1977 Washington, D.C. attack and hostage taking

The leader of the attack was Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, a former national secretary of the Nation of Islam. Khaalis was born Ernest McGhee in Indiana in 1921. Discharged from the U.S. Army on grounds of mental instability, he worked as a jazz drummer in New York City before converting to Islam and changing his name to Hamaas Khaalis. He became prominent in the ministries and school of the Nation of Islam and was appointed its national secretary in the early 1950s.[6]

Khaalis split with the Nation of Islam in 1958 to found a rival Islamic organisation, the Hanafi Movement.[7] In 1968, he was arrested for attempted extortion but released on grounds of mental illness.[5] The same year, militant students at Howard University formed a group called the Kokayi family. When that was disbanded, many of its members became members of Hamaas' Hanafi American Mussulman's Rifle and Pistol Club, which was given a group membership charter by the National Rifle Association.[8]

In 1972, Hamaas published an open letter attacking the leadership and beliefs of the Nation of Islam. A year later, five men broke into Khaalis' Washington, D.C. home and murdered five of his children, his nine-day-old grandson and another man.[5] The murderers were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Khaalis claimed the men were associated with the Nation of Islam, and that the government had not held the Nation of Islam accountable.[6]

On March 9, 1977, seven members of Khaalis' group burst into the headquarters of B'nai B'rith at 1640 Rhode Island Ave N.W. in downtown Washington, 5 miles south of Khaalis' headquarters at 7700 16th Street NW and took over 100 hostages. Less than an hour later, three men entered the Islamic Center of Washington, and took eleven hostages. At 2:20 pm, two Hanafis entered the District Building, three blocks from the White House. They went to the fifth floor looking for important people to take hostage. When an elevator opened the hostage-takers thought they were under assault and fired, killing Maurice Williams, a reporter for WHUR-FM radio,[4] and injuring DC Protective Service Division Police Officer Mack Cantrell. Then-councilman Marion Barry was struck by a ricochet in the chest and two others were wounded. "Throughout the siege Khaalis denounced the Jewish judge who had presided at the trial of his family's killers. 'The Jews control the courts and the press,' " he repeatedly charged.[5]

Khaalis and his followers wanted those convicted for the 1973 murders handed over to them, presumably for execution. They wanted those that were convicted of killing Malcolm X.[3] They also wanted to receive visits from Muslim leader Warith Deen Mohammed and champion boxer Muhammad Ali, long an active Nation of Islam supporter. Khaalis also demanded that he be refunded $750 in legal fees caused by a contempt of court citation issued in response to shouting at one of defendants on trial for murdering seven of his family members.[3] Time noted: "He also wanted the recently released film Mohammad, Messenger of God, to be banned on the grounds that it is sacrilegious. Khaalis' concern over the film was thought to have triggered the attack."[5] He made this determination about the sacrilegious nature of the film based on the mistaken impression that Mohammad was a character seen or heard in the film, which is not the case. The main characters are relatives whose portrayal is not forbidden by religious tradition. The kidnappers made some of their demands on air by calling the then popular broadcast journalist Max Robinson.[9]

When Khaalis was informed that people were worried about the fate of the hostages, Khaalis said, "Nobody showed any concern when my family was killed several years earlier." He told a reporter,

Get on the phone and call President Carter and some of those senators that never sent a call, a condolence message. Do you not realize when my family was wiped out [no] one said one word? Not one. Not even a preacher. Not even a minister. Not even a spiritual advisor. Not even a city council member. So, I'm very glad you're worried now. When they wiped out my family, I didn't hear about your sympathy and emotions. I got a letter the other day from my brother telling me how the brother was swaggering around in jail, the killer of Malcolm, walking around with guards protecting him. Well tell him it's over. Tell him it's payday.[3]

The money from the contempt of court citation was returned and the movie premiere was cancelled.[3] Convicted killers of his family and Malcolm X were not delivered.[3] Part of the negotiations were conducted by the three Muslim ambassadors, who "read to the gunmen passages from the Quran that they said demonstrated Islam’s compassion and mercy. They urged the gunmen to surrender."[10]

On the evening of the following day, following a number of phone calls, the three ambassadors, along with a few Washington, D.C. officials (including police commander Joseph O'Brien, who had investigated the murder of Khaalis' children and was trusted by Khaalis) met with the Hanafis. The ambassadors of Pakistan, Iran, and Egypt read the Quran with Khaalis to appeal to his conscience.[3] Finally, Khaalis and the others involved in the hostage taking at the two sites where no one was killed were allowed to be charged and then freed on their own recognizance. All 12 were later tried and convicted, with Khaalis receiving a sentence of 21 to 120 years for his role.[11]

Khaalis died at the Federal Correctional Complex Prison in Butner, North Carolina, on November 13, 2003.[12] Marion Barry recovered from his wounds and was later elected mayor. In 2007, the fifth floor press room at the Wilson Building was named for the slain reporter, Maurice Williams.[4][13]

John W. King wrote about the Hanafi siege in his book, The Breeding of Contempt. The book chronicles the siege and his family's becoming the first African American family in the Federal Witness Protection Program after the massacre of the Khaalis family.

The siege is mentioned in Joni Mitchell's song "Otis And Marlena" from her 1977 album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. In the song, the title characters travel "for sun and fun / While Muslims stick up Washington".

The Jonathan Leaf play The Caterers, which was produced Off Broadway in 2005, portrayed a modern-day version of the siege.[14]

University of Richmond associate professor of journalism Shahan Mufti was awarded the 2020 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Award for his book, AMERICAN CALIPH: The True Story of the Hanafi Siege, America’s First Homegrown Islamic Terror Attack, to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[15]

One of the workers at B'nai B'rith who was taken hostage was their public relations director, Bernard Simon, father of filmmaker David Simon. In 2020, David Simon included in his HBO mini-series The Plot Against America an incident from the attack: Bernard Simon was tasked during the siege with feeding the other hostages. He noted that the food provided by the nearby Hilton was bologna with mayonnaise on white bread, which is a food combination normally eschewed by kosher Jews. The elder Simon joked "Mayonnaise on white bread? I think they're trying to kill us." In The Plot Against America, the line is uttered as a moment of levity by Herman Levin when he is given that same meal at a roadside eatery during a road trip to rescue a young child who has just been orphaned by a KKK gang that killed the boy's mother.[16]

• 1973 New York City hostage incident
• Black Mafia
• List of journalists killed in the United States
• Major Coxson
• Zebra murders
• List of attacks on Jewish institutions in the United States
• List of incidents of political violence in Washington, D.C.