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At the end of a wooded, one-lane road in Green Tree, Attawheed Foundation – dominated by Saudi students at area universities – plans to expand its operations. Its intended headquarters is a million-dollar property that once hosted an American Legion post.

Attawheed (pronounced "aht-taw-HEED") has grown from a student club in the 1980s into a well-financed foundation. It has shared board members with Al Andalus, an Arabic-language elementary and middle school opened here in 1990.

Like many religious groups, Attawheed (Arabic for "the oneness of God") sees its mission as spreading the faith – in this case, Islam. Its Web site talks of providing a mosque, a school and living quarters for Muslims in "bilad al-kufr" – the "land of infidelity."

But Attawheed and Al Andalus School are overshadowed by Assirat Al-Mustaqeem, the Arabic-language magazine once published in Pittsburgh.

"The magazine is shut down for two years now," says Nazeeh Alothmany, Attawheed's spokesman. "What do we have to do with it?"

The answer is three things: people, ideology, and ties to other groups.

Two Attawheed officers ran Assirat, and some writers for the magazine attended Attawheed's religious services. At least one Assirat writer taught at Al Andalus, and the school posted Web links to extremist groups embracing Assirat's ideology – links that a school official could not explain and that remained in place until pointed out by the Trib.

Attawheed also maintains close ties to the Islamic Assembly of North America, an Islamist group associated with Assirat.

Only two Attawheed representatives agreed to be interviewed for this article, and both denied any extremist connection. They objected to the Trib's translations of Arabic words and dismissed questions about their activities as anti-Muslim.

Experts consulted by the Trib disagree, however.

Mary-Jane Deeb, an Arab specialist at the Library of Congress, is disturbed by the school's Web links to what U.S. authorities define as terrorist groups. Deeb – who stresses her views are personal, not official – thinks the aim was to mobilize "young people … to become mujahideen."

Drew University religion professor Christopher Taylor says the Web links reflect "hard-core, radical" views. Those links, along with Attawheed's relationship to Assirat and IANA, suggest the foundation and the school tolerated – or shared – the magazine's ideology, he and others believe.

"People say things, and they act," says Peter Probst, vice president of the Institute for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, Washington, voicing a consensus of the experts. A former counter-terrorism specialist for the Pentagon and the CIA, he believes "there's a very compelling case that they have a hidden agenda and they need to be scrutinized with great care."

A ‘PEACEFUL MESSAGE'

For now, Attawheed's 50 or so members and their families meet and pray at a South Hills motel. The motel's conference room is a temporary mosque until the Green Tree property is ready to be occupied.

"We are firm believers in the peaceful message of Islam," says spokesman Alothmany. A doctoral student in electrical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, he moved to the city in 1999. After 9/11, he helped form the Islamic Relations Institute of Pittsburgh, to reach out to non-Muslims.

Foundation members, he says, concentrate on studying Islam's holy book, the Quran, and on community relations – "helping the needy, social activities, exchanging visits with neighboring churches, responding to school requests for speakers."

"You have seen these same activities taken place at all other mosques in the city, and they take place also in most mosques in U.S.A., even in other religious organizations in U.S.A.," he wrote in an email to the Trib. "So there is really nothing more special going on in Attawheed."

In a post-9/11 letter to officials in Green Tree, Scott Township and Pittsburgh, Attawheed's officers wrote: "We wish to share with you that our religion, Islam, does not – in any way, shape or form – support, promote or propagate acts of terrorism against innocent men, women and children. Rather, ours is a faith which holds sacred the sanctity of human life."

Al Andalus, attended by many Attawheed members' children, is in a West End strip mall. Its name refers to the Muslim-ruled Spain of the Middle Ages, a high point of Islamic power that is still revered by some Muslims.

Modeled on Saudi Arabia's strict religious curriculum, the school is partly funded by the Saudi Cultural Ministry, headmaster Ali Al-Shehri says. A Saudi embassy spokesman in Washington, D.C., said he was unaware of funding for the school; the embassy's cultural minister did not return phone calls.

Al-Shehri completed a master's degree in English at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999 and is pursuing a doctorate in rhetoric and linguistics. "We come here for a special purpose," he says, "to get our degree and to go back home."

Alothmany, a past board member of both Attawheed and Al Andalus, insists that each operated separately from Assirat.

"I've never read it, in all honesty," he says of the magazine. "They used to give it to me sometimes. They used to give me some. They were free publications, but I used to recycle them." He also insists that he knew little about Assirat's staff.

Yet several people were active in the foundation, the school and the magazine.

Legal papers list Attawheed secretary Bandar Al-Mashary as chief executive of Dar Assirat for Da'wah and Media Inc., which published Assirat. Mohsen Al-Mohsen, who edited Assirat for four years, once chaired Attawheed's board – at least one year while Alothmany sat on the board. Both Al-Mashary and Al-Mohsen received doctoral degrees from Pitt.

An Assirat writer, Khalid Ayed, taught at Al Andalus and was a school official, according to a statement he gave following a 1998 car accident involving an Al Andalus student. His brother-in-law, Mulhim El-Tayeb, wrote for Assirat, too. Records show they also shared a Portland, Ore., address with an alleged associate of Wadih El-Hage, a top U.S. lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, according to federal authorities.

El-Hage was convicted in 2001 of raising money for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 244 people.

One man who belonged to the Pittsburgh circle describes it as small but close-knit. "Even if you did not know someone by name, you knew them by face," says Redouane Azizi. An Algerian, he moved recently to Ann Arbor, Mich., to write for Al Asr (The Era), a Web magazine produced by IANA.

Azizi hedged, however, when asked about Assirat. He said he never worked for the magazine – until being reminded of an article he wrote for it.

‘DANGEROUS DIVISIONS'

While denying a connection between Attawheed and Assirat, Alothmany and Attawheed board member Abdulaziz Al-Nehabi say the words of both are misinterpreted or mistranslated.

But experts reading those words, whether in translation or in the original Arabic, describe the language as divisive and militant.

"I can assure you that the concept of ‘killing the infidels' does not – nobody has these ideas," says Al-Nehabi, an Attawheed prayer leader and a Pittsburgh resident since 2000. "And I'm speaking on behalf of Attawheed. And I am sure of it, 100 percent. Since I have been here, nobody has tried to discuss this. Believe me."

He and Alothmany object to translating "jihad" as "holy war," for example. They insist it means a personal struggle to practice Islam.

They say "kafir," used in many Assirat articles and on Attawheed's Web site, means "non-Muslim," not "infidel." Attawheed's Web reference to "bilad al kufr" – which the Trib and others translate as "land of infidelity" – means "land of the non-Muslims," they say.

Nonsense, says Drew University's Taylor, an Arabic speaker. He compares the word "kafir" to an extremely hostile racial epithet.

An English-Arabic dictionary on Al Andalus School's Web site also matched the Arabic word "kafir" with the English word "infidel."

No matter how the words are translated, they create "dehumanizing … artificial and dangerous divisions," says Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Middle East politics at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. "You are basically indoctrinating the youth and making them very hostile."

He calls the language a "beginning that basically escalates … from rhetoric into horrible actions."

Still, Alothmany scoffs at any suggestion of extremism. "So we're calling the ‘infidels' to our place?" he says, grinning and putting quote marks around the word with his fingers. "We are sending our children, most of the [Muslim] community in Green Tree [are] sending their children to the ‘infidel' schools?

"Um, what else … the Attawheed Foundation is going to donate to the ‘infidels' located in Green Tree some money to put some playground for the ‘infidel' children to come and play?"

Green Tree's manager, W. David Montz, said he knew of no Attawheed donation.

WEB TIES TO TERROR

John Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, cautions that when analyzing Islamist movements, "you have to look at what they do. You can't simply look at … their exclusivist, racist theology."

Christian and Jewish extremists use hateful language too, he says. But while "their theology may stink," it is not always "a theology of hate/killing."

What Al Andalus School did – to use Esposito's test – was to link itself on the Internet to violently militant groups.

"It is very obvious, based on everything you sent me and their Web sites, that these are a bin Ladenite, pro-Taliban group," says As'ad Abukhalil, a political science professor at the University of California, Stanislaus, after reading several Assirat articles in the original Arabic.

Viewing the school's Web links on his office computer, Abukhalil exclaims: "They are so unabashedly militant, it's weird. I am more surprised they didn't even try to change things after Sept. 11."

Matthew Levitt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former FBI terrorism analyst, agrees. After 9/11, Muslim groups in America removed any questionable Web link "because nobody wanted to get slapped with that."

Not Al Andalus School. It maintained Internet links to jihad movements in Chechnya, Eritrea, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan until late April, when those links were pointed out by the Trib.

The U.S. government lists at least two of those as terrorist groups – Lashkar i-Taiba in Pakistan and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The Uzbek group is allied with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, according to U.S. officials.

Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism researcher at Scotland's St. Andrews University, goes farther. "These are all al-Qaida umbrella groups," he says of the school's links.

The school's Web site also linked to Azzam.com, a pro-jihad site the FBI accuses of transmitting coded messages for al-Qaida. The site is named for Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian cleric allied with bin Laden who was assassinated in 1989.

A link to the Palestinian Media Center lists a "glory record" of "martyr" suicide-bombers in Israel. Sources say the site belongs to the terrorist group Hamas.

Another link was to Al Asr, IANA's Internet magazine. In May 2001, it reprinted three fatwas endorsing "martyrdom operations" – suicide missions.

Yet another mouse-click led from the school's Web page to Nida'ul Islam (The Call of Islam), a magazine based in Australia. It purports to reflect "the views of the Jihad stream amongst Islamic movements."

Nida'ul Islam offers sympathetic interviews of bin Laden and Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric and spiritual leader of Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), the terrorist group that killed 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt, in 1997. Nida'ul Islam said it interviewed Rahman at a U.S. prison where he is serving a life sentence for conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center and other New York landmarks in 1993.

One of Rahman's co-conspirators was El-Sayyid Nosair, who lived in Pittsburgh before killing a militant Jewish rabbi in New York in 1991.

Nida'ul Islam also profiles "holy warriors" around the world and condemns many Arab governments. It called Saudi Arabia an "apostate" regime in one article.

Shown the school's links, Attawheed's Alothmany said he was "shocked." He acknowledged being responsible for the site but denied knowing how the links originated. They were removed five days later. Access to the site is now restricted.

Alothmany called the site a forum for parents to learn about the school. "The kids, they never, they never get exposed to these things," he said. "We don't – there is no teacher who sits down [and says], ‘Hey, guys, go visit Azzam.com.' "

Probst, the former CIA counter-terrorism specialist, calls Alothmany's denials a smokescreen: "It is obvious that they think we're idiots." Similarities between Assirat's articles and Al Andalus School's Web links are too disturbing to dismiss, he and others say.

"There is no doubt that this is a hard-core, radical Islamist group," says Drew University's Taylor. "The appearance of the jihad Web sites is a further expression of that."

The school's Web page "speaks for itself" with its links to groups "directly linked to al-Qaida," says Levitt, the former FBI analyst. "It is significant that these links were still there" after 9/11 and removed only when questioned by the Trib, he adds.

Safdar Khwaja, a leader of the Muslim Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh, Monroeville, says the Al Andalus links are a warning for all Muslim groups: "We have to broadcast to everybody that, even if it means censorship, that they are familiar with the direct context of their Web sites and magazines."

Nail Al-Jubeir, the Saudi embassy spokesman, says Saudi students are told not to engage in politics while abroad. "That is simply unacceptable, what they are doing … absolutely not part of their curriculum," he states, adding: "I really don't buy that excuse that they didn't even know about it."

‘RHETORIC ISN'T NEUTRAL'

Organizations representing many of Pittsburgh's estimated 8,000 Muslims condemned terrorism as un-Islamic after Sept. 11. Some Muslims interviewed by the Trib recoiled at the ideology found in Assirat.

"We have to have the courage of our convictions to say that, ‘No, I do not agree nor have I ever subscribed to that kind of utterly senseless material,' " says Khwaja, of Monroeville's Muslim center. "Do I think that 99 percent-plus of Muslims in the greater Pittsburgh area would reject this kind of philosophy? I would say yes."

Even so, the experts consulted by the Trib are troubled by the similarities between Assirat – which they classify as extremist – and the school and the foundation.

"When you're educating children, who the models are that you put forward is very important," explains the Library of Congress's Deeb, "because kids want to know what they will be like when they grow up." With its terrorist links, she says, Al Andalus School seems to have offered "holy warriors" as role models – just as Assirat promoted them in print.

She worries that the purpose "may very well be mobilizing young people and encouraging them to become mujahideen."

Drew University's Taylor says many people who sympathize with militant rhetoric think of themselves as "out there on the cutting edge of jihad, waging war against ‘the infidel,' although most will never act on their beliefs."

"But the possibility always exists that a small group will act on this rhetoric – and we all saw on Sept. 11 what a small band of committed fanatics can do," he says. "The problem is knowing which is which."

Gerges, the Sarah Lawrence professor, concurs: "While you might say ‘rhetoric is rhetoric,' in this case, given the polarized nature of relations between the world of Islam and the West, given the heightened sense of alienation and desperation in the Arab world, I think rhetoric is not neutral.

"Rhetoric can also have terrible implications and produce terrible results as well, as we have discovered on 9/11."

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