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*The story in Wall Street Journal below along with a note from Iftekhar Hai
and Shaheen Salaam prompted me to write the following commentary. Thank you
Peter, Iftekhar and Shaheen. It has been on my plate for over a month now,
here it is: *
*GUIDELINES FOR ISLAMIC ORGANIZATIONS*
Mike Ghouse
Much of the maligning of Islam we see and read in the news papers stems from
the speeches and the management of our Mosques, and it also fuels the talk
show hosts. The best way to fix the problem is straighten out ourselves
first.
The first battle field of change is our institutions. We need to plan long
term and short strategies/ solutions to our issues if we have not already
done it.
In the interest of our community's long term peaceful un-fearful
co-existence, we may have to take up this topic and discuss it within our
organizations. A national policy would be of greater value. Most of us are
familiar with our problems, and as such I have not explained the background
for each item, you can complete the list with your own situation. Here are a
few solutions to consider.
*SPEAKERS/ SPEECHES/ MEETINGS*:
- We must keep a record of what we say in public forums.
- We must keep records of speeches or scripts to go on the website.
- We must invite all the major media outlets, even if it is a vain
exercise.
- We must cultivate the habit of having the same speech in public and
private domains.
- We must have a formal system to appraise the values of our
organization to <guest/ Imam speaker>
- We must follow the Islamic tradition of good record keeping - every
thing our prophet has said is recorded.
- We must ask the new Imam speaker to present the scripted outline of
the Khutba prior to speech
- We must ask all our speakers to provide an outline to keep it as a
record and perhaps put it on the website.
- We must trust our speakers, but having a record of the speech is
greater trust we owe it to the Ummah.
- We must advise our speakers to open up the eyes and understand that
they are not speaking to a monolithic group.
- We must advise our speakers to cut down any kind of incitement,
microphone will be turned off for violations.
- We must let them know their boundaries - let it be in a manual, and
every speaker has to follow the guidelines.
- We must advise our speakers to be Women sensitive and guest
sensitive (as non-Muslim guests attend Juma)
- We must acknowledge that no one is above the long term goodwill of
our community.
*ACCOUNTABILITY & ADMINISTRATION*
- A major overhaul needs to be considered in Administration of
Mosques and Islamic Centers.
- Who do we want to run our Mosques?
- If we do not have a manual specifying it, it is time we develop it.
- A Manual will keep the politics, favoritism, nepotism at a lower
level.
- Qualifications must be verified by a paid third party CPA for
serious accountability.
- All the financial transactions must be audited by a CPA.
- Women and Youth must be represented on the board.
- Board Voting must be confidential and un-identified to keep the
freedom alive.
- No one should run the Mosque like the Patriarch of the family does -
i.e., no unilateral decisions.
- The Board members must have the experience in management of
professional, civic or community based organization, preference must be
given to those who have served in non-Muslim organizations. We live in a
real World, let's our actions be based on real world interactions.
*PUBLIC RELATIONS*
- We need to hire a public relations firm on a part time or full
time.
- We need to verify all literature that is put out there.
- We need to *remove* the Hilali Translation of Quran from our
Mosques.
- We need to learn to explain our Deen in more understandable terms,
not the old English.
- We need to make our mosques visitors friendly
Following is one of the best pieces of journalism to read - *for practicing
to hold the judgment*. The writer has done a fabulous job of writing the
story as you go down, and up, and down and up as your read. You feel a sense
of connectedness and a sense of truth emerging in his style. We
appreciate *Peter
Waldman*'s coverage. You are welcome to send a note to Peter:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
*World Muslim Congress*
*GOOD FOR MUSLIMS - GOOD FOR THE WORLD*
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Identity Crisis at a U.S. Mosque, Path of Tolerance - Leads to Tumult
*Firing of San Francisco Imam brings Lawsuit and Trial;
Radical or Whistle-blower? 'A Divergence of Agendas'*
By PETER WALDMAN
June 19, 2006; Page A1
SAN FRANCISCO -- Souleiman Ghali grew up as a Palestinian refugee in
war-torn Lebanon. He was a Sunni Muslim imbued from childhood, he says, with
hatred for Shiites, Christians -- and especially Jews.
Then he met one. In 1993, Mr. Ghali, who owned a deli at the time, was
searching for a place to open San Francisco's first Arab mosque. He found an
ideal building. But the owner, who was Jewish, wanted $10,000 a month in
rent, far more than the group could afford.
"I hesitated telling the landlord what we wanted it for, because I assumed
he didn't like Muslims," recalls Mr. Ghali. "But he said, 'A mosque?
Fantastic. We have so many fanatics. We need to work together for peace.'"
The owner slashed the rent 80% and gave the mosque a long-term lease. "That
stuck with me," Mr. Ghali says.
Pushed by Mr. Ghali, the Islamic Society of San Francisco is at the
forefront of a controversial movement to shape an "American Muslim identity"
of tolerance and respect for other faiths.
But the future of his effort is now threatened by a voice from within. His
mosque was hauled into court this spring by a fiery imam whom it fired in
2002, claiming he preached extremism. The cleric's wrongful-discharge
lawsuit has splintered San Francisco's Muslim community, as rival groups,
and ideologies, vie for worshipers' support.
After his firing, the Egyptian-born imam, Safwat Morsy, opened a new mosque
in a basement just around the corner from the Islamic Society, in the heart
of this city's gritty Tenderloin district. To swelling crowds, the Sheik
Safwat has railed against "the traitor criminal Souleiman Ghali" and called
for jihad, or holy war, against Israel and U.S. forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan. "Our killed ones are in paradise and their killed ones are in
hell," he told worshipers in 2003, in a sermon that was translated from
Arabic for the court case.
The fight is part of a larger identity conflict roiling many Muslim
communities in the U.S. The Sept. 11 terror attacks and the recriminations
that followed opened a searing debate among Muslims in America over the role
of Islam in their lives.
Many Westernized Muslims, such as 47-year-old Mr. Ghali, reacted to 9/11 by
recoiling from Mideast politics and other points of discord with mainstream
American culture. They set out to repair the image of Islam in America by
denouncing hatred and emphasizing the faith's common values with other
Western creeds. "Our vision is the emergence of an American Muslim identity
founded on compassion, respect, dignity, and love," says the Islamic
Society's Web site.
Other Muslims, particularly less-assimilated immigrants such as 48-year-old
Sheik Safwat -- who doesn't speak English -- mock the idea of an "American"
Islam. They see attempts to tailor the religion to Western norms as cultural
capitulation verging on blasphemy.
Beware of "the new American Islam," Sheik Safwat warned followers in the
2003 sermon translated for the court case, "a faith that does not talk about
the jihad; a faith that does not talk about the confrontation with tyrants;
a faith that does not talk."
*Sheik Safwat Morsy*
In a five-week civil trial held this spring in San Francisco Superior Court,
jurors were asked to consider two starkly different versions of the conflict
that has divided the Islamic Society. Sheik Safwat accused the mosque of
unlawfully firing him for exposing what he said were suspicious accounting
practices by Mr. Ghali and others. The Islamic Society insisted it had just
cause to terminate the sheik for preaching radicalism.
The Islamic Society, now one of three Sunni mosques in San Francisco's urban
core, occupies a corner building on a seedy stretch of Market Street. The
prayer hall, upstairs from a check-cashing service and a liquor store,
serves an immigrant community of mostly Arabs and South Asians, many of them
cabdrivers and laborers.
Even Mr. Ghali's admirers say he imposed his progressive agenda on the
Islamic Society autocratically. Working mostly by himself, he opened the
mosque to ecumenical events for Christians and Jews and actively stumped for
peace with Israel. This winter, he removed the barrier that separated women
from men, a tradition in many mosques. He did so without consulting the
community, knowing the move would cause an uproar -- which it did. "First we
changed the structure. Now we're educating the people," says Mr. Ghali, who
owns a small copy shop near San Francisco's Union Square.
*Frequent Clashes*
He clashed frequently with imams hired by the mosque to preach. Several
years ago, he recalls, he ousted one imam -- literally shoving him out the
door during Friday prayers -- after the cleric fulminated about Americans
facing hellfire for immorality. Tempers flared as the preacher's supporters
shouted "Pharoah!" at Mr. Ghali and accused him of censorship. Mr. Ghali
says he shot back: "Ask God to heal America, not punish it!"
Mr. Ghali says he sacked a second imam in 2000 for preaching too much about
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Angry congregants gathered 300 signatures
on a petition to keep the popular Yemeni cleric and throw out Mr. Ghali, who
fought off the challenge. "We would not let the Arab constituency shape the
mosque in their own image," says Mr. Ghali.
Sheik Safwat, who was hired in July, 2001, is equally stubborn, say people
who know both men. He came to San Francisco from the Muath ibn Jabal Mosque
in Detroit, where one of the congregants says his religious views split the
community and the mosque's board. Sheik Safwat, recruited by Mr. Ghali for
his eloquence and fund-raising skills, was named the Islamic Society's
executive director, as well as its imam, with responsibility to help "set
the vision" for the mosque. His four-year employment contract included a
house, health insurance and a salary of $3,500 a month.
The two men soon clashed. Fawaz Abu-Khadijeh, a cabdriver who is a regular
at the mosque, recalls Sheik Safwat asking him for curtains to further seal
off the women's prayer area, then separated from the main hall by an
eight-foot wall. The sheik's wife, who covers her hair and face in
traditional Islamic garb, was uncomfortable with the incomplete barrier, Mr.
Abu-Khadijeh says. But Mr. Ghali says he vetoed the idea, snapping at Mr.
Abu-Khadijeh: "We run the mosque, not Sheik Safwat's wife!"
Mr. Ghali says he resented Sheik Safwat using the mosque to raise money for
Mideast causes, drawing funds away from the Islamic Society's own needs.
"They both wanted to be leader," Mr. Abu-Khadijeh says.
Three days after the 9/11 attacks, at a Friday prayer service attended by
dignitaries including then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, Sheik Safwat
denounced the terrorists. "Islam does not accept this kind of behavior," he
said, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. "Islam is a
religion of peace."
But in April 2002, the sheik delivered a different kind of message,
according to Farhan Memon, a New York attorney who attended the San
Francisco mosque for many years. The Israeli army, in response to a rash of
suicide bombings in Israel, was laying siege at the time to Palestinian
fighters in the West Bank town of Jenin. From the pulpit, Sheik Safwat
lionized the Palestinians for laying down their lives, including the bomber
of Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, who had killed 15 people, Mr. Memon later
testified in the court case. The sheik's message, Mr. Memon said: "American
Muslims should find inspiration in that on how to become better Muslims."
(The sheik's lawyer attempted in court to cast doubt on Mr. Memon's
testimony by noting that he was listening to a translation from Arabic.)
In a recent interview, Sheik Safwat, speaking through an aide who
translated, denied he is an extremist and said he has denounced suicide
bombing and the killing of innocents many times. He said that as the
mosque's executive director, he became aware of accounting irregularities
which he contends are evidence of embezzlement and tax evasion. He said it
was his duty to confront Mr. Ghali and other Islamic Society leaders. In
response, he said, they fired him.
His dismissal, which came shortly after his controversial April 2002 sermon,
tore apart the local Muslim community. The sheik and his followers attempted
to overthrow Mr. Ghali and his allies at the mosque, court papers show.
Before being slapped with a temporary restraining order, Sheik Safwat's
group changed the locks on the mosque, commandeered the podium during
prayers and removed several computers and translation headsets to their new
headquarters around the corner, according to sworn affidavits filed in
court.
The sheik's aide, Mohammed Allababidi, says those affidavits are lies. He
says Mr. Ghali, to thwart rising opposition sparked by revelations of
"corruption," changed the locks and shut down the mosque for several weeks.
"There was a divergence of agendas, on top of a monumental struggle for
power," says Hatem Bazian, an Islamic law professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, who tried to mediate the dispute.
*'New Crusade'*
Sheik Safwat filed suit against the Islamic Society in April 2003, accusing
the mosque of illegally firing him in retaliation for exposing corruption.
At the time, U.S. forces were invading Iraq and emotions among Muslims
everywhere were raw. "They have declared religious war against Islam," Sheik
Safwat told followers at his new mosque, Noor Al-Islam, according to a San
Francisco Chronicle account. "It is a new Crusade." He said he blamed the
U.S. government, not the American people.
Mr. Ghali, although he is not a professional imam, gave a sermon that same
day at the Islamic Society. He urged restraint, the newspaper reported. "We
are misunderstood," he said. "Allah demands that we be patient and wise. Let
not the hatred of others allow you to swerve to wrong and depart from
justice."
A few weeks later, as Baghdad itself was falling, Sheik Safwat delivered a
tirade against infidel invaders and called for holy war to redeem Muslim
lands. This sermon, captured in a cassette recording, was professionally
translated and submitted as evidence in the court case.
Sheik Safwat, invoking familiar extremist rhetoric for his Sunni listeners,
blamed the fall of Iraq on connivance by the "traitor" Shiites and Arab
heads of states, whom he branded "agents of treason." The sheik also said he
saw the hand of the "sons of Zion," the Jews. With the fall of Baghdad, he
said, Israel had "realized" its dominion "from the Nile to the Euphrates."
He praised martyrdom. While the Muslim dead of Jerusalem, Afghanistan, Iraq
and the Sudan were in paradise, he said, the infidel dead were burning in
hell. "The beacon of the jihad will not be extinguished by the tank and will
not be extinguished by the airplanes," he said. "The clash of civilizations
and the combat of cultures and the recapture of the land and honor, this is
what believers are waiting for."
In another sermon, the sheik adopted the slogan used by the Palestinian
political party Hamas to reject Israel's right to exist: "Palestine, from
the sea to the river."
Mr. Allababidi, who serves as the Noor Al-Islam mosque's general secretary,
says the sheik won't elaborate on the 2003 sermons because they're a
"distraction" from "the corruption" at the Islamic Society mosque.
At the trial, the jury had to decide how much credence to give Mr. Ghali's
claim that the mosque had properly fired the sheik for his extremist
rhetoric. Jurors never heard the sheik's later sermons because the judge
ruled that evidence from after the sheik's 2002 firing was irrelevant to the
case. Mr. Ghali testified that the sheik told him twice that the best way to
deal with Jews was to "slaughter" them. Mr. Memon, the lawyer and former
mosque worshiper, testified that the sheik told followers to "emulate"
suicide bombers. Another attorney testified she'd heard Sheik Safwat preach
hate at the Islamic Society's regular Friday services.
The sheik and his lawyer maintained that Mr. Ghali and his allies had
capitalized for years on their positions at the mosque for financial gain.
They showed the jury blowups of canceled checks written to "cash" and
donation receipts allegedly inflated for tax purposes. They cast doubt on
the two attorneys' testimony about hateful preaching, noting that neither
spoke Arabic and both relied on simultaneous translations of the sheik's
sermons. Some Muslim scholars testified that they knew the sheik to be a
peace-loving man.
*An Excellent Witness*
The sheik made an excellent witness, says David Newman, the jury's foreman.
With his wife and seven daughters looking on, the sheik presented himself as
a committed pacifist, on good terms even with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. He testified that during his nine-month tenure at the Islamic
Society, he denounced Osama bin Laden, praised Jews and shunned Mideast
politics. "I condemn any killing," he told the jury.
In the end, jurors believed the sheik. The jury found that the Islamic
Society had breached the sheik's contract and awarded him $200,000 in
damages. It also found that the mosque had misrepresented the job when it
recruited him from Detroit. That finding, under California law,
automatically doubled the damage award to $400,000.
The hateful rhetoric seemed "inconsistent" with the peaceful family man who
appeared in court, says Mr. Newman, who works as a senior lawyer for the U.S.
Federal Trade Commission. Without transcripts of sermons or Arabic speakers
to corroborate the extremism, the jury didn't buy it, Mr. Newman says.
The evidence of accounting problems and Sheik Safwat's efforts to clean them
up was more persuasive, he says. "Was there theft?" he asks. "None of us
believed anyone made money out of this. But we all believed there were
accounting irregularities. Much of their problem was just sloppiness."
Adds Mr. Newman, an experienced trial lawyer: "There's reality and there's
courtroom reality. I have no doubt we made the correct decision, based on
the evidence we saw in the courtroom and the law as it was explained to us.
I have no opinion on whether we got reality right."
Issa Michael, the Islamic Society's attorney, complains that the judge
"handcuffed" his client by barring evidence from Sheik Safwat's later
sermons. Mr. Memon's testimony, Mr. Michael says, was "irrefutable." The
fact he didn't speak Arabic shouldn't have mattered, the lawyer says,
because the jury knew that the interpreters of the sermons were the sheik's
closest confidants.
To avoid possible punitive damages, the Islamic Society decided to settle
the case, agreeing to pay Sheik Safwat $400,000. Its legal fees exceeded
$100,000.
Mr. Ghali resigned from the board after the jury verdict. The mosque is
struggling now to stay afloat. It may have to sell a building in South San
Francisco that congregants have been renovating for years to turn into an
Islamic school. Mosque attendance is down. Some worshipers now attend Sheik
Safwat's mosque and a third one nearby. Peace and interfaith activities have
ceased, and there is a move afoot, led by women, to rebuild the women's
barrier.
Tanja Brauer, who leads a women's group at the mosque, contends that Mr.
Ghali "let his concerns about non-Muslim public opinion overshadow some of
our own concerns as Muslims."
Mr. Ghali says he "wanted our mosque to be different." He acknowledges he
could have been a better manager, but denies that anyone from the mosque
stole any money.
Sheik Safwat intends to use the settlement payment to repay debts, says Mr.
Allababidi, his aide. His mosque is looking to buy a building to accommodate
the capacity crowds coming these days for Friday prayers.
--
G. Waleed Kavalec
-------------------------
Why are we all in this handbasket
and where is it going so fast?
http://www.kavalec.com/thisisislam.swf
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