Influential Muslim Cleric Fights Deportation in New Jersey
March 9: Mohammad Qatanani, imam at the Islamic Center of Paterson, N.J., is fighting his deportation order.
An influential Muslim cleric, instrumental in reaching out to law enforcement after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, arrived at a federal immigration courthouse in Newark, N.J., Thursday to fight deportation.
*Â Â “influential?” Whom does he give influenza?
Imam Mohammad Qatanani, accompanied by his wife and six children, had little to say as he walked past several hundred supporters holding signs and American flags on his way to court.
The imam, who is expected to take the stand in his defense, prayed with his attorney inside the courthouse before the hearing got underway.
* Infidels are always sooo impressed with praying imam’s in robes and beards and turbans…
Qatanani has been in the U.S. since 1996 and heads the Islamic Center of Passaic County. The imam is well known for working with the FBI following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and for calling on his followers to do the same, although supporters say he worked with law enforcement long before 9/11.
Immigration authorities want to deport him because he didn’t disclose a prior conviction in an Israeli military court when he applied for U.S. citizenship more than a decade ago.
The first witness for the prosecution was a former Israel military judge who testified that Qatanani was arrested for belonging to and supporting Hamas, a group the U.S. declared a terrorist organization in 1995. The witness said that Qatanani agreed to plead guilty in 1993.
During the hearing, which is expected to continue through Monday, the imam is expected to admit he was detained, but will likely testify he was never given proper trial and was released from Israeli custody after three months.
Qatanani has previously denied belonging to Hamas, and supporters say he has consistently denounced Hamas and all terrorist organizations.
* There’s a sucker born every minute:
He has received support not only from his Islamic Center of Passaic County, but also from Jewish and Christian leaders who have worked alongside him, some of whom are expected to testify on his behalf. Supporters have raised $100,000 and pledged to protest every day of the hearing.
A federal immigration judge could rule as early as Monday whether Qatanani will be deported or given another chance at residency. If the judge rules against him, he can appeal, and the case could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Any ruling will also affect his wife and six children, three of whom were born in the United States.
* Anchor babies might help his case…
Here’s a different view:
Fitzgerald: The respected cleric’s deportation trial
“Deportation trial under way for respected Passaic cleric” — headline of this article about Qatanani
“Respected” by whom? For what? It is not the job of the reporter to tell readers what to think about Qatanani. If he is “respected” by his fellow Muslims, so what? Do we know exactly what others think of him? We do not. And it is not the reporter’s job to take sides so blatantly.
The reporter’s whole piece appears to have been written by the PR manager of the imam’s campaign. There is, for example, this:
On the sidewalk outside the Peter Rodino Federal Building in Newark, hundreds of supporters gathered in a noisy but peaceful demonstration that lasted more than five hours. Throughout the day, Qatanani sat alongside his wife and six children, his youngest son reading the Koran while his daughter studied for her Advanced Placement U.S. history exam. His wife and three oldest children also face deportation; the younger children are U.S. citizens.
They were “peaceful” perhaps — apparently we are supposed to be grateful for that — but what does it mean when not a dozen but “hundreds” of people demonstrate, and not for a half-hour but for “more than five hours”? What does it mean when they do this not in front of, say, a store that it is claimed has unfair labor practices, but in front of the Peter Rodino Federal Building, in an attempt to influence a legal hearing? Such a hearing should never be the subject of five-hour, or one-hour, demonstrations, by “hundreds” or by a dozen people, who are attempting to influence the application of clear rules by those whose task it is not to admit, as citizens or permanent residents, those who lie on their applications.
*
* prayed with his attorney inside the courthouse
Did the courthouse have a wudu washer & “prayer” room, and an arrow pointing to Maccas,
or did he improvise? Has the USA got a spine, or is it looking for a donor transplant?
I am not impressed by praying muslims – in Bart, I look at this one who does it and he now hides his prayer beads from me. I got a face of a drill sergeant – yeah, I had orders to be one but decided I didn’t need to go down that road. And I gave him that face and from that day forward I wore a necklace with a very, plain cross on it and searched him out to sit across from him.
He won’t even look at me – maybe it is because I read books and keep their book covers on – ‘Legacy of Jihad’, ‘The Myth of Islamic Tolerance’, ‘A Never Ending War’, ‘Religion of Peace, Why Christianity is and islam isn’t’, etc. Yeah – I love riding on Bart – heh heh heh – but I hate seeing muslims praying.
* [R_not] but I hate seeing muslims praying
If they have any sense, they will pray earnestly, but to God, in Jesus’ name, and not to
“Allah”, who has no son, and is unable to save them.
The right to peacefully assemble is not absolute, any more than the right of free speech is absolute. There can be, have been, limits placed on demonstrations — for example, on demonstrations outside of abortion clinics.
The courts — and the Supreme Court — have been ordinarily solicitous of the right to peacefully assemble, and that includes sidewalks across from courthouses — see Cox v. U.S. — and attempts to limit the kind of signs one carries, for example, outside the Supreme Court have been struck down (U.S. v. Grace).
On the other hand, disruption and riot have been held to be legitimate reasons for the police demanding that certain demonstrations be disbanded.
Here we have a new situation. What is that new situation? It is the systematic attempt, by large numbers of Muslims, to show up, and to intimidate by numbers and by the ferocity of the demonstration, jurors and judges. No statement is being made about politics; in size and scope this amounts to sheer intimidation. And it is systematic.
I hope that there will be legislation forbidding this kind of thing, and then let it be challenged in the courts, and percolate upwards to the Supreme Court where, I have hope, intelligent war-time limits — there is a war being conducted against our legal and political institutions, and that includes our legal and political institutions.
And that war, a war to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then ultimate dominance, of Islam, includes efforts by the American government to enforce its own immigration and naturalization laws, and certainly would include an attempt to prevent any future efforts to intelligently strip of citizenship those who were perjuring themselves when they took an oath of allegiance to the American Constitution.
The unrandom, systematic, well-organized attempt to show up at courthouses where every so-called “pillar of the Muslim community” brings suit in an attempt to defy American justice, and to throw a spanner into the works, constitutes a campaign, and there are ways that should be attempted to limit those who are so hell-bent on using our liberties to undo those very liberties.
Let the laws to intelligently limit, in such cases, such courthouse behavior, be passed — and then let the constitutional challenges be brought.
We’ll see what limits, in the case of such a sinister, widespread, and systematic effort to undo our ability to defend ourselves against those whose loyalty is not to, and cannot be to, the Constitution but is, rather, to Islam and the Umma, the Supreme Court is willing to accept, and what reject.
It’s a good subject — a subject that requires, however, that one understand the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam, and of how Islam, or rather the Holy Law of Islam, the Shari’a, in spirit and letter flatly contradicts the American Constitution. That understanding should not be difficult, if one is willing to study, and not simply refuse to consider the textual and historical evidence.
Posted by: Hugh