About 10 months ago, I looked into an investigative group with ties to a pro-Israel think tank that announced it would infiltrate U.S. mosques to see which of the nation's 2,300 mosques and Muslim day schools are potential laboratories for jihad.

The Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE) then said it would rank these Islamic centers from one to 10 in terms of "jihad adherence," 10 meaning they preach the most violent forms of Islam, calling for the overthrow of the U.S. government and establishment of a Muslim state.

They also share their findings with local law enforcement and a paid subscriber list.
Based on a series of undercover visits in May, they gave a 9.5 rating to Dar al-Hijrah in Falls Church, Va., one of the country's largest mosques, with about 3,000 adherents about five miles southwest of the District. Some of the 19 September 11 hijackers attended the mosque, which is a surprisingly humble place once you get inside. The main hall is ornate, but the women's worship space upstairs is tiny and the classrooms were quite plain.

Back to the SANE folks: "We will determine who's calling for jihad against America," said David Yerushalmi of Brooklyn, N.Y., an Orthodox Jewish lawyer who is president of SANE. "All our government officials take the line Islam is a noble and peaceful religion. We say it can also be a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States."

Mr. Yerushalmi, by the way, is legal counsel to the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies, a hawkish pro-free market think tank with offices in Maryland, Arizona and Jerusalem. Bush Administration officials Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have contributed to its output and the organization has a link to SANE's site: www.saneworks.us, which has a link to this site: http://www.mappingsharia.us/.

Local police cannot by law to infiltrate mosques, he said, but a private group such as his — made up of Jews, Christians and Muslims conversant in Urdu, Arabic and Farsi — can. To date, he added, several dozen law enforcement agencies, including the Fairfax County sheriff's department, had contacted them. SANE's workshop "Islamic Terrorist Sleeper Cell Activity in America" was listed on the county's criminal justice academy Web site for a scheduled June 28 workshop. But the event got postponed indefinitely because of "political correctness," now mourns SANE's senior investigator, a Christian named P. David Gaubatz.

Gaubatz said he faked a conversion to Islam to win the confidence of mosque leaders at Dar al Hijrah in mid-May. He spent long hours there, he said, talking with Yusuf Estes, a former Christian music minister who converted to Islam, and with Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, the mosque's outreach director.

Mr. Estes, he said, slipped him a disk containing documents praising violent jihad. Back then, I tried reaching Mr. Estes, who has a website islamtomorrow.com, for comment, but was unsuccessful. I had interviewed Mr. Estes about two years ago by phone — as he said he was too busy to meet in person. An American convert to Islam, he said he works as a full-time evangelist. He and his family now live in Alexandria and attend Dar Al Hijrah.

A former music minister in the Church of God (Anderson, Indiana), he was baptized as a 12-year-old in Pasadena, Texas. He includes portions of the New Testament and Christian lingo on his site and his “answers to questions” column is aimed toward Christians. His “Nine Steps to Purify Your Heart” to become a Muslim is similar to Campus Crusade’s “Four Spiritual Laws” method of becoming a Christian.
He says he now tours college campuses to spread the message, although he would not name specific campuses when asked. More women than men seem to be converting, he said, and the bulk of inquirers are Roman Catholics.

"Islam is very simple," he says. "It is easy to explain. Basically, there’s God and there’s you. Only one thing brings people to Islam. Allah has to guide them as he guided me."

Anyway, Mr. Estes is on SANE's black list. As for Mr. Abdul-Malik, one of his mentors is Imam Siraj Wahhaj of Al Taqwa, a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y., who in 1995 was named by the U.S. Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Mr. Yerushalmi will show a videotape of Mr. Wahhaj preaching that before people are armed "with 9 millimeter [guns] and Uzis," to start with, "We need to arm them with righteousness first. Then we can arm them. My mandate is to give them Islam."

I called Mr. Abdul-Malik, who also represents the mosque. He denied fomenting jihad, saying that "I am a person who on record publicly and privately denouncing terrorism in all its forms at the potential risk of my own life."

Mr. Wahhaj "has not been indicted and they do not have any evidence against him," he added.

Mr. Gaubatz said he also spent many hours at the Halalco book store, also in Falls Church, where he found several books espousing violent jihad. A Pakistani employee there passed onto him material espousing violence, he said, and he was only one of several people at the bookstore and mosque whose conversations behind closed doors were geared to steer him toward an Islamicized America.

He cited "Come Let Us Change This World," a Halalco book by Sayyid Abul A'la Mawdudi, founder of the Pakistani political party Jamaat-e-Islami, which included the sentence, "Capitalistic democracy will tremble for its safety in Washington and New York."

Mr. Gaubatz's group is still at work infiltrating mosques, he told me recently. The problem seems to be getting people to believe them.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times