Book Review: American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC
Being a review of a book about a now largely forgotten but absolutely bonkers time in nation's capital.
American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC
by Shahan Mufti
America’s collective memory is a hell of thing. A major event occurs and it’s all anyone talks about, first all the time, then occasionally, then rarely, then, unless it’s had a remarkably long lasting effect on country, it’s largely forgotten. That is the case with the siege on Washington D.C. in 1977 by the extremist Muslim Hanafi group. Three buildings occupied, It’s remarkable that it’s taken over forty years for someone to write the definitive account of this absolutely insane situation, but thankfully Shahan Mufti finally has.
The climax of the book is, obviously, the Hanafi’s take over of multiple buildings in Washington in the summer of 1977, but Mufti starts his story much earlier — with the development of the Nation of Islam and the Black Muslim movements in America. Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, the central figure in the book, comes up through that world, becoming close to Elijah Muhammad and his family before being disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and striking out on his own, eventually finding a South Asian mystical Islamic teacher with whom he develops what will become the Hanafi sect.
In the aftermath of Malcolm X’s assassination and as he moved closer to a more mainstream Islamic ideology (albeit with a mystical and fundamentalist bent) Khaalis became a consistent critic of the National of Islam. This would have disastrous consequences when a group of NoI members go to Khaalis’s home and slaughtered his family, killing his children and grandchildren in retaliation for him writing letters denouncing Muhammad. In the chillingest section of the book Mufti recounts the intruders systematic murder of most of Khaalis’s family. The youngest, a grandchild, only nine days old, was drowned in a bucket. Members of Mosque number 12 in Philadelphia were soon arrested for the murders but the trials were a bit of a shambles, made worse by the ham-handedness of the judge and the problems the system had in dealing with the deeply traumatized survivors of the killings.
Khaalis had always had mental problems (he’d been discharged from the military for psychiatric issues) but in the aftermath of the killings, he further unraveled, stockpiling weapons and becoming incensed by the release of a biopic about the prophet Mohamed.* Outraged at the movie and spiraling after the murders of his family Khaalis and his followers take over the Islamic Center, a Jewish Center, and a City Hall building in Washington, D.C. holding hundreds of people hostage and demand the the movie be banned in America and that the killers of Khaalis’s family be brought to them for beheading. Famously, future D.C. mayor Marion Barry was wounded in the melee. A tense standoff ensues that has more twists and turns than a substack review can handle. You’ll have to read the book, but the way the whole thing was handled reads like it is from a different time, which, in so many ways, it was.
Mufti does a remarkably job of telling this complex story. The Hanafi massacre killings are told in a straight forward way that gave me chills. The complex and insanely violent internecine fueds among the various Black Muslim groups is handled well and Khaalis is portrayed as the complex and emotionally disturbed man he was. Really great book about a now largely forgotten episode.
Recommended.
*the making of and distribution of the film is a subplot of American Caliph, but largely uninteresting.