VisasSan Bernardino mosque may be reason for barring British Muslim family from entering U.S.

Airliner taking off from Taipei Songshan Airport // Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Muhammad Mahmood, 47, who is a U.S. citizen and who a runs a car repair shop in San Bernardino, California, speculated that the reason his two brothers, their wives, and their children — all of them British citizens – have been barred from entering the United States to visit Disneyland was that he prays at the same mosque where one of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Farook, used to pray.

Mahmood told the BBC that he could think of no other reason why members of the British side of his family were denied entry to the United States.

The Telegraph reports that the family of eleven – Mahmood’s brothers Mohammad Tariq and Mohammed Zahid, their wives, and children — were stopped at the departure gate at Gatwick airport last week after they had already checked in.

They were not given an explanation why they were not allowed into the United States.

A British government spokesman said the British authorities were investigating the incident and that the family will receive an explanation of the decision. The spokesman stressed that the airline refused to allow the two families to board the plane in instructions from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Stella Creasy, the Labor MP for Walthamstow, has written to Prime Minster David Cameron asking him to discuss with the U.S. authorities what she described as a growing problem of British Muslims being barred from the U.S. without explanation. In her letter she said that there is “growing fear” among British Muslims that aspects of Donald Trump’s plans to bar Muslims from entering America are already being incorporated into policy decisions with consequences on the ground, even though they have been widely criticized.

A London-based imam said that in the past few months more than twenty British Muslims told him they were denied entry to the United States without being given an explanation for the decision.

Muhammad Mahmood told the BBC that although he prayed in the same mosque as Farook, he “did not know him personally” and would not even have recognized him.

His brother, Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, is now trying to get a refund of the £11,000 the two families spent on airline tickets and hotel reservations.

He said: “I respect these people need to react if there is a genuine concern but they need to make sure this concern is genuine. They need to check our backgrounds, check our accounts and check our businesses before they react like that.

“They can’t react like that just because we are Muslim.”

A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection told the Telegraph that the “religion, faith or spiritual beliefs of an international traveler are not determining factors” when deciding if can travel to the country.