Their leader, Narseal Batiste, was known in his native Chicago for his large, wooden walking stick, flowing robes and matching headdress - either white or purple.

"He used to stand on the corner for a long time talking up at the sky and holding a big stick," said Sarah Villasensor, 53, who owns the Latina Jewelry store a few doors down from where Batiste used to live. "He would stay for hours right there."

Batiste, at 32 the oldest of the group, imposed an ascetic regime: no women, no booze, no drugs, no meat and lots of martial arts. They affected a military bearing and wore black uniforms with homemade shoulder patches that some described as a Star of David.

"We study and we train through the Bible, not only physical but mentally," a member calling himself Brother Corey told CNN. "We are not no terrorists."

A close friend of one of the defendants said Batiste's teachings came from the Moorish Science Temple of America, an early 19th century religion that blends Christianity, Judaism and Islam with a heavy influence on self-discipline through martial arts.

Oddballs tried mix of creeds & religions, New York Daily News, 06/24/2006
Emphases mine.

Moorish Science Temple of America, Inc. (wikipedia) states that it "is a religion founded in the early 20th century claiming to be a sect of Islam, but having equal influences in Buddhism, Christianity, Freemasonry, Gnosticism and Taoism. Its main tenet was that African Americans were descended from the Moors and thus were originally Islamic. Its founder was Noble Drew Ali, the Prophet né Timothy Drew (1886-1929), whose disciples included Wallace Fard Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, and Elijah Muhammad, who was Fard's successor and who later employed Malcolm X as the mouthpiece of the Nation."

So here we have a group, MST, which is also related to the Nation of Islam (NOI), a group whose offshoots joined an American version of Jamat al Fuqura (JF) (Here's Something Interesting) which is related to the 1993 WTC bombing (Clement Rodney Hampton-el), to members DC shooter ex-NOI John Allen Muhammad and shoebomber Richard Reid, and to the Daniel Pearl murder.

It's interesting that America's latest domestic "Islamic" terrorists aren't Muslims or Islamic at all, except superficially. Recall, when the Oklahoma City bombing happened even Geraldo thought it was Muslims.

Related post: Sleeper Cell? Seas of David, Liberty City, 06/23/2006

On a related note, this isn't in the Islam category because this doesn't belong there.

On a secondary related note, the SoD's wanted to blow up the Sears Tower, right? The Sears Tower was designed by a Muslim, Fazlur Rahman Khan (wikipedia), so in my eyes, that makes them doubly dumb.