Muslim scholar quizzed on meeting Bakr

A MUSLIM scholar who lives in the United States was detained for seven hours at Miami International Airport after a trip to Trinidad. Ali A Mazrui, 70, who has been a resident of the US since 1974, was hauled in by members of the Homeland Security and Immigration Depart-ments on August 3 and asked if he met with Yasin Abu Bakr, leader of the radical Jamaat Al Muslimeen in Trinidad. “I told them no, but that I did try to meet with him,” he said. “I said it is my business to know about Muslims because I teach that.” Mazrui’s story was carried in yesterday’s edition of the Washington Post. The story details problems from Muslims when they travel and return to the United States. The pressure on Muslims follow the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC. The article reports complaints by Muslims.

A delegation of 18 Yemeni citizens invited to Washington by the US State Department was held for five hours after arriving at Dulles International Airport while immigration officials questioned and fingerprinted them. The September 3 incident, during which one member of the delegation was handcuffed for half an hour, angered the visitors from Yemen, whose government has been a key US ally in the war against terrorism. “I was in shock. If things are going to continue like this, why should I come to this country?” said Yahya al Habari, 44, a member of Yemen’s legislature who had come to meet with senior trade and agriculture officials. Habari, who travels on a diplomatic passport  and has been to the United States dozens of times for his business  as an importer of US crops, said, “I’d rather import Australian or Canadian wheat and save myself problems.” Besides businessmen and legislators invited to meetings with top US officials, the Yemeni delegation included cultural figures participating in “Windows on the Cultural Heritage of Yemen,” a symposium held September 5 and 6 at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer Gallery of Art. The event was sponsored by the Smithsonian, the State Department, the Yemen Embassy and the American Institute for Yemeni Studies.

The episode at Dulles is one of many recent cases in which Muslim air travellers have complained of being subjected to lengthy delays and sometimes being questioned by US law enforcement officials for no apparent legitimate reason. Last month, two well-known Muslim scholars who live in the United States were questioned for several hours at US airports after traveling abroad. Ali A Mazrui, 70, a professor at the State University of New York at Binghamton, said he was detained for more than seven hours at Miami International Airport and asked to explain his ideas on jihad. Radwan Masmoudi, who heads a Washington-based think tank that promotes democracy in the Middle East, was delayed four hours because of FBI questioning at a Detroit airport. Asked about the treatment of the Yemenis at Dulles, Bill Anthony, a spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection, said the State Department had not notified immigration officials at the airport about their arrival. Had it done so, the delegates would have been exempted from a special registration procedure — involving fingerprinting and photographing — required for male visitors between the ages of 16 and 45 from about 20 designated countries, Anthony said.

“Without pre-clearance, we are required to enforce the law, and we don’t have discretion on the ground,” he said. The handcuffing of Mohannad al Sayani, 40, who is general director for antiquities in one of Yemen’s provinces, was a case of mistaken identity. “It was a very close match that turned out to be incorrect,” Anthony said, declining to elaborate. The State Department did not return a call seeking comment. Anthony said Mazrui was detained in Miami for about six hours because of a “breakdown in communication” between immigration and customs officials. He said this led to Mazrui being questioned separately by two sets of officials and possibly an official from a third agency. Anthony declined to say why Mazrui was flagged for interrogation, saying, “There are many reasons why people get detained.” Mazrui, a political scientist, is the Albert Schweitzer professor in Humanities, Director of the Institute of Global Cultural Studies at SUNY-Binghamton and also teaches at Cornell University.

An Internet search brings up his picture and biography. He travels on his Kenyan passport and has been a permanent US resident since 1974. In a telephone interview, Mazrui said that after he landed in Miami on August 3 having returned from Trinidad, he was questioned first by  immigration officials, then by customs representatives and finally by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Their questions included “ ‘What is jihad?’ and whether I believed in it. I gave them ‘Jihad 101,’” Mazrui said. “Then they wanted to know what sect of Islam I believe in. When I said Sunni, they asked why I was not Shia,” he recalled. “That was definitely a first. That’s like asking a Catholic why he isn’t a Protestant.” During the last round of questioning, Mazrui said officials asked him whether he had met with a radical Islamist leader in Trinidad.