Allah's Elite: Why the 9/11 Mosque Was Closed

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Years later, he gave private lessons at the mosque on Steindamm Street to those who were hungry for knowledge. He squatted on the carpet, surrounded by a half dozen of his acolytes, who were permitted to ask him questions. At the same time, a burly man named Bashir translated the sermon into rough German in a room behind the prayer room.

Bashir wears a dense beard that covers all of his lower face, except the space between his upper lip and his large nose. Like most of the others in the mosque, he believed that the Koran could not be reinterpreted and read from a modern perspective, and that the text ought to be taken literally. Bashir had a reputation at the mosque for being a good-natured fellow who, nevertheless, could be more rigid and inflexible than almost anyone else. He lived at the mosque because he had no apartment of his own. His wife also lived there.

Bashir, sitting in the back room, crossed his legs. The Shaitan is trying to persuade you, he said, the Shaitan whispers things into your ear that seem harmless to you. That's because the Shaitan's goal is to seduce you in tiny steps, but in the end you will sin if you don't resist his whispered words. The bearded Bashir may have seemed like a storyteller putting the fear of God into the children, but he was dead serious.

In early March 2009, nine men and two women, taking various routes, set off from Hamburg to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of them were converts to Islam, and three were younger than 30. They had reportedly met at the Taiba mosque. The Hamburg branch of the BfV suspects that the group was on its way to visit military training camps -- a group trip to jihad. But despite the informants and agents who were practically stepping on each other's feet in the mosque, and despite the intense surveillance, no one seemed capable of stopping the group.

Enormous Black Knife

German authorities did revoke the passport of one of the men, and two were detained in Pakistan and sent back to Hamburg. A fourth man, who called himself Abu Askar, joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and subsequently appeared on videos, holding an enormous black knife in his hand. A Syrian-born German citizen named Rami M. was arrested in Pakistan, where the authorities accuse him of having attended a special training program in building explosives. He is expected to return to Germany in late summer.

The two young men who were detained in Pakistan were soon back at the Taiba mosque for Friday prayers. Michael W., now 25, is from Kazakhstan, and Alexander J., a Chechen, is 30. Michael W. seemed to be the more devout of the two. He had a thick beard, usually wore a white robe and during prayers sat close to the pedestal on which Abu Ilyas stood to give his sermon. After the sermon, he walked up to the third floor to join his Muslim brothers for a meal of soup and bread. He had a faraway look in his eyes and didn't seem angry that he had been stopped shortly before his destination. He took two lists of "Rules of Behavior for Jihad" with him on his trip to Pakistan, which included instructions like: "Be calm in battle. Don't shout. Don't desecrate any corpses."

There was never any talk of jihad in the mosque. When some of the young men began using the computers on the third floor, which were available to all visitors, to download videos from the Internet, the board of the mosque association had the computers removed as a precaution.

'Myths, Lies, Half-Truths'

The board would have liked to chase away the past like some annoying insect. Generous donors were hesitant to give to the mosque, and its management was determined to shed its reputation as a supporter of terrorists and advocate of hate. On July 20, 2008, the supporting association changed its name from "Hamburg Arab Cultural Association Masjid al-Quds" to "Taiba, Arab-German Cultural Association." The young men urged the older members to be more open, so that "a causal relationship is not established between us and terrorism." On their website, they began responding more frequently to newspaper articles and television reports. One section of the website was titled "Myths, Lies, Half-truths."

The association published a description of its activities, in which it stated, that it has "an education mission" and is pursuing a "Renaissance of the true Islam." It was an attempt to unite the moderates and the fundamentalists, but the fundamentalists remained skeptical. They were uninterested in compromise.

There are about 20 prayer rooms in the Steindamm vicinity, but many believers at the Taiba mosque saw themselves as the ones who had understood their religion better than anyone else. They were the serious believers, the defenders of the sole truth, Allah's elites.

Most of them supported the fight against the international troops in Afghanistan, "the resistance," as they called it. They rejected democratic elections because, as they argued, politicians make laws that could be against the will of God. They believed that Islamic Sharia law is the only law for a Muslim. After prayers, the younger members of the mosque went online to discuss whether it was their duty to aggressively confront all non-believers, including their parents.

New Space

When the association started having financial problems in the summer of 2009, it collected donations to move to a smaller building, but it was unable to find a property. In a letter to the landlord, the association asked for a rent reduction because of its "growing mountain of debt" and managed to negotiate the rent down to €5,000 ($6,400). The term of the new lease was to end on Dec. 31, 2010.

In May, the Hamburg interior ministry petitioned a Hamburg administrative court for a warrant to search the mosque association's premises. The request included quotations from Abu Ilya's sermons and Bashir's lessons. The court rejected the request, arguing that the evidence was too vague. It was only after the authorities had provided more material that a senior administrative court granted the petition. After the association's premises had been searched, Hamburg's interior minister said that the episode had finally been brought to a close.

The Islamists from the Taiba mosque are now roaming Steindamm Street aimlessly. "We are like gypsies," one of them says. Last week, six of them were standing together in the basement of a house, in a prayer room lit by fluorescent lights. Ramadan had begun. A scholar from Egypt was giving a talk, and the mood was relaxed. The men in the group looked around. Their new space wasn't half bad.

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• Part 1: Why the 9/11 Mosque Was Closed
• Part 2: Out of the Mosque, Into the Basement