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UCLA law Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl was standing near his open door last April when he heard a thud. It took him a few minutes to realize that a bullet was lodged into a book on his bookshelf.

“The scariest thing about it is how quiet it was,” he said. “With the silencer, all I heard was ‘thump.’”

Abou El Fadl is used to getting threats. He is what many consider to be a moderate Islamic scholar, speaking out against militant fundamentalist Islam.

Abou El Fadl said though he has received threats throughout his teaching career, the number and severity increased after Sept. 11.

“I was very outspoken in criticizing the way of religious thinking that made Sept. 11 possible,” he said. “I was very visible about it and very loud about it.”

Abou El Fadl is not the only researcher who has recently found that pursuing academic or scientific research can come with dangerous consequences. Faculty members who use animals as part of their research have been the target of threats and protests, with the intensity of these attacks escalating dramatically in the last few years, said Roberto Peccei, vice chancellor for research at UCLA.

Peccei said that when he came to UCLA seven years ago, protests by activists opposed to animal research consisted mostly of yearly demonstrations in Westwood. These demonstrations were nonviolent and not targeted at specific people.

But about five years ago, the nature of these attacks began to change, becoming more targeted and more violent, he said.

The threats and attacks turned more severe and personal after the names and addresses of researchers were published on an activist group’s Web site, where people were also encouraged to picket investigators’ homes, Peccei said.

Peccei called this the “proximate cause” of the intensified attacks, but also spoke of an atmosphere of violence in which terrorism has become perceived as an acceptable means of protest.

“As a function of the times, the events got more ... radicalized and they started targeting individual faculty members,” Peccei said.

Peccei said researchers have received threatening phone calls and had protestors show up in front of their homes.

He noted one researcher in particular who had a rock thrown through a window of his home.

The worst of the reported attacks against animal researchers occurred in July, when an animal activist group attempted to firebomb the home of Lynn Fairbanks, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences who conducts behavioral research on primates.

A bomb was placed at Fairbanks’ neighbor’s door and failed to detonate. The Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack lead Dario Ringach, a neurobiologist also using primates in his research, to give up animal testing.

In early August, Ringach wrote an e-mail titled “You win” to the Animal Liberation Front in which he stated that he would cease his work with animals.

Consideration of his young children led Ringach to decide to stop using animals as part of his research, Peccei said.

Last spring, protestors went to Ringach’s house while his young children were home.

“These were demonstrators with masks, and they were chanting and calling him a criminal,” Peccei said. “(His) kids were very perturbed.”

Though Ringach was the only researcher to cease animal research as a result of threats or attacks, Bill McBride, the director of the Roy E. Coats Research Laboratories and a professor of radiation oncology, said such actions “put fear into the minds of the investigators and the public as well.”

“Terrorist acts make investigators wary of publicly discussing their work,” he said.

Recently, the threats have also intensified for Abou El Fadl.

An Egyptian newspaper started running stories claiming it had documents leaked from the White House regarding alleged support of Israel’s decision to go into Lebanon.

Abou El Fadl said these allegations were untrue.

In August, Arabic-language media published news that threats were issued against Abou El Fadl by Iranian extremists in response to this alleged support, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Abou El Fadl said he has no way to determine whether the information was issued by Saudi or Iranian clerics, but does know that his books are banned in Saudi Arabia.

Abou El Fadl receives threats from both extremist Muslim groups as well as those he believes suffer from “Islamaphobia,” he said.

“I will not condemn the faith of Islam people,” he said. “Those who hate everything Muslim, ... they want me to say Islam is a bad religion.”

Though he receives threats from two sides, Abou El Fadl says giving up his work is not an option.

“I thought very long and hard about this whole role of an academic and freedom of speech – the obligation of a public intellectual,” he said. “There is a moral obligation to continue doing what I do.”

Both Peccei and McBride also said they had no intention of allowing the attacks to interfere with the research conducted at UCLA laboratories.

“We’re not going to be deterred by these reprehensible actions,” Peccei said.

Peccei said it is important to promote dialogue and discourse on campus to prevent such violence, as such attacks will not cease on their own.

“Now it’s for animal research ... (and) radical Islam,” he said. “Next time it will be something else.”