The Sheik from Jersey City

By Jill Smolowe/Jersey City

Hamas may not be run from Chicago, but the U.S. does find itself offering haven to a Muslim fundamentalist agitator from Egypt. Down a quiet residential street in Jersey City, up four flights of stairs, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman sits on a well-worn couch, holding court. His right leg tucked up in a half-lotus position, he laughs and jokes with the stream of guests who flow through his spartan apartment. But when the talk turns political, his white-socked foot thumps to the floor and Sheik Omar, 54, leans forward, his blind eyes staring straight ahead, his voice rising as he preaches jihad against Egypt's secular rulers. "The regime is a dictatorship," he thunders. "I challenge Hosni Mubarak to survive one hour without his emergency laws."

At such moments, the sightless sheik shows evidence of the seditious Islamist whom the U.S. State Department labels a terrorist. In Cairo, Sheik Omar is suspected by some security officials of giving his religious blessing to a string of murders that began with the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat and includes recent extremist attacks on foreign tourists, which have seriously damaged Egypt's $4 billion tourist industry.

In New Jersey, where the sheik has been living on and off since July 1990, he was hauled into federal immigration court three weeks ago and threatened with deportation. The U.S. charged that the sheik failed to disclose on his visa application that he is a polygamist and was convicted in Egypt of falsifying a check. The court reserved judgment, but Sheik Omar could soon find himself as unwelcome in the U.S. as he is in Egypt.

His fiercest critics liken the spiritual leader's modus operandi to the Ayatullah Khomeini's. They charge that Sheik Omar raises funds in the U.S., then smuggles money and tape-recorded messages of hatred and holy war to his followers in Egypt. So far, Sheik Omar is but one of many influential religious leaders and poses no immediate threat to the Egyptian regime. Such mythic stature can be hard to discern in the potbellied sheik, a good-humored man possessing neither Khomeini's authority nor his arrogance. But he can claim something of the Ayatullah's moral suasion: though blind since childhood, he devoted years of study to the Muslim scriptures, from which he derives his harsh commands.

Those are said to have included a series of fatwas, or religious opinions, for assassinations. Sheik Omar denies involvement in any murders. Was he responsible for the murder of Mustafa Shalabi, an Egyptian slain in Brooklyn last year? "I had nothing to do with that killing." Did he issue the death decree on Farag Foda, the antifundamentalist writer assassinated in Egypt last June? "I did not make a fatwa on Farag, but he deserved what he got because he attacked Islam." He ducks the question of Sadat's assassination, for which he was arrested, imprisoned, then acquitted. "I don't say. The court gave the answer by acquitting me." Has he ever issued a fatwa against anyone? "What is needed from me is not to make fatwas but to say the truth."

His truths fail to quash the charges and rumors that dog him. On the polygamy question, he says only that he now has one wife but has had two in his life. He says he has not engaged in any fund raising. Asked where his rent money comes from, he smiles. "Allah is the provider." He denies encouraging the attacks that have cut Egypt's tourist trade by more than half. But he vents his disgust with nonbelievers. "Tourism is legal in Islam," he says, "but tourism is not gambling or dancing in nightclubs or drinking liquor."

As for political aspirations, Sheik Omar says he wants to see "Egypt ruled Islamically and Mubarak's regime overthrown." Does he want to head a new government? "No. I'm not a political leader." But he is fiercely political. His main grievance against Mubarak, he says, is that "he is abusing human rights." He claims that while incarcerated, he was tortured with electric shocks and suspended by his legs.

As he faces deportation, the sheik says that though he has been threatened with imprisonment, he wants to return home. "If they kill me," he says, "that will certify me as a martyr." That is exactly what both Egypt and the U.S. want to avoid.

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Cairo