a Muslim perspective. We are law-abiding citizens. We are professionals," said Wazir, as he stood outside Masjid Al-Momineen in Clarkston, Georgia. "A lot of our children are going to school, getting a higher education, and the future is bright."

For Madeeha Hameed, 21, being part of this project has been especially personal. The senior at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, who took last semester off to travel as much as she could but has since gone back to school, moved to northern Virginia from Pakistan right before high school -- and right before the September 11 attacks.

"It was very difficult for me. ... You know how high school is," she said. "I did not want to be known as a Muslim or a Pakistani, because I just wanted to fit in. I had a lot of anger toward my identity."

Reading Ahmed's books, getting the opportunity to tag along on this current journey, "definitely helped me embrace my identity" and helped her to appreciate all that surrounds her, she said. "There are so many aspects of this country, and of Islam, that I wasn't aware of."
____________________________________________________________________________________
Man says he was informant for FBI in Orange County

He identifies himself in a court filing as having infiltrated mosques in Orange County on behalf of the agency.
By Teresa Watanabe and Scott Glover
February 26, 2009
As federal authorities press their case against a Tustin man accused of lying about ties to Al-Qaeda, they disclosed this week that some evidence came from an informant who infiltrated Orange County mosques and allegedly recorded the defendant discussing jihad, weapons and plans to blow up abandoned buildings.

On Wednesday, a man who claims to be that informant stepped forward, filing court documents saying that he had served as a confidential informant for the FBI from July 2006 to October 2007 to identify and thwart terrorist operations in the Orange County Islamic community.

The claim by Craig Monteilh, a 46-year-old Irvine resident, that he had been sent by the FBI to infiltrate several Orange County mosques could affect the government's case against Ahmadullah Sais Niazi. His allegations highlight recurring issues about the use of informants by law enforcement agencies and have fanned long-held fears by some Muslim leaders about religious profiling.

Monteilh said in interviews that he had alerted the FBI to Niazi after meeting him at the Islamic Center of Irvine in November 2006 and spending eight months with him. Monteilh said he called himself Farouk Al-Aziz and posed as a Syrian-French American in search of his Islamic roots. Monteilh told the FBI that Niazi befriended him and began to lecture him about jihad, gave him lessons in bomb-making and discussed plots to blow up Orange County landmarks.

"He took me under his wing and began to radicalize me," Monteilh said.

The FBI declined to comment on Monteilh's allegations, which could not be independently verified. Niazi's attorney, deputy federal public defender Chase Scolnick, also declined to comment.

But an FBI agent's testimony in the case Tuesday and interviews with Muslim leaders both appeared to bolster some of Monteilh's assertions about his role in the case.

Special Agent Thomas J. Ropel III testified at a bail hearing for Niazi that the defendant had been secretly recorded by an informant while initiating jihadist rhetoric and threatening to blow up abandoned buildings. Ropel did not name Monteilh but testified that the agency's informant was the same man Muslims had reported to the FBI as an extremist. In June 2007, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported Monteilh to the FBI as a possible terrorist, said Hussam Ayloush, the council's executive director in Anaheim.

Ayloush said he was "100% sure" that Monteilh was the informant in question and expressed anger and disappointment that the FBI would infiltrate mosques. He accused officials of trying to entrap innocent Muslims, noting that Monteilh has been convicted of grand theft and forgery in the past. He said Muslims had worked hard to develop a partnership with the FBI -- and had been assured by J. Steven Tidwell, then assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, at an Irvine forum in 2006 that their mosques were not being monitored. Now, Ayloush said, he has doubts about future relations with the FBI.

"This is religious profiling at its worst," Ayloush said about the FBI operation.

The Afghanistan-born Niazi, 34, was arrested last week and is scheduled to be arraigned next month on suspicion of perjury, naturalization fraud, misuse of a passport obtained by fraud and making a false statement to a federal agency. Niazi, who has lived in the United States since 1998 and earned citizenship five years ago, is related by marriage to Amin al-Haq, an Afghan militant who fought the Soviet occupation of the 1980s with a U.S.-backed Islamic resistance force that now is branded an Al Qaeda affiliate. Niazi is accused of failing to disclose those ties during his application for citizenship.

Niazi asserted after his arrest last week that he is an innocent man who is being retaliated against by the FBI for refusing to become an informant.

In Tuesday's bail hearing, Ropel asserted that Niazi was a danger to the community who should be held without bail. But prosecutors offered no testimony regarding the specific plots Monteilh says he told the FBI that he discussed with Niazi, allegedly involving attacks on Orange County shopping centers, military installations and court buildings. Nor was there any testimony about other mosque members allegedly having been involved in those or other terrorist activities, as Monteilh maintains was the case.

Ayloush said he had received numerous complaints from Muslims in 2007 that Monteilh was aggressively promoting terrorist plots and trying to recruit others to join him. Citing such behavior and saying that it made members of the mosque feel threatened, the Islamic Center of Irvine won a temporary restraining order in June 2007 that barred Monteilh from the mosque.

Monteilh filed a petition Wednesday to lift the restraining order, saying that he wanted to clear his name from any suspicion of terrorist activity. He had not contested the original order, he said, because he had been instructed by the FBI not to testify at the hearing. But he said he was speaking out now because the FBI had allegedly violated pledges to remove the restraining order, place him in a witness protection program, give him a final payment of $100,000 and grant other benefits in an exit package.

"Although the FBI has not fulfilled their promises, I am proud to have participated in the War on Terror," Monteilh said in the petition.

Monteilh, burly and bald, said he first began working for the FBI in late 2003 as an informant on white supremacist and narcotics cases after making connections with the Aryan Brotherhood during a prison stint for forgery. In 2006, he alleges, he agreed to infiltrate mosques.

During two weeks of training, Monteilh said in an interview with The Times, he was taught about Islam, Arabic, self-defense and weapons. He said he was outfitted with video and audio recording devices and given specific names of people to monitor. Monteilh said he also was instructed to progress slowly in his embrace of Islam to make his conversion seem natural -- wearing Western clothes initially and then eventually growing a beard and donning an Egyptian robe, shawl and head cap.

In August 2006, Monteilh said, he approached his first target: the Islamic Center of Irvine. There, he alleges, he made his declaration of the Islamic faith known as shahada and, as instructed by his FBI handlers, posed as a serious student of Islam.

Several Muslims began to embrace him, he told the FBI, and by December he was approached by Niazi. The pair dined at an Islamic Chinese restaurant in Anaheim and hit it off after Monteilh pledged that he would do everything he could to protect Muslims from harm by infidels. He described Niazi as highly intelligent, devout, resourceful and scholarly, with a temperate mien overlaying the passion of his cause.

In an interview, Monteilh alleged that he told the FBI that Niazi told him that he had been one of 200 people who greeted Osama Bin Laden in 1996 when he took refuge in Afghanistan after being expelled from Sudan. Niazi called Bin Laden an "angel," Monteilh said -- an assertion that FBI Agent Ropel repeated this week as information gleaned from the agency's informant. Ropel testified Tuesday that Niazi told the informant that it was his "duty to engage in violent jihad."

Over a year, Monteilh further related in an interview, the FBI paid him sums ranging from $2,500 a month to as high as $11,200.

Monteilh said he was cut loose as an informant in fall 2007 because members of the mosque he infiltrated began to suspect that he was working with the FBI.

Kenneth Piernick, a former FBI counter-terrorism official who is a consultant in Virginia, said parsing out what's true and what's not, even from someone deemed to be a reliable informant, can be challenging.

"You don't go talk to choirboys to get information on thugs," said Piernick, who retired from the bureau in 2003.

He said informants can be egotistical, manipulative and dishonest. Those who are getting paid, he said, have been known to "exaggerate information, or even invent it" to keep the money flowing.

Piernick said common reasons for discontinuing an informant include low-quality or unreliable information.

"In other words, he's not worth the effort," Piernick said.

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

scott.glover@latimes.com

Times staff writer Christine Hanley contributed to this report.