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CCW Weekend: One Hand

Guns and Gear | Contributor

By Sam Hoober, Alien Gear Holsters

Yes, you need to be practicing one-handed shooting. Start reading into police shootings or watch some bodycam footage, look into some civilian-involved defensive shootings and you’ll find that assuming the perfect modified Isosceles, Weaver or Chapman stance doesn’t happen nearly as often as you’d think.

There’s something to be said for training how you’ll shoot and you’ll shoot how you train of course.

Watch enough videos, read enough reports, and what becomes clear is that you may or may not have the opportunity to assume a two-handed shooting stance. Often enough, people are fending an attacker off with one hand. Additionally, it may happen so fast that you may only have enough time to get the gun out with one hand. This is also why it’s good to practice drawing from concealment with only one hand; you may not have a hand free to clear a cover garment.

If anyone wants to get into the caliber war and the “this is why 9mm is better than .45” in the comments, I suppose this is a good time to do it.

With that said, how to get started?

Well, start small and move up, like with anything else.

First, you need the highest, tightest grip possible. A firm grip on the gun leads to good shooting, one-handed and otherwise; grip it as tight as you can. You can grip too hard, though; what you do is take your carry gun and start to squeeze. Pay attention to the sights.

When the sights start to move or shake, that’s too hard. Let off a little until the gun isn’t moving anymore. If you need to, try to strengthen your hands. Use a hand exerciser and/or do more compound lifts. Barbell rows and deadlifts build grip strength (legs and back too!) and are just good for you anyway.

There are a few different techniques for shooting one-handed. Most common is to just straight-arm it. Extend the shooting hand until your elbow is locking out. Align sights, fire and get back on target.

Some people modify it by canting the gun inward. Doing so ostensibly directs the recoil force more into the trunk of the body rather than torquing the wrist, though some find it makes no difference. Just make sure that you can still get a good sight picture.

Another technique is to essentially use half of a Weaver or Chapman stance, just without the support hand. You want your shooting hand to extend as far and straight out as possible while keeping the elbow tucked into the body. You may have to lean into the gun until you find a good sight picture. Again, the theory is to direct recoil into the body as much as possible, combating muzzle rise and so on.

Massad Ayoob has been teaching a one-handed technique for years that he refers to as the
“Shotokan Punch,” similar to the punching technique taught in Shotokan karate. The gun hand goes straight out, fully extended with the elbow locked. You put your strong side foot out, slightly ahead of your weak-side foot, like stepping into the punch. While getting into this stance, tuck your support hand up into your sternum, like you’re cradling a football.

Come to think of it, he should have called it the Heisman because it’s basically like an RB giving a stiff-arm, but one digresses.

This gets you leaning into the gun and presents a bit of counter-balance, which can help mitigate recoil as well.

If you haven’t worked on shooting one-handed before, start slow. Starting out with controlled pairs is a good idea, as you want to build accuracy and recoil control before you start in with the 5 by 5 or the Bill drill. Do some work with the weak hand too, as it also gets neglected.

Click here to get your 1911 Pistol Shopping Guide.

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Sam Hoober is Contributing Editor for AlienGearHolsters.com, a subsidiary of Hayden, ID, based Tedder Industries, where he writes about gun accessories, gun safety, open and concealed carry tips. Click here to visit aliengearholsters.com.

Source: The Daily Caller

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Federalist editor sees need to know Mueller probe’s full origins

Mollie Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, says that though many think it’s important to move on from the Mueller report following Thursday’s expected release, one aspect that calls for further exploration is how it all began.

“People talk about moving on. That's important because there are serious policy issues that fixing our border and other things Congress needs to work on -- but how did the investigation ever start?” Hemingway said on “Special Report with Bret Baier” on Wednesday.

MUELLER'S QUESTIONS FOR TRUMP

“It was used, not just during the campaign but in the interim, before he [Trump] became president and for the first two years of his administration, to undermine him," she said. "It affected foreign policy and his ability to get things done.”

Hemingway emphasized that answers were needed in order to avoid a recurrence of the circumstances behind the inquiry.

“People need to make sure the report is put into context. It is not just there was a legitimate reason to look into Russia collusion and there were no indictments ... for Russia collusion or obstruction, but a story about how people weaponized information and used it to go after political opponents,” Hemingway told Baier.

“That absolutely must be looked into. We absolutely need to get answers so that it doesn't happen again and the people who did it are held accountable.”

Barr will release a redacted version of Mueller's full investigative report on Thursday morning.

Democrats are expected to file subpoenas to see what's behind the redactions.

Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley said Democrats will continue to second-guess the report, but its findings will stand.

“Clearly the Democrats are very upset by this finding. I think what we are going to see is them combing through this report second-guessing Mueller's findings on no collusion, second-guessing the Justice Department decision that there was no obstruction of justice because there was no underlying crime, and you will see Trump's team push back and say pick it apart all you want,” Riley said.

“Doesn't change the central conclusions, no collusion and no obstruction.”

TRUMP LEGAL TEAM PREPARES MUELLER COUNTER-REPORT ON OBSTRUCTION ALLEGATIONS

Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report, added that no matter what the report says Thursday, it will have no bearing on how the public views President Trump. “His approval ratings, disapproval ratings haven't moved much given the many things that have happened over the last two years.”

Source: Fox News Politics

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PIRC recommends against re-appointing Muilenburg as Boeing Chairman, CEO

Dennis Muilenburg CEO of the Boeing Company speaks at the George W. Bush Presidential Center's 2019 Forum on Leadership in Dallas
FILE PHOTO: Dennis Muilenburg, President, Chairman, and CEO of the Boeing Company, speaks at the George W. Bush Presidential Center's 2019 Forum on Leadership in Dallas, Texas, U.S., April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Jaime R. Carrero

April 23, 2019

(Reuters) – Leading proxy voting adviser Pensions & Investment Research Consultants (PIRC) recommended on Tuesday that investors in Boeing oppose re-election of Dennis A. Muilenburg as chairman and chief executive officer.

“There should be a clear division of responsibilities at the head of the Company between the running of the board and the executive responsibility for the running of the company’s business,” PIRC, which advises pension schemes and other investors, said.

(Reporting by Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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Israel says Brazil opens ‘diplomatic office’ in Jerusalem

FILE PHOTO: Israel's acting foreign minister Israel Katz, who also serves as intelligence and transport minister, attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem
FILE PHOTO: Israel's acting foreign minister Israel Katz, who also serves as intelligence and transport minister, attends the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem February 24, 2019. Abir Sultan/Pool via REUTERS

March 31, 2019

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel said on Sunday that Brazil had opened a “diplomatic office” in Jerusalem as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro began a visit to the country.

“Obrigado for opening a diplomatic office in Jerusalem!” acting Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a Twitter post that included a photograph of himself shaking hands with Brazilian counterpart Ernesto Araújo.

(Writing by Dan Williams; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

Source: OANN

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Hitler's goddaughter Edda Goering dead at 80, buried secretly in unmarked grave in Germany

Edda Goering, goddaughter of Adolf Hitler and daughter of leading Nazi official Hermann Goering, has died at the age of 80.

Goering, considered somewhat of a "Shirley Temple of Nazi Germany" according to the Telegraph, died of unknown causes on December 21, 2018, but her passing was not made public until this week. She was reportedly buried in secret in an unmarked grave in Munich, Germany.

Goering was born in 1938, the year before World War II began. Her father, Hermann Goering, was a prominent politican and military official, and an early member of Hitler's Nazi Party. In 1939, Goering was named as Hitler's successor, given his role as the "most popular of the Nazi leaders, not only with the German people but also with the ambassadors and diplomats of foreign powers," according to Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Edda Goering was the daughter of Hermann and his second wife, actress Emmy Sonnemann. She was the only daughter the leader ever fathered, and many considered her birth surprising, given that Hermann was badly injured in the groin in 1923, and his wife was 45 years old when she gave birth.  At her baptism, while wearing a christening gown with embroidered swastikas, the family named Hitler as Edda's godfather.

After World War II, Hermann Goering was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death. The night his execution was ordered, he committed suicide by poison.

HITLER'S DRAWINGS, WATERCOLORS GO ON SALE IN GERMANY; DRAWS INTEREST FROM IRANIAN, CHINESE BUYERS

After World War II, Edda's father Hermann Goering was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death. The night his execution was ordered, he committed suicide by poison

After World War II, Edda's father Hermann Goering was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death. The night his execution was ordered, he committed suicide by poison (Rosemarie Clausen / ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Edda went on to live with her mother in the family's various estates after the war, and reportedly worked in a hospital clinic. In 2015, she attempted to gain back some of her father's prized pieces of art, many of which had been looted during the war and were confiscated from him after his death.

In a petition to a legal committee, she asked for enough of her father's items back in order to live a "substistence livelihood." The committee reportedly unanimously denied her request after just a few minutes of deliberation.

AUTOGRAPH OF EVIL: HITLER-SIGNED COPY OF 'MEIN KAMPF' SURFACES 

Unlike the children of other Nazi officials, Edda rarely spoke about her father.

In a 1989 interview, she did, however, speak of her "very nice early childhood" because of the "love and care of my parents," according to the Times of Israel. In regard to the "unbelievable thing that happened to the Jews,” she said she felt her father was doing what he thought was best at the time.

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“I am convinced that my father, when he joined Hitler, believed that he was doing the best for Germany. My father was extremely popular, even abroad. He had the background, personality and natural warmth,” she said.

Source: Fox News World

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‘Russia has invaded Estonia, NATO is on the way’: German TV plumbs depths with fake war broadcast

A respected German analytical TV program opened its latest edition by informing viewers that Russian forces intruded into the Baltics. Was this “fantasy” just juvenile attention-seeking, or crude pro-NATO propaganda?

“Together with European and German allies, the US army is currently moving through land, air and sea to Estonia to expel Russian forces, which have once again invaded, as in Crimea before,” announced a worried Claus Kleber, host of heute journal, on the national public broadcaster ZDF Thursday night.

As millions of viewers tensed up, the veteran host announced that it was a “gotcha!”

“Do not worry. It is not true. This is just a fantasy scenario – but a realistic one,” said Kleber.

One of the biggest names in German journalism, Kleber explained that the fake-out was designed to make it clear that a war may be imminent, that it is likely to be a surprise, and that Germany will have to defend even its smallest allies, including Estonia.

“The problem today is that NATO seems more fragile today on its 70th birthday than during any time in its history. During which it has been an unprecedented success story,” said the host, before introducing a piece that gave a potted history of the alliance, from its post-WWII founding, to supposed revanchism from Russia, to its current bête noire Donald Trump.

Unless one believes there is truly some valid insight that is achieved by the entire episode, there are two ways of looking at these sub-Orson Welles shenanigans.

The first is to regard the modern news media as entertainers, who are not to be taken at face value. For all his PhD qualifications and long history as a top foreign correspondent, Kleber leads a moribund broadcast format – a scheduled news magazine show on terrestrial TV – and is trying to stay relevant by turning ever-more shrill. In the bland world of Germany’s news media, the more provocative approach has led to higher ratings for the esteemed heute-journal.

In this case, this stunt is merely borderline trolling that simply trivializes the very real concerns in the region, and among NATO allies through hyperbole. Estonia is not just some made-up country to be used as a storytelling prop.

But there is a less charitable interpretation: what if people are taking this seriously?

Imagine reading in the Western media that a Russian state channel was now putting out fake news bulletins about NATO invading Kaliningrad. Would you think this is provocative journalism or would you reckon that the Kremlin is irresponsibly stoking tensions, and preparing Russians for a confrontation with the West?

And for all the silliness, telling people “there will be a war with Russia, so you must love NATO” is not some irreverent journalistic opinion, it is the government line, beamed into homes across Germany as scaremongering, hysterical propaganda. Is this the  media really want to play?

Source: InfoWars

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Brazil studying lower corporate taxes: Bolsonaro

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at an event with Israeli and Brazilian business people, attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro speaks at an event with Israeli and Brazilian business people, attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem April 2, 2019. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

April 2, 2019

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday his economic team is studying lowering taxes on companies, in televised remarks during a visit to Israel.

In January, Bolsonaro had told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that his government would work to reduce and simplify taxes as part of an effort to make it easier to do business in the country.

(Reporting by Jake Spring)

Source: OANN

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Tiger woods celebrates after winning the 2019 Masters
FILE PHOTO: Golf – Masters – Augusta National Golf Club – Augusta, Georgia, U.S. – April 14, 2019 – Tiger Woods of the U.S. celebrates on the 18th hole after winning the 2019 Masters. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson

April 26, 2019

Tiger Woods is sending a message that he thinks he still has enough left, emotionally and physically, to win three more major championships to tie Jack Nicklaus’ record 18 titles.

Speaking to GolfTV in his first sit-down interview since the Masters, Woods said he has taken some time off since his victory at Augusta National, which still doesn’t feel real.

“Honestly, it’s hard to believe,” Woods said. “I was texting one of my good friends last night … that I couldn’t believe that I won the tournament. That it really hasn’t sunk in. I haven’t started doing anything. I’ve just been laying there. And every now and again, I’ll look over there on the couch and there’s the jacket.”

That’s the fifth green jacket for the 43-year-old Woods, who hadn’t won a major tournament since the 2008 U.S. Open. Along the way, four back surgeries, a divorce and other personal issues derailed him.

He said he has been spending time with his children – daughter Sam, 11, and son Charlie, 10 – who weren’t born when their father was the most dominant golfer on the planet.

“They never knew golf to be a good thing in my life and only the only thing they remember is that it brought this incredible amount of pain to their dad and they don’t want to ever want to see their dad in pain,” Woods said. “And so to now have them see this side of it, the side that I’ve experienced for so many years of my life, but I had a battle to get back to this point, it feels good.”

He said he hopes – maybe expects — they’ll see this side again.

And no one will take Woods for granted at the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, N.Y., which starts May 16.

Woods said he’ll be ready for a course he already conquered once in a major: the 2002 U.S. Open.

“I’m doing all the visual stuff, but I haven’t put in the physical work yet. But it’s probably coming this weekend,” he said.

Before Woods encountered health and personal problems, it was expected that topping Nicklaus’ major mark was “when” and not “if.” Then the certainty went away, but Woods thought he still had a chance.

“I always thought it was possible, if I had everything go my way. It took him an entire career to get to 18, so now that I’ve had another extension to my career – one that I didn’t think I had a couple of years ago – if I do things correctly and everything falls my way, yeah, it’s a possibility. I’m never going to say it’s not.

“Now I just need to have a lot of things go my way, and who’s to say that it will or will not happen? That’s what the future holds, I don’t know. The only thing I can promise you is this: that I will be prepared.”

–Field Level Media

Source: OANN

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Maria Butina, the Russian woman who was accused of being a secret agent for the Russian government, was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday by a federal judge in Washington after pleading guilty last year to a conspiracy charge.

Butina, who has already served nine months behind bars, will get credit for time served and can possibly get credit for good behavior, the judge said. She will be removed from the U.S. promptly on completion of her time, the judge added, and returned to Russia.

MARIA BUTINA, ACCUSED RUSSIAN SPY, PLEADS GUILTY TO CONSPIRACY

An emotional and apologetic Butina said in court Friday she is “truly sorry” and regrets not registering as a foreign agent.

“I feel ashamed and embarrassed,” she said, adding that her “reputation is ruined.”

Butina has been jailed since her arrest in July 2018. She entered the court Friday wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit and spoke in clear English, with a slight Russian accent.

“Please accept my apologies,” Butina said.

Butina’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, said after the sentencing they had hoped for a “better outcome,” but expressed a desire for Butina to be released to her family by the fall.

Prosecutors had claimed Butina used her contacts with the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast to develop relationships with U.S. politicians and gather information for Russia.

Prosecutors also have said that Butina’s boyfriend, conservative political operative Paul Erickson, identified in court papers as “U.S. Person 1,” helped her establish ties with the NRA.

WHO IS MARIA BUTINA, THE RUSSIAN WOMAN ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US?

In their filings, prosecutors claim federal agents found Butina had contact information for people suspected of being employed by Russia’s Federal Security Services, or FSB, the successor intelligence agency to the KGB. Inside her home, they found notes referring to a potential job offer from the FSB, according to the documents.

Investigators recovered several emails and Twitter direct message conversations in which Butina referred to the need to keep her work secret and, in one instance, said it should be “incognito.” Prosecutors said Butina had contact with Russian intelligence officials and that the FBI photographed her dining with a diplomat suspected of being a Russian intelligence agent.

Fox News’ Jason Donner, Bill Mears, Greg Norman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News Politics

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An official Sri Lankan police Twitter account was deleted after it misidentified an American human rights activist as a suspect in the country’s Easter Sunday terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, police posted the names and photos of six people that they said were at-large suspects in the bombings that killed more than 250 people.

However, one of the names on the list was Muslim U.S. activist Amara Majeed, who quickly tweeted that she had been falsely identified.

“I have this morning been FALSELY identified by the Sri Lankan government as one of the ISIS terrorists that committed the Easter attacks in Sri Lanka. What a thing to wake up to!” she wrote.

SRI LANKA AUTHORITIES SAY EASTER ATTACK LEADER KILLED IN ONE OF NINE HOTEL BOMBINGS

She wrote in a follow-up tweet that the claim was “obviously completely false” and asked social media users to “please stop implicating and associating me with these horrific attacks.”

“And next time, be more diligent about releasing such information that has the potential to deeply violate someone’s family and community,” she continued.

Later, she wrote an update saying police apologized for wrongly mistaking her as a suspect.

Police said in a statement: “However, although one of the released images was identified as one Abdul Cader Fathima Khadhiya in the information provided by the CID, the CID has now informed that a) the individual whose image was labeled as Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya is not in fact Abdul Cader Fathima Khadiya b) the individual pictured is not wanted for questioning c) Abdul Cader Fathima is the correct name of the suspect wanted by the CID.”

On Friday, the account, @SriLankaPolice2 was deleted with no explanation. Police did not release more information regarding the mistake.

Majeed, who founded “The Hijab Project” when she was 16 years old, told the Baltimore Sun that it was hurtful to be linked to the attacks.

“Sri Lanka is my motherland,” the Brown University student said. “It’s very painful to be associated with [the bombings].”

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Mohamed Zahran, the suspected leader of the attacks which targeted six hotels and churches, killed himself in a suicide bombing at the Shangri-La hotel. Police also said they had arrested the second-in-command of the group, called National Towheed Jamaat. Catholic churches in Sri Lanka canceled all Sunday Masses until further notice over concerns that they remain a top target of Islamic State-linked extremists.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: Fox News World

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Source: InfoWars

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FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday, in Colombo
FILE PHOTO: Sri Lankan Special Task Force soldiers stand guard in front of a mosque as a Muslim man walks past him during the Friday prayers at a mosque, five days after a string of suicide bomb attacks on Catholic churches and luxury hotels across the island on Easter Sunday, in Colombo, Sri Lanka April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Dinuka Liyanawatte/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam

KATTANKUDY, Sri Lanka (Reuters) – Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran was 12 years old when he began his studies at the Jamiathul Falah Arabic College. He was a nobody, with no claim to scholarship other than ambition.

Zahran and his four brothers and sisters squeezed into a two-room house with their parents in a small seaside town in eastern Sri Lanka; their father was a poor man who sold packets of food on the street and had a reputation for being a petty thief.

“His father didn’t do much,” recalled the school’s vice principal, S.M. Aliyar, laughing out loud.

The boy surprised the school with his sharp mind. For three years, Zahran practiced memorizing the Koran. Next came his studies in Islamic law. But the more he learned, the more Zahran argued that his teachers were too liberal in their reading of the holy book.

“He was against our teaching and the way we interpreted the Koran – he wanted his radical Islam,” said Aliyar. “So we kicked him out.”

Aliyar, now 73 with a long white beard, remembers the day Zahran left in 2005. “His father came and asked, ‘Where can he go?’.”

The school would hear again of Mohamed Zahran. And the world now knows his name. The Sri Lankan government has identified him as the ringleader of a group that carried out a series of Easter Sunday suicide bombings in the country on April 21.

The blasts killed more than 250 people in churches and luxury hotels, one of the deadliest-ever such attacks in South Asia. There were nine suicide bombers who blew apart men, women and children as they sat to pray or ate breakfast.

Most of the attackers were well-educated and from wealthy families, with some having been abroad to study, according to Sri Lankan officials.

That description does not, however, fit their alleged leader, a man said to be in his early 30s, who authorities say died in the slaughter. Zahran was different.

INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

Sri Lanka’s national leadership has come under heavy criticism for failing to heed warnings from Indian intelligence services – at least three in April alone – that an attack was pending. But Zahran’s path from provincial troublemaker to alleged jihadist mastermind was marked by years of missed or ignored signals that the man with a thick beard and paunch was dangerous.

His increasingly militant brand of Islam was allowed to grow inside a marginalized minority community – barely 10 percent of the country’s roughly 20 million people are Muslim – against a backdrop of a dysfunctional developing nation.

The top official at the nation’s defense ministry resigned on Thursday, saying that some institutions under his charge had failed.

For much of his adult life, Zahran, 33, courted controversy inside the Muslim community itself.

In the internet age, that problem did not stay local. Zahran released online videos calling for jihad and threatening bloodshed.

After the blasts, Islamic State claimed credit and posted a video of Zahran, clutching an assault rifle, standing before the group’s black flag and pledging allegiance to its leader.

The precise relationship between Zahran and Islamic State is not yet known. An official with India’s security services, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that during a raid on a suspected Islamic State cell by the National Investigation Agency earlier this year officers found copies of Zahran’s videos. The operation was in the state of Tamil Nadu, just across a thin strait of ocean from Sri Lanka.

“LIKE A SPOILED CHILD”

Back in 2005, Zahran was looking to make his way in the world. His hometown of Kattankudy is some seven hours’ drive from Colombo on the other side of the island nation, past the countless palm trees, roadside Buddha statues, cashew hawkers and an occasional lumbering elephant in the bush. It is a town of about 40,000 people, a dot on the eastern coast with no clear future for an impoverished young man who’d just been expelled.

Zahran joined a mosque in 2006, the Dharul Athar, and gained a place on its management committee. But within three years they’d had a falling out.

“He wanted to speak more independently, without taking advice from elders,” said the mosque’s imam, or spiritual leader, M.T.M. Fawaz.

Also, the young man was more conservative, Fawaz said, objecting, for instance, to women wearing bangles or earrings.

“The rest of us come together as community leaders but Zahran wanted to speak for himself,” said Fawaz, a man with broad shoulders lounging with a group of friends in a back office of the mosque after evening prayers. “He was a black sheep who broke free.”

Mohamed Yusuf Mohamed Thaufeek, a friend who met Zahran at school and later became an adherent of his, said the problems revolved around Zahran’s habit of misquoting Islamic scriptures.

The mosque’s committee banned him from preaching for three months in 2009. Zahran stormed off.

“We treated him like a spoiled child, a very narrow-minded person who was always causing some trouble,” said the head of the committee, Mohamed Ismail Mohamed Naushad, a timber supplier who shook his head at the memory.

Now on his own, Zahran began to collect a group of followers who met in what Fawaz described as “a hut”.

At about that time, Zahran, then 23, married a young girl from a small town outside the capital of Colombo and brought his bride back to Kattankudy, according to his sister, Mathaniya.

“I didn’t have much of a connection with her – she was 14,” she said.

Despite being “a bit rough-edged”, Zahran was a skilled speaker and others his age were drawn to his speeches and Koranic lessons, said Thaufeek. He traveled the countryside at times, giving his version of religious instruction as he went.

Also, Zahran had found a popular target: the town’s Sufi population, who practice a form of Islam often described a mystical, but which to conservatives is heresy.

Tensions in the area went back some years. In 2004, there was a grenade attack on a Sufi mosque and in 2006 several homes of Sufis were set afire. Announcements boomed from surrounding mosques at the time calling for a Sufi spiritual leader to be killed, said Sahlan Khalil Rahman, secretary of a trust that oversees a group of Sufi mosques.

He blamed followers of the fundamentalist Wahhabi strain of Islam that some locals say became more popular after funding from Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Wahhabism, flowed to mosques in Kattankudy.

It was, Rahman said, an effort “to convert Sufis into Wahhabis through this terrorism”. Rahman handed over a photograph album showing charred homes, bullet holes sprayed across an office wall and a shrine’s casket upended.

ONLINE RADICAL

It was an ideal backdrop for Zahran’s bellicose delivery and apparent sense of religious destiny.

He began holding rallies, bellowing insults through loudspeakers that reverberated inside the Sufis’ house of worship as they tried to pray.

In 2012, Zahran started a mosque of his own. The Sufis were alarmed and, Rahman said, passed on complaints to both local law enforcement and eventually national government offices. No action was taken.

The then-officer in charge of Kattankudy police, Ariyabandhu Wedagedara, said in a telephone interview that he couldn’t arrest people simply because of theological differences.

     “The problem at the time was between followers of different Islamic sects – Zahran was not a major troublemaker, but he and followers of other sects, including the Sufis, were at loggerheads,” Wedagedara said.

Zahran found another megaphone: the internet. His Facebook page was taken down after the bombings, but Muslims in the area said his video clips had previously achieved notoriety.

His speeches went from denouncing Sufis to “kafirs”, or non-believers, in general. Zahran’s sister, Mathaniya, said in an interview that she thought “his ideas became more radical from listening to Islamic State views on the Internet”.

In one undated video, Zahran, in a white tunic and standing in front of an image of flames, boomed in a loud voice: “You will not have time to pick up the remains of blown-up bodies. We’ll keep sending those insulting Allah to hell.”

“HARD TO TAKE”

Zahran spoke in Tamil, making his words available to young Muslims clicking on their cellphones in Kattankudy and other towns like it during a period when, in both 2014 and 2018, reports and images spread of Sinhalese Buddhists rioting against Muslims in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, Zahran’s confrontations boiled over. At a rally near a Sufi community, his followers came wielding swords. At least one man was hacked and hospitalized. The police arrested several people connected to Zahran, including his father and one of his brothers. Zahran slipped away from public view.

That December, the mosque Zahran founded released a public notice disowning him. Thaufeek, his friend from school, is now the head. He counted the places that Zahran had been driven away from – his school, the Dharul Athar mosque and then, “we ourselves kicked him out, which would have been hard for him to take”.

The next year, a group of Buddha statues was vandalized in the town of Mawanella, about five hours drive from Kattankudy. There, in the lush mountains of Sri Lanka’s interior, Zahran had taken up temporary residence.

“He was preaching to kill people,” said A.G.M. Anees, who has served as an imam at a small mosque in the area for a decade. “This is not Islam, this is violence.”

Zahran went into hiding once more.

On the Thursday morning before the Easter Sunday bombings, Zahran’s sister-in-law knocked on the door of a neighbor who did seamstress work near Kattankudy. She handed over a parcel of fabric and asked for it to be sewn into a tunic by the end of the day.

“She said she was going on a family trip,” said the neighbor, M.H. Sithi Nazlya.

Zahran’s sister says that her parents turned off their cellphones on the Friday. On Sunday, when she visited their home, they were gone.

She does not know if Zahran arranged for them to be taken somewhere safe. Or why he would have carried out the bombing.

But now in Kattankudy, and in many other places, people are talking about Mohamed Hashim Mohamed Zahran.

(Reporting by Tom Lasseter and Shri Navaratnam; Additional reporting by Sanjeev Miglani, Shihar Aneez and Alasdair Pal; Editing by John Chalmers and Alex Richardson)

Source: OANN

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