All Entries in the "Under Siege" Category

Muslim superhero comics meet resistance in U.S.

By Dan Merica, CNN

Naif Al-Mutawa anticipated a struggle when he launched an Islam-inspired comic book series that he hoped would become a symbol of toleration.

He worried about the comics being banned in Saudi Arabia – which wound up happening, briefly – and he expected to be challenged by conservatives in Islam, since Al-Mutawa wanted to buck the trend of Islamic culture being directly tied to the Koran.

But it wasn’t an Islamic cleric that stalled the series, called “The 99,” after the 99 attributes of Allah, which the superheroes are supposed to embody.

It is the American market, and the voices of Islam’s Western critics, that have caused the most problems for “The 99,” says Al-Mutawa, who is the focus of a PBS documentary airing next week.

In 2010, President Barack Obama called the comic books, which debuted in 2006, “the most innovative response” to America’s expanding dialogue with the Muslim world, which Obama has encouraged. The series features 99 superheroes from across the globe who team up to combat villains and who embody what Al-Mutawa calls basic human values like trust and generosity.

But Al-Mutawa, a Kuwaiti-born clinical psychologist and graduate of Columbia Business School, says a vocal minority have raised surprising questions about American tolerance of Islam.

Meeting resistance

The idea for “The 99” started during a conversation in a London cab between Al-Mutawa and his sister. It took off, although slowly, after Al-Mutawa raised $7 million from 54 investors across four continents.

The first issue was released during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in 2006. The comic book was quickly banned in Saudi Arabia and Al-Mutawa received threats of fatwas against him and his project from clerics. But Saudi Arabia eventually lifted the ban and the television adaptation of “The 99” will be aired there this year.

Al-Mutawa and his team have now raised more than $40 million in venture capital for the project.

But when word leaked that The Hub, a Discovery Channel cable and satellite television venture, purchased the series and planned to air it in the United States, the response from conservative bloggers and authors was swift.

A burqa-wearing superhero?

Pamela Geller, founder of the Atlas Shrugs blog, called the series, part of the “ongoing onslaught of cultural jihad,” and created a counter-comic strip that made the 19 hijackers behind the September 11, 2001 attacks the superheroes.

New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser, meanwhile, urged readers to “Hide your face and grab the kids. Coming soon to a TV in your child’s bedroom is a posse of righteous, Sharia-compliant Muslim superheroes – including one who fights crime hidden head-to-toe by a burqa.”

According to Al-Mutawa, the criticism spooked The Hub. “All of a sudden we couldn’t get an airdate and I was asked to be patient and we have been,” Al-Mutawa said. “But it has been a year and the actual push-back died down.”

Mark Kern, Senior Vice President of Communication for The Hub, told CNN that “‘The 99’ is one of the many shows we have on the possible schedule, but at this time, no decisions have been made about scheduling.”

Al-Mutawa isn’t shy about responding to the criticism his comics have received in the U.S. “There is nothing different from them and the extremists in my country,” he says. “They are just as bad. They are just intellectual terrorists.”

Geller, author of the book “Stop the Islamization of America,” called Al-Mutawa’s statement “ridiculous victimhood rhetoric.”

“He is the one mainstreaming oppression and discrimination,” Geller says. “I work for equality of rights for all people. So which one of us is the intellectual terrorist?”

Geller also takes issue with Al-Mutawa’s assertion that “The 99” exemplifies “moderation” and “toleration,” pointing to a “burqa-wearing superhero.”

But Al-Mutawa says criticisms of burqas are evidence that, “for some people anything to do with Islam is bad.”

“How cliché is it that characters created to promote tolerance are getting shot down by extremists,” he says.

Chronicling the ordeal

Al-Mutawa’s frustrations are chronicled in the new documentary “Wham! Bam! Islam!,” which will air on PBS on October 13 as part of the Independent Lens series.

The film’s director, Isaac Solotaroff, began shooting before the comic was released.

He said that one of the most surprising aspects of the story is how “a very small group of people who scream very loud, have a disproportionate share of the public discourse when it comes to culture.”

Echoing Al-Mutawa, Solotaroff calls it a case of the tail wagging the dog. He says that initial concerns of censorship in the Middle East began to change as the project progressed.

“We were waiting for a fatwa from a cleric in Saudi Arabia, Solotaroff says,” when it ended up being the U.S. market that has been resistant to “The 99.”

“Realizing that The 99 will not survive if focused solely on the Middle East, Al-Mutawa must now target an international and predominantly non-Muslim market,” reads the website for “Wham! Bam! Islam!”

Citing The Hub holdup, Solotaroff says the project is now stuck in the most important market” for “The 99.”

Al-Mutawa is also trying to gain distribution for his TV series in France and other countries, but his main focus remains the United States.

“One way or the other,” he says, “‘The 99’ will get on air in the U.S.”

Islamophobia Network Targets Top Performing American Schools

Source | By Michael Shank

This September, I was interviewed by a communications firm on the topic of Islamophobia. The firm is planning a campaign to counteract Islamophobia in America and was conducting interviews with Washington policymakers who have addressed this topic. The interview came on the heels of a Center for American Progress (CAP) report published last month, called “Fear Inc: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” which found a well-financed, well-organized network of advocates, experts and media partners conducting a strategic campaign throughout America and “spreading hate and misinformation,” as CAP put it.

Islamophobia is on the rise in America, but this is hardly surprising. Scan recent American history to witness the consistent creation of an “other”, whether it was anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism in the 19th century (and beyond), the first Red Scare in the early 1900s, the Japanese-American scare and second Red Scare in the mid-1900s, or the Muslim American scare in the early 2000s. There is purpose here. When entire races, religions or regions are dehumanized, it is easier to wage war, expel immigrants, and forge new, discriminatory (or oppressive) domestic and foreign policies to deal with these vilified populations.

Turkish-Americans are the latest to feel the heat. Despite serving as NATO’s number two troop supplier and recently agreeing to host a NATO radar defense system, Turkey is often accused by Washington for contradicting US foreign policy aims and objectives when negotiating with Iran, Syria, Israel and Libya. Additionally, Turkey’s market-friendly version of political Islam has often rubbed the West the wrong way.

Now, targeted discrimination aimed at the Turkish American community is centering on a Turkish educational effort, which was identified in CAP’s “Fear Inc” report. The new supposed Turkish threat to America: “Muslim Gulen schools, which [members of the Islamophobia network] claim would educate children through the lens of Islam and teach them to hate Americans”. The authors of the CAP report flatly reject this assertion, however, saying that the schools started by Turkish-American Fethullah Gulen are “nothing of the sort” and that “they are a product of moderate Turkish Muslim educators who want a ‘blend of religious faith and largely western curriculum’.”

CAP is on to something. Two Gulen charter schools ranked 5th and 6th on Newsweek’s 2011 Top Ten Miracle High Schools and two Gulen schools ranked 144th and 165th on Newsweek’s 2011 list of America’s 500 Best High Schools. So what is going on here? Gulen talks of peace and tolerance and was compared by Georgetown professor John Esposito to the Dalai Lama and praised by Madeleine Albright and James Baker III for his advocacy of democracy and dialogue. You would think this is the type of Muslim that America wants. While I recognize that there are legitimate concerns regarding the use of public funds for these charter schools, and concerns about the Gulen movement’s democratic proclivities in Turkey, it seems that at the heart of this is an undercurrent of phobia about Islamic teaching in America.

Having received my high school diploma from a Christian school and my master’s degree at a Mennonite university, which received funding from the US State Department, I know how comfortable this country is with Christian education. Islamic education, however, remains new. The Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York, for example, which aimed to teach Arabic and train students to become “ambassadors of peace and hope”, was vilified as having a “jihadist” agenda. Teachers were termed “terrorists” and founders were called “9/11 deniers,” to which Georgetown’s Esposito responded: “It’s an agenda to paint Islam, not just extremists, as a major problem.”

All of this is new to many Americans, and it is likely scary, especially since the prevailing association vis-à-vis Islam is violence. We have few notions of Islam and nonviolence, in large part because our fear has focused on the extreme outliers and because our largely Christian nation has not yet fully embraced — in media, policy, education or law — religious diversity, no matter how nonviolent, peaceful and tolerant the religion’s majority. It is time we do so. There is much to embrace — if only we open our eyes to it.

Michael Shank is a doctoral candidate at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, a board member of the National Peace Academy and an associate at the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict.

Pamela Geller to Delete Posts as Part of Settlement in Rifqa Bary Lawsuit

Source

More retreating from the anti-Muslim bigots. Pamela Geller will probably scream censorship, however this just underscores how obscene and twisted Pamela Geller’s anti-Muslim crusade during the Rifqa Bary case was (hat tip: W. Ruiz):

Tarazi had argued that New York-based blogger Pamela Geller defamed him by alleging he has terrorist ties. One posting linked him to Hamas, for example, which the State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization.

That blog and four others will be removed permanently from Geller’s “Atlas Shrugs” blog under the settlement, which did not involve any money.

Anti-Islamic blogger to delete posts as part of settlement in Rifqa Bary lawsuit

By Ashley Lopez (Florida Independent)

Pamela Geller, an anti-Islamic blogger based in New York, settled a lawsuit filed by one of Rifqa Bary’s attorneys this week.

Bary, a minor, fled from her parent’s house in Ohio to Florida because she converted to Christianity. According to Bary’s attorneys, she moved to Florida in an effort to practice Christianity away from her disapproving parents. A website created about the case claims that Bary left “after her father threatened to kill her for apostasy, a crime under Islamic Sharia law.”

Geller — along with a small group of anti-Muslim advocates in Florida, including a U.S. Senate candidate — fought to keep the young girl away from her parents. An attorney for Bary’s parents, Omar Tarazi, later sued some of those involved in the case for defamation.

Florida Family Policy Council President John Stemberger was sued by Tarazi for saying Tarazi was unqualified. Stemberger also alleged that Tarazi had terrorist ties in a 2009 TV interview. Last month, the defamation lawsuit was dropped after the two men reached an undisclosed agreement.

Geller and Rifqa Bary’s attorney were also sued for defaming Tarazi, a case that was settled this week.

According to the Associated Press:

Columbus attorney Omar Tarazi represented Bary’s parents, who denied intending to harm their daughter. Investigators in Florida and Ohio documented tension in the family but never found evidence that Bary was in danger.

Police recommended criminal charges be filed against adults in Ohio and Florida, including Christian ministers, who helped Bary run away, but prosecutors declined to pursue the charges.

Tarazi had argued that New York-based blogger Pamela Geller defamed him by alleging he has terrorist ties. One posting linked him to Hamas, for example, which the State Department has designated a foreign terrorist organization.

That blog and four others will be removed permanently from Geller’s “Atlas Shrugs” blog under the settlement, which did not involve any money.

Atlas Shrugs was described by The New York Times as a “site that attacks Islam with a rhetoric venomous enough that PayPal at one point branded it a hate site.” According to the Times, Geller “has called for the removal of the Dome of the Rock from atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; posted doctored pictures of Elena Kagan, the Supreme Court justice, in a Nazi helmet; suggested the State Department was run by ‘Islamic supremacists’; and referred to health care reform as an act of national rape.”

In court documents, Geller argued “that many of the postings singled out in the lawsuit also could fall in the realm of hyperbole and not defamation.”

Bary was eventually returned to Ohio. She has yet to reconcile her with her family. She turned 18 last year and is no longer embroiled in a public legal battle.

Islamophobia: Paranoia infects North America

By Haroon Siddiqui | Source

One legacy of the decade since 9/11 has been the growing fear of Muslims and Islam.

Many Europeans dread “Eurabia,” the ostensibly imminent Arab/Muslim takeover of the continent, even though its Muslim population is less than 3 per cent. Among those convinced of the coming apocalypse was Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik. Other believers express themselves peacefully but no less fervently.

Americans have come to share this European paranoia.

Many dread “New Yorkistan” and the takeover of America by Muslims, who constitute only 0.8 per cent of the population.

Nearly half of the 50 states have taken legislative steps to stop sharia, Muslim personal law.

Nearly a fifth of Americans believe that Barack Obama is Muslim or Arab or both. He fretted so much over this that during the 2008 election his organizers ejected two hijabi women from camera range. At a Republican rally, a woman called out to John McCain that Obama was an Arab; the Republican candidate responded: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen.”

Last year, Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg tamped down the hysteria over “Ground Zero mosque” but they could not persuade aFlorida pastor from commanding national attention for weeks before burning a copy of the Qur’an.

This year Peter King, chair of the security committee of the House of Representatives, held hearings into “the homegrown radicalization” of American Muslims. He believes that “80-85 per cent” of America’s 1,900 mosques are “controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. This is an enemy living amongst us.” In fact, a study this year by Duke University found that American Muslims have been the biggest source of tips to the FBI in disrupting terror plots. Attorney General Eric Holder lauded the Muslim community for it.

In Oklahoma, Republicans are accusing Democrats of plotting an Islamic state on the Plains. Elsewhere, school texts are being challenged as being pro-Islamic, meaning, they are neutral and do not condemn Islam.

Among the 23 anti-sharia states, the Tennessee Assembly said sharia promotes “the destruction of the national existence of the United States.”

Newt Gingrich believes, or at least says he does, that “sharia is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Sarah Palin says sharia is going to be “the downfall of America.” Michele Bachman says sharia means Muslim “totalitarian control” over America.

This is “is disturbingly reminiscent of the accusation in 19th-century Europe that Jewish religious law was seditious,” writes Eliyahu Stern, professor of Judaic studies at Yale.

It turns out that the sharia panic is not a grassroots movement but rather an orchestrated campaign by one man backed by anti-Islamic think tanks and private funders.

David Yerushalmi, a Brooklyn lawyer, works in collaboration with anti-Muslim groups to stoke the anti-sharia hysteria and distribute model legislation for states to adopt.

The Anti-Defamation League, a leading American Jewish agency, has lambasted Yerushalmi for his “anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black bigotry.”

He’s among five individuals named recently by the Washington-based Center for American Progress in its report Fear Inc.: Exposing the Islamophobic Network in America.

It names him along with Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy; Daniel Pipes of Middle East Forum; Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America; and Steve Emerson of Investigative Project on Terrorism. Their propaganda is parroted by Rep. King and other Republicans as part of their wedge politics. It is also repeated ad nauseum by such media outlets as Fox-TV.

The report also lists seven foundations that since 9/11 have dispersed $42.6 million to individuals and groups that work with the Tea Party’s state chapters: Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! for America; Pamela Geller’s (and Spencer’s) Stop Islamization of America; etc.

Some of them were behind the “Ground Zero mosque” protests, and are part of the agitation against the building of mosques and Islamic centres, 35 of which have been held up or delayed across the U.S.

The American Civil Liberties Union said:

“While mosque opponents frequently claim their objections are based on practical considerations such as traffic, parking and noise levels, those asserted concerns are often pretexts masking anti-Muslim sentiment. Government officials in some areas have yielded to this religious bigotry.”

As in most things , Canada is somewhere in between Europe and the U.S. in dealing with its 850,000 Muslims, both in the battle against terrorism and in the public discourse about Islam.

There was the bungled case of Maher Arar, tortured in Syria with Canadian complicity. There was the 2003 case of 23 Indian and Pakistani students accused of plotting terror acts, though not one was ever charged. There are the lingering cases of three Canadian Arabs who, too, got tortured in the Middle East with Canadian complicity. There’s the ongoing legal battle of five Arab-Canadians over security certificates that permit indefinite detention of non-Canadians.

On the other side of the ledger, there was the successful prosecution of 11 of the “Toronto 18” charged with terrorism, and that of an Ottawa man for his involvement in a British bomb plot.

Canada has not imported European aversion to Muslim immigration, yet. But our debate on multiculturalism has also become a smokescreen for attacking Muslims and Islam.

“Almost every reason for toleration’s apparent fall into disrepute concerns Islam,” notes Prof. Charles Taylor of McGill University, one of the inventors of our constitutional multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism was blamed during the noisy 2005-06 debate over sharia in Ontario, and also during Quebec’s 2008-09 debate on reasonable accommodation that preceded the anti-niqab legislation to deny all public services, including health services, to those wearing it.

Mind you, Quebec has long resisted the term multiculturalism and preferred inter-culturalism, with its implied primacy of not only the French language but also French culture. This year, the Parti Quebecois baldly asserted that “multiculturalism is not a Quebec value,” even though it is the law of the land (Section 27 of the Charter and the Multiculturalism Act).

Of the five high-profile Canadian cases of hijabis barred from soccer, judo and taekwondo tournaments, three were in Quebec. And in 2007, a Quebec corrections officer was fired for wearing a hijab. Opposition to the hijab is highest in Quebec, according to an Environics poll.

Across Canada, mosques in Hamilton, Montreal and the Vancouver area have been firebombed and vandalized since 2010.

European and American Islamophobes do have fans in Canada.

Geert Wilders, the anti-Muslim MP from the Netherlands, was here last year on a three-city tour, to much fanfare in the right-wing media. Among those applauding him was the virulently anti-Muslim group Canadian Hindu Advocacy. It is in the forefront of the protest against Friday prayers at Valley Park Middle School.

Another pro-Wilders group is the Jewish Defence League of Canada, which has an alliance with Britain’s anti-Muslim and racist English Defence League.

Among the anti-Islamic writers quoted by Breivik in his 1,500-page anti-Muslim manifesto were two Canadians — Mark Steyn and Salim Mansur.

Steyn, author and columnist, was the subject of a 2006-07 controversy when Maclean’s magazine ran his 4,800-word rant that Muslims pose a demographic, cultural and security threat to the West. When a group of Canadian Muslims complained to the human rights commission, they were vilified by Steyn supporters as well as free speech advocates in a way not seen before against any anti-hate complainants.

Mansur, a professor at University of Western Ontario and a columnist for the Toronto Sun, is a frequent critic of fellow Muslims and Islam. He is a member of the academic council of Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, and much used by Islamophobes in the U.S. and Canada.

hsddiqui@thestar.ca

September 11th And The Legacy Of Islamophobia In America

Source

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was 11 years old. After the first plane hit, teachers took kids in from the playground and quickly ushered them into the classrooms. Some of them turned on TVs; others did not. Mine did. At that age, I was not fully able to comprehend what I saw. Though what I did see — buildings stripped to skeletal foundations, men and women covered in ash wandering the streets like ghosts, and remnants of homes, identities, and belongings strewn about like shattered glass — left quite an indelible mark in my heart. Ten years later, I think that this was my first glimpse into how fragile a nation and its unity can truly be. Funny, then, that we have chosen to rebuild ourselves and attack others with some of the very things that caused the mass destruction to begin with.

Although the neologism that is Islamophobia dates back to the 1990’s, it was not until after September 11, 2001 that the intolerance was so rampantly widespread that Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, stated that “when the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry, that is a sad and troubling development.” While its definition, and for that matter, existence as a term, is contentious, many agree that Islamophobia is the hatred and fear of Islam and by extension, all Muslims. Though as much as I would like to say that American Islamophobia only emerged after 2001, the unfortunate truth is that it and the driving themes behind it have been around for quite some time; it is only after that cataclysmic day that it reared its ugly head that much higher.

According to Hussein Ibish, Senior Research Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine, what we recognize today as Islamophobia is merely a reincarnation of 20th century anti-Semitism, a time when it was popular to create fantastical scenarios wherein Judaism and its followers were “dedicated to plotting and carrying out the violent overthrow of American and Christian Capitalist society.” Sound familiar? That’s because it is.

Ibish also uncovered some other popular anti-Semitic literature of the era, and the parallels between now and then are alarmingly similar. Just substitute “Muslim” for “Jews” in statements like “Jewish immigration to the United States is a weapon of this war and a mortal peril” or “Jews are religiously authorized to lie to, cheat, steal from and murder non-Jews whenever possible,” and you’ve got a winner.

Coming a little closer to September 11, the entire Muslim-American population was quick to be called the culprit for another horrific terrorist attack, this time at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. KFOR, the local news station, received an anonymous phone call that day from a man who claimed his membership to the “Nation of Islam” as well as the responsibility for the bombing. Although unaware if the claim was accurate, the news station chose to air this claim several times that day, which resulted in over 200 hate crimes being committed to Arab and Muslim Americans in the next 72 hours, according to a report by the Arab American Institute. Suffice it to say, the perpetrator was not, in fact, a Muslim, but rather Timothy McVeigh, a homegrown terrorist who claimed to be a devout Christian.

Despite the fact that those responsible for the unnecessary deaths on September 11 were by no means identical to the majority of Muslims in America (much like many devout Christians are nothing like Timothy McVeigh), and the fact that over 300 people who died that day were Muslim, the unwarranted hatred continued, this time with a vengeance. From 2000 to 2001, the amount of hate crimes (pdf) committed against Arab-Americans quadrupled.

• In San Gabriel, California, for instance, a woman dressed in Muslim clothing was attacked by another woman who yelled, “America is only for white people.” The woman was subsequently sent to the Emergency Room.
• At a bagel shop in Beverly Hills, a customer saw another woman wearing a Quran charm, and attacked her, screaming “Look what you people have done to my people.” The woman lunged at the Muslim woman, but thankfully was restrained. Meanwhile, it was the victim who called the police as the shop owner apologized only to the attacker and offered her help.
• Even those who weren’t Arab were targeted. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, two men attacked, robbed, and cut the penis of an Indian man, calling him an Arab and saying that “to be an American, you must be circumcised.”

These sentiments were only perpetuated and made legitimate by the remarks of many, like Ann Coulter, who earn their living by being small-minded and hateful. In 2001, Coulter stated, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity.” Don’t worry, Ann; some of your conservative comrades have been trying.

While by no means were any of these hate crimes condonable, their prevalence so soon after the attacks is unsurprising. But now? Still?

Recently, Terry Jones, the attention-starved Evangelical pastor who gives quite a few Muslim extremists a run for their money, created another publicity stunt with his desire to host an “International Burn a Quran Day,” only deciding against it once high-up officials like General David Petraeus took his inane ideas seriously, and thereby spread Jones’ hateful and bigoted beliefs to an entire population of people who may never have known this Floridian fool otherwise existed.

And then there was the visceral and vitriolic reaction to the proposed construction of an Islamic Community Center close to (and by close I mean two city blocks away from) the former Twin Towers. Newt Gingrich, popular today for his extra-marital affairs and paying for nearly all of his Twitter followers, compared the community center to a Hitler memorial being built next to Auschwitz. The comparison is completely unfair and unreasonable, but if the comparison must be made, a fairer one would be that it is like stationing US troops next to the many Ground Zeros we have created in the Middle East.

And today, political leaders are quivering so much in their proverbial boots about the Islamic “takeover” that it has actually generated a substantial amount of heat in the Republican primary campaign trail. Recently, Michele Bachmann, largely under the influence of Frank Gaffney, well-known conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe, signed a pledge that rejected Sharia law. This pledge also equated homosexuality with adultery, which is something that is illegal in Bachmann’s home state of Minnesota. Funny enough, homosexuality and adultery are also considered crimes in Sharia law. Maybe Bachmann and Muslim extremists can find some common ground, after all.

In addition to calling attention to radical Islam while trying to squash it, Bachmann, along with others, has caught onto the trend of calling President Barack Obama whatever it is that she is currently afraid of. When Obama suggested that NASA increase its outreach efforts into Muslim countries, Bachmann riposted, “This leaves a lot of Americans wondering, where do this President’s interests lie?” thereby implying that Obama has a bias toward Islam. Suspiciously enough, Obama also has that name that rhymes with You-Know-Who. Bachmann, along with all other Republican fear mongers, knows that all you have to do is plant the seed to watch the paranoia flourish. And she did.

My question is, as a self-proclaimed Constitutionalist and Christian, what would it matter if Obama were a Muslim, Sephardic Jew, or a Mennonite? Both the Bill of Rights and Establishment Clause state that you may practice whatever religion you wish and not be punished or discriminated against because of it. Or to be pithier, there’s even that biblical beaut that commands Christians to “love thy neighbor.” But if it’s the violence about which Michele is concerned, she needn’t worry; democracy and Christianity both have a long history of war, oppression, and intolerance to offer.

Given how angry, scared, and bitter some Americans are about the imminent threat of the “Islamization of America,” one would think that the American Muslim must resemble some sort of blood thirsty sasquatch who seeks to implement his or her violent dogma into every aspect of peaceful American life. Wrong. Or that, you know, these Muslim Americans are really angry with how they’re being treated by the general public. Wrong again.

The results to a survey given randomly to over 1,000 Muslim Americans by the Pew Research Center are more telling about our own fear, hopelessness, and anger than theirs. For example, while 24% of the general population believes that Muslim support for Islamic extremism in the US is increasing, only 4% of Muslims (those who would actually know if this is true) agree. A mere 2% have a “very favorable” view of Al-Qaeda, much like there are a few handfuls of idiots out there that actually think white supremacy still makes one iota of sense. Furthermore, only 49% of those surveyed identify themselves as Muslims first and foremost. If that number seems alarming to you, fret not; 70% of White Evangelical Christians in the United States identify themselves as Christian before they do American.

The survey also unfortunately highlights the effects of Islamophobia: the majority of those surveyed report that they have received suspicious looks, been called offensive names, or have been singled out in airports or by other law enforcement. Furthermore, an additional 25% state that their mosques and Islamic centers have been targets of controversy and downright hostility.

Despite targeting and racial profiling, Muslim-Americans still are pretty satisfied with life in the United States. In fact, a majority of them say that the quality of life in America is better than their home countries, and that they want to adopt American customs and ways of life. And amid recessions and unemployment woes, it seems that these “outsiders” believe more in the “American Dream” than many of us “insiders” do: a whopping 74% of all Muslim-Americans surveyed believe that people can get ahead if they work hard, compared to the general public’s less enthusiastic 62% consensus. And no, these aren’t people born here and therefore inherently less pathogenic; 63% of those surveyed are first generation immigrants, 45% of whom have only been here since 1990.

And so in coping with the devastating effects of hate, we decided to respond with more hate, thereby more closely resembling a Hammurabi-esque form of “justice” than the international vanguard of justice and equality that we claim to be. The truth is that we don’t strengthen our country or honor the deaths of our loved ones by prescribing the same hatred and intolerance at which we were thrust that terrible September morning. We regain our national strength and honor them by loving thy neighbor, or, as expressed in the Quran, “[doing] good to […] those in need, neighbors who are near, [or] who are strangers.” More importantly, we honor those we lost by heeding their example: engaging in meaningful international and intercultural exchanges of ideas, goods, and services, realizing that the benefits of working together far outweigh those than when we do not.

Savannah Cox is a Foreign Languages/International Studies and Political Science double major at Bellarmine University, and has recently returned from the University of Granada, where she studied Spanish and Political Science. She has interned for the World Affairs Council of Kentucky and Southern Indiana as well as Congressman John Yarmuth. In her free time, she enjoys reading, strumming a ukulele, and consuming large amounts of salty carbohydrates.

Right-wing think-tanks fuelling Islamophobia, report suggests

Source | By Hamed Chapman

Two of the country’s most influential right-wing think-tanks have used the fear of terrorism and of Islam to push forward an authoritarian political agenda on the Conservative-led Government, according to a new study entitled The Cold War on British Muslims.

The report shows how the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC) and Policy Exchange have rejected counter-terrorism policies based on public safety and have instead sought to revive discredited counter-subversion policies of the Cold War era which targeted a generation of trade union leaders and peace activists including future Labour ministers.

Published by Spinwatch, which monitors PR and spin, it warns that the policies advocated by the neo-Con think-tanks, and apparently endorsed by the Coalition Government, will have “grave consequences for British politics if they are not challenged.”

“Such an approach will inevitably mean the curtailment of civil liberties and the narrowing of political debate. For British Muslims the consequences may be even more serious,” the report says.

“A community already facing routine vilification, racial intimidation and violence would potentially face even greater monitoring, intimidation and harassment by the state,” it said.

The Islamophobic undercurrent of such policies, it concluded, risk “further fuelling the racist violence against Muslims perpetrated by groups like the British National Party (BNP) and the English Defence League (EDL) – ironically the very extremism that organisations like the CSC and Policy Exchange claim oppose.”

The study examining the UK’s two leading radical think-tanks was carried out before Norway’s worst-ever terrorist atrocities, but is seen timely following the concern about the dangers posed by far-right extremists peddling an Islamophobic agenda.

It found that both CSC and Policy Exchange were funded by wealthy businessmen and financiers and conservative and pro-Israel trusts and foundations, who, inspired by the operations against peace activists and trade unionists during the Cold War, were explicitly seeking to revive the tradition of political counter-subversion.

“Their modern targets are politically engaged Muslims, liberals and leftists, as well as liberal institutions such as schools, universities and public libraries,” it said.

“Their efforts should be understood as a response to a resurgence in progressive political movements which have challenged the militarism of the United States, Britain and Israel, as well as the model of globalisation championed by these states.”

Three influential Government ministers, Michael Gove, David Willets and Ed Vaizey, who are members of the British neo-Con movement, were identified as being in charge of universities, schools and libraries.

The report suggested that even Prime Minister, David Cameron, though initially reluctant to publicly associate himself too closely with the neo-conservatives, took part in announcing a so-called war on multiculturalism, when advocating a “muscular liberalism” in defence of Western values during his Munich speech in February this year.

Co-author of the report, Professor David Miller of Strathclyde University, said that the policies advocated by the two-think-tanks “inevitably mean the curtailment of civil liberties and the narrowing of political debate.” The consequences the Professor warned, “for British Muslims though will be even more serious.” Revelations about them “arguably calls into question their ability to produce fair and balanced research and certainly underlines the need for greater transparency over the funding of think-tanks,” he said.

Germany’s Unhealthy Obsession with Islam

A Commentary by Rolf Schieder

German Islamophobes hold that their more liberal opponents are do-gooder Islamophiles and cultural relativists. German critics of Islamophobia claim their more conservative opponents are scare-mongers and slanderers. What both groups have in common is an obsession with Islam that doesn’t do Muslims, Christians or secularists any good.

The way the
politically motivated murders of 77 Norwegian children, adolescents and adults by a right-wing extremist were interpreted by the media as an attack on Islam was downright eerie. There were hardly any Muslims among the victims, nor was a mosque in Oslo blown up. It was not the beginning of a crusade against Islam. The victims were overwhelmingly young social democrats, who, if they could be assigned to a religious category at all, were mainly members of the Lutheran state church.

The killer, Anders Breivik, believes that the “Islamization” of Europe is a threat. But what he finds even more threatening is the “cultural Marxism” practiced by his fellow Norwegians. For him, their liberalism is a sign of cowardice and weakness. The term “cultural Marxism” is a reference to “cultural Bolshevism,” a concept from the 1920s, when lamentations about a general cultural decline were part of the standard repertoire of conservative political parties. Members of Germany’s so-called Conservative Revolution (ed’s note: mainly active in the period between World War I and World War II) saw the reasons for that decline in capitalism and consumerism, Westernization and individualization. In this sense, it is entirely correct to identify this mental climate as Breivik’s inspiration, as the historian Volker Weiss did in a recent opinion piece for SPIEGEL ONLINE.

But what does one gain from calling the killer a “right-wing brother of the jihadists,” as Weiss does, and characterizing the events in Norway as “the Talibanization of the Christian right”? This reinforces the old prejudice of the European left, namely, that religion in itself is always and exclusively dangerous. Yet this overlooks the fact that it was political, non-religious worldviews that inflicted endless suffering on humanity in the 20th century. It also suggests that there is a worldwide ecumenical movement of religions that are prepared to use violence and that have become a threat to the non-religious. In Weiss’s mind, the events in Norway represent a “fatal embrace” between “crusaders and jihadists.”

But if one is to establish a commonality between right-wing extremists like Breivik and jihadists, it lies not in a violent ecumenical movement, but in the shared psychosocial circumstances of the perpetrators. Terrorism is a problem among culturally uprooted, politically radical angry young men who are often educated but unsuccessful. They are men who rebel against a world in which they no longer feel at home. They have higher expectations of the world than it could ever fulfill.

In his influential book “Männerphantasien” (“Male Fantasies”), the German sociologist Klaus Theweleit offers a plausible explanation for the relationship between fascism and delusions of masculinity. If we consider the narcissistic outpourings of the mass murderer behind the Oslo and Utøya attacks, it is not difficult to recognize that he too dreamed the dream of the masculine knight — depicted as courageous, tough, white, potentially brutal but ultimately irresistible — who acts as the savior of a society portrayed as corruptible, soft, permissive, comfortable, feminine and in urgent need of purification. For Breivik, the sympathy that society expresses for the victims is presumably additional proof of its decadence. His goal was not to combat the Muslims, but to rescue his own society from disintegration.

A Sign of What Is Lacking

What, then, is the source of this obsession with Islam? Fifteen years ago, there were about 2 million Turkish immigrants in Germany. Today, Germany’s immigrants from Turkey are often lumped into a single category of “Muslims.” Their critics say that it is not Turkish parents’ own lack of education that prevents their children from doing well in school, but their religious affiliation. Muslim “headscarf girls” (ed’s note: a phrase coined by the controversial German author Thilo Sarrazin) are characterized as both a threat to feminism and dangerous baby-making machines obsessed with “demographic jihad.” Some cite the supposed threat of Muslim parallel societies, apparently ignoring the fact that for centuries Germans have lived in parallel societies consisting of Catholics and Protestants.

“Islam” has become a social phantasm. According to the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the term “phantasm” refers to a negated and repressed lack. As well as individual phantasms, which point to a repressed deficiency and to unattainable objects of desire, there are also societal obsessions, which relate to socially repressed deficiencies and unattained desires. The phantasm does not describe a real object. Instead, it indicates what is lacking.

What are these deficiencies? What is lacking? It isn’t the same for everyone.
Thilo Sarrazin decries what he sees as a lack of German children. The German politician Klaus von Dohnanyi believes immigrants are more devout than Germans. Others admire their family values. Turks who celebrate loudly and raucously after their team has won a football match are praised for their national pride. We even grudgingly acknowledge the willingness of suicide bombers to sacrifice their lives. Our own population seems lazy, indecisive, fearful, spoiled and endlessly demanding in comparison.

The only possible conclusion seems to be that — to quote the title of Sarrazin’s best-selling book — Germany is doing itself in. But despite the commercial success of Sarrazin’s apocalyptic tome, it did not trigger any tangible change within German society. Thus, the faction of Islam’s critics continues to suffer in the midst of a population that supposedly lacks the collective will to defend itself.

We Are Actually Discussing Ourselves

Opposing this culturally pessimistic faction are the secularists who do not subscribe to the phantasm of Islam as the more aggressive and more powerful religion, but instead regard Islam as an anachronistic and — given their own belief in a secular society — ultimately illegitimate phenomenon. To these German intellectuals, the fact that an ailing Christian Church tries to help Muslims gain public recognition — for example, by advocating chairs in Islamic studies at universities — in a bid to save itself from demise, is doubly vexing.

For German secularists, what is lacking is a secular society. But Germany is still a long way from that. Almost two-thirds of Germans are members of a church, a number that, when compared with the 2 percent of Germans who are members of a political party, speaks to the still robust state of organized religion. Although we live in a secular state, it is not a secular society that the state seeks to protect, but a society that has a vibrant diversity of religious beliefs and worldviews and is therefore pluralistic.

There is a range of other deficiencies, wishes, fears and desires that motivate the phantasm of “Islam,” from the yearning for a homogeneous German population to a highly individualized social model that deconstructs all things institutional. The real problem is that we are not actually discussing Islam at all. Instead, we are — in the sense that we are talking about what we are not — actually discussing ourselves. For this reason, I would give the following piece of Kant-inspired advice: “Have the courage to use your own religio-political reason without referring to the Other of Islam.” It is not the dispute over the phantasm of “Islam” that is productive, but the impartial analysis of the goals of the religio-political parties that are at odds in our country.

This would remove an enormous burden from the everyday lives of Muslims. They could simply view themselves as a religious minority among others, like the Jews for example, a minority that seeks to practice its religion within the framework of what is legally permissible — nothing more and nothing less. Problems relating to education, integration and equality could then be addressed as such in a nuanced and appropriate manner without being immediately framed within the context of a culture war. German Muslims would be relieved of the need to justify themselves every time an Islamist suicide bomber commits an attack somewhere in the world. They would be seen primarily as German citizens and only secondarily as members of a world religion.

This would make it easier to differentiate between the idea of “Islam” and the many ways to be a Muslim man or woman in Germany, a country that guarantees religious freedom. Finally, the various Muslim organizations could calmly coordinate among themselves, without having to confront external pressures, regarding how they want to jointly interact with mainstream society.

Civilizing Religion

Without a fantastical view of “Islam,” the German debate over religious policy would then become both tougher and clearer. Secularists, who seek to make religion an entirely private affair, and so-called culturalists, who seek to give priority to Christianity, could no longer sustain their joint campaign against Islam. They would be forced to recognize that the respective social models they envision are completely contradictory. Constitutional liberals, on the one hand, would have to join forces with the secularists in demanding equal rights for all religions, thereby opposing the culturalists. On the other hand, they would have to support the culturalists in preventing what the secularists seek, namely, making religious matters private and eliminating religion from the public sphere.

Within such a framework, groups such as the “ex-Muslims” would also lose their unique credibility. When, for example, the German-Egyptian political scientist and Islam critic Hamed Abdel-Samad advocates limiting the influence of organized religion in Germany “to detoxify this society,” one could argue that the established religions in Germany promote anti-totalitarian and individual freedom and that they can look back on a tradition of keeping civil society alive. Germany’s religious policy is not based on the elimination of religions from the public sphere, but the civilization of religions through public religious education.

Debunking stereotypes of Muslim Americans

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT | Salon.com

Gallup asks Americans of different faiths about terrorism, prejudice and foreign policy — with surprising results

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Gallup has released a major new study on attitudes of the Muslim community in the United States, as well as views of Muslims among other religious groups.

The report, which is based primarily on polling conducted in 2010, covers politics, social identity and religious engagement. And some of the results radically undermine popular stereotypes of Muslims Americans. They, for example, are the religious group that is most likely to reject attacks on civilians by individuals (like terrorists) or the military.

Muslim Americans are also more likely than any other religious group to report discrimination in the last 12 months.

For context and analysis of the report (.pdf), I spoke with Mohamed Younis, a Washington-based senior analyst at the Abu Dhabi Gallup Center.

What was the single most surprising result in this poll to you?

It would definitely be the fact that Jewish Americans are more likely than Muslim Americans to say that Muslims face prejudice in the United States. Sixty-six percent of Jewish Americans agree that most Americans are prejudiced toward Muslims in the United States; 60 percent of Muslim Americans agree with that statement. That was something I don’t think a lot of people expected.

Do you have any theories as to why that is?

At the study’s launch event, Rabbi David Saperstein argued this may be because the Jewish community has a large component of people who are socially and politically liberal-minded, and more likely to find that there is prejudice against minorities and want something done about it. Another reason could be that Jews generally are a community that has experienced a lot of distrust, allegations of disloyalty and prejudice — whether it’s in the U.S. or in Europe. In this poll, American Muslim and American Jewish perspectives, even on foreign policy issues like Iraq, are all very similar and closer to each other than to a lot of the other religions.

What about the fact that Muslim Americans are actually most likely to oppose attacks on civilians?

We asked the question in a couple of ways. We asked about military attacks on civilians, and we also asked about individual or nonmilitary group attacks on civilians. We found that Muslim Americans have the highest rates of saying that it is never morally justified. Some of the other religious groups were much more likely to say that military attacks on civilians could be justified. I think what you’re seeing there is a confidence in the military — and the idea that a more institutionalized type of violence will be done in a more responsible manner. Muslims see it differently. That’s consistent with their confidence level in the military, which, at 70 percent, is the lowest of any religious group in the U.S. Historically in Gallup polling, the military tends to have rates of confidence in the high 80s and low 90s all the time.

Also to a greater degree because of their faith, Muslim Americans identify with civilians dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s fair to say most likely Muslim Americans are keeping track of what’s happening in these countries more closely than the average person in America who has no connection to that part of the world whatsoever. It’s important to note that Muslim American attitudes about violence and civilians are actually very consistent with the polling we do globally within Muslim-majority countries. Muslims in countries across Asia and the Middle East also have extremely high rates of respondents who say that military attacks or individual attacks on civilians are never justified.

Is there one area of the poll where the response contradicted a popular stereotype about Muslim Americans?

Definitely one area is in the identity question. We asked how strongly respondents identified with a series of things: the United States, your religion, people around the world in your religious group, etc. What we found is that Muslim Americans are as likely to say that they extremely strongly or very strongly identify with the United States as they are to say about identifying with their religion. In the discourse in the United States about Muslim Americans is this fear that if Muslims organize on the level of religious community, they become more isolated, less loyal to the U.S. and less integrated. But we actually found the opposite. We found that those Muslims who do attend places of worship regularly are actually more likely to be politically active, registered to vote, and are less likely to report stress or anger the day before the interview.

The report also includes some recommendations. What are the most important?

One thing we have been talking about with civil society organizations is increasing the opportunity for education and engagement in and among faith groups, particularly with the Jewish American community. That’s because we found there are a lot of similarities between Muslim and Jewish Americans on many of the poll questions. The fact that we see less of a suspicion of Muslim Americans among Jews than among other groups shows that there is fertile ground for cooperation.

With regards to government, the rate of reported discrimination among Muslim Americans was 48 percent. They’re the most likely religious group to say they’ve experienced discrimination in the last year. That’s on par with Hispanic and African-American rates of reporting discrimination. So we’re suggesting there needs to be a more comprehensive nationwide strategy to study the level of prejudice and discrimination targeted toward Muslims specifically. And a majority of all the other religious groups said that Muslim Americans are facing prejudice in the United States. So the fact that we have such a high rate of respondents who report this who are not Muslim means that this is something that needs to be investigated more closely.

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More: Justin Elliott

Peter King and “Prislam”: Round 2 of Muslim American Radicalization Hearings

Source

Rep. Peter King held his second round of Homeland Security subcommittee hearings on the radicalization of Muslim Americans. This time the focus was on radicalization in our prison system and the threat it poses to the USA, some witnesses and Congressmen termed the concept “prislam,” a silly neologism that gives me headaches just hearing. Here’s hoping the word doesn’t take off.

It must be repeated from the very beginning that King is tarnished by his past Islamophobic and anti-Muslim comments. A point which has been made by countless journalists as well as by fellow Congressmen/women during the first hearing. He hasn’t apologized for, or retracted, any of those comments, which makes the present populist exercise he is involved in even more deplorable.

King also lacks all credibility considering he supported IRA terrorists for over a decade. Only in the magical realism world of Washington politics would someone who supported terrorists be the chairman of a committee discussing homegrown terrorism and radicalization, unless King is now going to argue that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?”

Now that we’ve established the serious problems with King chairing such a committee, lets get to today’s hearing. The hearing was less of a circus than the first one in March, mainly due to the absence of such clowns and non-experts as Zuhdi Jasser, Melvin Bledsoe, and co., but that doesn’t mean that it was any better.

Aside from the contribution made by Prof. Brent Useem much of the testimony was unsubstantial. Prof. Useem essentially summed it all up when he said, “Prisons are infertile ground for the growth of radicalization.” He had a mountain of evidence to back this quote up, which he submitted to the committee.

The most eloquent, touching and thoughtful questions and comments came from Rep.Hansen Clarke, Rep. Jackson Lee and Rep. Richardson, who did excellent jobs in questioning the premise of the hearings, highlighting its discriminatory nature and also providing perspective when it comes to violence and radicalization at large in our prison system.

Here are some choice cuts:

Rep.Hansen Clarke:

“You know what pisses me off? It’s not about Islam. It’s about the prison system,” …”It’s about the prison culture. We’ve got to change it.”

Rep. Jackson Lee:

“If we look to the informational, we should include an analysis of how Christian militants are intending to undermine the laws of this nation.”

“My political correctness is based on this document, ‘the Constitution’”.

Rep. Laura Richardson:

“I disagree with the scope of this committee, I deem that these hearings are discriminatory.”

Patrick Dunleavy:

“In the Attica and Sing-Sing prison riots, Muslims helped decrease violence and stem deaths.”

The WTF comment of the day from Michael Downing:

“Gangs as urban terrorists, the distinction is that they don’t target innocent civilians”

Peter King attempted to defend these hearings and the scapegoating that him and his colleagues are parlaying by saying,

“I have repeatedly said the overwhelming majority of Muslim Americans are outstanding Americans”…“Yet, the first radicalization hearing which this committee held in March of this year was met with much mindless hysteria — led by radical groups such as the Council of Islamic Relations and their allies in the liberal media personified by the New York Times.”

He thereby effectively made it about CAIR once again, which actually stands for Council on American Islamic Relations not Council of Islamic Relations. By doing so he dodged addressing the core criticisms leveled at him and the premise of these hearings, by not only CAIR, but a wide range of groups.

Such a hearing, aside from stigmatizing a whole group of people is also a waste of time, resources and energy,

Last year, the bipartisan Congressional Research Service determined that only a single example of homegrown terrorism stemmed from an individual who was radicalized in prison. CRS concluded that prisons, “while seen by some as potential hotbeds of radicalization, have not played a large role in producing homegrown terrorists.”

So whats all the fuss about?

Peter King wants to sharpen his hawkish GOP credentials, pander to the anti-Muslim base of his party and present an image of being tough on terror, while also continuing the scapegoating and fear-mongering of Muslim Americans.

These hearings only reinforce the point that Muslim Americans have been making the past few years, they are being unfairly targeted and feel besieged as a community. Rep. Mike Honda, a Japanese-American sympathizes, drawing on his own experience of having been interned by the USA during World War II,

Make no mistake. Growing up in internment camp Amache in Colorado was no joy ride — just look at the pictures. We were treated like cattle in those camps…We look back, as a nation, and we know this was wrong. We look back and know that this was a result of “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” We look back and know that an entire ethnicity was said to be, and ultimately considered, the enemy. We know that internment happened because few in Washington were brave enough to say “no.”

We know all this, and yet our country is now, within my lifetime, repeating the same mistakes from our past. The interned 4-year-old in me is crying out for a course correction so that we do not do to others what we did unjustly to countless Japanese-Americans.

This time, instead of creating an ethnic enemy, Rep. King is creating a religious enemy. Because of prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of Republican leadership, King is targeting the entire Muslim-American community. Similar to my experience, they are become increasingly marginalized and isolated by our policies.

Mike Honda’s words are like a clarion call to our political elites to recognize the dangerous path this nation is headed toward. Lets hope it won’t take another internment camp scenario for our leaders to wake up.

American Muslims Still Live in a Climate of Hate

by Asraa Mustufa | Source

News of Osama bin Laden’s death has not come without more incidents of backlash towards American Muslims. These individual episodes reflect not only the Islamophobia rampant in this country, but also the government policies that have fostered a culture of hate and suspicion towards law-abiding Muslims.

A mosque in Maine was vandalized with the messages “Osama today, Islam tomorrow” and “Go Home.” In Houston, a schoolteacher was disciplined for racially profiling a Muslim ninth-grader by asking if she was grieving her uncle’s death on Monday. Also this week, Mohamed Kotbi, an Arab waiter who is suing his employer, the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, for religious and racial discrimination following the 9/11 attacks, has reported more taunts from co-workers following bin Laden’s death. 

While feds assured Muslims and Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Michigan this week that they would not be profiled in the aftermath of the al-Qaeda leader’s death, for some, it’s hard to imagine a Department of Homeland Security that doesn’t discriminate against Muslims absent a major overhaul of the system. As Seth Freed Wessler reported on Wednesday for Colorlines, racial and religious profiling has been a central feature of the national security apparatus erected after 9/11. Immigration and law enforcement policies have been targeted against citizen and immigrant Muslims or those from Muslim-populated countries in a way that treats them indiscriminately as security threats. While the DHS recently dropped their controversial NSEERS or “Special Registration” program, profiling remains official policy at US borders, airports, in the immigration system, and by local police. 

The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations recently filed complaints with the DHS and DOJ citing dozens of reports from constituents who were detained at the Canadian border without predication of crimes or charges and asked questions about their worship habits, including how often and where they pray. DHS is launching an investigation into the claims. 

Local police are also trained and instructed to view Islamic religious activity with suspicion. The NYPD published a report on homegrown terrorism in 2007, which listed giving up drinking or gambling, wearing Islamic clothing, growing a beard, and becoming involved in social activism and community issues as indications of a person’s growing “radicalization.” 

NYU Law School’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and the Asian American Legal Defense Fund (AALDEF) released a report this week entitled “Under the Radar.” Among the issues addressed, the study details how lower evidentiary standards and lack of due process rights and transparency are used to subject Muslims to unsubstantiated terrorism allegations, prolonged detention, or deportation in cases involving ordinary or minor immigration violations.

“The overall effect of these practices is that religious, cultural, and political affiliations and lawful activities of Muslims are being construed as dangerous terrorism-related factors to justify detention, deportation, and denial of immigration benefits,” the report reads.

Although many are hopeful that the demise of the face of terrorism might usher a turning point in how American Muslims are viewed and treated, the death of Osama bin Laden does not change the fact that profiling of Muslims is not only sanctioned, but employed by various facets of government. Such policies help create a climate in which people feel safe acting and speaking out of hate and suspicion towards Muslims.

Anti-terrorism training draws scrutiny

By Shaun Waterman | The Washington Times

Anti-Islam stereotypes, political correctness are rival fears

Two senators have launched an inquiry into federally funded counterterrorism training for state and local police, saying they are concerned some of the instruction includes inflammatory and inaccurate anti-Muslim stereotyping. But the move has ignited fears that political correctness might undermine the training.

“We are concerned … that state and local law enforcement agencies are being trained by individuals who not only do not understand the ideology of violent Islamist extremism, but also cast aspersions on a wide swath of ordinary Americans merely because of their religious affiliation,” wrote Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, Connecticut independent, and Susan M. Collins, Maine Republican, in a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet A. Napolitano.

The two senators, who work closely together as the chairman and ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, asked for details of the two departments’ grant funding for counterterrorism training and for information about any standards or guidelines that training had to meet to qualify for federal money — including instructors’ qualifications.

The senators said staff inquiries had uncovered evidence that “improper training may not be limited to mere isolated occurrences.”

Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, billions of federal dollars have been poured into grant programs for state and local police and other first responders, with much of that spent on counterterrorism training. But there are few standards for such courses, and the senators fret that some trainers may be unqualified and some training counterproductive.

The senators cited recent news reports of “self-appointed counterterrorism training experts as engaging in vitriolic diatribes and making assertions such as “Islam is a highly violent, radical religion.”

“But Islam demonstrably is a violent religion,” said Robert Spencer, an author and blogger whose writings on Islam have proved controversial. “Not every Muslim is violent, but the religion teaches and encourages violence against non-Muslims.”

Mr. Spencer says he has taken part in counterterrorism training for U.S. military and intelligence agencies and the FBI, but not state and local police. He told The Washington Times he was concerned the senators’ inquiry could lead to “politically correct guidelines to stop people teaching the truth about Islam, especially from the Obama administration.”

Mr. Spencer, who has a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has studied Islam for three decades and written 10 books on the faith.

Walid Phares, another counterterrorism consultant who has helped train state and local police forces, told The Times that organized Islamic extremists were “trying to confuse the public by mixing criticism of unprofessional training with criticism of the best strategic analysis available in the United States.”

He said he supported the senators’ work.

At the root of many of the disagreements about the content of the training courses are differences about the nature of Islam and its relationship to extremist terrorist groups like al Qaeda.

Many see political Islam — a vision of the religion as not just a personal faith, but a blueprint for society and its laws — as the real enemy in the war against terrorism and as a toxic influence on the American body politic.

But the Obama administration, like its predecessor, says Islam is a religion of peace and generally urges officials not to describe al Qaeda and other terrorist groups as Islamic, but simply as violent extremists.

The Department of Homeland Security, in a statement released Tuesday evening, said the agency understands the senators’ concerns.

All DHS grant recipients providing training to state and local law enforcement partners “are expected to reflect the same professionalism and courtesy that is expected of all DHS and DHS component personnel,” according to the statement.

USA vs Al-Arian – on freedom of speech and political persecution

Source

”USA vs AL-ARIAN” is an intimate family portrait that documents the American-Muslim family Al-Arian’s desperate attempt to fight terrorism charges leveled by the US Government.

In February 2003, university professor and pro-Palestinian civil rights activist Sami Al-Arian was arrested in Tampa, Florida, charged with providing material support to a terror organization. For two-and-a-half years he was held in solitary confinement, denied basic privileges and given limited access to his attorneys. While the Bush administration considered this a landmark case in its campaign against international terrorism, Sami Al-Arian claims he was targeted in an attempt to silence his political views.

The film follows Sami Al-Arian’s wife Nahla and their five children throughout his 6 month-long trial. It is an intimate family portrait that documents the strain brought on by the trial, a battle waged both in court and in the media. In the film a tight-knit family unravels before our very eyes as trial preparations, strategy and spin consume their lives. This is a nightmare come to life, as a man is prosecuted for his beliefs rather than his actions.

The film raises questions on whether it is possible for a man like Sami Al-Arian to receive a fair trial in the United States given the current hostile environment against Muslims and the strong US support of Israel. It presents democracy in a new light in a post-9/11 culture of fear, where “security measures” trump free speech and punishment is meted out in the name of protection. It is an example of how the American government’s hunt for terrorists is a struggle that can be seen from multiple angles.

Engaged lobbyist

Dr. Sami Al-Arian has been a tireless voice for freedom and justice at home and around the world. He helped empower the Muslim community and was dedicated to raising awareness in the US about the plight of the Palestinians. He organized voter registration drives, supported candidates for public office, and lobbied numerous policymakers. Dr. Al-Arian attended briefings at the White House and Justice Department, advised several members of Congress, and met both Presidents Clinton and Bush.

The evidence presented against Dr. Al-Arian consisted mostly of wiretapped phone calls, his political speeches and his writings. During the trial, the US government brought witnesses to terror attacks in Israel, but did not provide any evidence directly tying Dr. Al-Arian to terrorism or to any criminal activity. There was no evidence that any violent act took place, or that any violent act was ever planned to take place in the United States. The jury did not convict him on any of the counts against him.

The Trailer

Watch the Documentary Online For Free

United States of Fear: How Right-Wing Lawmakers Will Use Absurd Terrorism Conspiracy Theories to Curb Your Freedoms

Source | Stephan Salisbury

There are some things to be thankful for.
The woman who puzzled over Hispanics in her audience of high-school students and suggested they looked “Asian” was defeated in her run for the Senate in Nevada. The guy who called Islam a cult was knocked out of the Tennessee gubernatorial race. The bizarre candidate who threatened to “take out” a reporter was brushed aside in his bid for the governorship of New York.

Despite the electoral failures of Sharron Angle, Ron Ramsey, Carl Paladino, and a host of others inhabiting what used to be America’s political peripheries, the next Congress will have a decidedly fringy tone. No wonder the wilder types already there are looking forward to the January 2011 legislative session with such relish: so many investigations crying out to be launched; so many dictators and thugs still hanging on in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela; terrorism in the streets of Portland; foreign terrorists flocking to America; secret government documents splayed across the front pages of our newspapers.

They wonder if the U.S. hasn’t simply become a pitiful, helpless giant. But the rest of us ought to wonder just what kind of politics is going to grow in the strange, rich Petri dish of the new Congress.

Consider just one area that will be a major focus of Congressional interest: immigration, an issue that will gain potency as it melds into the rhetoric of terror.

Foreigners and terrorists: Really, what’s the difference? That the nation has grown and prospered precisely because of adaptive immigration is beside the point, an obvious reflection of someone caught in the old mindset of the September 10th world. Interestingly, though, only about 8% of those who cast ballots in the 2010 election cited immigration concerns as their primary motivator. Of those who did, however, nearly 70% were Republicans.

With their new House majority, the Republicans plan to pay some major attention to that 8% of the motivated electorate. Immigration matters will play out largely in two key House committees, Homeland Security and Judiciary, and critical members of each committee told me they intend to investigate past actions of the Obama administration “fully and completely,” block any kind of comprehensive immigration reform, expose supposed lax enforcement of immigration laws and inadequate resources devoted to — as one Judiciary member put it — “boots on the ground.” Terrorism will play a key role in hearings on virtually all these topics, most dramatically, no doubt, in focusing attention on what Republicans view as a shadowy Latin network of terrorist infiltrators seeking to exploit the U.S. failure to protect its own southern border.

Most people are probably blissfully unaware of a burgeoning conspiracy in which Cuba and Venezuela are reputedly assisting African and Middle Eastern extremists as they slip into the United States and fan out across the country. That lack of awareness will not last long, however, if the new Republican majority in the House has anything to do with it. Key representatives are already promising to pound the drums ever more loudly and so expose this supposed burst of clandestine activity over the next couple of years. More on that in a moment.

Peter King, vocal New York Republican opponent of the Lower Manhattan Islamic cultural center, aka the mosque at Ground Zero, will soon become chair of the Homeland Security Committee. He has made it all too clear that he intends to “investigate” with abandon and continue to birddog that dreaded Manhattan “mosque.” King’s focus will serve to keep the specter of imminent terrorism directly before the country, infusing all manner of issues with claims and insinuations about bombs, plots, and massive threats.

He has made it no secret that he wants hearings on the administration’s failure to put more money into protecting New York City from the threat of nuclear terrorism, on what kinds of screw-ups led to the Fort Hood shootings last year, and on what King views as the Obama administration’s unconscionable plans to close Guantanamo and the Justice Department’s plans to hold 9/11-related trials in New York civilian courts. (That neither of these “plans” is exactly at the top of the Obama agenda anymore won’t matter a bit.)

King is a firm believer in Fortress America, too: in the creation, above all, of an impregnable fence along the border with Mexico. For want of such a fence, the nation’s “homeland security” will, he insists, be eternally “at risk,” as he wrote Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano in a joint letter with Darrell Issa, the California congressman who will conduct his own set of investigations as new chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

King sees Islam as virtually synonymous with violent extremism and, during last summer’s raging controversy over whether Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s proposed Manhattan Islamic center should be built, he called for an investigation of its funders. (In fact, there are, as yet, no funders.) Now, developers of the Islamic center — called Park51 — are seeking public economic development funds aimed at blighted downtown Manhattan. King doesn’t like that either. “It’s an affront to the memory of all those who were murdered on 9/11,” he insists. “This shows a gross insensitivity to the most fundamental feelings of New Yorkers and to those murdered on 9/11 it is a slap in the face that is a terrible insult.”

That Islam can be linked to terrorism is a no-brainer for the congressman and many other conservatives and Republicans. This same thinking has now infected the controversy over WikiLeaks. Why not, King wonders, label the largely volunteer WikiLeaks group a terrorist organization, thus facilitating seizure of its assets and arrests of anyone remotely associated with it, including presumably readers? Tom Flanagan, a former aide to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, has gone one step further, offering an idea that Republican leaders and conservative commentators appear to find appealing. Flanagan has proposed assassination as the fate for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Sarah Palin seems to agree. In a note on Facebook, she likened WikiLeaks to al-Qaeda. Of Assange, she wrote, “He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands. His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban. Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?” (There is, in fact, no evidence whatsoever that Assange has “blood on his hands.”)

This violent thinking has spread like the Ebola virus through conservative circles. William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, typically wants to know why Assange and his colleagues have not been “neutralized” by the U.S. government. Mike Huckabee, a former governor as well as past and possibly future Republican presidential candidate, suggests those associated with the leaks get the death penalty — but only after fair trials. “Any lives they endangered, they’re personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands,” he said. (One wonders why there is such a focus on bloody hands in the Republican Party.)

All Issues Are Terrorism Issues

What should be increasingly clear is that Republican members of the incoming Congress are looking for terrorism in ever more startling places. In fact, it seems that, for them, all domestic issues are potentially terrorist issues, perhaps none more so than immigration. Even in the current lame-duck session of Congress, their unsettling rhetoric has enswathed immigration in such claims. Take the debate over the Dream Act, which would provide an avenue to citizenship via military service or college attendance for foreign-born young people brought to this country at a young age by their undocumented immigrant parents.

Steve King, the Iowa Republican who will chair the Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee, has been deriding the DREAM Act as a “special amnesty program [and] affirmative action program for illegals.” Should it become law, he warns of a day when student “illegals” would find themselves “sitting in the classroom next to… a widow or a widower or a son or a daughter of someone who has lost their life in Iraq or Afghanistan defending our liberty and our freedom.” Senator Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican, goes King one better, suggesting that the DREAM Act could well pave the way for another 9/11 plotted by those “from the dangerous regions of the Middle East.”

Former San Diego mayor Roger Hedgecock, now a popular, nationally syndicated conservative talk radio show host, claims the DREAM Act is par for the course “in an era when the Obama regime considers terrorists citizens and citizens suspects — when Jesus’ birth is considered myth, but Obama’s birth is gospel.”

Steve King believes up to four million illegal immigrants a year are piling into the United States. These, he told me, add up to a “huge human haystack” composed of “vicious, violent criminals” and an unknown number of bona fide terrorists.

“As a sovereign nation, we must control our borders,” King argues. “We must ensure that terrorists do not infiltrate the United States. We must tighten and strengthen border control efforts so that illegal aliens and drug smugglers do not enter our country.” A building contractor back home in Iowa, King has even designed a border fence to show how easily the country could staunch the tide of “illegals” from Mexico and, of course, the terrorists among them. “We do this with livestock all the time,” he explained, as he described the fence to me.

Terrorists at the Door

The idea that terrorists are probing the southern border in the guise of immigrants has recently become part and parcel of Republican border-policy mythology. Michael McCaul, Texas Republican and current ranking minority member of the homeland security intelligence subcommittee, told me that “the border is going to be a focus” of extensive congressional investigation. “Who is coming into the country?” he wondered rhetorically in our conversation and added, “There is a massive tide of immigration without control.”

Among those furtively crossing the southern border, McCaul believes, are an unknown number of terrorist operatives. This past year, he notes, authorities arrested Anthony Tracy, an American Muslim, and charged him with assisting nearly 300 undocumented Somalis in entering the United States. Tracy told U.S. authorities that a Cuban official in Africa helped provide papers for the immigrants, enabling them to reach Mexico. From there, the Somalis crossed over the southern U.S. border and have now vanished.

Conservative pundits and some media outlets have made much of this, suggesting members of al-Shabaab, the Somali terrorist group, are now roaming the American countryside. But there is no tangible evidence that any member of al-Shabaab entered the country with Tracy’s help, according to an immigration spokeswoman.

McCaul said the Somali case and how the Obama administration let it happen would be a key topic in hearings in which he and other Republicans will demand answers. The real question is: Did it happen at all? Immigration authorities have not only been unable to find members of al-Shabaab who entered the country from the southern border — with or without Tracy’s help — they haven’t been able to locate any of them the 300 supposed Somalis at all.

The federal judge trying the case, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, dubbed it “shaky” at Tracy’s trial. Absent any smuggled Somalis, she pointed out, the government was unable to prove anything. Given the presence of informers at the center of so many terrorism prosecutions since 9/11, it should come as no surprise that Tracy has a long and mysterious past as an informer for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and possibly the Drug Enforcement Administration as well. What that means in the Somali case remains unclear. It is, however, clear that Tracy served only a four-month federal sentence in the incident and is now chatting up authorities.

Keep in mind that murkiness is a useful political tool. It will certainly be the stuff of upcoming congressional hearings, which will echo the endless rounds of anti-communist hearings that dominated Washington in the heyday of the House Un-American Activities Committee and similar panels in the 1950s. What can’t be seen must be feared, and in the confused darkness, passionate certainty grows.

In that murky vein, Republicans also hope to expose the links they see among Iran, Hezbollah, and Latin American lands, especially Venezuela. Right-wing commentators and military analysts assert Hezbollah is increasingly active in the Colombian drug trade, is working with Mexican drug cartels, and has ties to Venezuelan authorities.

Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been increasingly vocal in denouncing Hezbollah’s reputed march toward the Rio Grande. Earlier this year, she shared her concerns with the Department of Homeland Security. Within weeks, Mexico reported that it had broken up Hezbollah operations, although what “Hezbollah” was actually doing, if anything, is difficult to say.

Nevertheless, the talk of Hezbollah on the border has grown crazily since the supposed arrest of Jameel Nasr, described in second- and third-hand news accounts as a “Hezbollah operative” in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. This arrest, initially reported in July by a Kuwaiti newspaper, has not only not been confirmed, but Homeland Security officials insist that they have no “credible information” of any terror groups on the southern border.

That apparently is not good enough for the American right-wing. They prefer to follow one of the primary laws of the post-9/11 world: whatever can be imagined is in fact true. What “could be” invariably trumps what “is.” Is it possible that supporters of Hezbollah are plotting terror attacks from bases in Tijuana? Of course it is, therefore it must be so.

Could Somalis be lining up to travel to Cuba, Mexico, and Texas? It is possible, as so much is possible, therefore it must be so. A corollary to this law is that if a falsehood or rumor is repeated often enough, it becomes so. Hence, Jameel Nasr, Hezbollah operative, who may not even exist, actually was arrested as he plotted terrorist operations for Hezbollah just south of Texas.

A more realistic appraisal of Muslim activity in Latin America comes from an overlooked WikiLeaks document, a classified cable from the U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which describes “the unique possibilities for Muslim engagement” with the U.S. in that country. Writing at the end of 2009, the consul reported that there were some Hezbollah supporters among recent Lebanese immigrants to Brazil. (That in itself is hardly surprising since Hezbollah is a popular, deeply rooted political movement that controls significant parts of southern Lebanon.)

The consul also informed Washington that such immigrants were surprisingly few in number and were completely overshadowed by the country’s mainstream Muslim leaders, who have exhibited a keen interest in and curiosity about the United States, and are opposed to extremist ideologies of any kind. These leaders, he wrote, are eager “to engage, acutely aware of the dangers of radicalism, and had solid achievements in integrating Muslim and Brazilian identities, making them an excellent example of how a unique MMC [Muslim minority community] has, by and large, carved out a positive space within a diverse Latin American country.” In other words, in the real world, the vast majority of Muslims in Latin America are eager for the same kind of stability and engagement as Muslims in the U.S.

But this view — and the importance it places on dialogue — does not fit the prevailing nativist mythology in this country or Republican and right-wing efforts to meld terrorism, Islam, and immigration into a single muddy brew (a characteristic of much public debate in the U.S. since 9/11). It appears we have entered a post-analytic world where the point of public discourse is not to make distinctions but to obliterate them.

A tiny group of radical extremists, mostly from Saudi Arabia, have become indistinguishable from a billion and a half Muslims all over the world. A bizarre and convoluted ideology, worked out to justify specific attacks on the U.S. and Egypt, has come to stand in for Islamic sacred texts and holy law. The roughly 50 al-Qaeda fighters remaining in Afghanistan have become a synecdoche for the whole of the Muslim Middle East and South Asia.

Political dissenters in the United States have been absorbed into the terrorism trope as well. Information — which is, after all, what has been disseminated by WikiLeaks — is increasingly viewed as a potential terrorist weapon. Absorbing that information (that is, reading the documents) could even amount to material support for terrorism. In such a world, the counter-terrorism efforts of the U.S. government are trained on the entire civilian population, whether through electronic monitoring or fiddling with everyone’s junk.

Former attorney general John Ashcroft noted the importance of blurring all distinctions years ago. “In this new war, our enemy’s platoons infiltrate our borders, quietly blending in with visiting tourists, students, and workers,” he proclaimed in June 2002. “They move unnoticed through our cities, neighborhoods, and public spaces. They wear no uniforms. Their camouflage is not forest green, but rather it is the color of common street clothing. Their tactics rely on evading recognition at the border and escaping detection within the United States. Their terrorist mission is to defeat America, destroy our values and kill innocent people.”

It’s all right there, hidden in plain sight. Terrorists are Muslims, Muslims are immigrants, immigrants are residents. Around it goes. Increasingly, immigration enforcement is becoming an anti-terrorism effort. Anyone and everyone is a suspect. That is the reality played out at every airport; it is the narrative touched by every monitored email and tapped telephone call.

We are a fearful nation eating away at itself and the wolves are prowling the southern borders. Welcome to Congress, 2011.

Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His most recent book is Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland.

The FBI successfully thwarts its own Terrorist plot

By Glenn Greenwald | Source
(updated below)

The FBI is obviously quite pleased with itself over its arrest of a 19-year-old Somali-American, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, who — with months of encouragement, support and money from the FBI’s own undercover agents — allegedly attempted to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon.  Media accounts are almost uniformly trumpeting this event exactly as the FBI describes it.  Loyalists of both parties are doing the same, with Democratic Party commentators proclaiming that this proves how great and effective Democrats are at stopping The Evil Terrorists, while right-wing polemicists point to this arrest as yet more proof that those menacing Muslims sure are violent and dangerous.

What’s missing from all of these celebrations is an iota of questioning or skepticism.  All of the information about this episode — all of it — comes exclusively from an FBI affidavit filed in connection with a Criminal Complaint against Mohamud.  As shocking and upsetting as this may be to some, FBI claims are sometimes one-sided, unreliable and even untrue, especially when such claims — as here — are uncorroborated and unexamined.  That’s why we have what we call “trials” before assuming guilt or even before believing that we know what happened:  because the government doesn’t always tell the complete truth, because they often skew reality, because things often look much different once the accused is permitted to present his own facts and subject the government’s claims to scrutiny.  The FBI affidavit — as well as whatever its agents are whispering into the ears of reporters — contains only those facts the FBI chose to include, but omits the ones it chose to exclude.  And even the “facts” that are included are merely assertions at this point and thus may not be facts at all.

It may very well be that the FBI successfully and within legal limits arrested a dangerous criminal intent on carrying out a serious Terrorist plot that would have killed many innocent people, in which case they deserve praise.  Court-approved surveillance and use of undercover agents to infiltrate terrorist plots are legitimate tactics when used in accordance with the law.

But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI — as they’ve done many times in the past — found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a “Terrorist plot” which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction.  Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts — and an uncritical media amplifies — its “success” to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government’s vast surveillance powers — current and future new ones — are necessary.

There are numerous claims here that merit further scrutiny and questioning.  First, the FBI was monitoring the email communications of this American citizen on U.S. soil for months (at least) with what appears to be the flimsiest basis: namely, that he was in email communication with someone in Northwest Pakistan, “an area known to harbor terrorists” (para. 5 of the FBI Affidavit).  Is that enough to obtain court approval to eavesdrop on someone’s calls and emails?  I’m glad the FBI is only eavesdropping with court approval, if that’s true, but certainly more should be required for judicial authorization than that.  Communicating with someone in Northwest Pakistan is hardly reasonable grounds for suspicion.

Second, in order not to be found to have entrapped someone into committing a crime, law enforcement agents want to be able to prove that, in the 1992 words of the Supreme Court, the accused was “was independently predisposed to commit the crime for which he was arrested.”  To prove that, undercover agents are often careful to stress that the accused has multiple choices, and they then induce him into choosing with his own volition to commit the crime.  In this case, that was achieved by the undercover FBI agent’s allegedly advising Mohamud that there were at least five ways he could serve the cause of Islam (including by praying, studying engineering, raising funds to send overseas, or becoming “operational”), and Mohamud replied he wanted to “be operational” by using exploding a bomb (para. 35-37).

But strangely, while all other conversations with Mohamud which the FBI summarizes were (according to the affidavit) recorded by numerous recording devices, this conversation — the crucial one for negating Mohamud’s entrapment defense — was not.  That’s because, according to the FBI, the undercover agent “was equipped with audio equipment to record the meeting.  However, due to technical problems, the meeting was not recorded” (para. 37). 

Thus, we have only the FBI’s word, and only its version, for what was said during this crucial — potentially dispositive — conversation.  Also strangely:  the original New York Times article on this story described this conversation at some length and reported the fact that “that meeting was not recorded due to a technical difficulty,” but the final version omitted that, instead simply repeating the FBI’s story as though it were fact:  “undercover agents in Mr. Mohamud’s case offered him several nonfatal ways to serve his cause, including mere prayer. But he told the agents he wanted to be ‘operational,’ and perhaps execute a car bombing.”

Third, there are ample facts that call into question whether Mohamud’s actions were driven by the FBI’s manipulation and pressure rather than his own predisposition to commit a crime.  In June, he attempted to fly to Alaska in order to work on a fishing job he obtained through a friend, but he was on the Government’s no-fly list.  That caused the FBI to question him at the airport and then bar him from flying to Alaska, and thus prevented him from earning income with this job (para. 25).  Having prevented him from working, the money the FBI then pumped him with — including almost $3,000 in cash for him to rent his own apartment (para. 61) — surely helped make him receptive to their suggestions and influence.  And every other step taken to perpetrate this plot — from planning its placement to assembling the materials to constructing the bomb — was all done at the FBI’s behest and with its indispensable support and direction.  

It’s impossible to conceive of Mohamud having achieved anything on his own.  Before being ensnared by the FBI, the only tangible action he had taken was to write three articles on “fitness and jihad” for the online magazine Jihad Recollections.  At least based on what is known, he had no history of violence, no apparent criminal record, had never been to a training camp in Afghanistan, Pakistan or anywhere else, and — before meeting the FBI — had never taken a single step toward harming anyone.  Does that sound like some menacing sleeper Terrorist to you?

Finally, there is, as usual, no discussion whatsoever in media accounts of motive.  There are several statements attributed to Mohamud by the Affidavit that should be repellent to any decent person, including complete apathy — even delight — at the prospect that this bomb would kill innocent people, including children.  What would drive a 19-year-old American citizen — living in the U.S. since the age of 3 — to that level of sociopathic indifference?   He explained it himself in several passages quoted by the FBI, and — if it weren’t for the virtual media blackout of this issue — this line of reasoning would be extremely familiar to Americans by now (para. 45):

Undercover FBI Agent:  You know there’s gonna be a lot of children there?

Mohamud:  Yeah, I know, that’s what I’m looking for.

Undercover FBI Agent:  For kids?

Mohamud:  No, just for, in general a huge mass that will, like for them you know to be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays.  And then for later to be saying, this was them for you to refrain from killing our children, women . . . . so when they hear all these families were killed in such a city, they’ll say you know what your actions, you know they will stop, you know.  And it’s not fair that they should do that to people and not feeling it.

And here’s what he allegedly said in a video he made shortly before he thought he would be detonating the bomb (para. 80):

We hear the same exact thing over and over and over from accused Terrorists — that they are attempting to carry out plots in retaliation for past and ongoing American violence against Muslim civilians and to deter such future acts.  Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture:  that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world — invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries — torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death  — and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims — an amazingly small percentage — harbor anger and vengeance toward them and want to return the violence.   And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse:  that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism — rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism. 

UPDATE:  A very similar thing happened last month when the FBI announced that it had arrested someone who was planning to bomb the DC Metro system when, in reality, “the only plotting he did was in response to instructions from federal agents he thought were accomplices.”  That concocted FBI plot then led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers’ bags.

Meanwhile, in Oregon, the mosque sometimes attended by Mohamud was victimized today by arson.  So the FBI did not stop any actual Terrorist plots, but they may have helped inspire one.

More: Glenn Greenwald

Will the Persecution of Political Prisoner Sami Al-Arian Finally Come to an End?

Source | By Chris Hedges

U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema is scheduled to issue a ruling in the Eastern District of Virginia at the end of April in a case that will send a signal to the Muslim world and beyond whether the American judicial system has regained its independence after eight years of flagrant manipulation and intimidation by the Bush administration. Brinkema will decide whether the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Amin Al-Arian, held for over six years in prison and under house arrest in Virginia since Sept 2, is guilty or innocent of two counts of criminal contempt.

Brinkema’s ruling will have ramifications that will extend far beyond Virginia and the United States. The trial of Al-Arian is a cause célèbre in the Muslim world. A documentary film was made about the case in Europe. He has become the poster child for judicial abuse and persecution of Muslims in the United States by the Bush administration. The facts surrounding the trial and imprisonment of the former university professor have severely tarnished the integrity of the American judicial system and made the government’s vaunted campaign against terrorism look capricious, inept and overtly racist.

Government lawyers made wild assertions that showed a profound ignorance of the Middle East and exposed a gross stereotyping of the Muslim world. It called on the FBI case agent, for example, who testified as an expert witness that Islamic terrorists were routinely smuggled over the border from Iran into Syria, apparently unaware that Syria is separated from Iran by a large land mass called Iraq. The transcripts of the case against Al-Arian — which read like a bad Gilbert and Sullivan opera — are stupefying in their idiocy. The government wiretaps picked up nothing of substance; taxpayer dollars were used to record and transcribe 21,000 hours of banal chatter, including members of the Al-Arian household ordering pizza delivery. During the trial the government called 80 witnesses and subjected the jury to inane phone transcriptions and recordings, made over a 10-year period, which the jury curtly dismissed as “gossip.” It would be comical if the consequences were not so dire for the defendant.

A jury, on Dec. 6, 2005, acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight of the counts in the superseding indictment after a six-month trial in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. On the 94 charges made against the four defendants, there were no convictions. Of the 17 charges against Al-Arian — including “conspiracy to murder and maim persons abroad” — the jury acquitted him of eight and was hung on the rest. The jurors, who voted 10 to 2 to acquit on the remaining charges, could not reach a unanimous decision calling for his full acquittal. Two others in the case, Ghassan Ballut and Sameeh Hammoudeh, were acquitted of all charges.

The trial result was a public relations disaster for the Bush White House and especially then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who had personally announced the indictment and reportedly spent more than $50 million on the case. The government prosecutors threatened to retry Al-Arian. The Palestinian professor accepted a plea bargain that would spare him a second trial, agreeing that he had helped people associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad with immigration matters. It was a very minor charge given the high profile of the case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida and the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department agreed to recommend to the judge the minimum sentence of 46 months. But U.S. District Judge James S. Moody Jr., who made a series of comments during the trial that seemed to condemn all Muslims, sentenced Al-Arian to the maximum 57 months. In referring to Al-Arian’s contention, for example, that he had only raised money for Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s charity for widows and orphans, the judge told the professor that “your only connection to orphans and widows is that you create them.”

I spent an afternoon with Dr. Al-Arian in his small apartment in Arlington, Va., on Friday. His lawyers have asked that he make no public statements about his case. But we talked widely about the Middle East, the new Israeli government, the siege of Gaza, our families and the changes he hopes will come with an Obama administration. He sat on a couch wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet on his ankle, thankful to be with his wife and children after being shuttled between jails across the South and kept for 45 months in solitary confinement during his five-and-a-half-year ordeal. But he remains perplexed, as are many, by the gross miscarriage of justice and the ferocity of the government’s campaign to smear him with terrorism charges.

The government originally sought a standard cooperation provision as part of the final plea agreement. Al-Arian objected. He refused to plead guilty if he had to cooperate with the Justice Department. The Justice Department — including lawyers from the counterterrorism section of Main Justice — then negotiated to take out the cooperation provision in return for a longer sentence on the one count. That was the deal. He was to have been held in jail until April 2007 and then deported. But that never happened.

Right-wing ideologues, led by Assistant United States Attorney Gordon Kromberg, had no intention of letting him leave the country. Kromberg, a staunch supporter of Israel, arranged to keep Dr. Al-Arian behind bars even after he had finished serving his sentence. He blocked the deportation and subpoenaed Al-Arian to appear in Virginia to testify in an unrelated investigation of a Muslim think tank. This subpoena was a clear violation of the original plea bargain, and Al-Arian, heeding the advice of his lawyers, refused to give in to Kromberg’s demands. This led Kromberg to set in motion the newest charges of criminal contempt. Criminal contempt, bolstered by something called terrorism enhancement under Patriot Act II, is the only charge in U.S. statutes that does not carry a maximum penalty. The enhanced criminal contempt charge increases Al-Arian’s sentence from the usual 14 to 21 months for criminal contempt to a staggering 17 to 24 years for obstructing a state terrorism investigation. A handful of members of the House, including Jim Moran and Dennis Kucinich, have denounced Kromberg’s newest attempt to orchestrate a judicial lynching.

Kromberg, like many involved in the case, has also repeatedly made derogatory and insulting comments about Muslims. When Al-Arian’s lawyers asked Kromberg to delay the transfer of the professor to Virginia, for example, because of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, they were told “if they can kill each other during Ramadan they can appear before the grand jury.” Kromberg, according to an affidavit signed by Al-Arian’s attorney, Jack Fernandez, also said: “I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”

Judge Brinkema, in one of the rare examples of judicial courage during this saga, defied the government to allow Al-Arian out on bail.

The case against Al-Arian, in the eyes of the grand inquisitors like Kromberg, is a battle against a culture and a religion that they openly denigrate and despise. This racism, the driving engine behind the campaign against Al-Arian, mocks the integrity of the American judicial system. Let us hope that in a few weeks we will witness a new era. Justice delayed is better than justice denied. We owe Dr. Al-Arian, and ourselves, a return to the rule of law.

Mystery of who funded right-wing “radical Islam” campaign deepens

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT | Source

A document obtained by Salon creates new speculation about who paid for a right-wing campaign to stoke Islamophobia.

In the heat of the 2008 presidential election, an obscure nonprofit group called the Clarion Fund made national news by distributing millions of DVDs about radical Islam in newspaper inserts in swing states.

The DVDs, 28 million in all, were a boost to Republican candidates who were trying to paint Democrats as weak on terrorism — and they arguably helped fuel the anti-Muslim sentiment that boiled over in the “ground zero mosque” fight last summer. The film, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West,” was widely criticized for its cartoonish portrayal of Muslims as modern-day Nazis.

But who put up the money to send out all those millions of DVDs?

Clarion, which has strong links to the right-wing Israeli group Aish HaTorah and is listed in government records as a foreign nonprofit, would never say.

Indeed, the group does not have to release detailed donor information because of its nonprofit tax status. We knew only that there was serious money behind the effort: Clarion spent nearly $19 million in 2008, the year it sent out the DVDs.

Now, just as Clarion is gearing up to release a new film hyping the threat of Iran, the money mystery has deepened: According to a document submitted to the IRS by Clarion and obtained by Salon, a donor listed as Barry Seid gave Clarion nearly $17 million in 2008, which would have paid for virtually the entire “Obsession” DVD campaign.

Nonprofit groups must submit financial information including the identity of donors to the IRS — but ordinarily only basic revenue and spending data are made available to the public. In the case of Clarion, an extra page with donor information seems to have been inadvertently included in its public filing. See it here. (It was previously available on public websites that collect IRS forms submitted by nonprofits.)

There’s only one Barry Seid Salon could find who might fit the profile of a $17 million donor to Clarion. That would be businessman Barre Seid (note the different spelling) of Illinois, a longtime contributor to right-wing and Jewish causes. But his representative flatly denied to Salon that he has ever given money to Clarion.

The elderly and press-shy Seid is president of Tripp Lite, a large Chicago-based manufacturer of power strips that got into the personal computer market on the ground floor back in the 1980s. Seid has personally poured millions of dollars into Republican campaigns and conservative causes, and his foundation has given generously to the Cato Institute, the Americans for Limited Government Foundation, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This year, Seid received an honorary degree from Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv for his work “supporting those organizations which will fortify Israel’s position in the world.”

But Seid assistant Joan Frontczak told Salon in an e-mail: “Mr. Seid did not make any contributions to the Clarion Fund.” And she added: “Mr. Seid is a very private person and doesn’t seek publicity of any kind.”

Furthermore, Clarion Fund spokesman Alex Traiman denied that the inadvertently released document is accurate.

“The sources of anonymous donations to the Clarion Fund in 2008 have been incorrectly identified,” Traiman said in an e-mail to Salon. “As like many other not-for-profit organizations, we respect the right of private donors to remain anonymous.”

But there’s another wrinkle here. As first reported by Counterpunch, a right-leaning Alexandria, Va.-based outfit called Donors Capital Fund revealed in its 2008 IRS filing that it gave $17.7 million to Clarion that year, the same year the DVDs were sent out. Donors Capital Fund is what’s known as a donor-advised fund: It offers various tax and other advantages to people who want to make large donations to nonprofits.

Whitney Ball, president of Donors Capital Fund, told Salon that the group acts as a charitable vehicle for individuals who give Donors Capital Fund money and tell it where they would like the money to go. “One of our clients made a recommendation for Clarion and so we did it,” she said. Ball declined to identify the client or comment on Seid.

Seid’s private foundation has in the past made at least one donation to Donors Capital Fund. Seid’s assistant did not respond to a request for comment about whether he had made a donation to Donors Capital Fund and recommended that the money go to Clarion. So, for now, it’s impossible to say for sure why the name “Barry Seid” showed up on Clarion’s tax forms.

Finally, here is the trailer for Clarion’s new film, “Iranium.” It will be interesting to see if any donor steps forward to pay for wider distribution.

The Oklahoma Referendum Prohibiting State Courts from Applying International or Sharia Law

By MARCI A. HAMILTON | Source

On Election Day, Oklahoma voters approved a referendum that serves as an interesting microcosm of some of the most difficult challenges facing the United States now. The referendum amended the state constitution (via State Question Number 755) to forbid Oklahoma’s courts from applying international law or Sharia law (also known as Islamic law) in any case before them.

The international-law prohibition is a fascinating attempt by Oklahomans to stave off the increasing and unavoidable globalization of our lives. In turn, the prohibition on Sharia law seems to be Oklahomans’ reaction to the demonic Taliban and al-Qaeda forces that are pledged to end our way of life and America itself.

Most Americans understand Sharia law to be the motivating doctrine behind the violently radical Islamicists, and one can hardly fault the Oklahomans for seeking to build a legal barrier around their state to keep terrorism out. While the prohibition on the use of international law also presents interesting issues, I will focus here on the Sharia law prohibition. It is problematic.

What, Exactly, Is Sharia Law? The Ambiguity of Oklahoma’s Amendment

The problem for the Oklahomans who thought they could forestall extremists and terrorists from taking over their culture via their referendum, is that there are many interpretations of what Sharia law mandates. Some Muslims, to be sure, have interpreted Sharia law to mean that believers and Islamic governments should commit horrific assaults and mete out barbaric punishments. Whether the act at issue is commandeering an airplane to kill Americans or chopping off a hand as punishment for thievery, there are plenty of reasons to condemn and reject the interpretation that reads Sharia law to mandate such practices.

But others sincerely believe in following “Sharia law,” without such barbaric practices. The Oklahoma amendment, therefore, suffers from a serious case of vagueness. Which interpretation of Sharia law was intended to be targeted? What happens when a defendant argues that the plaintiff’s theories must be rejected because they are derived from a world view or theory or belief that can be identified in the Quran? Does similarity to an Islamic law forbid a principle from being the subject of judicial consideration? This is a quagmire no judge is likely to welcome.

Some Oklahoma legislators defended the constitutional amendment on the theory that Oklahoma needs to secure and retain its Judeo-Christian foundation and heritage against Islamic assaults. But under our Constitution, officially privileging one religion (or several) over another is forbidden. Moreover, given such legislators’ awareness of a Judeo-Christian continuum of beliefs, they must know full well that there is a wide range of interpretations of the Bible — and thus, they ought to easily understand that the same is true of Sharia law. Rabid abortion foes have interpreted the Bible to require the killing of abortion doctors; others have interpreted the Bible to permit women to make choices about their own bodies. Sharia law, too, admits of widely contrasting interpretations.

The Constitutional Challenge to the Oklahoma Referendum

As soon as Oklahoma’s Referendum 755 was enacted, an Oklahoma Muslim, Muneer Awad, filed a lawsuit arguing that it violates the Establishment Clause. For now, an Oklahoma federal district court has issued a Temporary Restraining Order.

Awad is likely to face an uphill battle on standing and ripeness alone: He may not be able to show any current, particularized harm to him that would make him a proper plaintiff, and as 755 has not yet been applied, it is not clear that a challenge to it can be brought at this time. However, the substance of Awad’s arguments is worth contemplating as we think about 755.

According to Awad, his “faith is the motivation for much of what he does. From greeting others with a smile to waking for the customary prayer at dawn, [he] avails himself of the Islamic religious traditions evolving out from the Quran and Islam’s prophetic teachings.” In other words, he appears to be the mild-mannered Muslim who does follow a law that he would call “Sharia law,” but his peaceable “Sharia law” is a far cry from the “Sharia law” of the terrorists.

Muneer Awad’s Concern: Can His Will Be Probated As He Wishes, In Light of 755?

Awad’s position provides an important window into what is wrong with the Oklahoma prohibition on Sharia law. He says that if the constitutional amendment goes into effect, that his estate will not be capable of being probated to reflect his intent.

More specifically, Awad’s lawsuit explains, “Plaintiff’s will directs the executor of his estate to prepare his deceased body in accordance with the prophetic tradition ‘enumerated in Sahih Bukhari, Volume 2, Book 23, Number 345,’ ensure that the burial plot selected permits Plaintiff’s body ‘to be interred with [his] head pointed in the direction of Mecca, and organize funeral prayers ‘in accordance with Sahih Al-Bukhari, Chapter 28, Section LIII, Number 1255, and the first paragraph of Section LV.’ [He] also directs his wife to contribute to charity in accordance with Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book, 51, Number 7.” But, Awad worries, can such a will still be enforced and carried out, in light of 755?

This is a fascinating conundrum, created by 755. For Awad, the language of his will doubtless seems crystal-clear, but to a secular decisionmaker, it may not be as clear-cut as it seems to Awad. Thus, even without 755, Awad’s will, by its terms, creates problems for the courts. According to the Supreme Court’s Establishment-Clause jurisprudence, if there are competing interpretations of the religious texts that Awad invokes in his will, then the courts would be put in a position of determining the “official” or “correct” interpretation of those religious texts. That, they are not supposed to do.

Thus, even putting 755 aside, it would, ideally, have been better for Awad to define how he would like to be laid to rest without reference to the religious texts. For instance, Awad might simply have given instructions to a trusted imam and used his will to give the imam the power to carry out those instructions, or he could have described the actions he wanted others to undertake, rather than incorporating by reference religious texts.

Putting the Establishment Clause aside, however, what about 755? One could argue that asking the courts to apply standard contract law regarding a testator’s intent does not run afoul of 755, even if that intent is based on Islamic beliefs. The court would not be asked to interpret or apply Islamic law, but only to use it as a guide to understand what the testator wanted. Once again, however, the biggest problem with the amendment may well be its vague contours — and the resulting difficulty in ascertaining what it does, and does not, prohibit.

Here is where 755 gets it right: Courts are supposed to apply only civil, secular law to individuals before them. Sometimes those laws reflect Christian or other religious principles, but that does not make them Christian laws. For instance, the law against murder is a secular law, even though the Ten Commandments reflect a similar prohibition. From this perspective, the prohibition on courts applying Sharia law is really not that problematic.

This principle has played out in the clergy sex-abuse cases. The Catholic bishops routinely argue in such cases that Catholic canon law should determine a wide array of issues, including whether the bishops were negligent in dealing with an abusing priest, and what is the status of parish or property ownership. In other words, they have argued that courts should apply canon law, not civil property law. The bishops’ lawyers work very hard to wrap their cases in canon law, so as to avoid the force and effect of the civil law. However, the overwhelming majority of courts have responded, correctly, by explaining that secular courts must apply neutral principles of law, including property and negligence law, and that they cannot and will not become the interpreters of canon law. They have canonical courts, in which they can employ canon law; canon law is not the appropriate arbiter in disputes in civil courts.

Thus, a directive not to use Sharia law as the governing law may be a non-issue. It may look anti-Muslim, but no other religious group has a right to have their religious doctrine determine secular law. On this reading, it is just a restatement of the rule of law.

Muslims have tried to substitute Sharia law in Canada (and elsewhere) for the secular law. That is a non-starter in the United States, where the separation of church and state would forbid such a move. There must be a public policy principle to support a law, not just a bare preference for a religious doctrine. Thus, the Oklahoma legislators were wrong to think that they could constitutionally secure Judeo-Christian “law” in the first place.

Marci Hamilton, a FindLaw columnist, is the Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children (Cambridge 2008). A review of Justice Denied appeared on this site on June 25, 2008. Her previous book is God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press 2005), now available in paperback. Her email is hamilton02@aol.com .

Many women excluded from work life due to scarf ban

Source

This is in violation of the Constitution, human rights and democratic principles, Can Paker, head of the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation (TESEV), said while introducing a new report on covered women and professional life in Turkey. Titled the “Headscarf Ban and Discrimination: Headscarved Women in Professional Life,” the report was prepared by Dilek Cindoğlu, an associate professor of political science and public administration at Bilkent University. The report was introduced to the press by TESEV on Tuesday at a press conference in İstanbul.

“The report seeks to open the headscarf ban, which has remained under the siege of politics, to debate. The matter of discussion is the ban itself but not the headscarf. Thousands of women who were trained in popular universities are excluded from business life because of the headscarf they are wearing. They are not employed in state institutions, which largely exist thanks to the taxes of the headscarved women and their families. Furthermore, they cannot find ‘proper positions’ at private companies. We believe that the headscarf ban goes against democracy, human rights and social peace. We hope the findings of the report will contribute to the lifting of the ban,” Paker noted.

The report will be followed by a new one, slated for April 2011. The report includes a survey among 79 women and 25 men on the headscarf ban.

The notorious ban on the use of the Muslim headscarf has been a matter of contention in Turkey. A headscarf ban applies to certain public and government offices and locations in Turkey. The ban affects university students as well as those working in the public sector. Women with headscarves are not allowed to enter military facilities, including hospitals and recreational areas belonging to the Turkish military.

Cindoğlu said the report mainly seeks to shed light on the problems faced by headscarved women who received higher education when being employed and during their professional lives. For her, Turkey wasted much time discussing the ban on the use of the headscarf at universities and it had better start discussing how and why covered women are discriminated against in professional life.

“Headscarved women we talked to during the preparation of the report told us that they are asked to be ‘invisible’ in offices. What does being ‘invisible’ mean? To work in the back rooms of a company, for example, or to work at a lower position for a lower salary. Or not to be allowed to attend business meetings. However, earlier research showed that up to 70 percent of Turkey’s women wear the Muslim headscarf and around 40 percent of women in business life are headscarved, Cindoğlu stated, and added that headscarved women are expected to “make concessions” if they are to be employed by companies, which is sometimes to agree to work for a low salary or at a lower position without the chance of promotion some day or to agree to take off the headscarf if necessary.

Cindoğlu also said women wearing the headscarf also face discrimination when being fired. “For example, if a company has to fire an employee, it’s usually a covered women who gets sacked even if she has better qualifications or is more hardworking than a non-covered woman because businessmen usually believe it is a ‘disadvantage’ to work with headscarved employees,” she said.

‘Bitter expectation’ of a mother

Yıldız Ramazanoğlu, a novelist, also delivered a speech during the TESEV conference. She said she expressed her wish for the lifting of the headscarf ban when she first hugged her daughter in 1987, but the ban has still yet to be abolished.

“I was about to cry when I heard the same expectation from a mother in 2010. We see that years pass by but expectations remain the same,” she noted. According to Ramazanoğlu, there is still a social gap between conservatives and secularists and that some secularists do not even leave their homes for several days at a time in order to not see a covered woman on the street.

“Children of headscarved women hope their fathers attend parent-teacher meetings rather than their mothers because they are fully aware that their mothers will not be ‘accepted’ or ‘respected.’ They believe their father will be a source of less problems for them,” she added.

Ramazanoğlu also stated that covered women face discrimination at the hands of conservative men, who believe a non-covered woman is more intellectual than her covered peer, for example. “This is why it makes men happy to see that covered women do not have the right to get elected in national elections. In this way, fewer women are elected to Parliament, for instance. And a majority of parliamentary seats are occupied by men,” she said. Women wearing the headscarf are neither elected to Parliament nor allowed to participate in any voting other than casting a vote at the ballot box.

BETÜL AKKAYA DEMIRBAŞ İSTANBUL

Creating a Lawless Executive Branch

Source

By Lawrence Davidson

Source Editor’s Note: In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration arrogated to itself the power to detain Muslims for long periods under fabricated claims that they were “material witnesses,” an issue that is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case seeking to prohibit penalties against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Though a federal appeals court has termed the “material witness” scam “repugnant to the Constitution,” the Obama administration and the right-wing high court might join forces to protect Ashcroft and, by precedent, declare future government officials free from accountability, as Lawrence Davidson notes in this guest essay:

One of the cases the U.S. Supreme Court will take up in its 2011 session is Ashcroft vs. al-Kidd, in which President George W. Bush’s first Attorney General, John Ashcroft, insists that he should have legal immunity for his acts while in office, including the use of material witness warrants to detain Muslims during Bush’s “war on terror.”

As Attorney General, Ashcroft appears to have knowingly violated the U.S. Constitution through his abuse of these warrants which are designed to hold people who are needed as witnesses in trials, not as a device for locking them up while they themselves are investigated.

Abdullah al-Kidd is a Muslim American citizen who Ashcroft illegally ordered detained through a material witness warrant. Al-Kidd was one of 70 detained in this manner.

Al-Kidd was picked up at Dulles International Airport after the FBI lied to a judge in order to get the warrant for his seizure. Al-Kidd was subsequently held for long periods in a security cell where the lights never went out.

That John Ashcroft is the criminal and al-Kidd his victim is certain. That is how the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals sees it. That court has refused to dismiss al-Kidd’s lawsuit against Ashcroft noting that the former Attorney General can be held personally responsible for an action “repugnant to the Constitution.”

The court noted that such was the case in a decision to “arrest and detain American citizens for months on end, in sometimes primitive conditions, not because they have committed a crime, but merely because the government wants to investigate them for possible wrongdoing.”

Ashcroft’s lawyers avoid the question of the illegality of his actions and simply say that he is immune from lawsuits for actions he took as Attorney General. On that basis they have asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the suit. The Justices have now decided to consider Ashcroft’s request.

Certainly John Ashcroft is not the first high U.S. official to reveal himself as an apparent criminal. Nor is it the first time that high government officials have acted in an unconstitutional manner.

Right out of the starting gate, so to speak, the young United States created the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) through which the Federalist party sought, quite unconstitutionally, to jail its political opponents. Andrew Jackson spit in the eye of both the Supreme Court and the Constitution by evicting the Cherokee Indians (1838).

James Polk should have been impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors for lying to the Congress in order to start the Mexican-American War (1846), Abraham Lincoln probably violated the Constitution by some of his police actions during the Civil War.

Then, there were the raids and deportations that took place as a result of the Red Scares of the 1920s, at least in part unconstitutional. You also have Watergate, Irangate and multiple potential Bushgates. Yet, few of the politicians who ordered these criminal actions, or the subordinates who carried out their orders, ever faced punishment.

The Obama Administration

What is interesting about the present case of Ashcroft vs. al-Kidd is that the Obama administration has decided to make illegality acceptable by institutionalizing the concept of immunity for highly placed men like Ashcroft. The administration will try to do this not through legislation, but through precedent – by defending Ashcroft’s claim to immunity before the Supreme Court.

At first it seems strange that a professed liberal president such as Barack Obama would do this. But unfortunately, it is quite consistent with the illiberal stance he has maintained on the question of the constitutional responsibility of his predecessors in the Bush administration.

From the beginning of his presidency, Obama decided to shield them from the consequences of their crimes. This position was initiated by the President’s “we should look forward” statement in January 2009. In this statement, he made it clear that he did not want to pursue those who had ordered or implemented (in this case) torture under the Bush administration.

When popular pressure forced the President to allow his Attorney General, Eric Holder, to open an investigation of the issue of torture, it was arranged so the inquiry would have no teeth. Publicly and up front we were told that no one would be prosecuted whatever the outcome of the probe.

That is the last anyone has heard of Holder’s investigation of torture American-style. The long and short of this is that the principle set down at Nuremberg, to wit following orders is no excuse for criminal behavior, will not be applied. Nor will giving the orders incur a penalty. The decision to defend Ashcroft’s claim of immunity is in solid accord with this position.

The logic of Obama’s position and its likely consequences warrant close examination. If we were to ask the President why he has decided to defend the immunity of alleged criminals who happen to be high government officials, and if he were to be perfectly candid in his reply, here is what he might say:

1. President Obama – It would be difficult for a president, or those who carry out his orders, to act freely and as needed if they had always to worry about litigation after the fact. This is particularly true in time of war and emergency.

My Reply – This assertion has been made by leaders of states from time immemorial. It is a variation on the raison d’etat argument that has historically allowed all manner of bad behavior under the guise of state interests.

On the other hand, it is true that following the law can prove inconvenient under wartime or emergency conditions. Nonetheless, in the long run, lawlessness is much worse than inconvenience. It is to be noted that, in the American case, appointed and elected high officials (particularly attorney generals!) are sworn to uphold the law, not to transgress it.

2. President Obama – While I have stopped the more egregious policies of the Bush administration, I am still responsible for the safety of all American citizens and, in our modern age, I have to be able to use all the methods, high tech and otherwise, to achieve this goal.

Some of these methods might very well prove unconstitutional (warrantless wiretaps, for instance) and yet I must be free to use them because another 9/11 style attack must be prevented. And, if I am to use these methods, then I cannot prosecute those who have done so before me. Otherwise I would be accused of being a hypocrite by my political foes.

My Reply – This argument juxtaposes unattainable 100 percent security against the traditional freedoms that makes America the country its founders intended. Do we want to sacrifice the latter for the illusion of the former?

As James Madison once observed, “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become instruments of tyranny at home.” That is the slippery slope President Obama seems willing to take us down. It also prioritizes the President’s political interests over the Constitution. This latter point of view can be carried further.

3. President Obama – You have to understand, that if I do not do all that is possible, be it constitutional or otherwise, to protect the nation I put myself in mortal political danger. I open myself to the accusation by my political rivals that I am “soft” on security or terrorism. And, if something does happen, such as another terrorist attack, then I am politically dead.

My Reply – Well, yes, this is so. However, what is also true is that prioritizing politics above law always leads us in the direction of corruption, or worse. By defending Ashcroft isn’t President Obama saying it is all right to break the law if you are highly placed and so lacking in imagination that you cannot figure out a legal way of dealing with an emergency?

For let us be clear, there is no evidence that after 9/11 the unconstitutional route was the only possible route to defend the country. Were the legal options and their constitutional variants ever seriously itemized and discussed? The Obama administration, like the Bush team, has never publicly addressed this question.

Likely Consequences

If Obama’s Justice Department proceeds with its plans to defend Ashcroft’s immunity claim and if, as is likely, the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court upholds that claim, we will be left with a politically based two-tier legal system.

It will set free to break the law every highly placed federal official every time he or she can claim an emergency situation. Then, after the fact, they will cite the immunity precedent. In the meantime, the fact that high federal officials are sworn to uphold the laws of the land will be rendered worthless, just another bit of political hypocrisy.

So what is it that we want for America? Do we want a two-tier legal system where presidents and their appointees can break the law with impunity? Do we want a legal system where it is accepted that citizens and residents can disappear into federal dungeons?

Is it all right with us that our fellow citizens, following the orders of the President, will torture, detain, shackle and otherwise abuse others without any regard for law – and they too will be immune? Because, whether they realize it or not, that is what Obama’s Justice Department is arguing for when it defends John Ashcroft.

President Dwight Eisenhower once asked the question, “how far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?”
It is time for us to ask this question about the heinous “security” tactics of President George W. Bush as well as President Barack Obama’s unfortunate willingness to defend them.

Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest; America’s Palestine: Popular and Offical Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.

Judge cancels hearing in Dr. Al-Arian’s Case

Alexandria, VA – October 28, 2010

On the eve of the hearing in the case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia issued an order to cancel it.

Last month the government filed a motion requesting Judge Brinkema to deny the pending defense motion, filed 18 months ago, to dismiss the criminal contempt charges against Dr. Al-Arian. A hearing that was set for tomorrow to decide on the pending motions has now been canceled.

The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice and Peace sincerely thanks all of Dr. Al-Arian supporters all over the world for their tremendous outpouring of love and support throughout this ordeal and for keeping him and his family in their thoughts and prayers.

We are also very grateful for the many friends who made the trip from as far away as Tampa, Florida and New York City to be there at the hearing and for the many dozens from the Washington DC area who have pledged to show their support and attend the hearing.

If there is any new development in the case, the TBCJP will immediately issue a press release.

If there is any new development in the case, the TBCJP will immediately issue a press release.

Dr. Al-Arian is being represented by a distinguished legal team led by George Washington Law professor Jonathan Turley and P.J. Meitl of Bryan Cave.

For previous press releases go to: www.freesamialarian.com
[For Case Background Click Here]

The Case of Dr. Sami Al-Arian

www.freesamialarian.com
There have been several hearings in the past, but this is considered the most important.

Washington, DC – October 13, 2010

On Feb. 20, 2003, former Attorney General John Ashcroft declared in a nationally televised news conference, carried on all major media outlets, that Dr. Al-Arian was one of the most dangerous people in the world.

Based on these assertions, Dr. Al-Arian was held insolitary confinement for 43 months during and after his trial, despite the fact that he had never waived his right to a speedy trial. Amnesty International protestedthe conditions of his detention, calling them “gratuitously punitive.”

No Guilty Verdicts

On Dec. 6, 2005, a Florida jury acquitted Dr. Al-Arian on eight counts, and deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal on the remaining nine counts, leading Time magazine to declare the case “one of the Justice Department’s most embarrassing legal setbacks since 9/11.”

While the government presented 80 witnesses including 21 from Israel, Dr. Al-Arian rested his case without calling a single witness basing his defense on the first amendment. Indeed, much of the government’s evidence presented to the jury during the six-month trial were speeches Dr. Al-Arian delivered, lectures he presented, articles he wrote, magazines he edited, books he owned, conferences he convened, rallies he attended, interviews he gave, news he heard, and websites he never even accessed.

In fact, several websites, presented to the jury as evidence, were created by anonymous individuals, after his arrest, while he was awaiting trial in solitary confinement in a federal prison. It was therefore no surprise that, with almost 100 counts between all defendants, the jury did not return a single guilty verdict on any count. Two other defendants were totally acquitted on all counts.

A Plea Deal to End Persecution

In April 2006, in an effort to spare his family another long, financially draining, and excruciating trial, Dr. Al-Arian pleaded guilty to violating a 1995 presidential executive order, by providing immigration services in the 1990s to persons associated with the PIJ, a Palestinian organization listed on the U.S. forbidden organizations (terrorist) list. In return, he agreed to immediate deportation from the U.S. despite more than three decades residing in the country. The details of the plea deal illustrated the true nature of the political persecution of this case.

The services admitted in the plea deal were: 1) hiring a lawyer for his brother-in-law during his immigration battle in the late 1990s; 2) sponsoring a Palestinian historian in 1994 to conduct research in the U.S.; and 3) withholding information from a U.S. journalist during a 1995 interview. There was no evidence or admission in the plea deal that showed any illegal financial transactions or material support.  Although Dr. Al-Arian was promised a prompt release in exchange for his plea, the U.S. government later admitted that, at the time the plea deal was signed in 2006, federal prosecutors were secretly preparing to call Dr. Al-Arian before a grand jury in Virginia, in a sign of their complete disregard for the overarching purpose of the plea agreement, which was to end any and all business between Dr. Al-Arian and the U.S. government.

Prosecutorial Trap

In what many observers believed was an attempt to seek retribution for the colossal defeat of the government’s case in Florida, Dr. Al-Arian was called to testify before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) in Alexandria three times between the fall of 2006 and the spring of 2008. The call to the grand jury was a classic prosecutorial trap in which agreeing to testify would result in a charge of perjury, while a refusal to testify would result in a charge of contempt of court. When Dr. Al-Arian refused to testify, invoking his right under the plea deal, he was held for over a year on civil contempt charges. In June 2008, he was charged with criminal contempt.

After five and a half years in prison, most of which was served under deplorable conditions in solitary confinement, and during which Dr. Al-Arian underwent three hunger-strikes that lasted several months requiring hospitalization, Dr. Al-Arian was released in September 2008 under house arrest, where he has spent the last 25 months awaiting the outcome of the case. 

In its March 2009 filing, the government made several admissions regarding the plea deal, namely, they affirmed its essence of non-cooperation, but still argued that it should not be taken into account.

Moreover,the EDVA prosecutors (as admitted in the government filing) began the process to compel Dr. Al-Arian’s testimony at the same time the DOJ was negotiating with his attorneys. This conduct prompted Judge Leonie Brinkema of the EDVA, in a Feb. 2009 hearing, to call into question the DOJ’s integrity, stating “I think the integrity of the Justice Department and the integrity of the criminal justice plea bargaining process is too significant to just let it die on the vine given the nature of the record before this Court.”

In an earlier hearing held in Tampa, Florida in Nov. 2006, Florida prosecutor Terry Zitek, stated in no uncertain terms that the cooperation clause was deliberately removed: “It’s not there, and we’re [the government] not…complaining that the defendant Al-Arian has refused to cooperate.”

Furthermore,lead government prosecutor Gordon Kromberg of the EDVA, conceded in a court hearing on Feb. 5, 2009, that the government had in fact removed the cooperation clause from the plea bargain upon the insistence of Dr. Al-Arian. But Mr. Kromberg tried to argue that the EDVA was not bound by the terms of the agreement. However, Judge Brinkema pointed out that the plea agreement was concluded with the DOJ as a whole, and that the DOJ could not be allowed to “compartmentalize itself,” and that the understanding of the plea agreement is indeed “at the heart of the case.”

This undisputed fact raised a number of questions about the government’s conduct in the case, including: Why would the Florida prosecutors remove the cooperation clause from the plea agreement unless there was a clear promise that Dr. Al-Arian would not be compelled to cooperate or testify? Dr. Al-Arian’s then attorneys submitted affidavits saying that cooperation with the government was non-negotiable.

 (Click here for the first declaration and here for the second by Dr. Al-Arian’s attorneys.)

After the government defied the judge three times by refusing to provide information regarding the plea negotiations, Judge Brinkema ruled in March 2009 in favor of the defense request to file a motion to dismiss the charges against Dr. Al-Arian. Her decision at the time had followed the new revelation that the Florida prosecutors were opposed to the efforts by the Virginia prosecutors to call Dr. Al-Arian to testify. After the parties briefed the court in April 2009, Judge Brinkema issued an order stating that she would rule in the future without further hearings. The new motion for a new hearing by the government is to force the judge to rule on the pending dismissal motion.

The Persecution of Dr. Al-Arian on Film

In 2007, Norwegian filmmakers released a documentary film entitled USA vs. Al-Arian. The award-winning film chronicles the story of Dr. Al-Arian and his family

during and after his Florida trial, illustrating the political nature of his prosecution and the state of the U.S. justice system under the Patriot Act. Since 2003, Dr. Al-Arian’s case has attracted the interest of major civil liberties  and human rights organizations in the U.S. and around the world. Peter Erlinder, a law professor, and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, said: “The prosecution of Dr. Al-Arian was a blatant attempt to silence political speech and dissent in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. The nature of the political persecution of this case has been demonstrated throughout all its aspects, not only during the trial and the never-ending right-wing media onslaught, but also after the stunning defeat of the government in 2005, and its ill-advised abuse of the grand jury system thereafter.”

 Striving for Justice

In August 2008, the late Howard Zinn declared: “I thought that [Dr. Al-Arian’s case] was an outrageous violation of human rights, both from a constitutional point of view and as a simple test of justice.” Moreover,

Dr. Mel Underbakke of Friends of Human Rights, who has traveled the country screening the documentary and educating the public about the dangers of the Patriot Act, said: “The unjust persecution of Dr. Al-Arian should concern all Americans. History has taught us that when the rights of the minority are violated by the government for political purposes, then the rights of all Americans would be eroded. That’s why thousands of civil libertarians and human rights activists in the U.S. and around the world, have been mortified by the injustice suffered by Dr. Al-Arian and his family and have rallied in their defense.”

When asked about how her father was doing during his house arrest, Laila Al-Arian, a journalist, said: “Our family is very grateful to have been with him since his release. He’s been a guiding influence in our lives. He is also most appreciative of the tremendous support he’s been receiving nationwide and around the world.”

A Voice for Freedom and Dialogue

Dr. Al-Arian reiterated his strong belief in the importance of dialogue and education in the only public speech he has given since his release on home confinement, delivered in June 2009 through Skype to the Global Forum on Freedom of Expression in Norway.

 He said: “Despite my imprisonmnent and experience, my faith in dialogue and commitment to freedom of expression, will never waiver. It’s been my life long passion. This experience taught us that when the American people are educated and empowered with truth, they respond positively and display a sense of fairness. I firmly believe that through education and civil engagement people change. Little by little they will understand the plight of the Palestinians and the importance of defending civil liberties and human rights. Increasingly, people realize that no democracy can survive at the altar of sacrificing free speech or dissent.” 

He continued: ” Our charge today is to pledge to defend the rights of our most vulnerable members of our world community: the tens of thousands of prisoners of conscience around the world, those who are under occupation or under siege, the millions terrorized by dictators and warlords, the poor and the sick, the uneducated and the exploited, the children, the abused women, and the elderly. Each one of these classes of people needs a voice and an advocate. They need to gain their freedom to realize a life of dignity and peace. So whether we recognize it or not, we are at the forefront of this struggle for their freedom.  Let your collective conscience speak on their behalf.” He then concluded: “One cannot achieve peace without realizing justice, realize justice without seeking out the truth, seek out the truth without practicing freedom. So living and thinking free is the root of achieving peace in our world.”

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The Strange Case of Aafia Siddiqui

by: J. Sri Raman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

The world has heard the stories of many Af-Pak women and their distress as victims of Taliban tormentors, which US and NATO drones have done nothing to diminish. This is about a woman who is also likely to draw the least public sympathy outside the terrain that constitutes the main theater of the “war on terror” because it is the Taliban, the fundamentalists and the far right in Pakistan who are clamoring the loudest for her release. They say she is being punished because she is a devout Muslim.

Dr. Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to a probably unprecedented 86 years of imprisonment by a US federal court in Manhattan on September 23. Thirty-eight-year-old Siddiqui, a US-educated neuroscientist from Karachi in Pakistan, was convicted after a jury trial of assault with intent to murder her US interrogators in Afghanistan. The charges carried a maximum sentence of life in prison. She, however, has received a much, much harsher sentence than what life imprisonment normally means.

The sentence – along with the fact that she is a mother of three young children – was sure to elicit sympathy for her anywhere, especially her own homeland. Adding to the outcry in Pakistan over her punishment is the widespread outrage over much that US and NATO forces have been doing in the Af-Pak region in the name of an anti-terror war. The protests against the court’s “injustice” to Siddiqui have also been combined with protests against Islamabad’s perceived subservience to Washington.

Inevitably, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani’s government in Pakistan has got embroiled in the affair. Siddiqui’s fate has also become a red-hot political issue for all political parties, including one under formation.

The government has called upon Washington to repatriate Siddiqui and vowed to fight for “justice” for her along with her family. The US, in turn, has offered to send her back home in order to serve her sentence there if Pakistan signs two international conventions relating to prisoner exchange along with it.

The ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has rallied behind the government. The main opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Nawaz), has articulated the demand for Siddiqui’s release more aggressively. The Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid-e-Azam), or the PM-Q, originally floated by former President Pervez Musharraf, is speaking with two voices on the issue.

It is going to be an important issue for the All-Pakistan Muslim League (APML), which Musharraf now proposes to launch from his London exile. He has had to deny, hotly and repeatedly, the charge of his involvement in the mysterious arrest of Siddiqui in an Afghan city two years ago.

Her pre-arrest past was not shrouded in secrecy. Siddiqui moved to Houston, Texas, on a student visa in 1990, joining her brother. She attended the University of Houston for three semesters, then shifted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) after being awarded a full scholarship.

Siddiqui moved back to Pakistan in 2002. She disappeared with her three young children in March 2003, shortly after the arrest of her second husband’s uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged chief planner of the 9/11 attacks. Her whereabouts remained unknown for over five years, until her arrest in July 2008.

One of her close relatives told a Pakistani newspaper: “They’re all lying … there’s something about Aafia. And we don’t know about it.”

According to the Afghan police, she was carrying in her purse handwritten notes and a computer thumb drive containing recipes for conventional bombs and weapons of mass destruction, instructions on how to make machines to shoot down US drones, descriptions of New York City landmarks with references to a mass casualty attack, and two pounds of sodium cyanide in a glass jar.

Siddiqui was apprehended by Ghazni Province police officers outside the governor’s compound. With two small bags at her side, crouching on the ground, she aroused the suspicion of a man who feared she might be concealing a bomb under her burqa. A shopkeeper noticed a woman in a burqa drawing a map, which is suspicious in Afghanistan, where women are generally illiterate.

Questions about her entire case have been raised following conflicting accounts of immediate post-arrest events. The official US version says that, on July 18, two FBI agents, a US Army warrant officer, a US Army captain and their military interpreters arrived in Ghazni to interview Siddiqui at an Afghan police facility. They met in a room partitioned by a curtain, behind which Siddiqui reportedly stood.

According to this version, the warrant officer sat down adjacent to the curtain, and put his loaded M4 carbine on the floor by his feet, next to the curtain. Siddiqui drew back the curtain, picked up the gun and pointed it at the captain. Then, she was said to have yelled, “Get the fuck out of here … May the blood of (unintelligible) be on your [head or hands].” The captain dove for cover to his left, as she yelled “Allah-o-Akbar” and fired at least two shots at them, missing them – so goes the interrogators’ report.

According to Siddiqui’s version, she stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain. After one of the startled soldiers shouted, “She is loose,” she was shot. On regaining consciousness, she heard someone say, “We could lose our jobs.”

The Afghan police version says that the US troops had demanded that she be handed over, disarmed the Afghans when they refused and then shot Siddiqui mistakenly, thinking she was a suicide bomber.

During her trial, the defense said there was no forensic evidence that the gun was fired in the interrogation room.

Siddiqui was taken to Bagram Air Base by helicopter in critical condition. Her trial was an agonizingly prolonged one, the longest delay being of six months, allowed in order to perform psychiatric evaluations. She was given routine mental health check-ups ten times in August and six times in September. Finally, the judge held that she “may have some mental health issues,” but was competent to stand trial.

Siddiqui drew much ire in the US when she said she did not want Jews on the jury.

She demanded that all prospective jurors be DNA-tested. The defense argued, in extenuation of her comments, that her incarceration had damaged her mind.

She drew some sympathy, however, from the public as well as the judge after her sentence, when she urged forgiveness and asked the Pakistani people not to retaliate.

Sections of liberal opinion in Pakistan are concerned over the mileage that fundamentalist jihadi forces are drawing from the issue. A victory here can, ironically, give those forces added social legitimacy when they attack women for not being burqa-clad, for not being Islamic enough, for being seen with men etc. That is the complexity of it all. But even these liberal sections agree that the US role in the affair has done nothing to enfeeble those forces.

Lahore-based Daily Times, a leading newspaper, says: “The US is already viewed as an authoritarian and arrogant superpower, and after this verdict its character is bound to take on an arbitrary dimension in perceptions. A murky case to begin with, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s ordeal is the subject of many speculations. It is still unclear what exactly happened to Dr. Aafia after her alleged disappearance from Karachi … it seems as if the US is bent upon making a horrific example out of Dr. Aafia.”

The paper adds: “Now that the case is out of the courts, people will be waiting to see how the Obama administration will act. Only time will tell if the US president will step in to mitigate the consequences of this strange sentence by either pardoning Dr Aafia or sending her back to Pakistan …”

Dawn, another newspaper, says: “… the case of Aafia Siddiqui was wrapped from the very beginning in all the contradictions and suspicions that characterize relations between Pakistan and the US.” It, however, adds: “Denialism embedded deep in the public psyche has allowed the real threat to the Pakistani state and society, religious extremism, to grow to dangerous proportions…. But long after the story of Dr. Siddiqui will eventually fade, Pakistan will still be faced with an internal enemy it has not even begun to comprehend.”

The release or repatriation of Siddiqui will cause much understandable jubilation as justice done to a “daughter of Pakistan.” We must all welcome such a dénouement – but also hope that it won’t be a victory for the Taliban in their war on women.

The story of Siddiqui provides a particularly sad illustration of the cruel fate of women in this war-torn region.