1973_Hanafi_Muslim_massacre

The 1973 Hanafi Muslim massacre took place on January 18, 1973. Two men and a boy were shot to death. Four other children ranging in age from nine days to ten years old were drowned. Two others were severely injured. The murders took place at 7700 16th Street NW, a Washington, D.C. house purchased for a group of Hanafi Muslims to use as the "Hanafi American Mussulman's Rifle and Pistol Club". The property was purchased and donated by then Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.The target of the attack was Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, the son-in-law of Reginald Hawkins. Khaalis had written and sent fifty letters calling Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad "guilty of 'fooling and deceiving people – robbing them of their money, and besides that dooming them to Hell.'" The letters were mailed to ministers of all fifty mosques of the Nation of Islam, a sect that Khaalis had infiltrated and in which he had been a leader in the 1950s. The letters were also critical of Wallace D. Fard and urged the ministers to leave the sect.The massacre was a direct cause of the 1973 Brooklyn hostage crisis that started the following day, as the four perpetrators, themselves Sunni Muslims, sought to acquire firearms for self-defense in the event they were targeted for a similar attack.