1973 Hanafi Muslim massacre

The 1973 Hanafi Muslim massacre took place on January 18, 1973. Two men and a boy were shot to death. Four other children ranging in age from nine days to ten years old were drowned. Two others were severely injured. The murders took place at 7700 16th Street NW, a Washington, D.C. house purchased for a group of Hanafi Muslims to use as the "Hanafi American Mussulman's Rifle and Pistol Club". The property was purchased and donated by then Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The target of the attack was Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, the son-in-law of Reginald Hawkins. Khaalis had written and sent fifty letters calling Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad "guilty of 'fooling and deceiving people – robbing them of their money, and besides that dooming them to Hell.'" The letters were mailed to ministers of all fifty mosques of the Nation of Islam, a sect that Khaalis had infiltrated and in which he had been a leader in the 1950s. The letters were also critical of Wallace D. Fard and urged the ministers to leave the sect.

The massacre was a direct cause of the 1973 Brooklyn hostage crisis that started the following day, as the four perpetrators, themselves Sunni Muslims, sought to acquire firearms for self-defense in the event they were targeted for a similar attack.

Background

At the time of the murders, Black Muslims were known as the Nation of Islam (NOI) and later, they changed their name to the World Community of Islam in the West.

Hamaas Abdul Khaalis was originally a Roman Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist born in Gary, Indiana as Ernest Timothy McGhee. He converted to Sunni Islam and on the advice of his Islamic teacher, Tasibur Uddein Rahman, he infiltrated the Black Muslims. He changed his name to Ernest 2x McGhee and he served as the principal of the sect's school, and then, he went on to become Elijah Muhammad's national secretary at its national headquarters in Chicago from 1954 to 1957. In an interview, Khaalis said, "Elijah once said that I was next in line to him, that it was me, not Malcolm X."

In 1957, he was demoted or he lost his influence in a dispute possibly after he unsuccessfully tried to convince Elijah Muhammad to change the direction of the movement. He then moved to New York City where he ran the Hanafi Madh-hab center in Harlem under his Sunni Muslim name Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. In New York, he continued trying to convince members to defect from Muhammad. In 1970, Khaalis converted basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was formerly known as Lew Alcindor. In 1971 Jabbar donated a $78,000 field stone mansion for Khaalis' headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The police believed that the continued efforts to convert people in New York was a reason for the growing conflict between Sunni Muslims and Black Muslims, and it may have contributed to the murders. In an interview, Khaalis stated the following about Malcolm X, "When Malcolm was killed I was teaching him the Sunni way," and "He used to come to my house on Long Island and we would sit in his car for hours. He would meet me after he left the temple. Never in public because he knew they were after him. He was saying the wrong things."

Massacre

On January 12, 1973, several Black Mafia affiliates traveled to Washington, D.C and scouted the home. Then on January 17, 1973, Ronald Harvey, John Clark, James "Bubbles" Price, John Griffin, Theodore Moody, William Christian, and Jerome Sinclair traveled in two vehicles from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.

One of the men called by claiming that he was interested in purchasing literature about the Hanafi and he arranged to come to the residence and purchase the literature. Two of them came to purchase the literature. One man gave Khaalis' son, Daud, a bill and needed some change. Daud left the room to get change, and upon his return, he was told, "This is a stick up." The two men then let five or six additional people into the residence.

Daud was killed first. He was taken to the third floor and shot. Abdu Nur was shot in a bedroom. Bibi Khaalis, one of Hamaas' wives, was forced to watch them drown two of the children in an upstairs bathtub and she was also taken to the basement where she was forced to watch them drown her nine-day-old granddaughter in a sink. Then Bibi was bound, gagged, and shot eight times.

Amina, Khaalis' daughter, was put in a closet and shot three times. She was told, "You know your father wrote those letters, don't you? Don't you know he can't do anything like that?" Unsure if she was dead, she was shot two more times, and then the gun jammed. Amina survived the shooting.

Seven Philadelphia Black Muslims were charged for the crime.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a pallbearer at the funeral for Khaalis' children.

Trials

James Price, 23, Jerome Sinclair, 22, also known as Jerome 5X; John W. Griffin, 28, also known as Omar Jamal; John W. Clark, 31; Thomas Moody, 20; and William Christian, 29, were indicted. All of them had extensive police records and with the exception of Christian, all of them had served prison sentences at Holmesburg Prison.

Of the six defendants, one was acquitted when a key witness, Price, an unindicted co-conspirator, refused to testify. Price was not happy with the lifestyle which he was afforded as a protected witness. Price also thought that if he could get out of the witness protection program he could reintegrate with his black Muslim brothers and they would stop threatening to commit violent acts against him. Then, Minister Louis Farrakhan on behalf of Elijah Muhammad, aired a threat during his radio broadcast:

Let this be a warning to the opponents of Muhammad. Let this be a warning to those of you who would be used as an instrument of a wicked government against our rise. Be careful, because when the government is tired of using you, they're going to dump you back into the laps of your people. And although Elijah Muhammad is a merciful man and will say, "Come in," and forgive you, yet in the ranks of black people today there are younger men and women rising up who have no forgiveness in them for traitors and stool pigeons. And they will execute you as soon as your identity is known. Be careful because nothing shall prevent the rise of the messiah, The Nation of Islam, and the black man the world over.

This broadcast led Price to refuse to testify. He was later murdered in Holmesburg prison, where he was housed with other Black Muslims.

Another defendant, John Griffin, was granted a retrial after the jury found him guilty, but the retrial ended in a mistrial because Amina Khaalis, a survivor of the massacre and the daughter of the Hanafi leader, refused to be cross-examined because she had "suffered irreparable psychological trauma" and it was thought that it was "highly probable" that she would suffer psychiatric injury if she were to testify about the murders again.

One of the men who was indicted, Ronald Harvey, was also indicted for the Camden, New Jersey murder of Major Coxson, a flamboyant black businessman and an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Camden.

1977 Hanafi Siege

In 1977, Hamaas Abdul Khaalis led an attack in Washington, D.C., the 1977 Hanafi Siege. He said that the purpose of the siege was to bring attention to the murders of his wife, his two children, and his nine-day-old grandchild, and the shooting of his daughter.

The murder brought attention to the armed conflict between Sunni Muslims and the Nation of Islam. Sunni Muslims believe that the Nation of Islam changed the doctrines of Islam by excluding whites and accepting Elijah Muhammad as a messenger of Allah. Sunnis believe that Islam is color-blind and they also believe that whites can become Muslim. They also believe that Muhammad was the last messenger of Allah.