This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. When I first looked at the new book by

our guest, journalist Shahan Moufti, I was amazed I had no memory of the events he describes,

which occurred when I was in my 20s. In March 1977, nearly 150 people were taken hostage in Washington

DC by a group of gunmen who stormed three different locations, the headquarters of a prominent

Jewish group, the Islamic Center of Washington, and the offices of the District of Columbia City

government, where a councilman named Mary and Barry took a shotgun pellet in his chest and had

to be hospitalized. The assault that led to a two-day standoff was orchestrated by a Hanafi Muslim

leader named Hamas Abdul Khalis. Among other things, he was outraged by a movie about the life of

the Prophet Muhammad, financed by Libyan leader Muammar Qadafi that was premiering that day in New York.

The attack also grew out of a bitter and violent dispute between Khalis's group and the nation of

Islam, which Khalis had once been a leading member of. Mufti spent seven years researching the

events and he describes them in riveting detail. Shahan Moufti is a veteran journalist who was

born in the United States and raised both in the US and Pakistan. He's been a reporter in the US

handover seas and is the author of The Faithful Scribe, a book that's both a personal memoir and a

history of modern Pakistan. He's currently chair of the Department of Journalism at the University

of Richmond. His new book is American Khalif, the true story of a Muslim mystic, a Hollywood epic,

and the 1977 siege of Washington, D.C. Will Shahan Moufti welcome to fresh air.

Thank you, David. It's great to be on the show. Before we get started, I just want to offer this

note to our listeners. Our conversation today will include a description of harm to children. We won't

dwell on it at length or include graphic details, but it is part of the story that unfolds here.

So let's talk about the man who is at the heart of this story. Hamas Abdul Khalis. Tell us a bit

a bit about him, his early life. Yeah, Hamas Abdul Khalis is the central character of the book. He's

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