The recent incidents in Oakland, California, where a group men wearing bow-ties trashed a pair of liquor stores and kidnapped a liquor store owner has received its share of media attention, nationally. But they have missed important details.

Suspicion, quite reasonably, fell on the Nation of Islam. It turns out there is an Oakland-based Black Muslim sect that operates a well-known chain of bakeries (Your Black Muslim Bakery) and other businesses. They also run a school and proselytize and, according to this series in the East Bay Express, quite a bit more.

The impressive reporting includes a long list of misdeeds. The founder Yusuf Bey apparently molested young women. Members of the sect have been involved with innumerable violent incidents - intimidating opponents and large-scale stand-offs with the police. Most damning, the group has acquired substantial influence with the Oakland government and has received, at most, slaps on the wrist for its misdeeds. Bay Area media has treated Bey as a respected elder statesman. If a fraction of the reporting is accurate, this group is a serious problem.

Although separate from the Nation of Islam, Yusuf Bey espoused Farrakhan-esque pseudo-philosophies - including vast semi-coherent conspiratorial theories about black oppression. In one lecture he praised honor-killings in which women are murdered for disgracing the family honor (an all too common phenomenon in the Middle East.) When local Jewish leaders protested a rally that included former Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad - Bey moaned: "Mr. Rabbi, when you challenge us, you're the oppressor. Those rich guys are something, picking on a poor ex-slave." Later he insisted he did not hate the Jews because, "they're not worthy of being hated."

Bey died in 2003, leaving his Empire in disarray (it doesn't help that he sired dozens of offspring leaving a less than clear succession policy.)

The other angle is that liquor store attacks are common tactics for radical Muslim groups. They are happening in Basra now, but were also committed by Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Gama'a Islamiyya in Egypt. Some terrorist groups focus on large-scale attacks. Others on local intimidation to create areas under their de-facto control. (No iron-law says a group can't do both.)

Bey's group has a long record of this sort of intimidation and, for the most part, has gotten away with it. With the organization in disarray, could they slip into a more activist mode and attempt to try to create a larger zone under their control and enforce stricter Islamic standards? It is certainly possible that the group is ready to move beyond its thuggery. Whether law enforcement and local politicos have the courage to take this group on will have important implications - in the Bay Area and beyond.