Political Gabfest - Gabfest Reads: Two Horrifying Days in D.C.

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3.8 • 546 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2023

⏱️ 32 minutes

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Summary

David Plotz talks with author Shahan Mufti about his new book, American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, DC. They discuss an Islamic group’s multi-location attack in D.C., the terror that hostages experienced while held captive for the two days, and the movie that started the whole thing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to GabFest Reeds. I'm David Plotz, one of the hosts of Slate's political GabFest.
0:14.5	In 1977, when I was a first grader in D.C. public schools, Lafayette Elementary, the city was gripped for several days by an extraordinary event. And even today, 46 years later, yeah, 46 years later, the feeling of those days remains powerfully in my memory. So powerfully, I literally think about it every time I drive up 16th Street.
0:38.2	And now Shahan Mufti has written an absolutely brilliant and mesmerizing and page-turning
0:44.1	account of an event that you probably never heard of, but which was massively important
0:49.4	in shaping America's relationship to Islam and to terrorism.
0:53.9	Mufti's book, American Caliph, chronicles the 1977 siege of Washington, D.C.,
0:59.5	when a small Muslim group based in D.C., based out of a house on 16th Street, took more than 150 hostages in three buildings,
1:07.4	killed a young Howard University journalist, nearly killed Marion Barry, then a
1:12.7	city council member, soon to be mayor, and brought the city to a standstill. The Hanafi Muslim
1:18.7	takeover of the B'nai Brith, the National Islamic Center, and the district building, was,
1:23.2	and I think remains the largest hostage taking ever on American soil.
1:31.2	Shahan Mufti, you are chair of the Department of Journalism at the University of Richmond.
1:35.6	Congratulations on writing a remarkable and magnificent book.
1:37.3	And welcome to Gap Fest Reeds.
1:38.8	Thank you so much, David.
1:39.7	It's great to be with you.
1:42.3	So there are so many threads in this book.
1:43.9	It is a history of Islam in America. It's a history of the nation of Islam. It's a tick talk about a terrifying hostage situation. It's a story about the most ambitious movie ever made about Islam. It's also incidentally a story about Karim Abdul-Jabbar. But it's most of all the story of Hamas, Abdul Kalas, who is the American Caliph of the title. So,
2:02.3	Jehahn, start by telling us a little bit about Hamas Khalis and who he was and the group
2:09.6	that he led. So, right, Amas Abdul Khalis is the Muslim mystic in the title of the book. And he is, I'd say, the one who wants to be American Caliph, the leader of Muslims in
2:24.3	America, among several other characters in the book.
2:27.4	But Amas Khalis is born in Gary, Indiana.
	...

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