New Jersey Mosques Celebrate Legal Victory of Pro-Intifada Imam

A group of three mosques in New Jersey is celebrating a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals to allow one of its leaders to remain in the United States despite his admitted affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Israeli conviction for supporting Hamas, and a 2017 call for a renewed “intifada” against Israel.

The Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), comprising mosques in Paterson, Clifton, and Prospect Park, New Jersey, said the court’s July 15, 2025, decision to allow Mohammad Qatanani to stay in the country confirms what its members knew all along: “Imam Qatanani is a man of peace, unwavering faith, and lifelong service,” who has “dedicated himself to building bridges of understanding, compassion, and unity among all people.”

This tribute, posted on Facebook over the name of mosque president Ibrahim Fahmy, is an odd way to describe a man who, according to the Israeli government, confessed to being a member of Hamas in 1993 and whose own lawyer admitted he was a member of the student Branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan before coming to the United States. To make the ICPC’s decision to call Qatanani a “man of peace” in 2017 even more worrying, the imam called for a renewed “intifada” against Israel at a rally in Times Square in New York City in December 2017.

“You have to stop all kinds of peace processes,” he told the crowd.

Calling Qatanani a man of peace is also a strange way to describe a man who came to the United States to work alongside Mohammad El-Mezain, the ICPC founder who was convicted of funneling money to Hamas in 2008 and who, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism, “reportedly stated in a 1994 speech at the ICPC that he raised $1,800,000 inside the United States for Hamas activities.”

The ICPC’s jubilance over the court’s decision appears to be accompanied by no small degree of truculence. When Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) called ICPC’s outreach coordinator, Salaheddin Fahmy, to follow up on an email inquiring about Qatanani’s case, Fahmy declared he would respond to the email with two words.

“The first word will begin with ‘F,’ and the second word will begin with ‘Y,’” he said.

The Ruling

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit declared on July 15, 2025, that Qatanani, a Jordanian national who came to the United States on a temporary work (H-1B) visa in 1996 and applied to become a lawful permanent resident (LPR) in 1999, could stay in the country despite his alleged failure to report to U.S. authorities that he had been arrested and detained by the Israeli government, which subsequently convicted him of being a member of Hamas in 1993. The Department of Justice issued a “no comment” response when FWI asked via email if it was going to appeal the decision.

Byzantine Process Within Executive Branch

The court’s ruling resolves, at least for now, a controversy that has bounced around among at least four bureaucracies within the executive branch since Qatanani applied for permanent residency in 1999. Since then, officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Bureau of Immigration Appeals (BIA), and Executive Office for Immigration Review have been wrangling over two main issues: the credibility of the Israeli verdict finding Qatanani a member of Hamas in 1993, and what he meant when he called for a new intifada in Times Square in 2017 during a protest against U.S. President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to that city.

The USCIS based its decision that Qatanani had “made a material misrepresentation on an immigration form that he had never been arrested, charged, or imprisoned for violating any law or ordinance,” court documents state. The ruling was based on testimony from FBI and ICE investigators who cited Israeli government documents indicating that Qatanani had pleaded guilty to being a member of—and providing assistance to—Hamas and had spent three months in an Israeli prison in the West Bank as a result. In response, Qatanani and his lawyers said he had been tortured into signing a confession, which had been written in Hebrew, a language he did not understand.

In 2020, an immigration judge ruled in Qatanani’s favor and granted him permanent residency. According to the ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals, the DHS missed a Congress-imposed deadline to appeal the decision, which was issued during the COVID lockdown.

Then, in 2024, the Bureau of Immigration Appeals, citing internal regulations, issued another order calling for Qatanani’s return to Jordan.

Judicial Branch

The imam appealed this ruling before the U.S. Court of Appeals where two of the three judges presiding over the case ruled in Qatanani’s favor in July. In their ruling, Cheryl Ann Krause, who was appointed to her seat by President Obama in 2014, and Ariana Julia Freeman, who was appointed by President Biden in 2022, stated that in its 2024 decision, the BIA exceeded its authority when it attempted to oust Qatanani from the U.S. by “using an agency regulation in a manner inconsistent with the procedures set out by Congress.” While the judges asserted that Qatanani’s 2017 call for a renewed intifada was “quintessential First Amendment activity,” thereby suggesting that it could not be used to deny him residency, they stated that they did not have occasion to consider this issue, basing their ruling on the missed deadline of 2020. “DHS did not appeal the IJ’s April 2020 order within 30 days, so that order became final,” the court ruled.

Judge Dissents

(ToddRothsteinphoto via Wikimedia Commons)

Paul Brian Matey, who was appointed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals by President Trump in 2019, dissented, stating that his colleagues had no authority to overturn the executive branch’s decision to remove Qatanani because it was exercising a “sovereign’s prerogative” to decide which foreigners get to reside in the country. Matey argued that even if he thought the court had the authority to do so, he would not have done so based on the facts.

“From 1985 to 1991, Qatanani was an active member in the Muslim Brotherhood, which led to Israeli suspicion that he was a member of [Hamas],” Matey wrote in his dissent. Moreover, the year he was detained by the Israelis, “Qatanani met with … Sumai Abu Hanous, whom Qatanani himself described as the ‘military leader of Hamas,’” Matey wrote. On this score, Matey is in agreement with one of Qatanani’s lawyers, who in 2008 told The New York Times that her client “was a member of the student chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood” in Jordan and that immigration officials denied the imam’s application for permanent residency “because he has relationships with people including his brother-in-law Mahmoud Abu Hanoud, a senior Hamas military leader who was killed by the Israelis…”

Call for Intifada

The dissenting judge also highlighted Qatanani’s speech at the 2017 rally in Times Square to protest President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Matey described the scene as follows:

Matey writes that, about the time Qatanani made his call to renew the intifada, Hamas had released similar statements “denouncing peace and calling for a new intifada” and that these calls had led to numerous acts of violence resulting in substantial death and injury, and that present-day calls have paved the way for more anti-Jewish violence. Matey argued that an Immigration Judge who gave Qatanani a pass on this issue on the grounds that “intifada” means “rebellion” or “uprising” and “declined to say whether it called for violence” had failed to provide a “factual finding about Qatanani’s intent.”

“An alien’s speech can offer important insight into his character that informs the Executive’s determination about whether the alien’s presence will add to the common good,” Matey wrote, writing, “Qatanani is not a member of ‘the people’ the First Amendment restricts government action against,” and later adding that “there is no debate that excluded aliens cannot invoke the First Amendment” and that the U.S. government “does not owe all aliens within its borders the same obligation it does to citizens.”

Ryan Mauro, an investigative researcher writing for the Capital Research Center who has written extensively about Qatanani, expressed disdain for the ruling in the imam’s favor.

“The ruling’s tone is that of someone bending over backward to exonerate someone whom the authors like on a personal level,” he said. “It exalts him as a man of ‘good moral character,’ accepting his wordsmithing at every turn. The charitable treatment of Qatanani is a sharp contrast from the more cynical treatment of the U.S. and Israeli authorities.”

Mauro also questions the judges’ efforts to exonerate Qatanani’s call for a “new intifada,” given that hundreds of Israelis were killed during the first and second intifadas which lasted from 1987 to 1993 and 2000 and 2005 respectively. “Qatanani said he wants to end peace and replace it with an ‘intifada,’” Mauro noted. “The authors of the ruling apparently believe Qatanani wants to end peace so that peace can begin, which is obviously illogical, or they consciously chose to overlook the significance of his incitement to violence.”

Benjamin Baird, director of MEF Action and a U.S. Army veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, expressed shock that the judges would give Qatanani a pass over his call for a “new intifada.”

“Anyone who has paid any attention to the Israel-Palestinian conflict knows full well that the first two intifadas cost more than 1,000 Israelis their lives,” he said. “You don’t need to consult Webster’s Dictionary to know that ‘intifada’ is a call for violence and hostility.”

ICPC’s Response

Salaheddin Fahmy, the outreach director for the ICPC where Qatanani works, dismissed concerns over the imam’s 2017 call for a new intifada and his admitted connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, stating that then District Attorney Chris Christie (who later went on to be elected governor), two local sheriffs and local religious leaders came to his defense during legal proceedings between 2006 and 2008.

“Your angle is not a peaceful angle,” he told the reporter from FWI, stating that the judges who ruled in his favor used the word “intifada” in “the context of a peaceful demonstration.”

“That’s what the judges believe, not me,” he said, adding that “Everybody I know believes that the word ‘intifada’ means freedom.” It was clear that Qatanani was referencing the peaceful interpretation of the word and that he was calling for the overthrow of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, Fahmy said. “You’re a genocide supporter—that’s clear.”

Fahmy suggested that Qatanani’s admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood were harmless, arguing that the branch he belonged to in Jordan (which he compared to Vichy France), was not as violent or aggressive as other branches in the Middle East.

Fahmy is not the only person who downplayed Qatanani’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Fr. Phil Latronico, a New Jersey priest who attested to the imam’s good character at a hearing in 2008, told FWI that he has known the imam for twenty-five years and has known him as an upright, peaceful man who has never deserved the false accusations issued against him. “As to membership in the Muslim Brotherhood, that occurred in his time of study and that was before the organization took on its radical nature This was similar to what occurred in our country during the early 70’s when many of us were in SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] before it went rogue and violent.”

In response to a text alerting him to a subsequent email asking for confirmation about the ICPC posted on the Investigative Project on Terrorism led by Steve Emerson, Fahmy typed, “Why would I engage with someone who believes that one of the most preeminent Islamophobes on the planet is a good source of data?”

“Have a good life (although given your hatefilled [sic] outlook that might be difficult),” he texted.