Imam Won’t Lose Job Over ‘Terrorist’ Speech

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Tuesday that the city Correction Department chaplain who told attendees at a Muslim youth conference last year that “the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House” would keep his job.

Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, who heads the chaplains unit at the department, will be suspended without pay for two weeks for failing to say he was speaking as an individual, not a representative of the city, when he made the speech, Bloomberg said.

“I certainly don’t agree with that view, but the issue here is not do I agree with him, but does he have a right to say what he wants to say,” Bloomberg said. “At the same time, we have an obligation to ensure that city employees do not falsely represent their political statements as the official position of their agency.”

Bloomberg leveled attacks at both ends of the political spectrum: people who criticize anti-government speech “under the guise of patriotism,” and anyone who would stifle free speech in the name of political correctness.

“We are forgetting what distinguishes America from everyplace else, and it’s something that I have felt very strongly about and get more and more worried about with time,” Bloomberg said.

Norman Siegel, the civil rights attorney representing Abdul-Jalil, said his client was disappointed with the suspension.

“If you listen to the tape, no reasonable person would believe he was speaking on behalf of the department,” Siegel said.

Outside Siegel’s office after the mayor’s announcement, Abdul-Jalil said that he still supported the mayor and that he worked with people of all faiths.

“I’m sorry the statement was quoted out of context and was offensive to anyone,” Abdul-Jalil said.

Officials suspended him with pay while they investigated him after news of the remarks emerged last week.

“The fact is that this is an individual that at all hours of the day and night has unfailingly been available, not only to inmates in their time of need, irrespective of their religion, including Jewish inmates, but also in the middle of the night when any member of our department is in need,” Correction Commissioner Martin Horn said.

“He’s always concerned with doing the right thing for the inmates. He puts them first, regardless,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis and a Fire Department chaplain. “I didn’t like what he said. Personally I hope he apologizes for what he said, but that being so, I don’t think that he should be dismissed.”