This much is known: Last October, FBI agents sought to arrest the controversial black Islamic leader on a number of federal charges during a raid on his warehouse just outside of Detroit.

Authorities say Abdullah was armed and opened fire, refusing to put down his gun. They said Abdullah shot an advancing police dog and was killed by at least 20 shots from police.

Excessive use of force charges against the police are a certainty. Did it really take 20 bullets to reduce the risk to officers? I think not.

And there are whispers in the black and Muslim communities around Detroit that Abdullah, 53, was unarmed and had the gun planted on him by police and/or FBI agents.

These are not the ramblings of conspiracy theorists. Minority communities of the Detroit area have a legitimate reason for concern.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the area was a hotbed for white police persecution of black militants. The circumstances around Abdullah's death echo past police impropriety.

More recently, activists in Detroit's large Muslim community say authorities have been heavy-handed in policing their community since the 9/11 terrorist attack that was engineered by Muslim zealots in the Middle East.

Only an open investigation will silence those concerns.

No doubt Abdullah was eccentric. He sought to form a Shari'a Muslim state in the United States. He also had a long rap sheet, starting from the 1970s, when he was charged with assaulting an officer in Alabama.

Abdullah followed the Ummah Muslim sect led by Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, an ex-civil rights hero formerly known as H. Rap Brown. Al-Amin is in federal prison for his 2001 conviction for fatally shooting two Georgia police officers.

At this point, all we have is the word of police. And if they are telling the truth, Abdullah made a fatal mistake when he refused to put the gun down, when told to do so by officers. In a sense, then, he died by his own hands.

Police officers want nothing more than to go home to their families every evening. And someone holding a gun, shooting a police dog (which makes it a police officer as well) and disobeying an order to lower the gun increases the likelihood that one of those cops might die.

But we can never forget that police officers have done their share of dirt over time.

Look no further than the police officers in suburban New Orleans, who were convicted of tampering with evidence and falsifying police reports in the shooting of unarmed Hurricane Katrina refugees trying to escape the storm's damage.

Questions will remain until the truth of the circumstances causing Abdullah's death is able to come to light.