07 October 2016

Maryland imam’s advocacy of ISIS lands him at center of terrorism probe

Suleiman Anwar Bengharsa once told a court during a custody dispute that he worried his ex-wife’s new husband was too close to Islamic radicals under FBI investigation and she might raise their child in an “extremist environment.”

A little over a decade later, the Maryland man became the thing he once feared. The onetime Commerce Department trade analyst had remade himself into something rare in the United States: a radical imam publicly supporting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

Bengharsa celebrated ISIS killings and immolations on Facebook and issued a blistering fatwa against feminism through a sharia law center he started in Montgomery County, Md., not far from the nation’s capital. He criticized fellow Muslims who assisted authorities in terrorism investigations. [The Washington Post] Read more