Just what does Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil have to do before Mayor Bloomberg will even criticize him — let alone bounce him from the city payroll?
On Thursday, the mayor actually went out of his way to praise Abdul-Jalil — who, after initially denying any knowledge of it, later admitted he’d approved a lavish bar mitzvah party last December that a scam artist was allowed to throw for his son at the Tombs lockup.
“He gets great marks from all the other clergy for working together collaboratively,” Bloomberg said of Abdul-Jalil, who collects more than $100,000 a year as an assistant city correction commissioner for ministerial service.
Added Bloomberg: “I made a decision that this is a guy who . . . does a good job, and we need to have him, and I’m very happy to have him.”
Translation: Abdul-Jalil, a onetime drug dealer who spent 14 years in prison before becoming an imam, won’t be punished beyond the two weeks’ vacation he’s already lost.
This, even though the mayor said, regarding the bar mitzvah bash, that “what’s gone on . . . is unacceptable” and that the resignations of Rabbi Leib Glanz and Correction Chief Peter Curcio for their roles in the jailhouse shindig were “the right thing for them to do.”
The fact is, this is not the only blemish on the imam’s Corrections record.
In 2006, he was suspended for two weeks after The Post disclosed that he had given speeches blasting “the Zionists of the media” and denouncing President Bush as “the greatest terrorist in the world.” Firing him, the mayor said then, would violate his free-speech rights.
A year later, the imam delivered a similar speech to inmates at Woodbourne Prison — adding that he hoped no one was recording him because he’d already gotten in trouble for his earlier remarks.
Here’s the irony: Abdul-Jalil kept his job in 2006 because he wasn’t acting in an official capacity. This time, he was — but he keeps his job anyway.
Par for the course for Mike Bloomberg, who finds it impossible to hold officials in his administration accountable for their misdeeds.