Winding Spiritual Path for Suspect
Not long after being expelled from an Orange County mosque in 1997 for fighting, Adam Yahiye Gadahn returned wearing a white turban and robes styled in a fashion, one cleric remembers, similar to Osama bin Laden's.
"When I saw that, I thought, 'My God, this guy is going in the wrong direction,' " said Haitham "Danny" Bundakji, president of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove.
On Wednesday, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller announced an international manhunt for Gadahn and six others thought to have terrorist connections. They alleged that Gadahn attended a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and worked as a translator for Al Qaeda.
Gadahn, 25, has traveled a long road since his days as a youth on a goat ranch in the hills of southwestern Riverside County. Grandson of a prominent Jewish doctor from Orange County, he was raised by parents with eclectic religious tastes who tried to turn their backs on the modern world.
After turning to Islam as a teenager in 1995, Gadahn's religious urges were answered at a Garden Grove mosque.
With light skin, hazel eyes and long hair, Gadahn stood out at a mosque dominated by worshippers of Middle Eastern descent. He identified himself as Yahya, the Arabic name for John the Baptist, a great prophet in Islam as well as in Christianity. His Muslim name, Yahiye, might be a variant spelling of the Arabic word.
Those who knew him recalled a quiet but angry young man who often wouldn't say hello to passersby if he believed they disagreed with his militant interpretation of Islam.
"He would not answer much; he would not comment much," said Muzammil Siddiqi, the Harvard-educated executive director of the Orange County Islamic center and a national Muslim leader.
Bundakji said the newly converted Gadahn mingled with half a dozen "hard-line" Muslims, a faction that Bundakji as the mosque's president didn't allow to meet as a group on the property. "I tried to chase these people away," he said. "This kid [Gadahn] would give me a dirty look all the time. I could see he was going with the wrong crowds."
Bundakji said those Muslims didn't like the mosque's moderate teachings and protested its outreach to Christians and Jews. He said they printed fliers calling the cleric "the Jew," among other things.
"These people looked at us as too modern, too Americanized," Bundakji said. "They thought we were drifting away from Islam."
- Videos Lead to Treason Charge Oct 12, 2006
- O.C. Man Rises in Al Qaeda Oct 08, 2006
- Californian May Be Man Who Made Video Threat Nov 11, 2004
