#2041: Abdul Alim Musa

A.k.a. Clarence Reams (original name)

Imam Abdul Alim Musa is a Muslim activist, director of Masjid Al-Islam in D.C., member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, popular speaker and, perhaps most notably, founder and director of As-Sabiqun, an anti-Semitic Muslim group (more here) that advocates for the creation of a global Islamic state that would abolish all “man-made” forms of governance, as well as the Islamic Institute of Counter-Zionist American Psychological Warfare. If the name of the latter suggests unhinged anti-semitism and conspiracy mongering to you, then you are entirely correct. Sometimes considered something of a cult leader, Musa is an outspoken fan of the political Islam embodied by Ayatollah Khomeini, and has made several visits to Iran as a (self-appointed) representative of Muslims in the United States and supporter of the Islamic revival (he frequently appears on Iran’s anti-semitic Press TV).

The Sabiqun group claims to have a national presence and centers in multiple US cities, but appears to be, ultimately, relatively small and centered around Alim Musa’s DC mosque and the Masjid Al Islam mosque in Oakland, California, which is led by the movement’s other main figure, Imam Amir Abdul Malik Ali. The purpose of the group is explicitly to challenge to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and it is resolved to work “for the purpose of reestablishing the system of governance known as Khilafah, or the Caliphate.” Apparently they predict that Islamic rule will be established in the U.S., which it calls “the Islamic State of North America,” by “no later than 2050” – “Islam went everywhere in the [ancient] world … so why can’t Islam take over America? … We are on the right road,” says Musa. In an article in the Sabiqun newsletter in 2002, the group claimed that there is “open warfare" between Muslims and the U.S., which it described as “the united forces of kufr [non-believers] … the criminal constitutional dictatorship of the USA.”

Now, you’d be excused for thinking that Sabiqun is a fringe group, but Musa (and Ali) have been invited to speak at a number of large community mosques around the US, as well as events organized e.g. by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Muslim American Society, the Islamic Circle of North America and the Islamic Society of North America – not all of which are at least usually considered fringe – as well as vehemently anti-semitic organizations such as the Muslim Congress. They are also popular with many Muslim student groups, such as the Muslim Student Union at the University of California, Irvine, and enjoys a concerning presence at many US college campuses, documented here. Musa has for instance been invited by student groups (one example) to give “vehemently Anti-semitic” speeches in which he e.g. asserts that America was controlled by Jews, and that “Yahuds are the enemy of humanity.”

Anti-semitism

According to Musa, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was operated by Jewish people: “Who ran the slave trade …who funded [it]? You’ll study and you will find out: the Jews…It was the Jewish bankers…in Vienna, with pockets full of money, funding and insuring, that’s who did it…. you can’t tell us about no holocaust. Between the African Americans and the Native Americans, everybody else’s stuff was small potatoes.” According to Musa, Zionist American agents were also behind 9/11 (“George Bush brings down the World Trade Center, blames it on us [Muslims] and then claims himself dictator over the world”). Indeed, the Israeli Mossad and the U.S. government are apparently behind 90 percent of the terror attacks in the U.S. and abroad since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, including the attempt to blow up an American airliner heading for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, designed to put deranged, fundamentalist violence-promoting theocratic conspiracy theorists like Musa in a bad light.

It was apparently also the Zionist-controlled American government that flooded the country with heroin in the 1960s to snuff out the black rebellion. In general, the US is more or less controlled by Zionists – the government is “Zionist occupied” by “Zionists in Hollywood, the Zionists in New York, and the Zionists in D.C.” – who “all collaborate” to oppress Blacks and Muslims. No fan of the Arab Spring events, Musa claimed the whole thing was a Western conspiracy to “wipe Islam off the map”.

Musa himself claims that his attacks are directed at Zionist supporters of Israel and not at Jewish people in general (“One of my best friends is a rabbi!”, claims Musa), which is somewhat blatantly contradicted by what he actually says.

The Islamic Institute of Counter-Zionist American Psychological Warfare was founded in 2011. As Musa put it, “[f]or 30 years, Masjid Al-Islam [Sabiqun’s mosque] has been carrying on a direct, face-to-face struggle against the monolithic Zionist American regime ... We are an anti-Zionist American psycho-guerrilla warfare movement. We use all available tools found in our environment in exposing the anti-Islamic, anti-human policies of this Zionist American system.” The mission of the center is “to counter the concerted efforts of the enemies of Islam to sustain a false characterization of Islam and Muslims as a dangerous threat to global stability and tranquility.” If that is the goal, then Musa’s own rants are certainly not helping. In particular, the center was established to “monitor Zionist and Israeli networks, circles, and clubs which deceitfully infiltrate Muslim and Black groups,” as well as to “[a]nalyze the Zionist grip on humanity established via the media and economics.”

In 2009 Musa was listed as one of 22 people banned from entering the United Kingdom. According to the UK government, this was because he was “[c]onsidered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fomenting and glorifying terrorist violence in furtherance of his particular beliefs and seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts.” He is.

There is a decent resource on Musa and his groups here.

Diagnosis: Though way less influential than the anti-Sharia crowd likes to think, Abdul Alim Musa and his groups are, it should be emphasized, more influential than many others seem to realize. He is, in any case, one of the most deranged lunatics alive in the US at the moment.