he four FBI agents visiting the Al Farooq mosque on Atlantic Avenue had to take the stairs to the third-floor prayer room. The elevator was broken, and the mosque has no money to fix it. The April 2003 visit was the agents’ second that week—trips taken, the agents said, to repair the relationship between the local Muslim community and law enforcement officers who alleged that donations collected at the mosque had been part of $20 million funneled to al-Qaeda terrorists. The agents spoke to worshippers for nearly an hour and then held a brief question and answer period. Worshippers voiced concerns about feeling harassed at the hands of citizens and law enforcement officials. FBI agent Joseph Billy Jr. was skeptical about FBI involvement in the harassment, saying, “This is your FBI. This is New York’s FBI office. Our whole purpose is to be an organization that protects us all.”

Adam Holroyde
Sean Fitzell
Megha Bahree
Chelsea Phua

FBI agents continued to reassure congregants of Al Farooq that the federal government was not targeting all Muslims or all worshippers at the mosque, but only a specific number of persons whom, the FBI charged, had associations with terrorists. “Your mosque is not what this is about,” Billy Jr. told worshippers. “It’s about a specific individual who has reason to be investigated.” He was referring to Muhammad Ali Hasan Al Moayad, a cleric in Yemen, and his assistant, Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed,

who were arrested with him arrested in Germany on January 10, 2003. According to a March 2003 affidavit that accuses Al Moayad of conspiring “to provide material support and resources” to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, Al Moayad claims at least some of the money, which is estimated at $20 million, was collected at Al Farooq. The affidavit does not give the specific amount of money that may have been funneled through the mosque. It indicates, however, that an unnamed Yemeni sheikh, who is the imam of a mosque in Yemen and a member of Al Moayad’s Islah party, was collecting donations at the mosque with associates in December 1999.

Muhammed Shoubir’s fifth floor office at Al Farooq mosque is covered with more than 40 Post-It notes. The spokesman and secretary of the mosque keeps notes detailing complaints from Al Farooq parishioners. One describes a woman who paces the floors of the mosque, nervous to be alone in her apartment because she is a Muslim. Another describes a Muslim man who installed three new locks on the front door of his Manhattan home to protect his wife and children. “These are people who are scared,” says Shoubir. And the recent trips made by FBI agents haven’t been helped.

In the wake of recent media coverage, the mosque and its worshippers have received many threats. Shoubir asked the police to protect Al Farooq and its followers, but was told that the police were too busy protecting bridges and tunnels. “I told him that we have 700 to 800 people everyday,” Shoubir said. “That’s a lot of people in one building.”

Al Farooq — one of approximately 130 mosques in New York City — was
established in 1976 to serve the large concentration of Muslims living on or
around Atlantic Avenue. In 1980, the mosque opened the Al Aquasa Islamic
School, a weekend school that teaches Arabic and Islamic studies to about 45
students between the ages four and 12. While worshippers at Al Farooq come from all over the world, the majority are Yemenis living on and around Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

“The [government] said somebody was here for two months and collected $20 million from Al Farooq,” said Shoubir. “Is this reasonable? Nobody thought to pick up the phone and ask us.” Since the charges surfaced, donations to the mosque have dropped, according to Shoubir, because people are afraid money they donate might support terrorism. They also are worried that they might be associated with terrorists.

Yet, this is not the first time the government has linked Al Farooq to terrorists. In the late 1980s, an organization named al-Kifah operated from the mosque to raise funds for the Islamic mujahedeen, resistance fighters in Afghanistan struggling against Soviet Union troops. Then, a former imam of Al Farooq, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was arrested as the lead conspirator in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center as well as for a failed plot to blow up the United Nations and several New York bridges and tunnels.

But mosque worshippers and officials deny that any funds collected by the mosque have gone to support terrorism. They say that it would be impossible for the mosque to have collected $20 million as the government charged; donations average less than a $1,000 a week. Worshipper Muna Mandi agreed. In March 2003 she told the Associated Press, "The mosque has problems buying toilet paper, paying its electricity bills—there is no money. The elevator breaks down just about every week. But I come for the religion."

So does Tegani Mohamed, a video store assistant. But, he admits, that when he gives money to the mosque, he does not ask what they do with it. “I give to them like I give to charity,” Mohamed said. “When you give to charity, you assume they would use it for charity.”
Shoubir describes the recent decline in donations as part of a long trend since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Shoubir remembers speaking with a wealthy doctor, who at the time of the attacks used to donate thousands of dollars to the mosque each month. The wealthy doctor stopped giving donations after the attacks, afraid that his donations might be misused, and he might be arrested. “That is the same way that many, many Muslims think,” Shoubir says.