In 1995, Al-Najjar was completing his doctorate in industrial management at the University of South Florida, where he taught Arabic as an adjunct professor. A Palestinian refugee born in Gaza and educated in Egypt, he had lived in the United States on a student visa for 10 years.
He worked as a volunteer researcher with his brother-in-law, USF colleague and fellow Palestinian Sami Al-Arian.
The two men were devoted to Al-Arian's brainchild, a USF-sponsored research center called the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, or WISE. Both say the purpose of the center, which operated out of a cramped USF office on a budget of about $20,000 a year, was to bring U.S. and Middle Eastern scholars together to discuss political and economic issues in that part of the world.
Today, at 43, Al-Najjar is still battling deportation, a process that could take years. In the meantime, the government is refusing to give him a work permit. He and his wife are living on her salary as a pharmacist and what little he can make as a translator and lecturer.
He also teaches at the Islamic Academy of Florida, a small school where Al-Arian, his former WISE colleague, is the principal. Islamic Academy of Florida faculity and staff
This guy escapes the hellhole that is the Islamic Middle East, then tries to destroy the country that takes him in, and we can't boot him out because of our own rules! As a society/country, we're insane! When will sanity prevail?