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Chilling E-mail Trail Leads to Ohio Professor, a Muslim Convert

The retired U.S. Navy man never intended to leave his e-mail address behind when he posted a message about his Christianity two years ago on a jihadist's blog.

Yet, when the jihadist -- using a Kent State University e-mail address -- wrote back citing a Bible verse, the Navy man was intrigued.

"I am fighting to save the life of my people, as you are yours," the jihadist said. "My weapon is faith, as is yours."

In the days that followed, the Navy man and the jihadist politely debated online until the jihadist left a chilling post about sleeper cells:

"Who knows when the next martyrdom operation might be coming to your town? I do."

The Navy man was shaken. He figured the jihadist must be a student, but a trail of e-mails and computer tracking -- recently shared with The Plain Dealer of Cleveland by the Navy man and four others -- appeared to lead to Kent State University professor Julio Pino, a Cuban immigrant who converted to Islam in 2000.

A photo the jihadist initially posted of himself on the blog was the same one that Kent State's Web site posted of Pino, according to the Navy man and the other bloggers, none of whom wanted to be identified in this article, fearing for their safety.

Pino faces no charges. He declined to comment for this article but in the past has said he neither advocates nor practices violence. The tenured professor did, however, concede that he posted articles to the jihadist blog, according to his department head.

Pino, his supporters and many academics said his posts are protected by both the Constitution and by the concept of academic freedom -- protection that has for generations shielded the jobs of U.S. professors with unpopular views.

Yet there was widespread outrage recently when a nationally known conservative blogger, Mike S. Adams, linked Pino to the jihadist blog. Callers swamped Kent State demanding Pino's firing. A few even threatened Pino's life.

But the controversy was nothing new. Pino has spent most of his life dedicated to one revolution or another. And his latest -- radical Islam -- has gotten him into trouble before.

Why would a Cuban become a Muslim?

People ask Pino that question all the time, he wrote in an essay posted at islamonline.net in 2003.

There isn't a simple answer. Pino said his path to Islam was long and winding. It began in 1960 when he was "born into the fist of revolution" in Castro's Cuba. Pino said he quickly had to pick sides: with his parents, counterrevolutionaries; or with the rest of the family, communists.

"These were playground questions for me, not theoretical debates," Pino said.

In 1999, on a flight to visit his family in Miami, Pino said he started reading the Quran. He finished the Muslim holy book in one day.

A year later, while he was walking on a beach in Brazil, Pino said a voice inside him spoke: "This is what I want to be and will be from now onwards -- a Muslim."

He visited an Akron mosque when he returned to Ohio. An imam gathered the congregation to witness Pino's conversion. "All your previous sins are forgiven," Pino remembered the imam saying.

Julio Cesar Pino died that day, Pino said. Assad Jibril Pino was born.

Pino lobbed an intellectual grenade in April 2002, a month after Palestinian suicide bomber Ayat al-Akhras blew herself up at a Jerusalem supermarket -- killing two Israelis and wounding 22 others.

He penned a poem honoring the suicide bomber, and the KSU student newspaper published it. Pino -- who rejected the term "suicide bomber" -- said he hoped the poem would make others think about the politics behind "martyrdom bombers."

Critics didn't buy it. A KSU English professor demanded that the university fire his colleague, an unprecedented situation on the Kent campus.

"If this is not an incitement to terrorism, I give up my Ph.D.," professor Lewis Fried told the Akron Beacon Journal at the time.