Mohammedan Brotherhood

The Mohammedan Brotherhood is a Harlem group that enters the narrative through Oscar Fate’s attempt to report on it. Its appearance at a pro-Palestinian demonstration—marchers in black carrying a portrait of Osama bin Laden—makes the group conspicuous, but not powerful: its members attract television cameras and reporters, while Fate’s editor refuses to publish his story. Through that failed assignment, the Brotherhood becomes both a subject of political controversy and an example of how a small group’s public visibility can be sharply different from its access to a durable public voice.

Public Appearance and Composition

Fate first encounters the Brotherhood at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York. The crowd includes Arabs, left-wing New Yorkers, and antiglobalization activists; the Brotherhood stands out among them. Its members wear black leather jackets, berets, and sunglasses, and march beneath a large poster of bin Laden. Fate notes their resemblance to the Black Panthers in appearance, but distinguishes the groups by age and bearing: the Panthers he recalls were teenagers or had a youthful aspect, whereas these men are adults with imposing physiques. The Brotherhood numbers fewer than twenty at the demonstration, a small presence magnified by the poster and by the political sensitivity of displaying bin Laden less than six months after the attack on the World Trade Center.

The demonstration gives the group attention from television crews, photographers, and local radio reporters. Fate watches the members speak with the media, chant, and move through the crowd. Before the demonstration disperses, they leave in a coordinated maneuver, running to vans waiting on a side street. Only then does Fate realize how few they are—about fifteen. He follows and asks to interview them for his magazine. Their spokesman questions the publication’s relevance, and Fate answers that it is a magazine for brothers. The exchange places the reporting relationship on uncertain ground: Fate seeks access, while the group has little reason to trust the reach or standing of his outlet.

Khalil and the Brotherhood’s Political Language

The spokesman tells Fate to call him Khalil. At a later meeting in a basement near Baychester, Khalil explains the Brotherhood’s language of holy war. He describes it as speech for people whose mouths are parched, who have lost the power of speech, or never had it. The account gives the phrase a claim to represent those who feel excluded from ordinary political expression, even as Khalil’s own explanations are forceful and contentious.

Khalil says that Jews are keeping the group down and advances conspiratorial claims about Jewish influence, the Ku Klux Klan, Hollywood, and the September 11 attacks. Fate challenges these assertions, asking whether Khalil believes the attacks were convenient for people with incriminating documents or arms interests and pressing him on who, in Khalil’s account, flew the planes. Khalil alleges that the attackers’ identities and deaths were concealed and proposes alternative perpetrators. These are Khalil’s claims within the interview, not facts established by the narrative. His account turns the interview into a conflict over evidence and credibility: Fate’s questions test the claims, but do not resolve them.

Khalil also explains that the Brotherhood carried bin Laden’s image because he believed bin Laden had understood the nature of the contemporary conflict. The group’s public gesture is therefore both a deliberate provocation and a declaration of political identification. Its members know the image will be remembered; they do not present the demonstration as an accidental misunderstanding.

Ibrahim, Community Work, and Internal Context

The next day, Fate meets members of the Brotherhood at a Harlem club and is introduced to Ibrahim, a man with a scarred face. Ibrahim describes the group’s charitable work in the neighborhood. Fate and the men eat at a nearby diner, whose ordinary details—the woman running it, a boy helping her, and an older kitchen worker singing—place the meeting in a local social setting rather than in the spectacle of the demonstration.

When Fate asks where Khalil and Ibrahim met, they answer that they met in prison, which they describe as a place where Black brothers meet. They discuss other Muslim groups in Harlem. Though they are critical of those groups, Khalil and Ibrahim say they try to be fair and maintain dialogue, and expect that other Muslims will eventually find their way to the Brotherhood. The passage thus presents the organization not only through its confrontational public image but also through its neighborhood activity, its members’ shared history, and their stated ambition to draw others into its circle.

Before leaving, Fate warns that the group may never be forgiven for marching with bin Laden’s image. Ibrahim laughs and says the demonstration will probably not be forgotten; Khalil says it has shown others who they are dealing with. Their response confirms that they understand the image’s lasting political cost and regard its defiance as part of the point.

The Rejected Story and Narrative Significance

Fate’s editor tells him to abandon the Brotherhood story and asks how many members the group has. Fate estimates about twenty. The editor’s objection is not that the subject lacks controversy: he explicitly points to the march under bin Laden’s portrait, but concludes that the Brotherhood’s small size and perceived recklessness make the story unsuitable for the magazine. Fate accepts the decision, and the report is not published there.

The episode therefore ends in a split between spectacle and circulation. The Brotherhood can command attention for a moment through a striking image, yet Fate cannot secure a lasting platform for its story. Its members describe holy war as a language for the silenced; the editorial refusal supplies a different kind of silence, imposed by the commercial and editorial limits of the publication. The novel does not validate the Brotherhood’s conspiratorial account, but it does preserve the tension between the group’s claims, Fate’s questioning, and the institution that decides whether readers will encounter the story at all.