 Here in Romania, the native Turkish and Tatar community has lived for over seven centuries, and has developed a way of life, and it is more difficult to say of us that we are terrorists".In April 2007, Murat Yusuf caused controversy after asking the Ministry of Education not to recognize the graduation diplomas for a number of Romanian Muslims who had received theological training in certain institutions (located in, among other countries, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan, Jordan and Egypt).He justified the measure by arguing that the young men had studied "a dangerous radical [form of] Islam", and contended that they were working "in certain foundations, assisted by Arab embassies, [and] listed as organizations suspected of producing terrorist propaganda, under surveillance by the Romanian intelligence services".