Navy Officer Balances Religious Responsibilities Miami Herald January 31, 2002 Navy Officer Balances Religious Responsibilities By Carol Rosenberg GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- You're the first-ever American Muslim cleric to minister to a prison camp full of suspected terrorists and one confides he has a weapon. Do you keep the secret? Or do you breach religious confidentiality? If you're U.S. Navy Lt. Abuhena Mohammad Saiful-Islam you search for a third way to resolve the clear conflict of interest between the crescent moon pin stuck in your left lapel and the lieutenant's bars on the right side of your uniform. ``I will say, `Give it to me,' -- and not tell the general who had it,'' he says softly but firmly. ``I'll make sure that he doesn't have it.'' A 39-year-old life-long, practicing Muslim, the soft-spoken Bangladesh immigrant is navigating uncharted waters and juggling complicated loyalties -- all while managing an international spotlight he has never experienced before. As a U.S. military chaplain, his contacts with prisoners are governed by the same confidentiality as that of a priest, minister or rabbi in the clergy corps. Saiful-Islam is by training an imam, or a prayer leader, who guides the faithful in a mosque during the five-times-a-day Muslim prayer. At Camp X-ray, he is also serving the function of a muezzin, the person who announces the call to prayer, commonly from a tower called a minaret. In his case, he is using a public address system and recording the prayer for five-times-a-day broadcast. Sometimes he laughs uncomfortably when questioned by journalists. Sometimes he looks bewildered. But mostly he's a busy man, trying to soothe Muslim sensitivities over the rugged chain-linked-fence cells at Camp X-ray. Advocate Saiful-Islam arrived at the detention center for suspected terrorists on Jan. 24 and made his debut by chanting the pre-dawn call to prayer to wake up alleged leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban militia and members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Since then, he has emerged as their advocate, arguing that the U.S. military can safeguard its soldiers while adding a few amenities of everyday Islamic life. Soon, he says, traditional white knit skullcaps will arrive for the captives to top off their fluorescent orange jumpsuits. Saiful-Islam has also asked for some copies of the Koran, in Urdu, a language of Afghanistan and Pakistan, plus large-type, Arabic copies for those with bad eyesight or those who read like elementary school children. ``These things are hard to find in America, and Gitmo is far, far away,'' says Saiful-Islam, a husband and father of a nearly 2-year-old daughter in California. Until he emerged as the chaplain of choice for this special assignment from among only 14 Muslim clerics in the U.S. armed forces, he was the only cleric specifically assigned to a Marine Corps base -- at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Military recruiters building a Muslim chaplains corps spotted Saiful-Islam in 1993, while he was an enlisted man working as a payroll clerk in the Pentagon and studying part-time to become a Muslim cleric. He was commissioned as an officer in 1998, just a year after obtaining U.S. citizenship and nine years after leaving his homeland to study in America. The first time he was sent to a theater of combat came in October when he served as chaplain at Operation Brightstar, a huge military exercise in Egypt not far from the World War II battleground called al-Alamein. No Answers His role has a curious juxtaposition, which he sums up simply. Captives at Camp X-ray are entitled to spiritual solace, he says, even though he doesn't accept radical interpretations that have led them to an unorthodox battlefield against the so-called Great Satan, the United States. ``I, of course, don't agree with their cause,'' he says, ``and neither does the religion, Islam.'' But after several days of four- and five-hour shifts inside the camp, hearing the prisoners' requests, he said exchanges have not dipped that deeply into the doctrinal. Mostly, they ask about their fate, and when they might go home. ``I don't have any answer for them,'' he says. Conversations between the cleric and the captives have taken place, one on one, in his native Bengali and Urdu. Others require the services of Arabic interpreters -- who, like Saiful-Islam, are U.S. military men in battle dress uniforms. So far no one has asked him how a practicing Muslim can also wear the uniform of the U.S. armed forces. It was a question he had expected. But instead, he says with surprise, ``They all want to speak with me. They all raise their hands'' to catch the attention of the U.S. government's designated spiritual leader. ``If they don't trust me with their needs, they don't get it,'' he says, with a sigh. ``I wish I had more time.''