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| It was at this time that the dissatisfaction among the American Salafees and Abu Usamah became apparent. Abu Usamah engaged in a war of words electronically with various members of his peer group which resulted in his becoming persona non grata among the American Salafees. | It was at this time that the dissatisfaction among the American Salafees and Abu Usamah became apparent. Abu Usamah engaged in a war of words electronically with various members of his peer group which resulted in his becoming persona non grata among the American Salafees. | ||
| Abu Usamah found a new home among the more moderate Indo-Pak communities in the UK, and became one of the Imams at ] in Birmingham, UK. | Abu Usamah found a new home among the more moderate Indo-Pak communities in the UK, and became one of the Imams at ] in Birmingham, UK. | ||
| ==Controversy== | ==Controversy== | ||
Revision as of 22:34, 24 January 2007
Abu Usamah (born March 4 1964) is one of the main Imams at Green Lane Masjid in Birmingham, England.
Abu Usamah, Khalifah At-Thahabi was born in Paterson, New Jersey, the youngest of 5 children. He was raised in the hard-knock projects of Paterson until his family moved out to the better part of Passaic, New Jersey.
He reverted to Islam in 1986 and applied to attend the University of Madinah as was the practice of many new, eager converts to Islam at that time. He successfully completes his Bsc in Usul-Ul-Fiq and mastered the Arabic language. He had changed his non-muslim name to his more well-known Islamic name after his conversion. He was initially known as Khalifah, Abdur Rahman but with the birth of his first son he took on the title of Abu Usamah(Father of Usamah) and attached the last name of At-Thahabi as a reference to the Imam Ad-Dhahabi and on the advice of a Shaytk in Madinah. At -Thahabi means Of Gold.
After his graduation from the University, Abu Usamah began a brief time teaching in the Uk but went back to the US in 1996 in order to puruse his first position of Imam in Orlando, Florida. He left there in 1999 to be the Imam of a fast-growing Salafee community in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He left Philadelphia in 2001 under a cloud of suspicion and accusation due to allegations of social and sexual misconduct. He had a brief stint in Cleveland, Ohio, and ended his time as an Imam in the US with the position of Imam at the Islamic Center of Peoria in Peoria, Illinois.
It was at this time that the dissatisfaction among the American Salafees and Abu Usamah became apparent. Abu Usamah engaged in a war of words electronically with various members of his peer group which resulted in his becoming persona non grata among the American Salafees.
Abu Usamah found a new home among the more moderate Indo-Pak communities in the UK, and became one of the Imams at Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, UK.
Controversy
In January 2007, Usamah was filmed in a Channel 4 Dispatches investigation Undercover Mosque preaching in the UK.
Among the comments he was filmed making were: "No one loves the kuffaar, not a single person here loves the kuffaar."
"Muslims shouldn't be satisfied with living in anything other than a total Islamic state."
"Allah has created the woman — even if she gets a PhD — deficient. Her intellect is incomplete, deficient. She may be suffering from hormones that will make her emotional. It takes two witnesses of a woman to equal the one witness of the man.
Usamah claimed in a video response that the footage filmed by the Dispatches programme featured statements which were "taken out of context."
References
- "Daily Mirror, Britain's new preachers of hate 11 January 2007
- Abu Usamah's response on Google Video.