N.Y. Chaplain’s Suspension Ignites Debate

When he spoke to Muslim students last year at a conference in Tucson, the top chaplain in New York City’s jail system talked tough to his audience, making comments that drew no media attention.

Umar Abdul-Jalil said “predators” should not be released from jail into the Muslim community, singling out Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric who plotted to blow up the World Trade Center. He criticized the lack of work reentry programs for Muslim inmates.

But the chaplain’s other comments at the conference drew heated criticism this month -- and calls for his termination -- when they surfaced in New York newspapers. Abdul-Jalil blasted “Zionists of the media” and said “the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House,” according to a transcript of his remarks.

Last week, city officials suspended him for two weeks without pay but decided that he could retain his $76,602-a-year job.

The decision satisfied few -- and triggered an angry debate over free speech and its limits after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who announced Abdul-Jalil’s suspension at City Hall, said he was balancing the cleric’s right to free speech with the city’s requirement that employees who make public statements clearly indicate they are speaking for themselves, not New York City. Abdul-Jalil, executive director of ministerial services for the city’s Department of Correction, did not make such a distinction during April’s remarks before the Muslim Students Assn., Bloomberg said.

“The Corrections Department is not suspending the imam for what he said, but for what he didn’t say,” the mayor said. He added that the action was not taken because of “statements which many New Yorkers would find inappropriate and offensive.”

Bloomberg conceded, however, that “this decision will not satisfy extremists on either side of the political spectrum.”

“Some will demand that he be fired; others will demand that there be no penalty at all.... We have tried to strike a balance,” Bloomberg said.

As criticism of the decision grows, New Yorkers have wrestled with a key question: Is the chaplain a provocateur, or was his message misunderstood?

Adbul-Jalil criticized his suspension after the mayor’s news conference, saying his comments had been taken out of context.

The 56-year-old Bronx man, who supervises 40 Correction Department chaplains of all faiths, apologized if anyone had been offended by his comments, saying, “I preach love and respect for people of all faiths.” He said he was considering an appeal of his suspension, but he declined further comment, as did his attorney, Norman Siegel, former chief of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Critics on both sides have blasted Bloomberg for ignoring what one attorney in the case called “the 800-pound gorilla in the room”: If Abdul-Jalil had spoken only about innocuous matters in failing to distinguish between personal and official comments, no one would have cared.

Abdul-Jalil “is entitled to say what he believes, and he shouldn’t be prosecuted,” said Steven Emerson, founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, a Washington, D.C., group that recorded the cleric’s comments a year ago. (The first media report of the comments appeared last week in the New York Post.) “But the real question is whether someone who says these kind of things is the right person to be ministering to inmates in the city’s jails.”

Abdul-Jalil “is in the wrong job,” Emerson added. “He shouldn’t be in the jail system. He should be a talk show host.”

Pundits and politicians have weighed in: New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser ridiculed Bloomberg for “an act of breathtaking wimpishness.” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter T. King (R-New York) said, “A person with those views should not be allowed to serve in any government agency.”

Lawyer Siegel was critical of Bloomberg’s decision for different reasons.

He said at a news conference that courts had “consistently held that a government employee, off the job, not discussing confidential information,” could express whatever views he or she wanted.

He said it was preposterous for the mayor to suggest that the content of Abdul-Jalil’s comments in Arizona was not relevant to his suspension.

The New York regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, Joel J. Levy, voiced support for the legal reasoning behind the suspension. But he said it was troubling that Abdul-Jalil had not recanted his comments.

“I understand [the decision] being made by lawyers, who looked at it like a lawyer,” he said. “But that is not the whole issue. The issue is what he said.”

For some, Abdul-Jalil’s comments were a surprising exception in a career that has won praise from many. Correction Commissioner Martin F. Horn noted at Bloomberg’s news conference that an internal investigation had given the cleric high marks for professionalism, evenhandedness and compassion for all inmates.

“This is an individual who has unfailingly been available to all inmates in their times of need, irrespective of religion, including Jewish inmates,” he said.

As Horn spoke, six other chaplains voiced support for their colleague, who is also the imam of the Masjid Sabur mosque in Harlem.

“I disagree and disapprove of what was said,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis and a chaplain with the city’s fire department. “But we look at the totality of circumstances here. You measure belief by behavior.

“The chaplains are unanimous in support of his conduct as a chaplain.”

Abdul-Jalil moved to New York City from Virginia when he was 11 and was raised by his grandmother, Siegel said.

Arrested for selling drugs at 23, Abdul-Jalil spent 17 years in Attica state prison, according to comments made to the Muslim Students Assn. He said he converted to Islam in prison and was paroled 14 years later.

He got a volunteer job with the Department of Correction and was hired as a chaplain in 1993. He was promoted to his current job four years ago and has been working at Rikers Island, the city’s main jail.

As the controversy grew last week, the chaplain announced he had supported and campaigned for President Bush. He did not explain how that support was compatible with his comments about terrorists in the White House.

“What hurts is to have my patriotism questioned,” he told reporters. “I’m a full-blown American. As an American, I have a right to disagree.”