Nixon · Knight
Plus "American Caliph" and New York real-estate beef
the true crime that's worth your time
Welcome to what’s become an annual tradition here at Best Evidence – a dive into the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award Fact Crime nominees. Are any of the 2023 nominees worth adding to your reading list?
We’ll continue our look at the nominees with American Caliph: The True Story of a Muslim Mystic, a Hollywood Epic, and the 1977 Siege of Washington, D.C. by Shahan Mufti.
On March 9, 1977, a group known as the Hanafis (a Sunni Muslim African-American group) launched a three-pronged attack in the nation’s capital. Devotees of the leader of the Hanafis, Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, stormed the headquarters of B’nai B’rith International, the Islamic Center of Washington, and the District Building (which held the offices of the Mayor and City Council), taking more than 130 hostages. The Hanafis’ demands? That the film reels of Mohammed: Messenger of God (set to premiere the same day at New York’s Rivoli Theatre) be removed from the United States. And that the men who massacred seven members of Khaalis’ inner circle in 1973 be delivered to the B’nail B’rith headquarters for reckoning.
