First published: Thursday, July 1, 2010
On 9/11, a small group of terrorists attacked the United States. In response, our government has spent the past nine years waging a “war on terror.”
It exploited those attacks as an excuse to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using fear of Muslims as the justification. A preemptive war against Iraq was begun under false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi government would share these with terrorists, particularly al-Qaida. Thousands of Muslims were rounded up in the Middle East as possible terrorists and tortured. The “worst of the worst” were sent to Guantanamo to be held and tortured indefinitely. But the U.S. knew all along that many of these prisoners were innocent, misrepresenting them as terrorists in order to generate fear that would induce Americans to permit restriction of their civil liberties and allow their tax dollars to be spent supporting these wars.
Our government needed to find terrorists living among us as a further way to manipulate our fear of Islam and thus fight its “war on terror” at home. Taking inspiration from former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 1 percent doctrine (if there is a 1 percent chance someone might be a terrorist, the government must act as if it is a certainty), the government launched a program of preemptive prosecution against Muslims to entrap and convict them of contrived crimes in order to preempt them from possibly supporting terrorism in the future.
Hundreds of Muslims are serving long prison sentences in America for crimes they did not commit. The purpose of these prosecutions is to increase our fear of Muslims and to convince the public that repressing both the Constitution and civil liberties is the way to prevail over terrorism.
We know the consequences of this injustice firsthand. We were involved in cases of Muslims who were targeted and entrapped in the Albany area, such as Yassin Aref, Mohammed Hossain, Ansar Mahmood, Dr. Rafil Dhafir and Imam Warith Deen Umar. We know that these individuals were not involved in terrorism, and our government now acknowledges as much. When innocent people are entrapped and framed based essentially on their religion, we cannot turn our heads and pretend that we do not see injustice. We cannot remain silent while these Muslims and their families, our friends and neighbors, have been wronged.
On April 5, the Albany Common Council became the first city in the United States to pass a resolution calling on the U.S. government to appoint a special prosecutor to re-examine the cases of Muslims who were preemptively prosecuted. The inspector general of the Justice Department has recommended this, but the department itself has taken no action.
Without Muslims falsely convicted of terrorism, how would our government justify its repression of civil liberties, its wars abroad and the “war on terror” itself?
On July 23–25, Albany will host the United National Peace Conference, bringing together all the national peace organizations to discuss strategies for implementing peace in the U.S. and the world. Speakers will include Noam Chomsky, Kathy Kelly and Cindy Sheehan.
One of the issues the conference will consider is how Muslims here and abroad are mistreated based on fear of Islam, and how to break this exploitation of fear cycle. You will hear many stories from both Muslims and non-Muslims like us, who have been personally touched by experiences of injustice and are determined to speak out about it.
Even if you cannot attend the conference, you can still help promote peace. Learn to see your local Muslim community as your American neighbors who are striving, like you, to build this country, and as people from whom you have nothing to fear. We came to know Albany’s Muslim community from different perspectives. Each of us has learned from them that despite media hype, Islam is a peaceful religion that recoils from extremists or terrorism. Unfortunately, we have also learned how maligned and fearful Muslims are throughout America.
It is time to stop the wars, persecution and injustice that flow from fear. It is time to start a healing that only peace can bring.
Stephen Downs is an attorney in Selkirk and founder of Project SALAM (Support And Legal Advocacy for Muslims). Joe Lombardo is a Delmar-based organizer of the United National Peace Conference. Register for the conference here.