Imam faces deportation

As he prepared to face an immigration judge in Newark on Thursday to fight deportation, Imam Mohammad Qatanani put his fate in God’s hands.

“Whatever God wills,” Qatanani said earlier this week. “I am optimistic, but even if they want to get me out, I will be fine. I will accept any kind of decision.”

Sitting at his desk in his office at his mosque, his hands folded before him, the spiritual leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County looked serene – hardly like someone who is in the midst of a firestorm.

Hardly like someone whose life may be upended within a week.

Hardly like someone who could have had ties to Hamas, a group branded by the United States as terrorist.

What deportation would destroy, Qatanani said, is the bridge he built between the members of his mosque – one of the largest in the state – and political and law enforcement officials. It took years, he said, to persuade a congregation suspicious of U.S. authorities, and bitter about being profiled as terrorist sympathizers, to get involved in the larger community and with authorities.

“They will say, ‘He was a moderate man, he spoke about moderation, about trusting authorities. He spoke about peace and building bridges, and what did they do? They deported him.’ This country will be sending the message that we don’t want even moderate Muslims, we do not want Muslims,” Qatanani, 44, said. “This is the message they will send to Muslims everywhere, also in the Middle East.”

Immigration authorities denied his application to become a permanent U.S. resident. They allege that the imam, who came to New Jersey from Jordan in 1996 on a religious visa, lied on his application when he said he’d never been convicted of a crime. His attorney, Claudia Slovinsky of Manhattan, said that immigration officials, who have repeatedly declined to comment, said they had information from Israeli authorities that they arrested Qatanani in 1993 on the West Bank and detained him for three months for having had ties to Hamas.

Through a statement issued to the press recently, Israeli army officials said Qatanani had confessed to being a member of Hamas. The imam vehemently denies it, and said he did not note the detention on his application be cause he was never officially charged with a crime.

“I am against violence,” he said. “I have no relationship with [Hamas].”

U.S. authorities also have noted, Slovinsky said, that Qatanani’s predecessor at the mosque, Imam Mohammed el-Mezain, was arrested on charges involving the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, of which el-Mezain is a leader, and which officials said funneled money to Palestinian terrorists. Trials ended in acquittals, and one in a hung jury.

“I have nothing to do with that imam,” Qatanani said. “Just because I became the imam here after him – is this a just system, is this fairness? There is not supposed to be guilt by association.”

Qatanani’s hallmark calmness gave way to traces of bitterness when he spoke about Israel and Israelis.

“The judicial system there is not a just system,” he said. “It is a system of occupation in the West Bank.”

“People are suffering,” he said of fellow Palestinians on the West Bank. And though it was 15 years ago that Israelis detained him, he said, he feels they have made it their mission to torment him.

“You want to live in America – we will not leave you alone, you will live in suffering everywhere,” Qatanani said is Israel’s policy.

The imam’s deportation fight has become a cause célèbre that has brought together clergy of different faiths, U.S. Congress members, law enforcement officials and mosque members across New Jersey and New York.

In letters, affidavits and speeches at rallies, they depict the imam as the living rebuttal to the stereotype of Muslims – as a man of peace, of tolerance, a champion of assimilation and noble American citizenship. By the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, they plan to hold rallies outside the federal building in Newark, where Immigration Court is on the 11th floor, on each day of the three-day trial.

Nearly 20 buses are expected to bring supporters from New Jersey and New York. Dozens of students have been excused from Muslim schools to attend the rallies.

“This is a very anxious time for our community,” said Aref Assaf, a Denville businessman and ICPC congregant who is heading the campaign in the imam’s support. “If there is a negative decision, if an imam of this caliber is snatched away, there will be tremendous disappointment in our community and their fears and suspicions about how the U.S. government sees Muslims will be confirmed.”

National Muslim groups are closely watching the case. Qatanani’s deportation fight, they say, is the latest of a series they’ve seen in recent years.

“We know of imams in Michigan, Texas, California, who are also fighting to stay,” said Kareem Shora, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, D.C. “We don’t know whether it’s policy or not.”

Qatanani, meanwhile, has spoken to his six children – three of whom were born in the United States – about how they must be prepared for the worst.

“I told them to be ready to leave if that is what we must do,” he said. “They say they are ready.”

“God has his plan and knows what is best for his slave,” he added. “He will choose what is best for us. The decision makers here can say what they want about me, but they know me very well — that I am an ambassador for peace. If they say ‘We don’t want you, you have to leave,’ I will not have an explanation for that. But I would leave this country with love for it.”

E-mail: llorente@northjersey.com