The Government particularly considers militant Islam a threat to the government and closely follows the practice of its adherents. While the Syrian government allows many mosques to be built, it monitors and controls sermons and often closes mosques between prayers. In Damascus, a road is being built through the old city to a major Shi'a mosque. To complete the road, the government plans to tear down several predominantly Sunni residential complexes in the old city. The country's Sunni clerics and communities have criticized these plans. Religious minorities, with the exception of Jews, are represented among the senior officer corps. In keeping with the Syria's secular policy, though, the military does not have a chaplain corps; members of the military do not have direct access to religious or spiritual support; and soldiers are expected not to express their faith overtly during work hours. For example, Muslims are discouraged from praying while on duty. Syria canceled an Islamic religious program that had been broadcast just before the major weekly prayers were shown on government-run television. On April 20, 2007, the son of the late Grand Mufti, Sheikh Salah Khuftaro, in a speech at the Abu Nur Islamic Center, denounced the Information Minister for this decision. Before the 2011 revolution, European diplomats and human rights organizations around the world characterized the level of repression against alleged Islamists as consistent throughout the years, with discrimination neither increasing nor decreasing. Some religious leaders insisted they faced increased repression at the hands of the Syrian government, however. Human rights organizations documented the arrest of at least 30 persons for alleged ties to Islamist groups. The Government rarely furnishes documentation on the number of detained persons. Human rights groups have reported on the amount Syrians who have been arrested or detained for alleged ties to Islamist groups in previous years but whose detention have not been confirmed nor denied by the government. Since 2007, the Syrian Supreme State Security Court has sentenced at least 22 alleged Islamists to lengthy prison sentences. Syria continues to hold an unknown number of members of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists as political detainees and prisoners. Many alleged Islamists not connected to the Muslim Brotherhood have been charged and convicted for membership in a Salafist organization. Arrests of alleged Islamists and, in some cases, convictions, were motivated primarily by the Syrian government's view of militant Islamists as potential threats to government stability. The Jewish community is prohibited from sending historical Torahs abroad under a law against exporting any of the country's historical and cultural treasures. This poses a serious problem for the dwindling Jewish community concerned about the preservation of its ancient religious texts. On June 24, 2007, Syrian Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed Baderedin Hassoun called on Jews of Syrian origin to return to Syria, claiming that the property and synagogues of Jews who left Syria remained as they were and would be placed at the disposal of their original owners.