The Swiftbombing Dilemma

Shortly after the failed bombing in Times Square my phone started ringing. Journalists across the nation asked for my opinion on the event. They needed it immediately. They needed it concise. They did not need a long, intellectualized sermon about how Muslims like me already have a rock-solid track-record when it comes to condemning terrorism.

What they needed was a sound-bite: “Muslims condemn terrorism.” or “We condemn terrorism whenever it happens, wherever it happens, whoever commits it.”*

So, without hesitation, I condemned terrorism again and again. The truth must be told over and over. Seeing people attempt to murder civilians sickens me. The leaps of logic needed to justify blowing-up people who are going to work or maybe trying to have a fun night out elude me. Anwar Awlaki’s “if you’re an American paying taxes you are a legitimate target” argument takes the whole death and taxes guarantee way further than I can stomach.

Recently, many Muslims have begun to question how we respond to crises such as the Christmas Day bomber and Faisal Shahzad. They say our record is clear. We should no longer hold press conferences in the wake of terror incidents to condemn the perpetrators.

They are right in that our record is clear. But they are wrong to think that we should stop proactively issuing condemnations.

I compare our situation to the dilemma John Kerry faced when he ran for president in 2004.

Kerry’s opponent’s hit him square between the eyes with a memorable talking-point: “You voted for the war, but against funding the troops.” It is short, snappy, seems to point to a flip-flop and, most priceless, can be said in mere seconds.

Kerry’s response was neither short, nor snappy. He may have had the best argument to dispel the apparent flip-flop. However, it took too long and it did not seem to address the emotional punch of apparently not supporting our troops. The response lost him votes.

So when a reporter calls me and asks for my response to an act of terror what I want to do is start in on the lecture: Look, since 9/11 I have condemned terror so many times that instead of my wife kicking me out of bed for snoring, I get kicked out for muttering condemnations in my sleep. When my neighbors greet me I respond by condemning terrorism. In 2006 after a congressional office asked me to organize a statement condemning the kidnapping of an American journalist in Iraq, I got on a plane and criticized the extremist’s actions from Baghdad. I have left my daughter in tears at home as I broke a promise to her so I could return to work and condemn Nidal Malik Hassan.

I could go on but you get the point. So does the reporter who does not have time to write about all that.

What could end up appearing in the news later that night is the less than inspiring, “Saylor noted that Muslims feel they have condemned terrorism already and are not going to repeat this condemnation today.”

Obviously that is not going to work.

Muslims are being hit square between the eyes with something more powerful than a talking point: images of some psycho claiming our faith motivated him or her to commit some unconscionable atrocity.

If I do not have a short, snappy, mere seconds of a response the result could be the loss of more than votes. I am going to be dumping fuel on the problem. It is a sin in my book to try to provide intellectual analysis in the immediate wake of a near massacre. Emotions are too high and your words must speak to those emotions. The best argument will get buried under the adrenaline.

So we are stuck, swiftbombed as it were. Those who argue that we have a clear track-record of condemning terrorism are right, but when they argue that we should move on and stop issuing the condemnation they have failed to comprehend John Kerry’s lesson.

Following the Times Square attack, I got an e-mail from a fair-minded person who asked why we Muslims did not condemn terrorism.

I responded with my usual lengthy list of links to such condemnations and, in part, wrote this:

“It is true that such condemnations often do not reach the general public…Short of an advertising campaign that is beyond the financial reach of our community organizations, we have been unable to come up with a solution to the problem of our condemnations and opposition to extremists not reaching everyone. Always welcome your thoughts on the subject.”

Until someone solves that problem, I will continue to repeating my sincere condemnations of terror.
*******************************************************************************************************
*Personally, I always thought this line was pretty comprehensive and hard to misinterpret. However, in some circles it gets me accused of being a HAMAS supporter. Another pitfall we Muslims face: you can universally condemn terrorism but if you don’t do it exactly the way some agenda driven people think you should, well that must mean you are a supporter. Foolish.

John Adams and Lawyers Working Terrorism Cases

Emotionally, it can be a hard thing to see people accused of atrocities benefiting from our legal system. However, in terms of our essential values--objective justice--and maintaining the moral high ground that makes our nation appeal to people around the world, it is essential.

See: Targeting Justice Department Lawyers for Work in Terrorism Cases is Misdirected

As with everything under the sun, the current tensions over current Department of Justice lawyers who worked on unpopular cases has a precedent, in this case one emerging from the very revolution that established our country.

John Adams, our second President, set the standard for placing essential values over emotions when he went acted as legal counsel to British soldiers accused in the Boston massacre, one of those iconic incidents that contributed to sparking full scale colonial revolt against King George.

In 1770, British troops shot and killed five civilians in Boston. I am always hesitant about citing wikipedia, but in this case the text provides a significant insight into how the incident parallels today:

"Captain Preston [the British officer in charge] and the soldiers were arrested and scheduled for trial in a Suffolk county court. The government was determined to give the soldiers a fail trial so there could be no grounds for retaliation from the British and so that moderates would not be alienated from the Patriot cause. A problem was that no lawyers in the Boston area wanted to defend the soldiers, as they believed it would be a huge career mistake. A desperate request was sent to John Adams from Preston, pleading for him to work on the case. Adams, who was already a leading Patriot and who was contemplating a run for public office, nevertheless agreed to help, in the interest of ensuring a fair trial."

Writing in his diary, Adams expressed fear he felt for his own safety, as well as that of his family from more radical elements of the revolutionary movement. He also wrote of "...hazarding a Popularity very general and very hardly earned: and for incurring a Clamour and popular Suspicions and prejudices..."

In the end Adams concluded: "It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country."

Vigorous defense of the unpopular as laid out by the laws of our land, and when convictions occur a justice that does not impose cruel of unusual punishment, is a basic value. The public may not feel the need to like it, but it should be respected. Certainly, the careers of people pursuing such work should not be tarred and feathered. These lawyers provide a service that can powerfully inspire the imaginations of the people overseas who are wondering if they should side with us or with the authoritarian guys in the caves.

If we master our fears and project our values we will win these imaginations over hands down. The other road--providing no real legal defense, substandard lawyers, or a system that cannot provide any verdict other than one pre-determined by an emotional mob--ends up making us look a lot like the the states our cave-dwelling enemies covet.

Is America a Christian Nation?

The founders wrote, and the state's ratified Article VI, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution which states, "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Additionally, the First Amendment, added to the Constitution as part of the deal to get it ratified, says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The Library of Congress published a piece entitled "The Founding Fathers and Islam” in 2003 and that hallowed institution concluded, “The Founders of this nation explicitly included Islam in their vision of the future of the republic.”

However, in all honesty, whether our nation was founded as a Christian or not is an argument best left to academics debating over the dusty tomes of history.

America was definitely founded as a nation that counted African Americans as three-fifths of a human being (U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 2, but the language was wisely scrubbed by the Fourteenth Amendment) and denied women the right to vote (took them until 1920 until someone wised up and enfranchised the all the ladies, credit to Wyoming for giving them the vote first).

We evolved for the better. The slaves secured their natural right to liberty. Women secured their natural right to vote.

Today, America is a multi-ethnic and multi-faith society with a shared set of core values: individual freedom and dignity, rule of law under which everyone is treated equally, individual opportunity, all committed to fostering the common good, etc.

Christianity is there, contributing to the good of our nation. But so are Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and a host of other faiths.

Advancing Bigotry on Capitol Hill

Liliana Segura over at alternet has published a worthy piece titled
“How Members of Congress Are Advancing Anti-Muslim Hysteria to Push a Radical Legal Agenda”

Here is an excerpt, but I recommend clicking on the link and reading the whole thing:

Beyond Congressional hearings that push the "homegrown Islamic terrorist" narrative -- or even repressive pieces of legislation like the [Stop Terrorists Entry Program (STEP)] -- CAIR's Corey Saylor says the alliances formed by members of Congress like Barrett with members of the anti-Muslim right are far more dangerous.

"It's less the legislation and more the legitimacy that's offered to some of the anti-Muslim bigots by members of Congress," he says.

One example Saylor cites is Rep. Paul Broun, a Republican member of the House from Georgia. Broun recently invited a man named David Yerushalmi to testify at a hearing on Capitol Hill. "Yerushalmi belongs to an organization that once called for adherence to Islam to be punishable by 20 years in prison," says Saylor.

Yerushalmi is the president and founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which, in addition to seeking to criminalize Islam, has statements on its Web site such as: "There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote."

"This man has the right to free speech, he has the right to believe what he believes," says Saylor. "But he gets legitimized because someone like Paul Broun invites him to Capitol Hill and gives him a platform … That allows him to go out and push his hate speech."

Two days before Christmas, CAIR sent a letter to President Obama, urging him to address what it described as a "rise in Anti-Islam hate, Islamophobic incidents, and rhetoric targeting ordinary American Muslims." Among these incidents was "an attack on a Sikh youth in Texas who was mistaken for a Muslim," "a Colorado sheriff who called the U.S. Marines 'Travel agents to Allah,'" and "a spate of vandalism incidents at mosques nationwide." It also listed a disturbing number of anti-Muslim incidents among supporters of and aspiring elected officials, as well as elected officials themselves.

Most memorable, perhaps, was the attempt last year by right-wing members of Congress to convince the public that CAIR itself was engaged in a sinister conspiracy to infiltrate and take over Congress, by dispatching interns to Capitol Hill. Last October, U.S. Representatives Sue Myrick, R-South Carolina, was joined by Rep. Broun as well as Arizona Republicans John Shadegg and Trent Franks in issuing a call for a federal investigation into CAIR's attempts to place interns in the Committees on the Judiciary, Intelligence and Homeland Security. The accusation was inspired by a book titled Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America, written by Dave Gaubatz, an anti-Islamic activist who posed as an intern for CAIR in an attempt to prove that the group is trying to infiltrate Congress. (Rep. Myrick wrote the introduction to the book.)

The backlash against Myrick and her co-conspirators was swift. "These charges smack of an America of sixty years ago where lists of 'un-American' agitators were identified,"wrote Reps. Michael Honda, D-CA, Barbara Lee, D-CA and Nydia Velazquez, D-NY in a letter on behalf of the Congressional Tri-Caucus, and signed by 87 members of Congress.

"The idea that we should investigate Muslim interns as spies is a blow to the very principle of religious freedom that our founding fathers cherished so dearly. If anything, we should be encouraging all Americans to engage in the U.S. political process; to take part in, and to contribute to, the great democratic experiment that is America."

Another Fox News Appearance Discussing Security

A second Fox News interview this week. I disagree with the decision to call the segment "When Sensitivity Trumps Security." I feel it is reasonable to accommodate a person's sincerely held religious beliefs in this situation.