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March 12, 2006
Yee: Suspicion of Muslims hinders terror war
By Wayne Parry
WEST ORANGE, N.J. (AP) - The former Muslim chaplain at the U.S. Army base at Guantanamo Bay who was once suspected of espionage says the military is discouraging American Muslims from helping more thoroughly in the war on terror by mistreating detainees and viewing Islam suspiciously.
James Yee, the Springfield native who was arrested on suspicion of espionage in his role as spiritual adviser to Muslim detainees at Guantanamo, claims he and other American Muslim service members at the detention center were also viewed with suspicion by military commanders.
In an interview with The Associated Press before addressing the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee's New Jersey chapter Saturday night, Yee said his case is one of the things that makes American Muslims wary of cooperating more fully in the war on terrorism.
"When someone like me gets thrown in jail for making positive contributions, people see that and don't want to have anything to do with the government," said Yee, who lives in Olympia, Wash. He said one higher-up referred to him as "that Chinese Taliban" during the 76 days he spent in solitary confinement in a South Carolina military prison.
Yee grew up as a Lutheran in Springfield, where he was the only Asian in his school and one of only two minorities. He converted to Islam in 1991, drawn to the religion's diversity, as well as its focus on one God.
Once a highly regarded solider encouraged by commanders to serve as the "poster boy for Muslims in the military," the Gulf War veteran returned to active duty in January 2001, and the next year was sent to Guantanamo, the U.S. military base in Cuba where suspected Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners are held.
In addition to seeing to the detainees' religious needs, he acted as a liaison between them and military commanders, passing along their grievances about how they were being treated. That, Yee said, made him fall under suspicion as well.
"My faith surely was under fire," he told the anti-discrimination group in his speech. "That fact that I'm a Muslim-American put me in the cross-hairs. Because when I prayed in the Islamic form of prayers, when I read the Quran in the classical Arabic language, it mirrored that of the prisoners. Some interpreted that to believe that meant that me, along with the other American Muslims, were also the enemy."
He was arrested in September 2003 - two days after receiving the best officer evaluation report he had ever received - and accused of spying and helping the Taliban and al-Qaida, offenses that carried the death penalty. But the actual charges filed against him dealt only with mishandling classified materials. Yee said the crux of the case against him stemmed from documents on his computer the military thought were classified.
In reality, he said, most were articles he had downloaded from the Internet for a postgraduate course in international relations he is pursuing. None contained any classified material, and the charges were dropped in March 2004, including lesser alleged offenses like adultery, storing pornography on his Army laptop and lying to investigators.
Those accusations devastated his family, which is still working to repair their relationships with each other, said Yee, 38.
Yee received an honorable discharge in January 2005, followed by an Army commendation for "exceptionally meritorious service."
He said military interrogators at Guantanamo used the detainees' Muslim faith against them during interrogations. Although he did not witness it, Yee said at least one detainee was made to bow in prayer with a Pentagram painted on the floor. An interrogator would scream, "Satan is your God now, not Allah!" Yee said the incident was told to him by detainees, and confirmed by translators who came to him in confidence.
He also said detainees and translators told him interrogators would throw the Quran on the ground and step on it. And he said he witnessed interrogators roughly handle the Muslim holy book while looking for contraband, causing pages to fall out and bindings to crack…
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/newjersey/story/6022313p-5995407c.html
MSNBC - March 13, 2006
Rome's chief rabbi visits city's mosque
‘We have a duty to promote dialogue,’ he says during landmark visit
ROME - Rome’s chief rabbi paid a landmark visit to the capital’s mosque on Monday and called for greater dialogue between Jews and Muslims to promote peace.
Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni’s visit to the sprawling mosque on Rome’s outskirts, one of the largest in Europe, was the first by a chief rabbi of Rome since it opened in 1995.
“We must contribute to creating the conditions for peace,” he said in an address to Muslim leaders. “We have a duty to promote dialogue and this is what we are trying to do.”
The visit took place less than two weeks after Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders met at the Vatican and agreed that they should widen their dialogue to involve Muslims in the wake of tension over the publication of newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.
An Italian minister, who was later sacked, infuriated Muslims by wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the cartoons.
Di Segni encouraged Muslims, who have overtaken Jews as the second-largest religious group in Italy after Roman Catholics, to be become full members of the community.
“As Italian Jews who have been here for 20 centuries, we had a very long relationship with Italian authorities and we have managed to find solutions and models of co-existence,” he said.
“We think our experience can be very useful to you in this very difficult process of integration...”
Abdellah Redouane, head of the Islamic cultural institute based in the Mosque complex, said the cartoon controversy was an example of how Jews and Muslims could work together.
“I want to thank the Jewish community for the solidarity they showed towards Muslims when, recently, the Prophet Mohammad was ridiculed and insulted with offensive cartoons that were simply not funny,” Redouane said.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11808138/
Cincinnati Enquirer – March 11, 2006
Pakistani woman deported for
violating a student visa in 1989
By Dan Horn
Fatima Raziuddin called her husband and children from an airport Tuesday night to say goodbye.
After 18 years in the United States, she was being deported to Pakistan for violating a student visa in 1989 by working at a fast-food restaurant. She had lived quietly, but illegally, in West Chester Township for the past decade.
Raziuddin sobbed as she talked to her husband about all she was leaving: Her two teenage sons, friends and neighbors, the doctors who treated her cancer and the children she taught at the local mosque.
Her life in America was over.
"Everybody loves her," her husband, Razi Dinn, said a few days later. "We need her. We can't live without her."
They might have no choice.
Raziuddin can't apply to re-enter the country for 10 years, and Dinn, a U.S. citizen, is wary of moving his kids to Pakistan, a country they've visited only once.
As a native of India, which has poor relations with Pakistan, Dinn isn't sure he could even make such a move.
The family's dilemma frustrates Raziuddin's friends and family, prompting them to join the growing national debate over the fairness and effectiveness of U.S. immigration law.
Raziuddin fought hard to stay in the United States, pleading with administrators and judges for years. But the mistake she made in 1989 - working part-time at a Popeye's restaurant in Texas - caught up to her last month.
Authorities arrested and jailed her after she tried for the third time to apply for citizenship.
Raziuddin does not dispute the old visa violation or that she later broke a promise to voluntarily leave the country. She argued instead that the life she led in America should outweigh her failure to follow the rules so long ago.
Immigration officials say they have no choice but to enforce the rules. They say illegal immigrants, even those who lead otherwise exemplary lives, flout laws intended to protect American citizens.
"We all have sympathy on the individual level, but we have a remarkably broken system," said John Keeley, spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank that favors strict enforcement of immigration laws. "This highlights the fact that people are exploiting the system. We have someone here who pledged to return home and then ignored U.S. immigration law."
Raziuddin's lawyer made a last-ditch try to keep her in the country a few weeks ago when he requested asylum for her. He said she might be harmed if she returns to Pakistan because she is a Shiite Muslim, while her husband is a member of the rival Sunni sect.
Her asylum request failed. A few days later, immigration officials took her to the airport, allowed her a phone call and put her on a plane to Pakistan…..
http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060311/NEWS01/603110432/1077
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