Mohammad Qatanani - Imam in The U.S.

Imam in The U.S.

In 1996 Qatanani migrated with his family to America on a religious work visa. Qatanani became the Imam of the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in Paterson, New Jersey, the second largest Muslim community in the U.S.. He is also a Member of the Fiqh Council of North America and gave lectures at the Islamic American University, a subsidiary of the Muslim American Society (MAS). Qatanani was a speaker at an Islamic Association of Palestine conference in Chicago in 1999. He was quoted in 2004 as seeing no "big issue" with charities supporting the children of suicide bombers "after" the suicide attacks, explaining that the children are innocent, even if their parents are not.

In 1999, Qatanani applied for a U.S. Green Card without disclosing that he had been in Israeli detention for three months in 1993. Qatanani contends that he never received word of any charges or convictions against him during his three months in police custody, and therefore was not lying on the immigration form. Government officials learned of Qatanani's detention when Qatanani contacted the FBI in 2005 requesting assistance with his immigration application. In July 2006, the government denied his application, and deportation proceedings began against him, his wife and three of his six children.

According to Israeli records, he was "convicted of assisting terrorist organizations for referring Palestinian students arriving in Jordan" to join the Muslim Brotherhood, a student organization that was legal in Jordan, and the Hamas, which is on the U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Qatanani did not dispute that he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan and that he helped Palestinian students find housing and get into Jordanian university, but says that he was unaware of any links to groups like Hamas and that he was not a member of Hamas.