An American Imam

Magid keeps close watch on younger members of the mosque who might be drawn to the diatribes of radical clerics. Before 9/11, he recalls, a teenager who had read a fatwa on an extremist website walked into his office and asked whether the Koran sanctioned suicide bombings. "Absolutely not!" he sternly told the boy. Since the attacks, no young person has approached him with that kind of question, but Magid constantly lectures in Koran classes: "Don't blindly follow how any religious leader interprets Islam--even me." After last July's bombings in London, which were carried out by young British-born Muslims who had turned to extremism, ADAMS parents came to him fearful that their children could be similarly swayed. Magid says he convened more classes with his younger congregants to talk "about using democratic means--not violence--to convey their frustrations and disagreements with U.S. foreign policy." As riots by mostly disaffected young Muslims swept France this month, he preached the same message of nonviolence in his youth classes.

Distrust remains. The collaboration between the FBI and the imam "has not been popular in certain wings," concedes Michael Rolince, the Washington field office's special agent in charge of counterterrorism. The bureau has come under fire from hard-line pundits, who charge that it is reaching out to American Muslim leaders sympathetic to extremists. "They are providing an endorsement of these individuals, which enhances their credibility," says Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, a conservative think tank in Philadelphia. (The FBI insists it works only with moderates like Magid.) But some ADAMS members are still uncomfortable about their imam's talking to an intelligence service, while other conservative clerics have complained to Magid that he is selling out. Although they keep those reservations private for fear they will be investigated, Magid says, "they ask, 'How can you open a dialogue with the government when it has been so hostile to Muslims?'"

But progressive imams like Magid realize they are on the front line between the Muslim community and a country awakening--often fearfully--to the knowledge that it has a Muslim community. "It's time for Islam in America to be American," he says. For the FBI, that kind of thinking may be one of its best weapons in the war on terrorism. •