YPSILANTI, Mich. - A militant religious message is spread worldwide from this city outside Detroit by a group of Islamists with connections to Pittsburgh. Working in the onetime office of an accountant, the Islamic Assembly of North America promotes its views through books, magazines, Internet sites, a radio program, a prison ministry and conferences. Two Algerians who wrote for Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, the Arabic-language magazine once published in Pittsburgh, are now on IANA's staff. They are among a number of former Assirat staff and other men who have moved between Pittsburgh and other U.S. cities, associating with organizations or individuals with known or suspected ties to Islamist movements. Other names connected with IANA have surfaced repeatedly over a decade with Islamist movements in the United States and in Middle Eastern countries. The two former Assirat writers are just the latest incarnation of a Pittsburgh-connected relationship that began in the 1990s. Assirat regularly published articles about IANA; IANA's officers contributed articles to the magazine or sat on its advisory board. The relationship did not end when Assirat folded in July 2000. Attawheed Foundation, made up mostly of Saudi graduate students attending Pittsburgh-area universities, retains IANA as one of two beneficiaries of its assets. Attawheed also listed IANA as a financial reference for donors. And Al Andalus, the private school in Pittsburgh attended by many Attawheed members' children, maintained links on its Web site to IANA's Internet sites. One IANA site reprinted three fatwas — Islamic legal opinions — that encouraged "martyrdom" attacks against enemy targets just four months before Sept. 11. Among the examples cited in one fatwa was the crashing of an airplane into an enemy target. Spokesmen for Attawheed insist "no special relationship" exists between their foundation and IANA. But an IANA employee said he is familiar with Attawheed and described the two groups' relationship as financial. Like a 'father' IANA operates from a single-story building with tan aluminum siding and rust-colored trim. The building stands along a busy street in a city that has struggled since the local General Motors plant closed more than a decade ago. Few people visit IANA's office, according to workers in nearby office buildings. They describe IANA's staff as courteous but private; women who enter the building are covered in the traditional gowns and veils of devout Muslims, they say. Neither the sight of fully veiled women nor an Islamic group's presence is unusual in this corner of southeastern Michigan. Detroit and surrounding cities such as Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Ypsilanti are home to a large concentration of Arab-Americans; many families date back generations. IANA is far from its own roots, though. It incorporated in 1993 in Denver and listed directors in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Oregon. Its former president, Bassem Khafaji, an Egyptian then living in Denver, later sat on Assirat's international advisory board. IANA grew out of Dar Makkah, a dissolved Denver-based organization that published "The Friday Report." The publication included a compilation of fatwas issued by Muslim sheiks. ("Friday Report" refers to Islam's Friday prayers, the equivalent of Christianity's Sunday services.) Dar Makkah's former director, Mohammed Al-Ahmari, now runs IANA. In 1996, IANA bought its Ypsilanti property for $181,000, according to public records, and it operates on an annual budget of approximately $500,000. One of its directors, Ala'a Abunijem, founded Dar Makkah Association in Portland, Ore. In the small reception area of the Ypsilanti office, IANA's Arabic- and English-language publications are showcased. A June 2000 copy of Assirat lies on a table. The Pittsburgh magazine was distributed at IANA's conferences, sources say. Assirat's former managing editor, Khaled Guerdjouma, now writes for IANA's Web magazine, Al Asr (The Era). IANA has published a booklet by Guerdjouma — who uses the pen name Khalid Hassan — on Islamic movements in his native Algeria. Bloody warfare between Islamist guerrillas and government troops has ravaged Algeria for more than a decade. Redouane Mohammed Azizi, a fellow Algerian and friend of Guerdjouma, wrote for Assirat in Pittsburgh as well. He moved recently to Ann Arbor to become an Al Asr writer. Interviewed in IANA's office, Azizi said he knew other Muslims connected to Assirat and to Attawheed Foundation in Pittsburgh — although he initially claimed not to have written for Assirat — and described them as close-knit. Guerdjouma recently returned to Algeria, he said. Azizi also insisted he knew nothing about the three fatwas endorsing suicide missions that Al Asr posted on its Web site in May 2001. He said that occurred before he joined IANA. but an article with Azzizi's byline appeared on Al Asr at the same time. In one, Sheik Salman Al Awdeh wrote that "martyrdom" is permissible under certain conditions. Among those: A suicide attack should "gain supremacy for the word of God" or "harm the enemy, through the killing and the wounding … or demoralize the enemy when they see that only one Muslim could do such damage." In another, Sheik Hamid Al-Ali explained distinctions between suicide operations, such as "storming enemy lines without a hope of survival" or dying "to destroy a vital enemy command post." "The modern version of that," Al-Ali wrote, "is to use bombing methods or to crash one's plane on a crucial enemy target to cause great casualties." IANA's director, Mohammed Al-Ahmari, was traveling in the Gulf state of Qatar, according to an IANA staffer who declined to give his name. But like Azizi, the IANA staffer said he was familiar with Attawheed Foundation in Pittsburgh and described IANA as "a father" to Attawheed. Although no other evidence points to IANA parentage for Attawheed, the two organizations have been close for years, according to Attawheed's own records. 'You pick somebody' While Assirat highlighted IANA in print, Attawheed Foundation made IANA part of its own legal set-up. Incorporating in 1995, it listed IANA and its then-president, Bassem Khafaji, as one of two beneficiaries of its assets. The other was the now-defunct Dar Makkah. Even so, Attawheed spokesman Nazeeh Alothmany denies any involvement by the Pittsburgh foundation with IANA. "You have to pick somebody, and you just pick," he says when asked about the choice of IANA as a beneficiary. Alothmany moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., from Saudi Arabia in 1995. He says he was active in Islamic circles there — but not with IANA — before moving to Pittsburgh four years later. Attawheed board member Abdulaziz Al-Nehabi agrees: "There is no special relationship or this kind of thing between Attawheed and IANA." Yet when Attawheed later posted a message on an Islamic Internet site to raise funds, it included four references. Alothmany describes them as "like the one you would have in your resume. You get reference letters from people who you met with and interacted." One reference was IANA. Another was Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen, a Saudi religious leader who issued a 1991 fatwa condemning Muslim Shiites as infidels who should be killed. In 2000 he endorsed executing "apostates." Shortly before Sept. 11, Jibreen issued a fatwa defending Afghanistan's Taliban against U.S. accusations that it harbored al-Qaida terrorists. His fatwa appeared on Azzam.com, the pro-bin Laden Web site with a link on the Web page of Al Andalus School in Pittsburgh. "The Kafir nations, such as the Christians, the Jews, the Communists and the Atheists, all of them, are against the correct Islam," Jibreen wrote. True believers should wage war on infidels "with your wealth, your persons and your tongues." Asked about Jibreen's fatwas, Attawheed's Al-Nehabi says a few intolerant opinions do not make a religious scholar all bad. IANA follows an equally fundamentalist path on its "Fatwa Line," a toll-free phone service. One of the religious leaders its service highlights is Sheik Jamal Zarabozo, whose books are sold in IANA's Ypsilanti office. Zarabozo's fatwas were frequently printed in "The Friday Report" produced by IANA's predecessor, Dar Makkah. In the past, Zarabozo has accused Muslim modernists of breaking Islamic principles by opposing the stoning of adulterers and the killing of "apostates." In another fatwa, he warned against visiting a Christian church to "watch people commit the greatest sin … You have no way of knowing what evil Satan may put into your heart by attending the gatherings wherein shirk (idolatry) is being committed." IANA's outlook is not universally accepted, though. Even some other Islamic fundamentalists criticize it as being too radical. In an open letter posted on the Internet in December 1996, the Quran was-Sunnah Society in Detroit accused IANA of emphasizing politics over religion, unjustly condemning others as infidels, inciting followers to "unrest and rebellion and causing them to fall into bloody confrontations." The Quranic society endorses Islam's ultra-conservative Wahabist sect.

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