Assassination in Detroit

Nov 9, 2009

The FBI lured a Muslim leader from Detroit, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, to a warehouse in Dearborn, Michigan and fatally shot him. They also charged 11 of Abdullah’s followers with various crimes.

The story the FBI gave was typical justification for FBI wrongdoing! They claim Abdullah was a radical Muslim who hoped to set up a separate nation inside the U.S. governed by Islamic Sharia law. They imply by the way they talked that he was a terrorist–without saying it.

Local Muslim leaders, Muslim scholars and people from his west-side Detroit neighborhood tell a totally different story about Abdullah. They say he offered people a peaceful way out of the most brutal conditions. “He would open up the mosque to homeless people. He used to run a soup kitchen and feed indigent people. I knew nothing of him that was related to any nefarious or criminal behavior.... He would give the shirt off his back to people,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Michigan chapter.

In a city where crime is rampant, those close to Abdullah say he wanted to have Islamic law in neighborhoods “because he wanted no drugs, no guns, peace where the children can run and play.”

The authorities say they found an “arsenal” at Abdullah’s home: three rifles, a shotgun, and a handgun. No self-respecting Michigan hunter would be caught dead with such a small “arsenal.” According to Abdullah’s son, he carried a gun because he’d been shot at three times, which is hardly unheard of in the impoverished Detroit neighborhood where he lived.

The FBI says Abdullah had a gun and was killed in a shootout with their agents. Who could believe that there were 18 bullets fired in a crowded warehouse, but every one of them hit him–and no one but him? Not a scratch on anyone else!

The feds say Abdullah was involved in fencing stolen goods. If he was, then why did they have to lure him away from his Detroit neighborhood to a warehouse where they were running a sting operation in racist Dearborn? Certainly it’s not because it’s hard to fence stolen goods in Detroit.

It’s hard to believe anything the FBI says, but even if it were true, why was the FBI involved in investigating a small-time fencing operation? “This was petty stuff,” said Imam Abdullah El-Amin of the Muslim Center of Detroit, “A bunch of petty thieves.” In reality, the FBI specifically targeted Abdullah.

This was the FBI’s alibi for the execution of someone who was a critic of the U.S. He spoke out against the U.S. wars and dared suggest black people should organize themselves and depend on each other.

The fact the FBI would murder a black activist comes as no surprise to members of the black community and anyone else politically active in this country. We know only too well how the FBI went after Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Little Bobby Hutton, George Jackson, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, among a host of other people.

The assassination of Luqman Ameen Abdullah was officially sanctioned murder.