Illinois State Police will probably be villified by media and sued by ACLU

State police revoke appointment of Muslim chaplain

Officials from the Illinois State Police have revoked the appointment of a prominent Chicago-area cleric to be its first Muslim chaplain.

In a statement, state police officials said Sheikh Kifah Mustapha, the associate director of the Mosque Foundation in Bridgeview, could not serve as a volunteer chaplain "due to information revealed during the background investigation."

Last December, Mustapha was one of seven religious leaders trained in Springfield to become volunteer state police chaplains. State police said they discovered after all seven volunteers completed the training that detailed background checks had not been performed.

But shortly after Mustapha's appointment, Steve Emerson, executive director of the Washington-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, criticized Illinois law enforcement for ignoring Mustapha's history as an "unindicted co-conspirator" in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, once the nation's largest Muslim charity.

The foundation's two founding members were sentenced last year to 65 years in prison each for funneling millions of dollars to Hamas, a militant Palestinian group that the U.S. has labeled terrorist but also does social work. Mustapha raised money for the group in Chicago.

On Wednesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations will hold a news conference to protest the revocation of Mustapha's appointment.

--Manya Brachear