Ebrahim Moosa – Opinion | 24 Jumad al Ukhra 1438/23 March 2017

February and March 2017 witnessed two demises that silently drew close the door on a traumatic episode in contemporary American Muslim history.

At 9:40am on Saturday February 18, 2017, Sheikh Umar Abdur-Rahman, 78, passed away at a medical center of a federal prison compound in Butner, North Carolina, in the USA.

The Sheikh’s son Ammar said his family had received a phone call in Egypt from a U.S. representative stating that his father had died.

Just over a fortnight later, Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who represented Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman, and was eventually disbarred from the profession and incarcerated on account of her communications with him, breathed her last aged 77.

She had fought a long battle against cancer.

The deaths swung the pendulum back squarely to the early 90’s when the Sheikh moved to the United States, served as an Imam there, and, in the wake of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre, was charged with a seditious conspiracy against the US government.

It is often incorrectly alleged that the Sheikh was found guilty of involvement in the WTC bombing. In reality, whilst the bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, Sheikh Umar was arrested on immigration grounds almost 5 months later.

On October 1, 1995, he was convicted of seditious conspiracy, solicitation to murder Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, conspiracy to murder President Mubarak, solicitation to attack a U.S. military installation, and conspiracy to conduct ‘bombings’.

In a classic case of entrapment, tape recordings of Islamic rulings compiled by an agent-provacateur were used to implicate the Sheikh in a supposed conspiracy involving terrorist attacks on US soil.

That agent was Emad Salem, who had also doctored several recordings between himself and Egyptian intelligence officials once he discovered they may be used by the defence in the Sheikh’s trial, where he was the primary witness.

Salem had confessed to lying under oath in a previous trial. 6 months prior to the WTC bombing, the FBI terminated his contract after he failed several lie detector tests. Nonetheless, he was rehired following the bombing and was paid over $1 million by the US for his work in the case.”

“Although the Sheikh had been blind almost since birth, could only read Arabic braille, suffered from diabetes and heart disease and was unfamiliar with the American geography let alone knowing the whereabouts of the landmarks in New York, this did not make a difference to the US government,” says advocacy group Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) in a fact sheet about the Sheikh.

“His attorney Ramsey Clark said of the trial “From its opening…the government appealed to fear and prejudice, telling the jury time and time again…Dr Abdel Rahman sought to kill Christians and Jews, to destroy Israel and the United States…If our law has any role in the protection of fundamental human rights, this conviction must be reversed.”

“Sheikh Omar had admitted to wanting to overthrow the Egyptian regime of Hosni Mubarak but by peaceful means only. According to the committee set up to free him, he was not found guilty of any act, but rather for his thoughts, speech and writings which were highly critical of Hosni Mubarak’s regime.”

In 1996, he was sentenced to life in solitary confinement without parole.

For most of his incarceration, according to the IHRC, Sheikh Umar suffered from bad health including chronic headaches and sleep disorders, as well as the effects of diabetes and old age. His mobility was severely impaired and he was confined to a wheelchair.

“He was not allowed to pray Juma (Friday prayers) or any other congregational prayers. Many times when the Sheikh recited the Quran in prison, the prison guards played loud music in disrespect. He was not allowed any contact with the outside world, and rarely received any visitors. Every time he did have a visitor, he was subjected to strip searches. He was only allowed a five-minute phone call to his family once a month. He has been physically abused on many occasions. In addition to this he was routinely subjected to degrading treatment such as internal examinations21 and reportedly suffered from gangrene in one of his legs.

“After Sheikh Omar’s detention, Mr Clark wrote a letter of appeal to the prison authorities which revealed that Sheikh Omar had become significantly weak in prison, was constantly tired due to sleeplessness and suffered from ‘headaches and organ pains’. His condition was further exacerbated by the ‘poor air quality and bad odours’ in the cell in which he was confined. Sheikh Omar went on many voluntary fasts as a protest against his inhumane conditions. Mr Clark further stated, ‘It would be difficult to devise a crueller plan to kill him.’”

Another victim

During his 1995 trial, it was activist lawyer, Lynne Stewart, who represented Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman in court. Stewart had also defended Black Panthers and Weather Underground members over the course of her career and considered herself a “people’s lawyer.

When the Sheikh was pronounced ‘guilty’, Stewart wept in court.

“I believed, and I believe today, that he is wrongfully convicted,” she asserted.

She also said that the Sheikh was just the latest in a long line of American heroes who were convicted wrongfully.

“He was a personification of an American hero,” Stewart said in an interview just prior to her death. “I feel very strongly that he suffered. He suffered unjustly because he was convicted of this bogus crime.”

Stewart recalled that Sheikh Abdur Rahman once joked with her that “he hoped that I would become a Muslim because that was the only way I could be in heaven with him.”

She said the sheikh did not plot against the U.S., but he did want to overthrow the government of Egypt – and that she admires him: “Very, very intelligent. Very witty. Very dedicated. But dedicated to a free Egypt.”

For her passionate defence of the cleric, Stewart herself soon fell prey to the same system that ensnared the Sheikh earlier.

While Sheikh was serving his life sentence, she passed along a statement from him to Reuters, wherein he informed his followers that they had his permission to end their ceasefire with the Egyptian government, and had his permission to resume attacks if they liked.

Before Stewart could see Abdur Rahman in detention, she had to agree in writing that she would not talk about, nor pass on, anything of a political nature – her communications with him, it was specified, would be restricted to legal matters.

After she released the Sheikh’s statement to the press, the US Attorney General Ashcroft alleged by its virtue that she had become a co-conspirator in terrorism.

Stewart admitted to the release being a breach of her conditions of engagement and was a mistake. However, she opined that the statement merely took the form of political advice from the Sheikh and not a military order.

At the time the incident occurred, the Clinton administration merely made her sign a document that contracted her to avoid a repeat of such behaviour. However, in the highly emotive post 9/11 period, the matter was resurrected and Stewart was charged.

“This was designed and certainly has the effect of sending a chilling message through the defense community. You work hard as a defense lawyer. Your family hates you. The public hates you. You don’t make any money,” said fellow defence lawyer Ron Kuby. “And in the end, if you do a really good job, you get indicted. After the indictment of Lynne Stewart, what kind of a lawyer in his or her right mind is going to take one of these cases?”

Stewart was convicted in 2005 for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and providing material support to terrorists, and was initially sentenced to a 28-month sentence, which was later lengthened to a 10-year sentence by an appellate court. She was granted a “compassionate release” in 2013 because of cancer which her doctor reckoned left her with barely 18 months to live.

Post release, Stewart remained upbeat despite her medical condition, vowing just days before her death her desire to do “so many wonderful things in this world for other people and for myself.”

Stemming from cancer complications and a series of strokes, she breathed her last on March 7, barely 3 weeks after Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman passed on in prison.

Forgotten

Born in Egypt in 1948, Sheikh Umar subsequently lost his eyesight whilst still an infant of 10 months. In his early childhood, he would go to the masjid with a nephew to study the Quran. When he was 5 years old, he enrolled in a school for the blind and learned Braille, and by the age of 11 years he had become a hafiz.

He studied Islam at Al-Azhar in Cairo and graduated with highest honours in 1965.

The Sheikh began teaching there but was subsequently removed from his post after his recurrent criticism of the Jamal Abdel Nasser regime in his Khutbahs. In 1972, he obtained his PhD from the College of Usul ud Din and Tafsir at Al Azhar and was invited to resumed teaching there.

He was ever vocal against the state of repression in Egypt and found himself in detention and on trial a number of times for his statements which were deemed to, amongst others, be a call for the overthrow of the government and an incitement to assassination.

His links to organisations such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya and some of his most outspoken comments against leaders of Muslim lands had led some to chide him as a Takfirist and instigator who was to be shunned. The reality, however, was that many of his comments were borne from a particular political and personal reality that included him coming face to face with extreme repression and even torture to his person.

As problematic as the Takfiri ideology is, moreso in light of how some groups espouse it today – and even if the Sheikh echoed it in part, it is critical to appreciate that the ordeals he faced – both in Egypt and the USA – were hardly a product of this theological stance, but instead part of a regime of repression and conspiracy in both countries. The Sheikh’s lengthy detention, it should always be remembered, was enacted on spurious grounds using contrived evidence.

Prior to his sentencing in 1996, the Sheikh delivered a message to the Ummah from his cell, highlighting what he believed to be the gravity of the injustice fabricated against him:

‘I only teach Islam in schools, universities and mosques. It is my only profession. Then the prosecution distorted the facts, manipulated the intent of my words and barred the jury from listening and knowing about what Islam and Quran really are saying.

‘The prosecution has no evidence to present against me. It is impossible that I can build a bomb, or put one anywhere. That is not my profession. That is not the profession of a Muslim preacher. I could do that neither physically nor by virtue of my position as a Muslim scholar. That confirms that the attack in this case was only on Islam.

‘The whole focus, activity and concern in my life is teaching Islam. I tell people in schools and mosques what the Quran says. And I tell couples how to resolve their marital problems. I advise businessmen about valid and prohibited transactions in earnings and profits. All that I have done is teach Islam.’

Whilst there were many campaigns for the Sheikh’s freedom in the initial years of his detention, his plight soon fell into obscurity for the Ummah.

His name only came up briefly again after the Egyptian revolution, when the initial climate of optimism gave rise to some Egyptians publicly calling for his release. I personally witnessed some activists at the Al Azhar Mosque in Cairo in August 2011 campaigning after Jummuah prayers for his freedom.

Subsequently, in a speech to supporters at Cairo’s Tahrir Square on 30 June 2012, popular President Mohamed Morsi briefly mentioned that he would work to free Sheikh Umar Abdur-Rahman, along with other Egyptians who were arrested during the revolution.

In later years, a letter purported to be from the Sheikh, released from prison, conveyed a deep sense of foreboding.

In it, he addresses Muslims all over the world lamenting the dehumanisation he had been subjected to, and conveying the heavy toll it had taken on his psyche:

“Surely the US government has found in my imprisonment an opportunity; an opportunity to defile the honour of a Muslim, snatching away his dignity and respect. They’ve placed me under siege, not only physically, but also psychologically.

I’ve been placed in isolation. I’ve been forbidden contact with any Arabic speakers. Days, weeks, months pass and there’s no one I can talk to, and no one to talk to me.

I’ve been deprived of everything inside my cell even media players or a radio. If it wasn’t for the recitation of the Quran, I would have had many physiological problems. In this oppressive siege, cameras are included throughout my cell. They monitor me continuously throughout the day, they even watch me washing my private parts during bathing and using the toilet. They don’t stop there, they exploit my blindness to achieve their vile objectives, for they frisk me by stripping off my clothes, just as I was born, and look at my private parts, front and rear.

What do they search for? Drugs and explosives? This happens before and after every visit. This is so shameful, it makes me prefer the earth to split in half and swallow me whole over their filthy actions. But as I said, to them this is an opportunity they seized to defile the dignity of a Muslim and his honor on this earth. I am also prevented from performing Jumu’a prayers, Eid and any contact with other Muslims! All of this is forbidden to me! They give me false justifications and they make up null excuses.

The prison wardens neglect my personal condition e.g. haircuts and nail-cutting for months. They also force me to wash my underwear. I soak, wash, rinse and hang it, I find it hard! Moreover, I feel the danger of this situation. For surely, they will kill me… they will! Especially now that I’m separated from the world. No one sees what they add in my food, my drink! They could use a slow method to kill me, they could poison my food or medicine or inject me with something. They could drug me with something which would kill me or drive me crazy.

My brothers, if they kill me – which they will – escort my Janazah, and deliver my corpse to my family. But never forget my blood, never forsake it! And remember that a brother of yours spoke the truth and was killed in the path of Allah.”

According to the Sheikh’s son Ibrahim, his father spoke with his family a week prior to his demise. During that phone call, he told his mother it may be the last time they talk to him as he feels his end is near due to ill health and the prison’s rejection to transfer him for treatment abroad.

Abdur-Rahman said his father’s voice was disturbed and he could barely take a breath, adding that he told them during the phone call that these were his last days and he may die within hours.

The son was bitter that the family had not once been allowed to meet their father during all the years of detention, with their applications to visit the US all being rejected by the local American embassy.

Fortunately for the Sheikh, his final request of being reunited with family in Egypt in mortality was granted.

More than 2000 people attended his funeral in his home town of Al-Gamaleya in the province of Dakhalia, northeast of Cairo.

The mosque where his Janazah was performed was bursting with mourners, and some were forced to pray outside.

“We never met you but we´re your students,” read one banner at the funeral held up by women wearing the niqab face veil. Aida Abdel Azim, a woman in her 50s from Al-Gamaleya, said she wished the sheikh had returned to Egypt alive.

“We would have loved him to come back while he was still alive so we could kiss his head and feet. But he has returned dead,” she said.

“I attended his lectures. He never encouraged violence or terrorism,” she added.

Precedent

The scant global Muslim interest in the passing of Sheikh Omar, as can be evidenced from a lack of public statements and leadership reaction, could suggest that the community has cast his episode to another era or are simply too overwhelmed with current challenges to respond.

In truth, the demise of the Sheikh and his ‘people’s lawyer’ weeks after the ascension of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States could not come at a more opportune time for reflection.

What the Trump administration has done since assume power is merely mainstreaming the far-right Islamophobia movement, which in effect has been around for decades.

Islamophobe Steven Emerson’s 1994 television documentary Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America besmirched the likes of Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman to sow suspicion and generate deep paranoia about Muslims.

It counted among the opening propaganda salvos in the new post-cold war mission to cast Muslims as the new red danger.

Emerson went on to play a key role in other pioneering prosecutions meant to demonise Muslims in that period, such as the Sami Al-Arian case and the Holy Land Foundation trial.

In all cases, the affected communities failed to put together a united front for the ostracised and challenge the subtle narrative being fostered.

Two decades later, Emerson and close associates such as Steve Bannon and Robert Spencer have ascended in stature and occupy the policy pedestals where their dangerous ideas incite violence and push for an altogether more chilling breed of discriminatory policies against Muslims.

America may soon see a Muslim registry system, mass deportations and wholesale arrests.

This demonisation of Muslims and Islam did not materialise overnight, and its trajectory from the entrapment of Sheikh Omar Abdur Rahman to the Muslim Ban of Trump should teach us an important lesson.

Activist El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan called it a long while ago when he lamented the over-riding sense of fear and cowardice amongst Muslim leadership to speak up against the humiliation of Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman.

“No case symbolizes the consequence of being gripped by such a paralyzing fear then that of the blind hafiz al-Quran, Sheikh Umar Abdur-Rahman – one of the most prominent, yet largely ignored, political prisoners in America!” he wrote in a post titled Our Collective Guilt Re: Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman.

“That a blind man, and religious leader, could be charged successfully with leading a “seditious conspiracy” against the United States of America – on the strength of one severely tainted, and well paid, government (COINTELPRO like) witness (Emad Salem) – and given a life sentence, should be a source of shame for all self-respecting Muslims residing anywhere in the West.”

Saalakhan proceeds to point out the role that a community-wide atmosphere of apathy and indifference played in enabling the miscarriage of justice in cases such as the death row of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

That atmosphere changed dramatically changed in the intervening years, he said, to the extent that the appeals process for Mumia came under a global microscope, thereby boding better for justice in that case.

In the case of Sheikh Umar Abdur Rahman however, the treachery of silence remained.

Saalakhan’s post from April 2001 concludes:

“The appeals process for Sheikh Umar (like the original trial itself) grinds away slowly under a cover darkness and conspiratorial silence. And we wonder why we [Muslims] get no respect! We only reap what we sow.”