Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman

Omar Abdel Rahman (1938-2017), colloquially known as the Blind Sheikh, was the leader of the Egyptian terrorist group Gama'a Islamiyya. His group was involved in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, and although Rahman was acquitted, he was expelled from Egypt and moved to the U.S. after the trial in 1990. In the U.S., he preached at a series of mosques and gained a small but devoted following. Rahman preached hateful and extremist ideas, including virulently antisemitic remarks, once issuing a fatwa stating that it was permissible under Islam to rob banks and kill Jews and that Muslims had a religious obligation to destroy the West. He was indicted as part of the investigation into the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and served a life sentence. He died in prison in 2017.