Imam with Ties to Hamas Hosts Syrian Sheikh Who Backed Suicide Bombings

CLCDecember 21, 2016

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Imam with Ties to Hamas Hosts Syrian Sheikh Who Backed Suicide Bombings — Imam Mohammad Qatanani

The leader of the Islamic Center of Passaic County, Imam Mohammad Qatanani, will be tried once more after the feds appealed a judge’s 2008 deportation decision and appears to have sealed his fate when he hosted a radical Syrian cleric last week.

Imam Mohammad Qatanani failed to disclose connections with Hamas when he applied for permanent residency in the United States. That omission, immigration officials say, renders him ineligible to stay in the country, according to John Rossomando of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).

John Rossomando reported:

Israeli military court records show he was arrested in 1993 and convicted of providing support to Hamas. Qatanani claims he was merely detained and never charged.

While his case is in recess, Qatanani’s mosque, the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), hosted Sheikh Mohammed Rateb Al-Nabulsi last Friday. Al-Nabulsi is a Syrian imam who defended Palestinian suicide bombings in April 2001.

“All the Jewish people are combatants” acceptable as targets for attacks in Israel, Al-Nabulsi wrote in his “ruling on martyrdom operations in Palestine.”

Al-Nabulsi praised “our Mujahidin Resistance Brothers in Palestine and Lebanon” in a 2006 article on his website.

“We say Allah-u Akbar to all our Mujahidin brothers in South Lebanon and Palestine who embodied with their heroic deeds the meaning of Jihad,” Al-Nabulsi said.

During a visit to Qatar earlier this month, Al-Nabulsi posed for a photo with Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader who served as its prime minister in Gaza.

Radical Islamists, especially if they are tied to Hamas, ISIS or other radical Islamic organization have no business in America and with this latest revelation, Imam Mohammad Qatanani should be deported without delay.