The three Islamic organizations that recommend Muslim chaplains for the armed forces and federal prisons will no longer have that job to themselves, Pentagon and prison officials said on Tuesday.
The decision follows the arrest of a Muslim chaplain, Army Capt. James J. Yee, who has been accused of leaving the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba with diagrams of the compound.
At a meeting of the terrorism subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, asked, "Would it be fair to say that no longer will it be the Department of Defense policy that one or two specific organizations would have the sole authority to approve or to nominate members to the chaplaincy?"
"That's true," said Charles S. Abell, the principal deputy under secretary of defense.
The Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences, in Leesburg, Va., and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, in Arlington, Va., recommend chaplains to the military. The Islamic Society of North America, based in Plainfield, Ind., refers Muslim clerics to the Bureau of Prisons.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said a member of the board of the Islamic Society had been listed by the F.B.I. as a possible unindicted conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
The Arlington-based council is an affiliate of the American Muslim Foundation, whose leader has been arrested and accused of acting as a courier to funnel money from Libya to terrorist groups in Syria.
The Leesburg graduate school was raided by Customs in 2002 as part of an investigation into money being funneled to Al Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups, senators added.
No charges were filed.
Captain Yee, also known as Youssef Yee, was certified by the Leesburg graduate school.
Chaplains in the military and in the federal prison system have to be endorsed by a qualifying religious organization.
"Recognizing that they are under investigation, we are seeking others," Mr. Abell said.
Harley G. Lappin, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said it had not hired any new Muslim chaplains since August 2001. "Probably, we will not hire any, at least from these endorsing agencies, until the investigations are completed," he said.
The senators were careful to say that all Muslim chaplains should not be tarred with the same brush. There are currently 10 Muslim chaplains working in the federal prison system and 12 with the armed forces, they said.
"I see no suggestion that any of these individuals are promoting radical Islamic beliefs or has any links whatsoever to terrorism," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California.