Allah

Andwele Allah was searching for lyrics. He had a beat, and he was awash in ideas, but the words didn't come until he drove through Baltimore one day, past kids on corners, bottles, needles, surveillance cameras and boarded-up homes. "I pulled over and started writing the song," he said. "I just let my pen bleed like my heart was bleeding on the paper." "You young brothers have to stop and think," he eventually wrote. "You squeeze the trigger because you're blind from weed and drink. You took a life but don't know what it took for God to create.

Your recent editorial regarding Egypt ("The revolution betrayed," Dec. 22) refers to "the moderately Islamist Muslim Brotherhood," biggest winner so far in Egypt's parliamentary voting, and to the country's "weak secular and liberal parties. " The secular and liberal parties are weak, if not uniformly secular or liberal, and they evidence strong anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic influences. But what is moderate about the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party so far could be campaign and coalition tactics, not strategy.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The government completed its case against Zacarias Moussaoui yesterday with its most chilling piece of evidence, a tape from the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 that recorded the terrorists overwhelming the pilots on Sept. 11, 2001, slashing their throats and praising Allah before crashing the jet into a Pennsylvania field. The 32-minute recording begins at 9:31 a.m. with terrorists forcing the two pilots at knifepoint to give up control of the aircraft. Apparently dragged outside the cockpit, the pilots can be heard begging for their lives.

A Maryland inmate serving a 40-year sentence for a string of robberies on the Eastern Shore pleaded guilty Monday to mailing a threatening letter to a federal judge, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Willie Ray Bryant, 41, smuggled a hostile letter out of his Cumberland prison a year ago and sent it to U.S. District Court Judge William D. Quarles Jr., who received it Sept. 14, according to court records. Quarles had previously presided over one of Bryant's state cases.

Your recent editorial regarding Egypt ("The revolution betrayed," Dec. 22) refers to "the moderately Islamist Muslim Brotherhood," biggest winner so far in Egypt's parliamentary voting, and to the country's "weak secular and liberal parties. " The secular and liberal parties are weak, if not uniformly secular or liberal, and they evidence strong anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic influences. But what is moderate about the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party so far could be campaign and coalition tactics, not strategy.

A Maryland inmate serving a 40-year sentence for a string of robberies on the Eastern Shore pleaded guilty Monday to mailing a threatening letter to a federal judge, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Willie Ray Bryant, 41, smuggled a hostile letter out of his Cumberland prison a year ago and sent it to U.S. District Court Judge William D. Quarles Jr., who received it Sept. 14, according to court records. Quarles had previously presided over one of Bryant's state cases.

Five-year-old Sadiq Asad used to resist his mother's attempts to teach him the Arabic songs she learned as a child. He was too shy or embarrassed to try pronouncing the Arabic words of the prayers that his parents and older sister recite five times a day. And he began every morning of his first year of preschool in tears when his mother dropped him off. But all that has changed. Now, Sadiq is a kindergartner at the Aleem Academy in Sykesville. It's the most recent of a handful of Muslim schools to open in the Baltimore area and in the Maryland suburbs of Washington as more families strive to combine the top-notch academics of traditional private schools with the Islamic teachings and values typically reserved for religious classes.

Islam is the religion of 924 million people worldwide. About 95 percent of the followers of Islam, known as "Muslims," live in Africa and Asia. There are about 6 million Muslims in the United States.The Middle East, the site of the Persian Gulf war, is the birthplace of Islam. The religion was founded there, on the Arabian peninsula, in the early seventh century by an Arab merchant named Mohammed. He believed he was directed by God to reform the ways of the people of Mecca, who worshiped various idols.

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka - Not long after losing 24 relatives, including his wife and three of his four children, Mohammad Sumanthra Jainudeen stood over the freshly made grave of his 16-year-old daughter and proclaimed that he was very happy. His was not the awkwardly smiling front sometimes offered here by men and women who do not yet comprehend the loss of their families and homes. Jainudeen, who is active in his mosque in this predominantly Muslim town, believes he understands very well what happened when his house and his neighbors' and relatives' houses were destroyed by last month's tsunamis.

NAHRIN, Afghanistan - Abdul Majid stands in a hillside cemetery, staring at the four little mounds at his feet. "When I look at them," he says, "my children suddenly appear before my eyes." His neighbor Palwasha paces a ruined courtyard with dusty baby clothes in her hands. "Allah, Allah, Allah," she softly cries. In market towns like this one, the streets are usually teeming with kids flying kites, playing soccer and trailing visitors. But today, there is a strange hush in Nahrin. The children are missing.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- The government completed its case against Zacarias Moussaoui yesterday with its most chilling piece of evidence, a tape from the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93 that recorded the terrorists overwhelming the pilots on Sept. 11, 2001, slashing their throats and praising Allah before crashing the jet into a Pennsylvania field. The 32-minute recording begins at 9:31 a.m. with terrorists forcing the two pilots at knifepoint to give up control of the aircraft. Apparently dragged outside the cockpit, the pilots can be heard begging for their lives.

Andwele Allah was searching for lyrics. He had a beat, and he was awash in ideas, but the words didn't come until he drove through Baltimore one day, past kids on corners, bottles, needles, surveillance cameras and boarded-up homes. "I pulled over and started writing the song," he said. "I just let my pen bleed like my heart was bleeding on the paper." "You young brothers have to stop and think," he eventually wrote. "You squeeze the trigger because you're blind from weed and drink. You took a life but don't know what it took for God to create.

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka - Not long after losing 24 relatives, including his wife and three of his four children, Mohammad Sumanthra Jainudeen stood over the freshly made grave of his 16-year-old daughter and proclaimed that he was very happy. His was not the awkwardly smiling front sometimes offered here by men and women who do not yet comprehend the loss of their families and homes. Jainudeen, who is active in his mosque in this predominantly Muslim town, believes he understands very well what happened when his house and his neighbors' and relatives' houses were destroyed by last month's tsunamis.

NAHRIN, Afghanistan - Abdul Majid stands in a hillside cemetery, staring at the four little mounds at his feet. "When I look at them," he says, "my children suddenly appear before my eyes." His neighbor Palwasha paces a ruined courtyard with dusty baby clothes in her hands. "Allah, Allah, Allah," she softly cries. In market towns like this one, the streets are usually teeming with kids flying kites, playing soccer and trailing visitors. But today, there is a strange hush in Nahrin. The children are missing.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Zacarias Moussaoui invoked the name of Allah and refused to enter a plea yesterday to a six-count criminal indictment that accused him of a role in the Sept. 11 terrorist plot. His lawyer and the judge in the case entered a plea of not guilty for him. At a half-hour hearing conducted under heavy security at the federal courthouse, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of U.S. District Court scheduled Oct. 14 to start the trial for Moussaoui, the first person directly charged in the hijackings.

Five-year-old Sadiq Asad used to resist his mother's attempts to teach him the Arabic songs she learned as a child. He was too shy or embarrassed to try pronouncing the Arabic words of the prayers that his parents and older sister recite five times a day. And he began every morning of his first year of preschool in tears when his mother dropped him off. But all that has changed. Now, Sadiq is a kindergartner at the Aleem Academy in Sykesville. It's the most recent of a handful of Muslim schools to open in the Baltimore area and in the Maryland suburbs of Washington as more families strive to combine the top-notch academics of traditional private schools with the Islamic teachings and values typically reserved for religious classes.

They were called Black Muslims. They said the white man wa the devil. The civil rights movement was a bad joke, the white man's trick.Charles Rasheed, the first Black Muslim in Baltimore, preached the message. He listened approvingly to Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the movement for more than 40 years, and later listened to Malcolm X, its most articulate spokesman.Now Mr. Rasheed is something else.Not Black Muslim, but Muslim. Now he is a Muslim, period.Mr. Rasheed waves away the old sermons about white devils, much as Malcolm X did shortly before his murder, in 1965.

Experts on codes said yesterday that it is conceivable that Osama bin Laden used a videotaped declaration shown on television worldwide to transmit a simple message by way of a primitive verbal or visual code to terrorist cells in the United States or other countries. A prerecorded broadcast such as the one aired Sunday could not hide a lengthy or complicated message, they said. But such a message could be hidden in a photo, a rock music file or other innocuous-looking items posted on the Internet or sent by e-mail, using sophisticated, computerized techniques that bin Laden's associates may have used in the past.

Experts on codes said yesterday that it is conceivable that Osama bin Laden used a videotaped declaration shown on television worldwide to transmit a simple message by way of a primitive verbal or visual code to terrorist cells in the United States or other countries. A prerecorded broadcast such as the one aired Sunday could not hide a lengthy or complicated message, they said. But such a message could be hidden in a photo, a rock music file or other innocuous-looking items posted on the Internet or sent by e-mail, using sophisticated, computerized techniques that bin Laden's associates may have used in the past.

What would possess a man to strap explosives onto his body, turning himself into a walking bomb? Or to steer a commercial aircraft filled with passengers into a building, causing untold death and destruction? Suicide bombers claim they do it in the name of God. But how legitimate is that claim? The question is of vital importance to approximately 7 million Muslims living in the United States. Although no one has claimed responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks, authorities strongly suspect that it was carried out by supporters of Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi living in Afghanistan.