Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi
Encyclopedia
Sayed Rahmatullah Hashmi is a former envoy
of the Taliban government in Afghanistan
. 'Sayed' is an honorific
title that indicates lineage with the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad
. Also known simply as Rahmatullah, he was once enrolled as a non-degree student at Yale University
. In July 2006 it was announced that his application to pursue a bachelor's degree had been rejected by Yale College
via the Eli Whitney Students Program
.
parents. In 1982, his family moved to Pakistan
. Rahmatullah grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan and was educated in madrassas and the Pakistani school system. His schooling was fragmented, but he did emerge proficient in English as well as Pashto, Persian
, and Urdu
. In the fall of 1993, he took a high-school equivalency exam in Quetta, Pakistan and was awarded a degree.
In 1994, the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, and the 16-year old Rahmatullah joined them in Kandahar
, Afghanistan as a computer operator and later, thanks to his language skills, as translator. He was appointed to the position of diplomat in the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad
, Pakistan in 1998. In this capacity he traveled around the world as a spokesperson for the Afghan foreign Ministry.
In 1997, Rahmatullah was present when CNN
's Peter Arnett
interviewed Osama Bin Laden
. Speaking of the interview at the University of Southern California, during March 2001, Rahmatullah said
In early 2001 he made a trip to the US. He met with US State Department officials, senators, and the media. At one point he encountered an anti-Taliban protester, a woman who tore off her burqa
; he said to her "I'm really sorry for your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you." Footage of the incident was later incorporated into the Michael Moore
documentary Fahrenheit 9/11
.
During this 2001 tour he denied knowing anything about Osama Bin Laden until after the 20 August 1998 cruise missile attacks
ordered by U.S. President Bill Clinton
Later in the same interview, he aggressively defended Osama Bin Laden, referring to him as a "good guy" for the Afghans and insisting that the Taliban government would not hand him over to the United States.
Hashmi would later claim that he was getting disillusioned with some Taliban policies by this point. Nevertheless, in an interview to the Yale Daily News
, he supported most Taliban policies especially on security, integrity of the nation, and their ban on opium cultivation.
On 30 August 2001 as a translator to the Taliban foreign minister, Rehmatullah Hashmi reviewed charges of preaching Christianity against foreign aid workers.
He spoke against Shelter Now International for preaching Christianity and demonstrated the evidence supporting Taliban charges of prosyletizing Christianity that had been gathered against the jailed American, European and Afghan missionary aid workers.
Afghan aid workers could have faced the death penalty for conversion to Christianity and foreign aid
workers face a variable jail sentence depending on the severity of the proselytizing. However, before the Taliban government fell in October 2001, all the missionaries were released unharmed. Later speaking at a press conference in Islamabad, the missionaries told news men that they were treated well during their two month long incarceration.
After the 11 September 2001 attacks, Rahmatullah's family lived in Pakistan. During the US invasion of Afghanistan, Rahmatullah worked for CNN's Nic Robertson
as a translator and a personal assistant. After the war he lived in Quetta
, Pakistan, for most of the next three years, reading astronomy books, and completing his unfinished high school education.
cameraman who had sponsored his 2001 trip—suggested applying to college in the US. In 2005, Rahmatullah was admitted to Yale
as a nondegree student. On 26 February 2006, The New York Times Magazine
published a profile of Rahmatullah, making his status as a Yale student widely known.
In 2006, conservative sentiment arose opposing Rahmatullah studying at Yale University and questioning outright his presence in the United States. On 8 March 2006, Yale alumnus Clinton Taylor launched a campaign intended to discourage alumni donations until Rahmatullah's presence at the school is better explained by the administration. The initiative has been called "NailYale".
On 23 March 2006, writing in OpinionJournal.com, John Fund
reported that Senator John Cornyn
(R-TX) had sent a letter to Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff
, requesting an explanation regarding the circumstances surrounding Ramatullah's visa application and the subsequent visa extension.
As of April 2006, Yale has published the following comment on its website:
A recent non-scientific poll conducted by the Yale Herald—a student-run weekly newspaper—which was answered by 2,000 undergrads, concluded that 50% of Yale supported Hashmi's acceptance and about 25% opposed it.
Critics such as 1999 Yale alumnus David Bookstaber, who contributes to the NailYale blog, acknowledge that "reactions run the spectrum" from outrage to support. One student leader of Yale's Hillel
, a Jewish group, defended him, saying "Applying to Yale in the first place and while here, participating in Yale's 'Jews and Muslims' dialogue group, Hashmi seems to want to expand his mind. Hashmi, by learning here, has already changed his approach to the world." An unnamed professor pointed out that members of the new Afghan government are former Taliban and that prior to 1998 Hamid Karzai
was associated with the Taliban. Zachariah Victor, doctoral candidate in music and member of Yale's Graduate and Professional Student Senate http://www.yale.edu/gpss/, blasted conservative critics as "outsiders" who attack universities because they do not have "reason, science or history on their side" in matters of policy (these are Victor's own views; the Graduate and Professional Student Senate has no public stance on the admission of Hashmi to Yale College).
In July 2006, Rahmatullah was denied admission to the Eli Whitney Students Program
, Yale's degree-granting program for non-traditional students.http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/07/06/yale.taliban.ap/index.html
Diplomat
A diplomat is a person appointed by a state to conduct diplomacy with another state or international organization. The main functions of diplomats revolve around the representation and protection of the interests and nationals of the sending state, as well as the promotion of information and...
of the Taliban government in Afghanistan
Afghanistan
Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...
. 'Sayed' is an honorific
Honorific
An honorific is a word or expression with connotations conveying esteem or respect when used in addressing or referring to a person. Sometimes, the term is used not quite correctly to refer to an honorary title...
title that indicates lineage with the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
. Also known simply as Rahmatullah, he was once enrolled as a non-degree student at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. In July 2006 it was announced that his application to pursue a bachelor's degree had been rejected by Yale College
Yale College
Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...
via the Eli Whitney Students Program
Eli Whitney Students Program
The Eli Whitney Students Program is an admissions program designed to attract students from non-traditional backgrounds to Yale College. Students admitted through the program study either part or full-time and receive either a B.A. or a B.S. from Yale College...
.
Biography
Rahmatullah was born in Kohak, Afghanistan, to PashtunPashtun people
Pashtuns or Pathans , also known as ethnic Afghans , are an Eastern Iranic ethnic group with populations primarily between the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan and the Indus River in Pakistan...
parents. In 1982, his family moved to Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. Rahmatullah grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan and was educated in madrassas and the Pakistani school system. His schooling was fragmented, but he did emerge proficient in English as well as Pashto, Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, and Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
. In the fall of 1993, he took a high-school equivalency exam in Quetta, Pakistan and was awarded a degree.
In 1994, the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, and the 16-year old Rahmatullah joined them in Kandahar
Kandahar
Kandahar is the second largest city in Afghanistan, with a population of about 512,200 as of 2011. It is the capital of Kandahar Province, located in the south of the country at about 1,005 m above sea level...
, Afghanistan as a computer operator and later, thanks to his language skills, as translator. He was appointed to the position of diplomat in the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad
Islamabad
Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan and the tenth largest city in the country. Located within the Islamabad Capital Territory , the population of the city has grown from 100,000 in 1951 to 1.7 million in 2011...
, Pakistan in 1998. In this capacity he traveled around the world as a spokesperson for the Afghan foreign Ministry.
In 1997, Rahmatullah was present when CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
's Peter Arnett
Peter Arnett
Peter Gregg Arnett, ONZM is a New Zealand-American journalist.Arnett worked for National Geographic magazine, and later for various television networks, most notably CNN. He is well known for his coverage of war, including the Vietnam War and the Gulf War...
interviewed Osama Bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
. Speaking of the interview at the University of Southern California, during March 2001, Rahmatullah said
- "CNN was in Afghanistan interviewing Bin Laden, in 1998. You have to be careful in listening to this. I was there, and they asked Bin Laden as to what was his thinking about the killing of civilians in Iraq.... He said that if all American citizens and if all British citizens are willing, or supporting, to kill all Iraqi civilians, then all American citizens and all British citizens deserve the same thing or to be killed. CNN cut everything. Three-hours conversation was not there. The only thing they put, and it was not complete, the only clause that they said was that all American and British citizens must be killed."
In early 2001 he made a trip to the US. He met with US State Department officials, senators, and the media. At one point he encountered an anti-Taliban protester, a woman who tore off her burqa
Burqa
A burqa is an enveloping outer garment worn by women in some Islamic religion to cover their bodies in public places. The burqa is usually understood to be the woman's loose body-covering , plus the head-covering , plus the face-veil .-Etymology:A speculative and unattested etymology...
; he said to her "I'm really sorry for your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you." Footage of the incident was later incorporated into the Michael Moore
Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...
documentary Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a 2004 documentary film by American filmmaker and political commentator Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and its coverage in the news media...
.
During this 2001 tour he denied knowing anything about Osama Bin Laden until after the 20 August 1998 cruise missile attacks
Operation Infinite Reach
The August 1998 bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan were American cruise missile strikes on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998...
ordered by U.S. President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
- "In 1998, they just sent cruise missiles into Afghanistan and they announced that they were trying to kill Osama bin Laden. We didn't know Osama bin Laden then. I didn't know him; he was just a simple man. So we were all shocked. I was one of those men who was sitting at home at night. I was called for an immediate council meeting and we all were told the United States have attacked Afghanistan. With 75 cruise missiles and trying to kill one man.".
Later in the same interview, he aggressively defended Osama Bin Laden, referring to him as a "good guy" for the Afghans and insisting that the Taliban government would not hand him over to the United States.
Hashmi would later claim that he was getting disillusioned with some Taliban policies by this point. Nevertheless, in an interview to the Yale Daily News
Yale Daily News
The Yale Daily News is an independent student newspaper published by Yale University students in New Haven, Connecticut since January 28, 1878...
, he supported most Taliban policies especially on security, integrity of the nation, and their ban on opium cultivation.
On 30 August 2001 as a translator to the Taliban foreign minister, Rehmatullah Hashmi reviewed charges of preaching Christianity against foreign aid workers.
He spoke against Shelter Now International for preaching Christianity and demonstrated the evidence supporting Taliban charges of prosyletizing Christianity that had been gathered against the jailed American, European and Afghan missionary aid workers.
Afghan aid workers could have faced the death penalty for conversion to Christianity and foreign aid
workers face a variable jail sentence depending on the severity of the proselytizing. However, before the Taliban government fell in October 2001, all the missionaries were released unharmed. Later speaking at a press conference in Islamabad, the missionaries told news men that they were treated well during their two month long incarceration.
After the 11 September 2001 attacks, Rahmatullah's family lived in Pakistan. During the US invasion of Afghanistan, Rahmatullah worked for CNN's Nic Robertson
Nic Robertson
Nic Robertson is a Senior International Correspondent at CNN.Nic started his career in broadcasting in 1984 within the engineering arm of the UK's Independent Broadcasting Authority He then worked as an engineer with TV-AM until 1989.Nic began his career at CNN in 1989, starting as a satellite...
as a translator and a personal assistant. After the war he lived in Quetta
Quetta
is the largest city and the provincial capital of the Balochistan Province of Pakistan. Known as the "Fruit Garden of Pakistan" due to the diversity of its plant and animal wildlife, Quetta is home to the Hazarganji Chiltan National Park, which contains some of the rarest species of wildlife in the...
, Pakistan, for most of the next three years, reading astronomy books, and completing his unfinished high school education.
Yale attendance controversy
In 2004, an American friend, Mike Hoover—a CBSCBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
cameraman who had sponsored his 2001 trip—suggested applying to college in the US. In 2005, Rahmatullah was admitted to Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
as a nondegree student. On 26 February 2006, The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
published a profile of Rahmatullah, making his status as a Yale student widely known.
In 2006, conservative sentiment arose opposing Rahmatullah studying at Yale University and questioning outright his presence in the United States. On 8 March 2006, Yale alumnus Clinton Taylor launched a campaign intended to discourage alumni donations until Rahmatullah's presence at the school is better explained by the administration. The initiative has been called "NailYale".
On 23 March 2006, writing in OpinionJournal.com, John Fund
John Fund
John H. Fund is an American political journalist and conservative columnist. Currently a senior editor of The American Spectator,...
reported that Senator John Cornyn
John Cornyn
John Cornyn, III is the junior United States Senator for Texas, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was elected Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 111th U.S. Congress....
(R-TX) had sent a letter to Homeland Security
Homeland security
Homeland security is an umbrella term for security efforts to protect states against terrorist activity. Specifically, is a concerted national effort to prevent terrorist attacks within the U.S., reduce America’s vulnerability to terrorism, and minimize the damage and recover from attacks that do...
Secretary Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoff
Michael Chertoff was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush and co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. He previously served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as assistant U.S. Attorney...
, requesting an explanation regarding the circumstances surrounding Ramatullah's visa application and the subsequent visa extension.
As of April 2006, Yale has published the following comment on its website:
- Yale has allowed Mr. Hashmi to take courses for college credit in a part-time program that does not award Yale degrees... We hope that his courses help him understand the broader context for the conflicts around the world... According to the State Department, Ramatullah Hashmi was issued U.S. visas in 2004 and 2005, first on a tourist visa and then in 2005 on a student visa. The mandatory procedures were followed, which, in his case, included vetting through an interagency security clearance process. He was cleared by all agencies."
A recent non-scientific poll conducted by the Yale Herald—a student-run weekly newspaper—which was answered by 2,000 undergrads, concluded that 50% of Yale supported Hashmi's acceptance and about 25% opposed it.
Critics such as 1999 Yale alumnus David Bookstaber, who contributes to the NailYale blog, acknowledge that "reactions run the spectrum" from outrage to support. One student leader of Yale's Hillel
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, working with thousands of college students globally...
, a Jewish group, defended him, saying "Applying to Yale in the first place and while here, participating in Yale's 'Jews and Muslims' dialogue group, Hashmi seems to want to expand his mind. Hashmi, by learning here, has already changed his approach to the world." An unnamed professor pointed out that members of the new Afghan government are former Taliban and that prior to 1998 Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai
Hamid Karzai, GCMG is the 12th and current President of Afghanistan, taking office on 7 December 2004. He became a dominant political figure after the removal of the Taliban regime in late 2001...
was associated with the Taliban. Zachariah Victor, doctoral candidate in music and member of Yale's Graduate and Professional Student Senate http://www.yale.edu/gpss/, blasted conservative critics as "outsiders" who attack universities because they do not have "reason, science or history on their side" in matters of policy (these are Victor's own views; the Graduate and Professional Student Senate has no public stance on the admission of Hashmi to Yale College).
In July 2006, Rahmatullah was denied admission to the Eli Whitney Students Program
Eli Whitney Students Program
The Eli Whitney Students Program is an admissions program designed to attract students from non-traditional backgrounds to Yale College. Students admitted through the program study either part or full-time and receive either a B.A. or a B.S. from Yale College...
, Yale's degree-granting program for non-traditional students.http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/07/06/yale.taliban.ap/index.html
External links
- Transcript
- "You've Got Mail (It's From Yale): A university official calls Taliban critics "retarded" while the university maintains a stony silence, Wall Street Journal, 13 March 2006
- Ivory Tower Stonewall: A 9/11 survivor asks Yale to explain why it admitted the Taliban Man, Wall Street Journal, 3 April 2006