Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: Then one day, it …

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: Then one day, it was like 4 o’clock in the morning, I was asleep and the phone rang. It was a sister in the community calling and saying, “Mahmoud, turn on the television! Your house is burning!” I turn on the TV and I’m looking at images of the house on fire. I drove down there. I told the community to come down. I put down targets, brought our guns and started shooting on the property. I was basically saying at the time, It is what it is, but I’m not going anywhere. I was trying to buy property there and section it off and then sell so that other people could buy property and we could develop a community because we had a huge lake and huge farm land. We were like, Let’s build and establish our own community. It was 53 acres. But then I thought about it. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my children and my family there, and so that’s what made me sell it. Now, if it was just me alone, it’d be a different story. Looking back at everything, I’d rather live and die with a free conscience.