Military

DATE=4/2/2002

TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT

TITLE=YEMEN / AMERICAN MUSLIMS - PART FOUR

NUMBER=5-51360

BYLINE=ALISHA RYU

DATELINE=TAREEM, EASTERN YEMEN

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: As part of its joint campaign with the United States against terrorism, Yemen - on the Arabian peninsula - is cracking down on hard-line Muslim religious institutions and students suspected of harboring extremist views. In the final segment of a four-part series on Yemen, V-O-A's Alisha Ryu reports that there are still more than a dozen American Muslims studying in Yemen unwavering in their commitment to Islam.

TEXT:

/// OPEN SOUND OF PRAYER CALL EST & FADE ///

The Muslim call to prayer echoes over the dusty village of Tareem in eastern Yemen, where the faithful gather, much as their ancestors have for centuries.

Hundreds of men - in long robes and matching white turbans - file into mosques five times a day to pray. Devotion to Islam runs deep in Tareem, which is the reason why a group of Yemeni imams or teachers - founded a religious school here in 1996.

Dar Al-Mustafa now has more than 400 students from all over the world enrolled in four-year courses. Most of the 100 or so foreign students are from Indonesia home to the largest Muslim population on earth.

But 13 are from the United States, which was the target of unprecedented terrorist attacks believed to have been carried out by the Islamic extremist, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

Two of the American students agreed to talk to me. Thirty-two year-old Jamal Ud-Deen Hysaw from Chicago was a second-year student at Dar Al-Mustafa when the attacks occurred last September.

/// FIRST HYSAW ACT ///

I was actually visiting America when the attacks happened. Yes, you did have a lot of Americans who were afraid. But I can't worry about them. I'm proud of who I am. Just because I'm a Muslim, I'm a terrorist? That's like saying you're a white guy so you're a possible Nazi or one of those militia guys.

/// END ACT ///

Mr. Hysaw and other American students I spoke to at the school insist that they did not come to Yemen to learn how to hate the United States and plan its demise. They say they resent having their patriotism questioned because they are religious Muslims.

Mr. Hysaw's third-year classmate Abdul Kareem Yahyaa (EDS: Ya-ee-ah) from Berkeley, California, says he has seen nothing but goodness in the teachings of Islam.

/// YAHYAA ACT ///

What the school is trying to do is to nurture in the students love of Allah, love of the messenger of Allah, and love of humanity from the point of view of showing service to it.

/// END ACT ///

Dar Al-Mustafa may never have taught extremist ideology. But many other schools in Yemen did, according to the Yemeni government.

Since September 11th, the government has deported hundreds of foreign students who did not have proper visas or were thought to have links to radical Islamic groups. In one of the biggest arrests so far, Yemeni authorities in February detained 115 students from Egypt, Algeria, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, as well as Britain and France. Information obtained from the students was reportedly shared with authorities in the United States.

U-S officials have been urging the Yemeni government to pay close attention to the curriculum at religious schools in the country. Late last year, it was discovered that a captured American Taleban member, John Walker Lindh, had studied Arabic and Islam at the Yemen Language School in the capital Sana'a before he went to fight in Afghanistan.

Yemen is also the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden's family and there is fear that his extremist views could find a foothold among his sympathizers here, just as they did in Afghanistan.

But Mr. Hysaw says many Muslims around the world do not see that threat and believe the U-S-led war on terror is really a campaign to stop the spread of Islam.

As an American, he says he feels even more duty-bound now to carry out his religious mission.

/// SECOND HYSAW ACT ///

As you see me dressed now is how I'll dress in America, even though they will see a turban and think "Oh, you're one of those bin Laden people." But that's okay because one of the things I do know about the American people is that they respect a person who stands up for himself.

/// END ACT ///

But Mr. Hysaw may be alone in his desire to carry out his work in the United States. Other Americans at the school appear to be thinking twice about returning to a country where they fear they may be treated with suspicion by people so recently traumatized by Islamic terrorists. (Signed)

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