UPDATE: Fuqra Compound: York, SC

I received an email from a reader who has been doing a little homework on the Fuqra compound in York County, SC. Here's what he had to say:

I have researched the folks in York County, South Carolina. I usually hunt in York and surrounding counties. I was unable to do so this year unfortunately. The terrain is rolling hills with pine, oak and maple trees. Lot 2 is waterfront (lake) at the rear of property. The property is less than one hour from Charlotte, NC and the international airport via I-77.

The group has about 33 acres in York, the following property is owned by Ali Rashid, with tax id numbers:

1. 3880000015 17.00 acres purchased 8/4/84 for $16000.00
2. 3880000006 11.28 acres purchased 7/19/91 for $6500.00 (adjoining above property at rear)
3. 4550000009 5.0 acres purchased 3/21/91 for $14000.00 (right front of lot no. 1)
4. 3880000093 1.0 acre purchased 2/6/03 for $1.00 (this prop. is within boundaries of #1, Najah Rashid is listed as owner of this lot). I searched the tax rolls and found no other property listed for Ali or Najah.

All of the above properties adjoin and during spring, summer and early fall are very secluded. There are more than 20 structures on the combined properties

I believe prop. 4 is the location of the university or the mosque. The GIS site for the county has pretty good resolution aerials of the property. Apparently taken during the winter.

I located several properties listing Karen Shabazz as the owner, including the cultural center, snack bar, salon/styling college and residential. All of this info is open source thru York county tax office. The county tax office is always the best starting point in research of computerized counties.

When I looked at this previously, I missed property #2, so the "Islamville" compound is even bigger than I'd shown on the map. Google and MSN only showed a stream running past there, but as the reader pointed out, this rear parcel is shown as lakefront on the York County GIS. I'll try to do an updated map or two when I get time, or you can visit the York County GIS & Property Search page yourself. Let me know if you find something interesting. Here's what else he had to say in a follow-up email:

Google, MSN aerials may pre-date the lake. I’m not sure when the dam was built, the maps on Mapquest show it. The lake appears to have been added (layered) on the York GIS. As you are probably aware, there is a nuclear power station on the NW end of Lake Wylie owned by Duke Power. Construction of the power station began about 1974. It became operational in/about 1985. Rashid’s purchase (17 Acres) was in ’84. He purchased the waterfront lot (11.28 acres) in ’91.

The link below addresses the Catawba Power Station, my heart nearly stopped when I viewed the right side of the web page. It lists 18 nuke power stations in the southeast. The McGuire station is 17 miles north of Charlotte, NC. This is just over an hour driving time from York Counting these two sites there are 4-5 plants within a couple of hours of York.

This link - Catawba Nuclear Generating Station - will allow you to link to the other plant sites.

A commenter on the previous thread had pointed out that this power station is just six miles east of the compound and noted this:

The MSN sattelite pictures show a long clearing running past "Islamville". That is a powerline right-of-way. Typical areas like that are long clear-cut paths that run for miles and are probably 50 yards wide. Most people use them to cover long distances on ATVs wile out in the woods.

Those paths are home to massive powerlines that run all the way to the nuke plant. As they are fairly close to the plant, those lines are responsible for a large area of the power grid.

The reader email continues:

The compounds in York, SC, Macon, GA and Commerce, GA all are located very near heavily traveled interstate highways and within approximately 100 miles or less of power plants.

One other thing, 13 of the plants are within or very close to the Northeast Macey arrival flight path for Atlanta International Airport. This flight path is the busiest en-route sector in the world. The sector begins over NC at about 25,000 ft. and airspeed between 250-400 mph. This of course does not include outbound or overflight traffic. This also does not include air traffic from/to Charlotte, which is also extremely busy with flight paths directly over York.

There is heavy speculation in the above statements and all info is based upon open source research.

One other thing he said, "I sure pray people are doing their jobs." I think we all share that sentiment.