Travel Restrictions
A little over a year ago, a respected senior South African Aalim was prevented from boarding an airplane for an onward flight from Dubai. This was followed
by similar incidents and definite restrictions being imposed upon many other religious figures and personalities from South Africa. There were no real reasons provided to any of these scholars. Senior members of parliament were contacted, governmental departments approached and many meetings later there was still no resolution.

In other cases, South African scholars were taken in for questioning and in some cases even detained in various countries. In one case, a teacher and his student were detained in a West African country and only released after
much publicity, pressure and high level intervention.

A South African Aalim serving as a religious leader in a California City for over five years was detained on his arrival in San Francisco, upon his return from a holiday in South Africa. The fact that he has residency in the USA
(Green Card) and two of his children, being born in the US, are US citizens
was of no consequence. He was presented with the option of either ‘returning voluntarily’ or being taken into detention. His house and
possessions still remain in the US. Needless to say, he has a record as clean as a whistle, and has proved to be a valuable member of the community he lived in - interacting positively on various levels with both Muslims and non-Muslims. Other South Africans working in the US have also been forced to return under dubious circumstances. In all cases, no evidence of ‘untoward activity’ can be attributed to any of these personalities and no reason is provided for their forced return.

Most recently the current status was highlighted when a South African Aalim who travels annually to the US to provide religious guidance to a specific community was forced to disembark his fight and return to South Africa from Senegal, on his way to the US. Another recent incident was that of a senior Aalim, who spent most of Ramadan in the UK and then traveled to the US where he was promptly detained at the airport. Fortunately, his hosts
engaged in a massive campaign to make people aware of his situation and approached people at various levels, which resulted in his deportation, after being put into a prison cell for the duration of his wait for a connecting flight back to the UK.

The most recent incident was that of Professor Adam Habib of the Human Sciences Research Council, traveling on official HSRC business. After, this incident, the South African government approached the US embassy for answers and when these answers were not satisfactory, a strong
reproach-like statement was issued.

Many questions need to be asked. Was the statement issued by our government the end of their efforts or are they still following up, and is there a possible easing of the current aggressive, irrational behavior displayed by US immigration officials? People also seem to raise their eyebrows and wonder as to why similar statements, as those made with the Habib incident, were not made at the time of the numerous other previous incidents. Is it that the South African government were not aware of the incidents; did they make similar statements and simply not communicate these well enough to the Muslim community or was it considered unnecessary to make statements until the proportion of this illegal activity affected someone high up in government circles?

Media
Recent discussions in the US regarding the media, the ‘effective’ use of the media by the ‘terrorist’ organizations, the need to take the use of the media to higher levels and the intended misrepresentation that US activity in the Iraq is being reported negatively, is strange, to say the very least.

Is this part of a plan to introduce, into the already un-level playing field of
the media, an innovation which is so foreign that it needs the ground to be prepared before it can be launched? Who knows.
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