Shout-Out to NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg: REINSTATE our Chief Jails Chaplain IMMEDIATELY!

Ever since our particular SABMA genesis 25 years ago, we concerned clergy and laity, the cooperative interfaith pastoral associates of St. Anthony's Bread Mission Apostolate, have been ministering in the local tri-state area prisons and jails. Our all-inclusive outreach to the suffering is embracing and ecumenical and also includes the urban streets and many other extensive care facilities since 1981.

For several years I also served as a chaplain in the Essex County Jail in Newark NJ on the AIDS Unit and often visit afflicted inmates within our various NYC city jails and institutions. Such pastoral visitations often entails frank, open, uninhibited discussions with our incarcerated clients and the supporting staffs on many topics and levels. Formal and casual follow-ups often involve discussions and/or defusing and debriefing conferences with clerical colleagues and affiliated pastoral associates. Personal, health and sociological issues, not all of them confidential, often diverge into the broad political spectrum as secured by our 1st Amendment Constitutional rights. These democratic freedoms are protected.

This week one of our own ministerial brothers from the Bronx and Harlem hoods was unjustly impugned, censured and BOOTED for exercising his civil and clerical rights to free speech. It was not clear yesterday how long the Black Muslum imaum would be barred from returning to his job or what further range of punishments he could face. Chaplain Umar Abdul-Jalil is a latitudinarian Muslim imam who serves as the NYC Correction Department's Top Chaplain. As such, he oversees 40 Dept. of Corrections chaplains of all faiths and coordinates 500 volunteers and visits by children in the child welfare system to their incarcerated parents. He was hired in 1993 and promoted in 2002.

The New York Post quoted Brother Abdul-Jali as saying in a lecture to a group of Muslim students at a conference in Tucson, Arizona last April that Jews controlled the media and that "the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House." "We have terrorists defining who the terrorist is, but because they have the weight of legitimacy, they get away with it.... We know that the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House without a doubt." he said during the three-day religious educational conference.

[He was surreptously recorded there by "The Investigative Project", a group of about a dozen sleuths who track suspected terrorist and militant groups. Steven Emerson, who heads the group said Abdul-Jalil is an "extremist". "I think his comments are reflective of this radical Islamic orientation that sees the U.S. and the West as part of a conspiracy to subjugate Islam," he said.]

Respectfully, they have my support and cooperation, but NOT in this botched case. You really don't know him, guys, nor did you understand him correctly. I base that personal opinion on the Imam's holy works that myself and his other clergy peers have witnessed -- and the personal philosophy he has put into effect. (SEE BELOW).

Resultantly, he was temporarily suspended from his $76,602. civil service job as director of the department's ministerial services division at Rikers Island (largest American prison-city located on an island in the East River, between Queens and the Bronx) and placed on paid administrative leave last Thursday. Our NYC Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he expected to decide soon how to handle the case as he considers the status of the much esteemed chaplain. Then we hope and pray that he will give the guy a fair shake as he checks him and these charges out...

You, Mr. Mayor, have been quoted as stating that you have talked with top city officials and other clerics and had read that lecture. "Part of it is what I think's right and part of it is what's legal," Your Honor said. "He is a Civil Service employee and I want to understand the law, as well as understand exactly what he said and what his performance is, and then I'll make a decision as to what I think is right." Then consider also what the Imam's lawyer, civil-rights activist/attorney Norman Siegel (UGH, ad nauseum, ad infinitum...), Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), has indicated: that NYC workers can be fired only if they reveal city secrets or make comments on city time.

Then take preemptory action and do so NOW! REINSTATE HIM. Please don't pretend to be a loyal Bush Republican who's suddenly supporting our President, because you're NOT. After all, you're obviously out to shaft your "own NYC GOP" (by plunging the knife into the backs of your own" fellow" Republicans in Queens by craftly, yet openly, drafting a popular Dem. who's the favorite son of this NYC Boro) -- many of whom, BTW, did not support your recent successful candidacy.

The Imam is almost everything that you're NOT. The Imam and his faith community is anti-abortion/pro-life. You're NOT. The concerned Imam supports the $500. Education Tax Credit (education tax credits and vouchers for ALL parents and children: Bill 1939-A pending approval in the NY state legislature this March 31st; having been introduced by State Senators Martin Golden - and Serphin Maltese whom you despise and oppose) for parents & children. You do NOT.

As the bipartisan Imam explained, "I made statements as a person who has worked on every Republican's campaign, including Bush's. I'm a full-blown American." The civic-minded Imam is entitled to his views and has nothing to apologize for. And he has every right and duty to share his religious sentiments with members of his faith community -- regardless of who does not like it. He argues that they were taken out of context and I personally believe him. And this comes from a street wise, chronic skeptic.

And also, Mr. Mayor, please don't misthink that he's "extremist" or "anti-Semitic" just because of his comments about one of our local lock ups. He recently said that Muslim inmates had been interrogated, tortured and held without being charged in the federal NYC Metropolitan Correction Center and urged Muslims not to let the "Zionists of the media" determine the meaning of Islam. As the qualified Imam explained, his mother was Jewish (just like yours is) having converted to Judaism in 1959. "I'm more Jewish than most who espouse the Jewish faith." he publicly reiterated just yesterday. (And this writer is more Catholic than the Pope. sic.) So don't consider him to be a "Jew-basher" either. Rabbi Baruk Leibowitz, who works with Abdul-Jalil, said, "Umar is my friend ... What is being said about him defies all that I know about him."

Are you going to bar me from your jails as well? It's no big secret that this life-long Republican -- who has NEVER voted for a Democratic (especially one the transparant likes of YOU) -- now considers the President to be a whiney, unsportsmanslike, poor loser over losing his intimate sweethearts' Arabs ports deal -- and which I opine anywhere. I don't like or respect Saudi/Dubai Arabs, I don't like political Zionists and I don't like most Muslims, but I'll luv them nonetheless. Perhaps that would make me a piss poor priest and undesirable chaplain also in your log-in book.

As the pastoral moderator of our local interfaith SABMA clerical association these past 25 years, I call on our Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and NYC Corrections Commissioner Martin F. Horn to IMMEDIATELY right this wrongful travesty of justice. We stand alongside other members of the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy -- and with the President of the 11,000-member union of correction officers, Norman Seabrook -- who rallied against this outrage last Sunday in Manhattan.

I didn't like or appreciate the Imam's radical remarks either. And I might (?) even go so far as to consider them seditious and incendiary during this time of War -- especially since it began at our NYC Ground Hero. But I certainly don't consider them to be "unpatriotic". If anything, they might be regarded as insensitive, however COURAGEOUS. Well, that's only because he's a stand up kind of guy. "What hurts is to have my patriotism questioned." the Imam said. "That hurt more than anything else. As an American, I have a right to disagree... It's up to the clergy to speak on matters of the soul!."

"I work together with all people of faith. I think that is the beauty of God. Anytime that someone would come in to bring in the Word of God whether it is your particular way or another way, it is always for the blessing of God. As the director of ministry services, I work with all faith groups. It is always be a pleasure to come here and be reminded of God. I don't have a problem with prayer; I have a problem when there is no prayer." -- Our brother in Abraham, Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil, lives in Harlem with his wife of two decades, Vermelle, and has three children and four grandchildren. By the Grace of Almighty God, he plans to continue his work of teaching tolerance for all religions. "In God's House there are many mansions," he says.

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Just like him, many of us co-ministered to our uniformed officers at "Ground Zero" and also stood alongside our fellow interfaith clergy after 9-11. I was there too. After work, the good Imam volunteered from 5:00 until 10 or 11 p.m., counseling the law enforcement community working at the morgue. Initially 300-400 people worked there in shifts around the clock - personnel from the FBI, State Police, National Guard and the city police (NYPD), Fire (FDNY) and his Corrections departments.

"This was really stressful work," said Imam Jalil. "After the shock, spiritual centeredness was important so everyone could do the work they needed to do. I helped set up a makeshift ecumenical worship center in a van where we held nondenominational services twice a day. One of the beautiful things that has come out of this terrible tragedy is that it has brought together so many from so many different faiths."

Imam Jalil has participated in interfaith memorial services with priests, ministers and rabbis at synagogues, cathedrals and churches all over the city. He is also working with the families of the kitchen workers - 40% of them Muslim - who died at the Windows on the World restaurant atop the World Trade Center. "Most people know that Islam is anti-terrorism," he said.

"We believe in One God and in law and order. We denounce terrorism. The people who attacked the World Trade Center are criminals. They hide behind a cloak of religious self-righteousness and do the devil's work."

THEREFORE: In your love and mercy and from the goodness of your heart, I also call on ALL my brethren and sistern clergy to E-Mail and/or WRITE Mayor Bloomberg and lend him your spiritual input as he mulls our brother's professional future.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
City Hall
New York, NY 10007
PHONE 311 (or 212-NEW-YORK outside NYC)
FAX (212) 788-2460