New York Daily News - City News - City slams jails' Imam

New York Daily News - City News - City slams jails' Imam: "The top Islamic chaplain for the city's jails was temporarily booted from his job yesterday almost a year after calling the Bush administration 'the greatest terrorists in the world' and criticizing Jews."

Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil had been recorded speaking at a conference in Tucson, AZ last April.

In his own defense he said, '"I made statements as a person who has worked on every Republican's campaign, including Bush's, I'm a full-blown American."'

"Full-blown American," or not, comments like these by a chaplain within the prison system of this country has to give pause for concern. At the conference the Imam was recorded as saying; '"We have terrorists defining who the terrorist is, but because they have the weight of legitimacy, they get away with it,"' and "we know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House without a doubt." He also said "Muslim inmates had been interrogated, tortured and held without being charged in the Metropolitan Correction Center and urged Muslims not to let the "Zionists of the media" determine the meaning of Islam."'

While on paid administrative leave he has hooked up with attorney Norman Siegel who is the former Director of the ACLU’s New York division. According to Siegel, "the city has no right to fire (the) imam because his inflammatory remarks didn't violate rules about what city employees can say." Siegel also said, "the First Amendment says public employees off the job can speak on issues of public concern, it's protected." An example cited was from "a decade ago in which city employee Rosalie Harman blasted the Human Resources Administration on national TV over the death of a young girl in its care."

It would appear that legally, Siegel has a point, with regard to freedom of speech, however, the Rosalie Harman defense is a painfully lacking when one considers possible results from the "incendiary" speech of the Imam versus Ms. Harman. This is the type of trash the ACLU rushes to the defense of all too often. There are deeper considerations with regard to someone in his position and those that he may influence.

A visit to ACLU.org's homepage speaks to where their heads are with the accompanying image.
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