The crime of prayer, the crime of love

Twenty year-old Norma Ruiz had never met a foreigner before. Twenty-two year-old California native Lui Lopez arrived nearby after receiving an invitation to administer construction and operation of a grange just outside her town near Tequila, Mexico.

They met at a prayer group which Norma’s mother attended. By then, the group had ceased to meet after the priest who led it was transferred away from Norma’s town, but the sign remained outside on Dona Rafaela’s wall: “Our Lady of Zapopan Prayer and Study Center”.

When Lui asked Dona Rafaela at what time the group met she answered that they didn’t, because they didn’t have a leader anymore, “unless you want to be the guide”. Lui accepted and conducted the class and prayer group for about eight to twelve people who would gather for an hour twice a week. After several months of attending with her young daughter, Dona Silvia one day brought her eldest daughter. It was love at first sight. But the focus on prayer and scripture remained the priority and delayed any kind of romantic relationship.

After a few months of praying and studying scripture together with the group, Norma and Lui finally ran into each other far from Dona Rafaela’s house in the town’s central plaza. Norma was now twenty one and Lui twenty three when their relationship began. After a year, Lui returned to California to attend his sister’s wedding. They maintained a long-distance relationship for a year before Lui finally returned to propose.

Likewise, their engagement lasted an entire year. The requirements for marriage in the church seem tedious to many young couples in Mexico, and about half of the marriages are either purely civil ceremonies or mere civil unions. But Norma and her family insisted on a full religious ceremony. It wasn’t too hard, aside from the special government permission needed by a non-national to marry inside of Mexico, except for one condition: the baptismal certificate. Lui wasn’t Catholic, but that wasn’t a problem. A baptismal certificate from any Christian denomination was acceptable. That wasn’t good enough though; Lui was Moslem.

Most people consider it impossible. Yet the common Mexican practice of “stealing away” was unacceptable to Norma and her family. The thought of baptism was similarly out of the question for Lui, recalling the Qoran: “Sebgat Allah, wa man ahsano men Allah sebgatan?”. However, he learned of a rare exception occasionally granted by an Archbishop or Cardinal for an “Apostolic Dispensation”. Negotiations with the Cardinals of Los Angeles and Guadalajara ensued. A rigorous preparation course ensued. However, with key elements of both of their religions in common: respect for the lives of all children from the moment of conception, Jesus of Nazareth as the Word of God and God’s one and only Messiah, and the eternal virginity of his mother Mary, dispensation was granted after one year. With the approval of the Cardinal of Guadalajara coming in only four days before the ceremony, preparations were rushed. However, the large Spanish Colonial-Era church was filled and a remarkable sermon about God’s universal love and the unity of all peoples of the book was given by the pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. After a large reception just across the plaza from the church, Norma flew to California on her wedding night. After a two-year probationary period in which she was not allowed to return to visit her family, Norma finally received permanent residence in 2000.

At the same time, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Lui left a higher-paying job which he enjoyed to take a lower-paying position at an aerospace manufacturer in order to obtain health insurance for his wife. Hers was a rare form of breast cancer, Cysto-Sarcoma Phylloides, which only occurs in a average of five cases worldwide per year. Unlike more common types of breast cancer, Pylloides tumors do not respond to chemotherapy. Fast and precise surgery must be successful or the patient will most certainly die within months, if not weeks. With much insistence, Lui was able to press for the needed surgery despite a widespread reluctance to consider women under 45 years of age as threatened by breast cancer. The surgery was a success. They made the front page of the local newspapers. Lui and Norma remained very active as volunteers with the American Cancer Society, the YWCA and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation throughout Norma’s oncology follow ups, reconstruction surgery, and beyond, assisting with both screening and awareness programs.

For a girl who had never traveled more than 100 kilometers from home and had never stayed away from her parents for more than 48 hours, suddenly being across an international boundary, forbidden from returning to her family or having them visit her, and then not knowing whether she would ever survive beyond the two-year probationary residence was a terrible experience. When her last surgery was completed, she was finally able to go back to visit her beloved family in Mexico. It was a joyful family reunion for Norma, her parents and grandparents, and nine brothers and sisters. In her mid-20s, she had defeated cancer and overcame the political obstacles that international couples face to be together will all of her family at last.

After three weeks, it was time to return to work in California. Besides working, Lui also entered the University of California Los Angeles to major in Arabic and Spanish and Linguistics and to double minor as well in Latin American Studies and well as Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Their first daughter, Hajjia Xafiqa, was born while he attended college fulltime. Lui graduated cum laude with Latin as well as departmental honors.

Just forty days after graduating, Lui began his doctoral program for the Islamic Studies PhD at UCLA. He was recruited as reader for two history classes while studying fulltime. Within three months, they also had their next child, Saffar Al Adl. By the end of the first year of graduate school, Lui had been recruited to teach three linguistics classes and three more history classes. This was in addition to two tutoring jobs, one assisting student athletes and the other working with international students who spoke English as a second language. He also had an off-campus job as an interpreter for non-English speaking patients to communicate with their English-speaking doctors at pre-ops and surgeries, with an occasional Arabic or Spanish document-translation project to boot. However, his research interests, which were very wide given his multiple major/multiple minor program and his interdepartmental graduate major, included “Afro-Hispanic Shiite Heritage”, something which several political groups, such as the Bruin Republicans, the Bruin Democrats, the Darfur Action Committee and Bruins for Israel, did not approve of. They preached Shiites as people needing to be confined to, surrounded, and isolated in Iran in preparation for a final “solution”. The concept of a Shiite society stretching from Lisbon, Portugal to the Libyan Desert and from Catalonia in Northern Spain to Cape Nouadhibou in Sub-Saharan Africa for over a century is something they seek to conceal from even the best of History departments.

In May of 2006, Los Angeles Police detectives came to the family’s home and demanded that Lui not teach the History of Islamic Spain class that he had been contracted to teach since January of that year. Knowing that the travel-study program and 30 enrolled students were counting on him to teach in Spain and Africa, Lui held to his legal right to teach. The police detectives also demanded that Lui and Norma divorce. The demands against education and family that LAPD detectives Lillenberg and Mora made seemed unbelievable and incredible. However, after refusing to abandon his family or his students, an arrest warrant was issued the day he returned from Spain.

However, in spite of 24-hour surveillance by both the University of California Police Department and the Los Angeles Police Department, none of them bothered to inform them of the warrant or demand that Lui appear in court. With a huge research grant scheduled for the next academic year, the Lopez family decided to visit Norma’s relatives in Mexico again and present the grandchildren that Norma’s parents had yet to meet.

Visiting Mexico had been no problem in 2000. But pre-9/11 America was now a thing of the past. Upon returning at the Nogales/Arizona border crossing, the Lopez family was arrested and separated into different buildings. Norma was interrogated as to how often Lui went to the mosque and how often he prayed.

Thinking it was not illegal to pray under U.S. law, Norma honestly answered about Lui’s daily prayer habits.

However, the United States Department of Education revoked the 15,000 stipend it had awarded Lui to study Indonesian language and declared his student fees which had already been paid to be unpaid. In spite of fulfilling all the terms of the federal grant and fulfilling all is degree requirements ahead of schedule, his degree was denied, he was imprisoned and his marriage declared “purged”. Furthermore, on October 10th of 2007, seven UCPD officers stormed Lui’s classroom in UCLA’s Rolfe Hall with all his classmates present. Lui was taken to jail. His crimes? Prayer and of love.