Can you pare down the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights to a manageable, no-nonsense six? Well, not really, but government authorities sure as heck can try that under the table, especially when it comes to dealing with those dreadful "Middle Eastern types" running around the country. For surely you have read about what had happened to those equally dreadful Italian, Irish, Jewish and Japanese types before them early in the last century.
In mid-December, hundreds of visitors and would-be immigrants were arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service a day after they showed up in response to a government-mandated registration drive for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan and other Middle Eastern countries who were in the United States on temporary visas. After being photographed, fingerprinted and interviewed, they were taken into custody and charged with overstaying their visas, though many, according to press reports, had nearly completed the process for legal residency. The INS said about 7,500 immigrants from these countries would, in due course, be similarly affected nationwide.
Sure, since Sept. 11, the name of the game has been security, security, security. And you let that slide.
Outside the US, at secret CIA interrogation centers around the world, from Bagram in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, terrorist suspects are "sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles ... or held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights — subject to what are known as ‘stress and duress’ techniques," wrote Dana Priest and Barton Gellman in a front-page report in the Washington Post, Dec. 26.
Those suspects who do not cooperate are turned over ("rendered" in CIA parlance) to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the US government and human rights organizations.
And sure, you say again, these are difficult times we live in, America is threatened, and though these practices are egregious, they could be, if not justified, at least explained.
And since Sept. 11, hundreds of suspects have been rounded up and held in federal jails around the country without access to lawyers, relatives and even to news media, a policy that is not only short-sighted, but lacks any valid penological objective.
Yes, troubling, but you argue once again that, well, America can’t afford to let its guard down.
But what of the assault on Arab-American Muslims, whose faith requires its adherents to observe zakah, the donation of a portion of their annual income to charity? Should Muslims nationwide be considered supporters of terrorism because they had donated to charities that, after Sept. 11, became designated as conduits to terrorists?
Looks like it.
Since those planes crashed into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, virtually all Muslim charities in the US have been designated as financiers of terrorism, and in some cases their officers arrested and charged, including the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation, the largest and most respected Muslim charity in the country, the equivalent of the Christian United Way and the Jewish United Jewish Appeal.
Spokesmen for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Long Beach, California group that lobbies for Muslim causes, have told the press that among American Muslims, particularly those from the Middle East, there is a feeling that were they to write checks to their favorite charities these days "the government will come after us." Though Muslims in the US are not by any means a homogenous community, coming as they do from different countries and ethnic backgrounds, with different cultures and different languages, they now are beginning to feel a homogeneity that they had not felt before, identifying with one another in no small part because the US government, and in many cases American society in general, are treating them as one.
In effect, by waging the battle for homeland security, the US may be forging a new minority identity.
As Peter Sherry, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, wrote recently in the Washington Post’s Outlook section: "We are pushing these groups together into a political coalition around grievances against the government that will not soon be forgotten. The outcome will almost certainly be a new minority group whose claims against America will be a source of rancor and division long after the current crisis has ceased."
This was evident at the MPAC annual conference in Long Beach during the last weekend of December, which attracted 1,500 attendees, where the defining theme was the need for American Muslims to forge an overarching group consciousness. It appears that whereas, in the past, America’s Muslims had never felt an urgent need to unite, now being subjected to intimidation by law enforcement agencies, from the FBI to the INS, will reinforce that need.
And make no mistake about it, intimidation there has been.
One well-known Muslim American entrepreneur in Florida, Jesse Maali, was arrested recently and his home searched for allegedly donating lavishly to Palestinian and Muslim charities. The prosecutors even brought up the nebulous issue of a letter that Maali had written to an Arab newspaper in London in which it was claimed he had supported suicide bombers.
So what happened to the First Amendment that prohibits government abridging the freedom of speech of citizens? You would think that Maali should be free to write whatever the heck he darn well pleases, wherever he pleases, wouldn’t you? And while we’re at it, what has happened to the Fourth Amendment that affirms "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures"?
As more and more Muslim charities are shut down, with their assets frozen (the Benevolence International Fund being the latest victim) we wonder about all that.
All of us wonder about it — those of us who believe in America, whether we were born, grew up, or came here fresh off the boat.
Arab News Opinion 9 January 2003
