Ansaaru Allah Community

The Ansaaru Allah Community was an American pseudo-islamic sect founded in Brooklyn in 1970 by Dwight York. York had been inspired by travels to Africa (Sudan and Egypt in particular). There he met and persuaded members of Mohamed Ahmed Al-Mahdi's family to finance him to set up a cell of their organization in the United States. This was to be a "west" or "American" political wing of Sudan's Ansar movement under Sadiq al-Mahdi. He began to develop the claim of his "Sudanese" roots in order to authenticate his American branch of the sect. After York returned from a pilgrimage to (Egypt and Sudan), he invited Sadiq Al-Mahdi to the US. A 1993 FBI report described this group as a "front for a wide range of criminal activity, including arson, welfare fraud and extortion.