Omar Shahin

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Sheikh Omar Shahin is a Jordanian native, living in the United States. He came to the United States in 1995, and became a U.S. citizen in 2003[1]. He was Imam at the Islamic Center of Tucson in Arizona[2] from 2000 until 2003, when he joined the board of directors and executive committee of the North American Imams Federation. He is currently president of the executive committee of this organization[3]. In addition to being an Imam, Shahin is also licensed to practice jurisprudence law as an Islamic Attorney in the courts of Amman, Jordan. He is a lecturer at the American Open University.[3]. He is also a professor in Islamic law at the Graduate Theological Foundation, where he has been teaching since 2004.[4]

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[edit] Academic

Omar Shahin is Professor of Islamic Law and Director of Islamic Studies at the Graduate Theological Foundation in South Bend, Indiana. He holds the High Diploma from Jordan University. He also holds degrees in Islamic Studies from Islamic University in Almedina Almonwara, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan. He studied at Almedina Almonwara, Saudi Arabia in the early 1980's [5]He is licensed to practice jurisprudence law as an Islamic Attorney in the courts of Amman, Jordan. Imam Shahin holds both the Master of Theology and the Doctor of Philosophy from the Graduate Theological Foundation.

[edit] Involvement in racial profiling cases

In November 2006, he became a spokesperson in the Flying Imams controversy, in which he was personally involved; he and five other imams (Didmar Faja, Marwan Sadeddin, Mohamed Said Mitwaly Ibrahim, Ahmad Shqeirat and Mahmoud Sulaiman) were taken off a US Airways flight before it left Minneapolis for Phoenix, Arizona. Shahin and his companions were returning to Arizona from a meeting of the North American Imams Federation in Minnesota. Critics have questioned whether the event was manufactured to create publicity around planned congressional legislation against profiling[6] in public transportation and law enforcement introduced by Rep. John Conyers of Detroit who is likely to chair the House Judiciary Committee in the 110th Congress[7] coordinated with groups such as the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation and CAIR.

The day following the incident Shahin spoke to the press who had gathered when he returned to a US Airways ticket counter to buy new tickets for the group. He told media that the incident was, "humiliating, the worst moment of my life," and asked if, "To practice your faith and pray is a crime in America?" When US Airways would not issue him and the other Imams new tickets he called for a boycott of the airline and said, "I'm not going to stay silent...I came to this country to enjoy justice and freedom[8]." He has said it is incorrect that any of the men had one way tickets, because he purchased all of the tickets himself and can prove this, and that he had alerted the FBI to the conference in order to prevent this kind of incident from occurring[9].

The six imams filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court of Minnesota in March of 2007. The lawsuit named US Airways and the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission as defendants. The lawsuit gained national media attention as it also named as-yet-unnamed "John Doe" passengers who "may have made false reports against plaintiffs solely with the intent to discriminate against them on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity and national origin."

Legal protection for citizens reporting suspicious activity in good faith was included in the "Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007," passed by Congress and signed by President Bush on August 3, 2007. The "John Doe" defendants were dismissed from the lawsuit on August 22.

[edit] Fundraising activities

Steven Emerson testified before the Senate Banking Committee that the Islamic Center of Tucson raised thousands of dollars for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development in 2001 (during Shahin's tenure as Imam). In December 2001, the United States Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control designated Holy Land Foundation as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.[10] while the European Union froze its European Assets.[11]

Shahin was a representative of the KindHearts charity, accused by the US Government of fundrasing for Hamas[12][13] and now defunct.

[edit] Views

He has expressed doubt that any sincere Muslims had responsibility for the 9-11 hijackings, since, according to him, over 1,200 Muslims died in the World Trade Center attack[14], the implication being that true Muslims would not kill innocent people if they were also Muslims; moreover, as several of the hijackers attended a strip club, their actions were not in accordance with Islamic morality.[15]

[edit] Books

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Flying Imams: In Crawls The Star-Tribune
  2. ^ The Washington Post, September 10, 2002, posted at Mysterious Trip to Flight 77 Cockpit
  3. ^ a b The Assembly of Muslim Jurists in America
  4. ^ The Graduate Theological Foundation faculty list
  5. ^ Fear Pushed Some Away, Most Came Back, Arizona Daily Wildcat, September 11, 2002
  6. ^ The Real Target of the 6 Imams' Discrimination Suit
  7. ^ MAS Freedom Foundation Leads Powerful Interfaith Response to Air Travel Profiling
  8. ^ Uproar follows imams' detention
  9. ^ Flying while Muslim
  10. ^ Bush Freezes Suspected Terror Assets
  11. ^ http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/site/en/oj/2005/l_340/l_34020051223en00640066.pdf
  12. ^ Treasury Freezes Assets of Organization Tied to Hamas
  13. ^ Office of Foreign Assets Control Recent OFAC Actions
  14. ^ "Arizona Was Home to bin Laden Sleeper Cell"
  15. ^ Arizona Republic, September 28, 2001 "Arizona Was Home to bin Laden Sleeper Cell"