Tex Mecca
Ever since a worshiper at Arlington’s Center Street mosque was linked to terrorist Osama bin Laden, its neighbors have cast a wary eye at the city’s growing Islamic community—and Muslims have wrestled with whether and how to embrace American culture.
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Whenever I asked how individuals from so many nations worshiped harmoniously together, I received long-winded replies on the miracle of Islamic fraternity. In truth brotherhood is sometimes more of an ideal than a reality. “I went to a meeting recently,” recounted Aziz Shihab. “By the time I got there, chairs were flying and people were screaming. It seems there was a very beautiful Pakistani girl who was supposed to sing. I saw her, and she was beautiful. But she didn’t get to sing. All the Pakistanis wanted to hear her, but the Iranians said, ‘Absolutely not!’” Culturally, Iran is far more conservative than Pakistan; allowing a young girl onstage would have violated Iranian sensibilities. Such clashes born of differences in home cultures have kept the immigrant Muslim community divided. Recently, however, leaders have been trying to forge greater unity. To this end, Ambassador Ahsani and others have formed the American Muslim Caucus to give Muslims a greater voice in politics. Both parties have given them a favorable reception, despite the fact that many Muslims hold conservative views. Ahsani, for example, enjoys listening to Christian radio because of the talk about things like “family values.”
POLITICS IS NOT A PRIMARY CONCERN of most Muslims in the Metroplex, but there are enough exceptions to the rule that the community has become a force back in the Middle East. One of Arlington’s most fervent activists is a Palestinian American named Hasan Hasan-Ali, who works as an engineer at Parkland Hospital. One evening, he invited me over for a traditional Arab meal. He explained that he had been born in Kuwait, but because of his Palestinian ancestry, he was not considered to be a citizen, not allowed to vote, and couldn’t study what he wanted to at university, so he moved here. “When I became an American citizen, I realized I could go and vote for somebody who was running for president, or mayor, or anything,” recalled Hasan-Ali. “This to me was like candy.” He now organizes voter registration campaigns among Arab Americans. His wife, Tammy, who is from Honey Grove, a small town northeast of Dallas, converted to Islam before they married. “I don’t think people realize that we worship the same god as Jews and Christians,” she told me. “They hear Allah and they think it’s a medieval god or something.”
When the conversation turned to Jerusalem, where his family lived until the creation of the modern Israeli state, Hasan-Ali abruptly left the table. He came back with a heavy set of wrought-iron keys, which used to open the doors of his family home. It has been demolished. Many Palestinians in the Metroplex have similar souvenirs, and after a while keys that do not unlock anything came to stand for the Palestinian predicament in my mind. Feelings of loss, distance, and alienation, combined with the high incomes they now earn in the Metroplex, had made these immigrants the world’s most lavish contributors to the Palestinian cause of nationhood.
One week later, Hasan-Ali invited me to a fundraiser for the Islamic Association for Palestine. The IAP produces videotapes and a newspaper, called Al Zaytoma (The Olive), that present the Palestinian perspective on the conflict with Israel. Similar organizations in the Metroplex (most famously a charity called the Holy Land Foundation) have been accused of funneling money to Hamas, an organization that engages in terrorism, but Muslims have vehemently denied the accusations. The FBI has looked into the matter, but no charges have been brought against any charity in the area. Those who contribute have been assured that the money will be spent on orphans, widows, and the elderly.
At the fundraiser, five Palestinian men took the stage to sing virile, foot-stomping songs of their homeland. Then organizers dimmed the lights for a slide show aimed at stirring sympathizers into a generous mood. Images of children being raised in tents, of boys being shot at, and of homes being destroyed flashed across the screen. I sat with a family from Richardson who were extremely welcoming. “I don’t tell people I’m from Texas or the United States,” their twelve-year-old told me. “I say I’m Palestinian.” He has never lived in Palestine. “I want to go over there and fight someday,” his eleven-year-old brother chimed in. “I hate the Jews.”
At the end of the night, a man known as one of the most prolific fundraisers in the Metroplex took the podium to cajole money from the crowd. Hasan-Ali and seven other men walked among the tables with plastic baskets to collect the checks. “We are here for one reason,” the speaker told the audience. “To establish a connection between our hearts and Jerusalem! Jewish organizations have raised $300 million to establish a connection between Jews in this country and the Holy Land! We are here for the same reason! We want you always to be in touch with your brothers and sisters in Palestine!” And the people gathered together in the Metroplex, so far away from their birthplace, wrote checks to buy the connection of which he spoke. Some paid $5,000, many more paid $1,000, and others paid $500 or $250. In total the IAP raised $55,000, which, I was told, was a slow night.
BELIEVING THAT ASSIMILATION INTO AN infidel society leads to the loss of Muslim identity, many who worship at Center Street argue that it is necessary to retreat from the world around them—a stance that differentiates the mosque from others in the Metroplex. After the Friday services I attended, Umm Hamza knocked on the door that separated us from the upstairs part of the men’s side. A male voice answered. Osama Al-Assad, a member of the mosque’s governing board, unlocked the door and invited us to cross over. We all sat down in a small office. Al-Assad is originally from Kuwait, but in 1978 he moved to Oklahoma to study civil engineering. He now owns an electronics business. His manner was polite and even friendly, though he stared at the ßoor during our entire conversation. (Men who worship at Center Street take literally the Qur’an’s directive to lower their eyes in the presence of women.) “In this mosque, our way is that we don’t interfere in politics,” he explained, studying his feet. “We don’t get involved in politics, even back home.” Getting involved in politics means a person has become caught up with earthly matters.
Like many other Muslims whom I asked about Wadih el Hage, Al-Assad said that few people at Center Street had any idea of his ties to Osama bin Laden. The FBI, however, knew all about el Hage’s past. Immediately after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the bureau created eighteen joint terrorism task forces with local law enforcement officials to prevent anything like it from ever happening again. The Justice Department rarely opens investigations of religious organizations, and FBI officials told me that none of Arlington’s mosques are under investigation. “Somebody’s religion, whether they are Catholic or Muslim or anything else, does not constitute a likelihood that they will become a suspect,” FBI supervisory special agent John Fraga told me. “We’ve gone to great effort to dispel the notion that we’re out to open investigations on all Muslims or all Arab Americans.” Having worked for an alleged terrorist does attract scrutiny, however, and Wadih el Hage had once been the private secretary to Osama bin Laden. El Hage is a 38-year-old Lebanese Christian who converted to Islam. In 1978 he came to America on a student visa to get a degree in urban studies from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. In 1985, while living in Tucson, he married April Ray, an American, and four years later became an American citizen. The following year, the couple moved to Fort Worth, where el Hage committed his first infractions of the law, writing $2,400 worth of bad checks to 22 businesses over a two-week period.
After being charged with the crimes, el Hage disappeared, taking his wife and children with him. His roundabout journey took him first to Pakistan, to visit his ailing father, who had suffered a stroke. Later he surfaced in Brooklyn, where he filled in as the director of the Alkifah Refugee Center, an organization that recruited Muslims to fight in the Afghan war. (Today prosecutors allege that the center was largely funded by bin Laden.) From there, the family moved to Khartoum, Sudan, where el Hage served as bin Laden’s private secretary. After a few years, they moved again, to Nairobi, Kenya, where el Hage worked as a gem dealer, though prosecutors allege that he doubled as bin Laden’s prime operative in that country. Several individuals el Hage associated with in Nairobi were later charged with playing key roles in the bombing of the U.S. embassy there.
Wadih el Hage moved back to Texas in 1997, settling in Arlington. He opened a business called Lone Star Wheel and Tires and became a regular at Center Street. Though most in the congregation were unaware of his past, el Hage did tell the imam about his former employer. “Wadih told me that he knows bin Laden,” Imam Al-Hallak recalled, “but this is my impression: It was a business relationship.”
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