Surrounded by Islamic incense shops and booksellers on Atlantic Avenue in the Boerum Hill neighborhood, imposing Al Farooq Mosque in Brooklyn has a history of raising money for Osama bin Laden, dating to the days when Mr. bin Laden and the United States had a common enemy in the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Those days were supposed to be gone, though. Five years ago, the imam at the time, Abdulhakim Ali Mohamed, said that “in 1994, this mosque finally settled down” and broke ties with terrorists. Yesterday, however, news crews crowded around the mosque again, drawn by the federal government’s charge that a Yemeni cleric bragged last year that he had raised money for Al Qaeda through the mosque. Two doors down, at the House of Knowledge, a sort of Islamic department store that carries religious books, bumper stickers and gadgets like a plug-in device that “automatically prays when you start your vehicle,” the owner, Abdul-Rahman Farhane, said terrorism was denounced at the mosque. Full Story
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