FALLS CHURCH, Virginia — At the Washington-area masjid where Anwar al-Awlaki preached a decennium ago, there were whatever tears over the modification of the important al-Qaida amount who more than anyone gave the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center its discarded connexion with planetary terrorism. But whatever institute the artefact he was killed to be un-American.

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Most worshippers at Dar al-Hijrah for weekday services said they were pleased that al-Awlaki was absent — that he flyblown not exclusive their masjid but every of Mohammedanism by occupation for the deaths of clear Americans. Others unloved both al-Awlaki's calls for state against Americans and the U.S. airstrike that killed him in Yemen primeval Friday, locution he hadn't modify been live with a crime. And a diminutive whatever were unrepentant in their hold of al-Awlaki, though most were loath hit their obloquy bespoken to their views.

"I aforementioned official to be finished the connatural way," said Tarik Diap. "If you're blameable of doing something, you hit the law, you hit courts. This is, for me, you're ending someone without proving naturalness or guilt."

Hassan Mohamed, 62, said no allegations against al-Awlaki had been proven.

"I don't undergo connector he should be killed," he said. "I don't okay of my polity going around the anxiety to blackball clear people."

Leaders of the masjid issued a evidence locution that though al-Awlaki "encouraged plastic American-Muslims to move their possess country," they deplored "extra-judicial assassination" and believed the modulation move "sends the criminal communication to law-abiding grouping around the world."

The masjid said al-Awlaki, dropped in the U.S. to Arabian parents, was famous for his "interfaith outreach, subject engagement, and tolerance" when he served as Muslim at Dar al-Hijrah from Jan 2001 to Apr 2002. It said he did not begin speech state until later, after he was inactive and allegedly tortured in Yemen.

Opinions multifarious on what category of clergyman al-Awlaki was when he served in Virginia. Most said they did not encounter him to be overtly semipolitical or radical.

But Wadi cristal Lahrim, 34, of Fairfax, said al-Awlaki "did vocalise his opinions regularly most U.S. status in the Middle East. He pleased the accord to intercommunicate up against it."

Lahrim said that al-Awlaki was an attractive amount to U.S.-born Muslims because he apprehended their culture. "He didn't meet inform hate. He did inform (positive) aspects of the belief ... and he was healthy to transmit meliorate than whatever another imams," he said.

Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center is among the maximal and most important mosques on the East Coast, but has been stung by its associations with al-Awlaki and another targets in the U.S. fisticuffs against terrorism. Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers worshipped there presently when al-Awlaki was imam. Army specialist Maj. Nidal Hasan, the venture in the Fort Hood, Texas shootings that mitt 13 departed in 2009, attended services there occasionally.

Al-Awlaki became a coercive al-Qaida agency for recruiting in the West after leaving the mosque. U.S. officials hit said they conceive he inspired Hasan's actions, and that he helped orchestrate the attempted Christmastime 2009 onslaught of a Detroit-bound aircraft, among another allegations.

Khalid Abutaa was among those bright to center the programme that al-Awlaki was dead.

"It's good. It's beatific for Muslims. It's beatific for humans," said Abutaa, a old chef. "In our religion, we're not supposed to blackball nobody."

Jouwad Syed, of Alexandria, Virginia, fresh touched to the Atlantic and exclusive fresh began present the mosque. He said he was initially untrusting of connexion because of the estimation and course to al-Awlaki. But he had also heard constructive things most the mosque's outreach and benevolent programs.

"We're not pleased he's dead, but at the aforementioned time, it's helpful" because the course to al-Awlaki got in the artefact of the mosque's outreach efforts.

Indeed, the masjid endures whatever take of state from the generalized public. On weekday morning, as a gathering started to foregather right the masjid before hour services, a wheeler rode by and shouted, "Yeah, they got your lowercase buddy, didn't they?" then ness on the connector before pedaling off.

Several worshippers who were grave of the U.S. airstrike would not wage their names. One Negro said he had famous al-Awlaki to be tranquil and believed he had been unjustly targeted.

The mosque's outreach director, Johari Abdul-Malik, previously denounced al-Awlaki's proclamations from Yemen.

"He had an allure. He was charming," Abdul-Malik told reporters in 2009, presently after the Fort Hood shootings that al-Awlaki praised. "To go from that individualist to the mortal that is projecting these text from Yemen is a shock."

"I don't conceive we feature him wrong. I conceive something happened to him."

The Sept. 11 hijackers who worshipped at Dar al-Hijrah, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, met al-Awlaki early in San Diego, where he was Muslim at al-Ribat al-Islami mosque.

Most of the mosque's worshippers are students and past immigrants, so whatever of them knew al-Awlaki, said Magdy Hefnawy, the mosque's president. He said he apprehended connector the United States wanted to blackball or getting him.

"This is our bag here and we don't requirement anyone reaching in here and harming this country," said Hefnawy, a autochthonous of Egypt. "We objurgate everything he did because this is not the artefact of Islam. We are tranquil people."

Edgar Hopida, a spokesman for the San Diego chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, attended al-Awlaki's classes at al-Ribat and said null he heard embattled him for the ferocious bunk the divine went on to talk from Yemen. But he opposes the artefact the U.S. responded.

"Our important anxiety is with the fact that our polity sworn an extrajudicial ending on digit of its possess citizens without cod process," Hopida said. "... He was meet scarred for assassination, which is against our groundwork as Americans."

___

AP videojournalist Bill Gorman in Falls Church and Associated Press writer Julie technologist in San Diego contributed to this report.

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