A southwest suburban father of five who became an early symbol of the U.S. government’s war on terror and galvanized Chicago’s Arab-American Muslim community shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks died Sunday.
Muhammad Salah, 62, of Bridgeview, died Sunday morning of complications from cancer, said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, a member of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview where Salah worshipped. His services Sunday afternoon at the foundation drew a crowd of mourners from across the city and suburbs, Sahloul said.
“It was like Friday prayer today in the funeral prayer …,” Sahloul posted on Facebook. “You can sense that he was not a normal person. He was giant in his life and a symbol of the true faithful. He was a role model to all of us with his humility and steadfastness.”
While in an Israeli prison on charges of providing support to Hamas, Salah, a Palestinian native, was classified as a “specially designated terrorist” by the U.S. Treasury Department in the 1990s. After 55 days of interrogation, he had pleaded guilty to charges that he provided funding to Hamas extremists — a confession his lawyers said was coerced by days of sleep deprivation and physical abuse.
Released from Israeli custody in 1997, federal prosecutors in Chicago brought criminal charges against him six years later. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft heralded the indictment as a vindication of the USA Patriot Act, the controversial terrorism-fighting tool forged by the Bush administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.
A jury acquitted Salah of conspiring to support Hamas extremists. But he was found guilty of obstruction of justice for lying under oath when questioned in a civil suit filed by the family of David Boim, an American student killed in a 1996 Hamas shooting in the West Bank. Salah was sentenced to 21 months in prison in 2007.
While many like the Boim family and the federal government viewed him as a criminal who sought and trained recruits for Hamas on U.S. soil, many Arab-Americans and Palestinians viewed the mild-mannered man as the face of their own struggle and considered his trial to be an indictment of their religious beliefs. Salah and his supporters always maintained his innocence.
“A large Muslim community like Chicago’s would not have stood by a criminal,” Sahloul said.
Salah was born in 1953 on the Jordanian side of Jerusalem, which was then divided between Israel and Jordan. He immigrated to the U.S. and became an American citizen in 1970, three years after the Israeli army captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In the U.S., he earned his GED and trained in computers. He worked as a grocer and sometimes as a car dealer, and also took a course in how to become a security guard. He made his home in Bridgeview, which has a sizable Palestinian population, and became a board member of the Mosque Foundation.
In January 1993, Salah was arrested at a checkpoint in Gaza, then under Israeli occupation. He was found with $97,400 in his possession, according to the affidavit.
Israeli authorities and U.S. prosecutors said he was aiding and abetting terrorists. Salah’s attorney said he was on a humanitarian mission. Israel recently had deported a number of Hamas activists to Lebanon and the money Salah brought to the Holy Land was for the support of the exiles’ families, lawyers said.
Even though he was acquitted on the terrorist charges, Salah was not allowed to get a job, pay rent, obtain medical care or even buy groceries without approval from the U.S. Treasury Department for 17 years — the only resident U.S. citizen then living under such intense scrutiny, his attorneys said. To make a living, he drove a van to transport patients to and from doctor’s appointments.
“He was a pillar of faith and that was always obvious,” said Seema Imam, a professor of education at National Louis University and a longtime friend. “The fact is that he had so many challenges in his humanitarian life and he managed to smile … He certainly never had the justice or the trial that most people are afforded.”
Those economic restrictions ended in 2012, shortly after he sued the U.S. government to his remove his name from the list of “specially designated terrorists.” Friends say after cashing his first paycheck, the first purchase he made was flowers for his wife.
“Brother Salah was not wealthy. He did not hold positions. He was not a doctor, lawyer, politician, businessman or community leader, but he was an exemplary simple man,” Sahloul said.
In a statement Sunday, the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago praised Salah’s “positive attitude through decades of difficulties, that many people would consider impossible.”
In a 2006 Chicago Tribune Magazine article, Salah expressed confidence in his ultimate vindication.
“I wait for the supreme judge,” he said to a reporter one day in court. “That’s what keeps me going.”
Salah is survived by his wife, Maryam; five children, Ahmad, Abu Bakr, Salma, Soumayya and Ibrahim; and one grandchild.
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