Dr. Moniem El-Ganayni is not the only imam to have served as a chaplain inside a state prison. But he may be the only one who is also a nuclear physicist working on classified U.S. military projects that require a security clearance.
At least, he used to do classified work at the Bettis Laboratory, an advanced naval nuclear propulsion technology lab in West Mifflin operated by Bechtel Bettis Inc. for the U.S. Department of Energy.
But in October, the two tracks of his life collided. His security clearance was suspended, barring him from the lab where he has worked for 18 years.
Long a respected member of the Pittsburgh Muslim community and a founder of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh in Oakland, the Egyptian-born Dr. El-Ganayni also was the imam at Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution-Forest in Marienville, Forest County, for five months in 2007. His contract was canceled in August after disputes over Ramadan observance and visiting policies.
Twelve weeks after that, agents from the Energy Department, and later the Pittsburgh FBI, began questioning him about a book he distributed to inmates at the prison as well as speeches he made opposing FBI recruitment at local mosques and prayers he led there.
His clearance was suspended on Oct. 24 pending further review. His pay has been cut in half pending the outcome.
Without his clearance, and at age 57, Dr. El-Ganayni stands to lose much of what he has worked for since arriving in this country in 1980. His job and medical benefits are in jeopardy. A U.S. citizen since 1988, he won't be able to work in his field, and, if his clearance is not reinstated after an upcoming hearing, he says he'll probably return to Egypt with his American-born wife.
Dr. El-Ganayni is the second local imam to run into a wall in recent months. Kadir Gunduz, 48, who has lived in Pittsburgh since 1988 and has raised three children here, was jailed in December on a visa technicality. He was released after a public outcry, but still faces deportation to his native Turkey. His appeal is pending.
An untold number of Middle Eastern immigrants and Muslims across the country have been quietly ensnared by measures aimed at strengthening national security in a post-9/11 world, including some, like Dr. El-Ganayni, who have lost their security clearance.
There is no way of knowing just how many, said Art Spitzer, director of the Washington, D.C., affiliate, of the American Civil Liberties Union.
"We've heard about a number of cases involving security clearances, so there must be a lot more we haven't heard about," Mr. Spitzer said.
The DOE, FBI, Bettis and SCI-Forest all declined comment on Dr. El-Ganayni.
Science or subversion?
It all began with a book, "The Miracle in the Ant," one of numerous volumes published by Harun Yahya, an Islamic creationist from Turkey. The book details ant anatomy and behavior, and argues that these characteristics disprove the theory of evolution.
Dr. El-Ganayni had ordered the book for the Forest prison library and was passing out photocopied chapters for the Muslim inmates housed in segregation to read in their cells. Eventually, he came to the chapter called "Defence and War Tactics," about ants that produce acid, use camouflage or enslave other ants.
Then there's this passage, under the heading "Walking Bombs":
"The ultimate in public service is to destroy enemies by committing suicide in defense of the colony. Many kinds of ants are prepared to assume this kamikaze role in one way or another, but none more dramatically than a species of Camponotus of the saundersi group living in the rain forests of Malaysia."
A quick Internet search shows that this passage and others (minus the creationism) were lifted almost verbatim from "Journey to the Ants," by Pulitzer Prize winning biologists Edward O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler. "Journey" was published by Harvard University Press in 1994, six years before the Harun Yahya version.
Dr. El-Ganayni said he scanned the chapters before passing them out, and the "walking bomb" passage didn't seem problematic because it was a scientific description of an insect. The passage must have raised hackles at the prison, however, because the Rev. Glenn McQuown, the chaplaincy director, was asked to examine the book -- he declined to say by whom.
"In my view, the book was completely benign," said the Rev. McQuown from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he was about to deploy to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army. He added that he would be happy to work again with Dr. El-Ganayni anytime and said, "I have him on my list to call for support as I prepare to engage with Muslims in Afghanistan."
Somehow, the prison literature made its way to the DOE. Dr. El-Ganayni is convinced it was sent in retaliation for his dispute with prison authorities, but Sue McNaughton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections in Harrisburg, said any prison employee or inmate could have put a copy in the mail.
In any case, the DOE questioning began. "They asked, 'Would you support killing Americans?' I said, 'Of course not.' 'Are you loyal?' I said, 'Yes.' 'Would you do anything to harm this country?' I said, 'No.' "
Then they asked if he advocated suicide bombing, and if the "walking bomb" passage could be read as promoting attacks against Americans.
"I couldn't believe my ears," Dr. El-Ganayni said. "I am an American. How could I advocate killing myself? I am also a Muslim, a man of peace. I do not advocate killing anyone."
He said he told his questioners that he was against suicide bombing, and explained repeatedly that the passage was about ants, not people.
"You can twist anything to mean something else if you want to," he said.
From his office at Harvard, Dr. Wilson, the world's foremost authority on ants and the real author of passage, said he was startled to learn that his words had become an issue for Dr. El-Ganayni. "My reaction is astonishment at the unfairness of it," Dr. Wilson said.
Dr. El-Ganayni said he was similarly astonished. "I told them, 'Look at my actions. I have been here since 1980; I never had a problem at work; I never broke a law; I never had any trouble except the dispute at the prison.'
"Now they are taking two sentences from a book about ants that anyone can get in the bookstore, and making it more important than [my] 27 years in this country."
FBI interviewers also brought up a passage from the Quran -- Chapter Two, Verse 286, the last few lines (in English translation): "Oh God ... Thou art our protector. Help us against disbelievers."
The line is the Muslim equivalent of the Lord's Prayer's "deliver us from evil," according to Ahmed Rehab, spokesman for the Council of American Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C.
"It's a standard line that allies Islam with good against evil. It is not meant to be read through the filter of modern conflict," Mr. Rehab said.
The FBI saw it in a different light, said Dr. El-Ganayni.
"They asked me, did I ever pray in the mosque for God to grant victory to the mujahadeen [holy warriors] over kufra [disbelievers]?
"I said I read that passage, it is one of the most common prayers for Muslims, but they were misinterpreting it. It's not about war against Christians or Jews or Americans or any other group."
The agents also asked about Dr. El-Ganayni's speech opposing FBI recruitment at mosques, specifically two flyers from the bureau describing its work and inviting members to consider working for the agency.
Since the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. investigators have tried various ways, including flyers and the use of informants, to get inside a community whose language, beliefs and practices are not well understood by most Americans and whose skills the agency sorely needs.
Lillie Leonardi, community affairs coordinator for the Pittsburgh FBI, said her office has arranged meetings with Muslim leaders, but that if flyers were left at mosques, it wasn't by her.
"That would be disrespectful in trying to build a relationship," she said.
The FBI interviewers asked Dr. El-Ganayni if he had attacked the bureau in speeches in the mosques.
"I said no, I attacked only their transgressions against the Muslim community.
"I said it's not good for us to report on each other because it makes a climate of fear in the mosque. No one will feel safe confiding their private problems about money or their marriage if they think it will be reported to the government and used against them. That is not against the FBI and America, it is against intimidation and coercion."
He showed a reporter a 2006 Wall Street Journal article about Yassine Ouassif, a 24-year-old Moroccan living in San Francisco. The FBI took away Mr. Ouassif's green card and threatened to deport him unless he informed on his friends. He refused and was jailed until Homeland Security cleared him.
"I never thought these things could happen here," Dr. El-Ganayni said. "This is not the America I came to in 1980."
Putting security first
There is no Constitutional right to a security clearance, but there's also no forfeiture of nonwork-related free speech by those doing classified jobs.
Hank Van Dyke, a lawyer for the security arm of the Schenectady Naval Reactors Office, said that in 18 years with the agency, he'd never seen anyone's clearance pulled because of conversations unrelated to work.
Yet as the Code of Federal Regulations is written, virtually any statement or "derogatory" information can be used against an applicant. And the Supreme Court has ruled that the courts will not review security denials.
The code directs officials to reach "a comprehensive, common sense judgment, made after consideration of all relevant material, favorable and unfavorable ... consistent with the national interest."
It further states: "Any doubt ... shall be resolved in favor of the national security."
That sentence has cost plenty of people their clearances for reasons that seem insubstantial, according to Mr. Spitzer, of the ACLU.
"The incentive for the agents is always to protect themselves by erring on the side of denial," Mr. Spitzer said.
Prison troubles
Up to now, Dr. El-Ganayni's life has been an immigrant success story.
He left his native Egypt in his mid-20s with a master's degree in nuclear physics from Ain Shams University in Cairo. He enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh, earning another master's in the same subject in 1981. The following year, he married Jean Louise Dell'Aquila, then a recent convert to Islam from a large Italian family.
In 1988, he became a U.S. citizen. Two years later, he earned his doctorate in atomic physics at Pitt and was hired at the lab, then run by Westinghouse Electric Corp.
The religious side of his life was an outgrowth of his upbringing, he said -- his father has the equivalent of a doctorate in Islamic law. So, finding few Muslim institutions in Pittsburgh, Dr. El-Ganayni helped found the Islamic Center. Over the years, he's been president, board member, committee chairman, teacher, prayer leader, prison outreach worker and relief-provider for people in need.
His apartment overlooking the Highland Park reservoir attests to his lifelong interest in learning. The walls are lined with shelves holding hundreds of beautifully bound Arabic-language books, arranged by subject matter: The Quran and commentaries; the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad; Islamic beliefs, law and history; Arabic, cultural studies and comparative religions. Other shelves hold many of the same works in English translation, as well as books on physics and math.
There are also signs of the charitable acts he has performed -- notably, a slab of marble bearing the painted image of a rabbi holding the Torah, the holy scroll of Judaism. It was given to him by an ailing, elderly Jewish woman in his building whom he and his wife helped with medical and financial support.
Until the trouble started, Dr. El-Ganayni was a senior scientist at the Bettis lab. Every few years, security agents would interview him. He said the exchanges were always friendly and his clearance was never at issue.
Bettis knew he had a sideline as a prison imam, he said. His first such job was at Belmont Correctional Institution in Ohio from 1999 to 2005. Kathy Cole, a spokeswoman for Belmont, confirmed that Dr. El-Ganayni had no trouble with authorities there.
Then he signed a one-year contract with SCI-Forest, described on its Web site as "a state-of-the-art maximum-security prison" built to house 2,200 adult male inmates.
Things went well enough at first, but during a three-week period in July, relations grew strained.
First, he says, officials at Forest refused to allow him to arrange for donations from the Muslim community to help impoverished inmates pay for a special holiday meal at the end of Ramadan, the month in which Muslims fast from dawn to dusk each day. He said he asked five times to meet with the superintendant, to no avail.
The next week, he had a run-in with officials at SCI-Muncy, the women's prison in Lycoming County. Dr. El-Ganayni said he had driven relatives of inmate Karena Dorsey on a four-hour trip to the prison after checking to make sure the family would be allowed to see her, but when they arrived, officials barred the visit. He disputed the decision, again to no avail.
In a letter of warning dated July 23, Muncy Superintendent D. M. Chamberlain said staffers had reported the imam to be "insistent and agitated" as well as "abusive and threatening toward the staff" -- a description he denied.
The week after that, he distributed the passage from the ant book. Then, in a letter dated Aug. 1 and giving no reason, SCI-Forest terminated his contract, seven months early. On Aug. 20, Dr. El-Ganayni and his wife launched a Web site, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Monitor --
pa-doc-monitor.org -- posting criticism of the prison system. Two months later, his clearance at Bettis was suspended. He had hoped it was a misunderstanding that would be cleared up quickly, but that didn't happen.
On Jan. 17, Dr. El-Ganayni received a letter from the DOE offering the option of a hearing to present his side of the story. He took the option and is waiting for a date.
"I will make my case," he said, "but I am not going to beg for mercy. If the government fights me, I get a lawyer and fight back. If I win, I get my job back. If I lose, I leave."
Farooq Husseini, director of interfaith relations at the Islamic Center, called it "astonishing" that two respected imams from Pittsburgh were suddenly in jeopardy.
"These are good men, very kind, very loyal," Mr. Husseini said. "If this can happen to them, it can happen to anybody."
