Mosque fires father of suspect
Staff Writer
March 26, 2003
His son, branded a terror suspect and the subject of a worldwide FBI search, has disappeared. Now a respected Islamic holy man's position at a Miramar mosque is gone, too.
"They fired me," Gulshair El'Shukri-Jumah said Tuesday. "I can't sleep at night anymore."
Mosque leaders say they do not suspect El'Shukri-Jumah, 73, of terrorism. But they say their community is nervous about publicity over federal investigators accusing his 27-year-old son, Adnan El'Shukri-Jumah of possibly coordinating al-Qaida's next attack against America.
"In light of what happened he was asked to step down," said board member Abzal Hosein. "We want to let people know at no time we have any affiliation with terrorists."
As Gulshair El'Shukri-Jumah nervously awaited a follow-up meeting with mosque directors Tuesday, he retraced elements of his religious career, which included 20 years of missionary work for the Saudi government. In 1995 he retired after 10 years leading a Brooklyn mosque where at least one suspect from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 prayed.
El'Shukri-Jumah said he testified in a trial in which Abdul Rasheed was convicted of plotting to blow up the United Nations and the Holland Tunnel.
El'Shukri-Jumah said he understood that Rasheed, prosecuted under his legal name of Clement Hampton-El, had fought in Afghanistan to "help his brothers, the Muslims."
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Gulshair says the board asked him to serve as imam, or spiritual leader, three years ago. He took two months to decide, uncomfortable with the idea that the leadership would want him to promote Trinidad. He is a Guyanese native more interested in spreading Islam.
Most of Al-Hijrah's 100 to 200 congregants are Trinidadian, members said. A group of nine or 10 Trinidadian friends founded of the Caribbean American Islamic Association about a decade ago, said Hosein. A few years ago they bought a building next to the El'Shukri-Jumah home.
"After getting to know him and the experience and knowledge he had of Islam, we didn't want that to go to waste. And what was more important, he was living next door."
The FBI has said that during a meeting at the Miramar mosque that a young convicted terror plotter, Imran Mandhai, tried to recruit Adnan El'Shukri-Jumah to a scheme to induce anarchy by blowing up a Florida power plant. Federal authorities said El'Shukri-Jumah refused, guessing correctly that he was being monitored by an FBI informant.
Gulshair El'Shukri-Jumah said he does not think the meeting took place at the mosque, but Hosein said FBI investigators must know what they are talking about.
His job was to sleep at night??