Siraj Wahhaj

Wahhaj has been the center of controversy throughout his career. Wahhaj had connections to Omar Abdel-Rahman, the man who planned the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. ⁴ Wahhaj also supports Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, from whom he accepted an award in 2022. ⁵ In 2018, Wahhaj’s family was involved in a kidnapping scandal that led to the death of Wahhaj’s three-year-old grandson. ⁶

Early Life and Education

Siraj Wahhaj, whose birth name was Jeffrey Kearse, was born in 1950, in Brooklyn, New York. He was raised as a Baptist Christian until he converted to Islam in 1969, when he joined the Black Nationalist movement Nation of Islam and changed his name to Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj later moved away from the Nation of Islam and became an orthodox Sunni Muslim. ² After receiving clerical training in Saudi Arabia at the Umm al-Qura University of Mecca, Wahhaj returned to Brooklyn and founded the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in 1981. ^{3 2}

Career and Influence

Siraj Wahhaj has led the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque in Brooklyn, New York since founding it in 1981. ⁷ In 2005, Wahhaj also helped found the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), a national network of mosques, Muslim organizations, and individuals founded by African-American Muslims to advance their interests in the United States. ⁸ Wahhaj is also the former vice president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an Islamic nonprofit with ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. ^{9 10}

In 1988, Wahhaj responded to drug and gang violence around the Masjid At-Taqwa mosque by offering to patrol drug houses that had been recently raided by the New York City Police Department. He and his congregants did so, preventing drug dealers from re-entering the drug houses after the raid to continue operating. Wahhaj and the mosque received public praise for their efforts. ^{11 2}

In 1991, he became the first Muslim to recite the Opening Prayer of the Qur’an (Al-Fatihah) at the U.S. House of Representatives. ⁹

Radicalism and Alleged Ties to Terrorism

Siraj Wahhaj has been accused of radicalism and allegedly maintains ties to terrorism. According to federal prosecutors, Wahhaj was investigated in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and served as a character witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing during his trial. Federal prosecutors claim Wahhaj’s name was included in a list of names of people who could possibly appear in the evidence, but he was never prosecuted. ¹²

Wahhaj has received criticism for his support for and connection to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom Wahhaj praised at a New York City event in 2019 and from whom Wahhaj received a humanitarian award. ⁵

In various lectures, Wahhaj has expressed radical opinions, including his wish for an Islamic state in the United States, his support for the death penalty by stoning for adultery, and cutting off hands for theft, among other radical stances. ^{13 3 14}

During one lecture in 1992, he claimed, “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate. If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir and give allegiance to him. Take my word, if eight million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.” ¹⁵ He further claimed that Muslims fall into a “trap” by “having a premature discussion about Sharia when we are not there yet.” ^{15 16}

In 1998, he accused then-President Bill Clinton of bombing Muslim countries to distract from President Clinton’s sex scandals. ¹⁷

Wahhaj accused the U.S. government and the media of hiding 400,000 annual tobacco-related deaths by focusing on the World Trade Center bombing, and of putting troops in Muslim countries to murder those countries’ residents. He also suggested that the World Trade Center bombing “has the fingerprints of agencies like the Mossad.” ¹⁸

At another conference, he said religious conversion should come before providing firearms to Muslims. ¹⁹

2018 Kidnapping Controversy

In 2018, Siraj Wahhaj’s son (who has the same name) abducted his own three-year-old son, Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, and took him to a remote compound in New Mexico where the boy eventually died in a religious ritual. CNN reported that Wahhaj’s son, Siraj Wahhaj Jr. returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia in October 2017 desiring to take Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj off medications and to “perform rituals to ‘cast demonic spirits’ out” of the child’s body. ⁶

In November 2017, Wahhaj, Jr., kidnapped Abdul-Ghani, who suffered from hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, a brain injury caused by a lack of blood flow to the brain around the time of birth, ²⁰ from his mother. By January 2018, reports surfaced of a compound in New Mexico. After receiving a tip and procuring a search warrant, authorities raided the compound in August 2018 to find 11 emaciated children, and the remains of the deceased Abdul-Ghani. Siraj Wahhaj (the younger) was arrested along with four other adults, including two of his sisters and Siraj Wahhaj’s (the older) daughters, Hujrah Wahhaj and Subhannah Wahhaj. ⁶

Following an investigation, it was discovered that Abdul-Ghani died within weeks of arriving at the New Mexico compound. Siraj Wahhaj (the younger) and his sisters believed that Abdul would rise on Easter as Jesus, and lead a terrorist plot against unjust institutions in the United States. Siraj Wahhaj (the younger) and his sisters were sentenced to life in prison for their connection to Abdul-Ghani’s death and the terrorism plot against the United States. ²¹

Siraj Wahhaj (the elder) claims that he became aware of the situation when he received notice of a Facebook message from one of his daughters at the compound requesting food and water. The elder Wahhaj says he helped lead the police to the compound and blamed his children’s criminality on a mental disorder. ^{22 23}