Ali Al-Timimi was born in the United States of Iraqi parents, attended high school in the Washington area and holds bachelor degrees in biology and computer science.
He is pursuing a doctorate at George Mason University in computational biology with a focus on cancer and genes. On campus, he is known as an affable, well-spoken colleague. "We mostly talked astrobiology," said Pascal Heus, a former fellow student.
But like many Muslim leaders of his generation, Timimi, 39, moves easily from the modern high-tech world of science to the ancient spiritual world of early Islam.
For several years, the Fairfax County resident was a frequent and popular lecturer at the Center for Islamic Information and Education in Falls Church, also known as Dar Al Arqam. Several people who know Timimi say he preaches a conservative type of Islam known as salafi, an Arabic word meaning "predecessors."
Salafis seek to practice Islam as they believe their spiritual predecessors -- the prophet Muhammad and his companions -- did. They want to purify Islam from what they regard as deviations that have come into the religion over the centuries. They lean toward literal, rigid interpretations of Islam's holy book, the Koran, and their focus is on personal faith, ritual and social interactions rather than political issues.
"Al-Timimi and the Dar Al Arqam crowd are kind of apolitical, [advocating] a very rudimentary-type Islamic thinking," said Al Hajj Johari Abdul-Malik, a Muslim chaplain at Howard University and spokesman for the Dal Al Hijra mosque in Falls Church. "They're not talking about politics; they're not talking about voters. Their issues are, people should pray, people should fast. They should learn the Arabic languag e, frequent the mosque, raise your children to be devout. I've never heard any anti-government rhetoric."
But in a recent indictment of 11 Muslim men on charges that they conspired to wage jihad, or holy war, against a country friendly to the United States, the Islamic preacher is cast in a different light. The indictment, filed in June in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, does not name Timimi or charge him with a crime. But several sources say Timimi is "Conspirator No. 1," who allegedly encouraged the other men to wage jihad overseas.
The indictment alleges that in mid-September 2001, Timimi told seven of the defendants "that the time had come for them to . . . join the mujaheddin engaged in violent jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan or Indonesia" and that they could "fulfill their duty to engage in jihad by joining Lashkar-i-Taiba" because it was "on the correct path." He allegedly added that "American troops were legitimate targets of the jihad." Lashkar is a Pakistani group trying to oust the Indian government from Kashmir.
The indictment also alleges that after the space shuttle disaster in February, Timimi said the United States "was the greatest enemy of Muslims."
Timimi declined to be interviewed but responded to written questions by e-mail and through a lawyer's spokesman, Todd Gallinger. His remarks after the shuttle crash, Gallinger said, are apparently a reference to an Internet posting in which a "Sheikh Dr. Ali Al-Tamimi" stated after the crash that "the heart of every believer leaped with joy at the disaster of his greatest enemy."
Gallinger said that Timimi does not recall making that statement and that if he did, it was taken out of context. "He definitely did not say it in the context of violent conflict," said Gallinger, although Timimi does believe that U.S. foreign policy "victimizes Muslims throughout the world" and that U.S. culture "is taking Muslims away from their religi on."
Timimi believes the posting may have been written by someone who overheard a private conversation and misquoted him, Gallinger said.
In his e-mail responses, Timimi denied ever condoning killing Americans, saying that being raised in this country "is one of God's greatest blessings."
"Many of my best qualities are simply because I am an American. At the same time, as a Muslim, I will have opinions that go counter to the mainstream of American society," he wrote.
As a salafi, Timimi belongs to a strain of Islam whose adherents believe that other religions are illegitimate, leading many of them to see a sharp divide between Muslims and non-Muslims. Many salafis believe that the West, and the United States in particular, is intent on eliminating Islam and is therefore an enemy in a global clash of civilizations.
Non-salafi Muslims often criticize salafis as being intolerant, puritanical and overly focused on outward displays of piety.
But salafis are not monolithic, and there are many currents among them, especially in Saudi Arabia, where the government embraces a form of salafi Islam sometimes called wahhabism.
Timimi studied Islamic philosophy in Saudi Arabia and is friendly with many Saudi scholars.
Most salafis do not advocate violence, but in recent years, salafi groups that promote jihad to attain political goals have appeared -- notably al Qaeda and Lashkar-i-Taiba.
Salafi Islam often holds special appeal for devout young Muslims in the West who want to maintain a distinctly Islamic identity.
Shaker El Sayed, secretary general of the Muslim American Society in Falls Church, recalls meeting Timimi 15 years ago at the Islamic Center in Washington. "I found him typical of young men who become religious," Sayed said. "He took things a little bit literal. . . . He needed guidance."
Since then, Timimi has "become more
moderate, more sociable," Sayed said.