Paterson imam fights deportation

Star Ledger front page story, May 7, 2008

By Mitsu Yasukawa / The Star Ledger,Imam Mohammad Qatanani

The day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, FBI agents seeking Arabic interpreters turned to the Islamic Center of Passaic County in Paterson, where the imam, Mohammad Qatanani, instructed the faithful to lend the agents a hand.

In 2005, the New Jersey Senate tapped Qatanani to be the first Muslim to lead the opening prayer for a voting session, praising him as a voice of moderation and tolerance. And for years, Jewish and Christian clergy have called on Qatanani to speak at programs promoting interfaith dialogue. Twelve years after he arrived from the West Bank, however, Qatanani's days as the Garden State's most visible Muslim cleric may be coming to an end.

Qatanani, his wife and three children are facing deportation for his alleged failure to disclose a 1993 arrest by Israeli authorities on his green card application. Israeli military officials told the Associated Press he confessed to being a member of Hamas, a known terrorist organization. Qatanani denies the charge.

Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will begin presenting the case before an immigration judge in Newark Thursday.

Muslim leaders and the rank-and-file faithful across New Jersey are calling it a watershed moment for a community that has often struggled for acceptance.

"If a man of moderation is being put out in this fashion, what kind of Muslim does America want?" said Aref Assaf, president of the Paterson-based Arab American Forum.

Qatanani's supporters have raised $100,000 for his defense, printed shirts reading "Keep the Imam in America" and hired a fleet of buses to take them to a rally outside the courtroom.

His lawyer has assembled a list of character witnesses that includes a rabbi, three Christian clergymen, the Bergen County and Passaic County sheriffs and a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark. U.S. Rep. William Pascrell (D-8th Dist.) has written a letter to the judge calling the imam "a gentleman who's had a tremendous positive influence."

Rabbi David Senter of Congregation Beth Shalom in Pompton Lakes said many members of the conservative Jewish synagogue were skeptical when he began inviting Qatanani to seders and other events at the synagogue after the two clerics met during an appearance on a radio program several years ago.

Now that they know him, he says, "They are phenomenally supportive of the fact that I'm standing behind my friend."

Qatanani's case will be decided by Judge Alberto J. Riefkohl of the Executive Office of Immigration Review, an administrative court system within the U.S. Department of Justice.

The hearing is expected to last three days. Riefkohl can issue an order of deportation or grant either legal permanent residency or a green card to the imam, his wife and three foreign-born children. The couple also have three children who are U.S. citizens.

Seated in his office after Friday prayers, Qatanani said he and his followers fear that his deportation would erase "the kind of trust and the relationship" they have built with the community.

"Even the officials fear it," he said. "They feel there was a strong relationship with the mosque."

Qatanani says he will accept the outcome of the hearing as God's will. But his supporters are less willing to accept the loss.

Many recall the days after 9/11, when news that several of the hijackers had briefly lived in Paterson cast the area's large Muslim community in a suspicious light.

Out of fear, many mosque members say, they instinctively withdrew, closing the doors to outsiders, including their neighbors, police and the media. Qatanani urged them to do the opposite, inviting the FBI to a recruiting fair and other events at the mosque, and opening the mosque to reporters.

"Because of the things he says, I always thought he was a U.S. citizen," Ismail Omran, a 43-year-old diner manager, said as he left the mosque Friday. "He says, 'This is our country, we have to support our country.' He made me feel like I am a part of this society."

Officials with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency seeking Qatanani's deportation, declined to comment on the case.

In paperwork filed on the case, the government cites a 1993 Israeli Military Court conviction for "assisting Hamas" and says the imam lied on his immigration application by not disclosing the arrest.

Qatanani says he was never formally arrested and never charged with a crime when he was among hundreds of Palestinians detained during the intifada uprising in 1993.

He came to the United States in 1996 with a work visa to serve as imam of the Paterson mosque and a year later applied for legal permanent residency, or a green card, for himself, his wife and three children born abroad.

On July 10, 2006, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied the family's application and they were placed in deportation proceedings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.