Muslims For A Safe America

Speculation is growing about the possibility of an American attack on Iran – either a full-scale invasion (as we saw in Iraq) or air strikes and missile attacks (possibly including bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons) against Iranian nuclear facilities, missile launch sites, and military/intelligence targets – to prevent Iran from using its nuclear program to develop nuclear weapons. Read the rest of this entry »

While many Americans of various faiths have opposed the U.S. government’s domestic and international “War on Terror,” American Muslims who have expressed their criticisms and doubts about these policies have often had their loyalty questioned.

Many Americans wonder why a large number of American Muslims oppose monitoring mosques and Muslim charities, phone wiretapping and airport profiling. Is it because American Muslims are unwilling to tolerate any personal inconvenience or intrusion on their privacy, even if it makes the country safer? Is it because American Muslims sympathize with terrorists, and they don’t want terror plots disrupted?

And many Americans wonder why many American Muslims opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Is it because American Muslims put the safety of their fellow Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq over the safety of their fellow Americans here at home? Is it because American Muslims want al-Qaeda to have bases it can use to strike America again? Read the rest of this entry »

In April 2012, an Arab-American Muslim from Massachusetts, Tarek Mehanna, was sentenced to seventeen-and-a-half years in prison after being found guilty of (among other things) traveling to Yemen in 2004 so he could get training to fight against U.S. troops in Iraq. (Several American Muslims have been convicted on similar charges.)

Mehanna’s case has renewed a debate among some American Muslims: If the U.S. invades a Muslim country, whose side are American Muslims supposed to be on? What religious responsibility do American Muslims have to assist Muslims whose country is invaded by the U.S.?

At his sentencing hearing, Mehanna told the Judge, “I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of ‘Shock & Awe’ in the opening day of the invasion – the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking but of their foreheads (of course, none of this was shown on CNN). I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslims – including a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlers – were shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as the slept by US Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women don’t even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the seventeen Afghan Muslims – mostly mothers and their kids – shot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses. These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of brotherhood – that each Muslim woman is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. In other words, I couldn’t see these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them. … So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It’s what I’ve always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it’s not extremism. It’s what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you don’t have to agree with my beliefs – no. Anyone with commonsense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home.”
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After 9/11, the Bush Administration blamed Al Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks, and blamed the Taliban government in Afghanistan for providing a base for Al Qaeda. The U.S. then invaded Afghanistan, overthrew the Taliban government, destroyed Al Qaeda training camps, helped set up and supported an elected Afghan government, and continued to fight Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

Now, nine years later, President Obama has tripled the number of American troops in Afghanistan to 95,000, but they are spread thin in some regions, and they cannot hold on to territory. The Afghan police and army are developing very slowly. The Obama Administration warns that the Taliban are taking back territory and making a serious comeback.

Over the past nine years, thousands of American soldiers, thousands of Muslim fighters, and thousands of Afghan Muslim civilians have died in Afghanistan. America has spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan. The American public is tiring of the war in Afghanistan. Many Americans now think the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting, and they don’t want to keep sending more American troops and American money to Afghanistan. Read the rest of this entry »

For decades, the U.S. government has provided economic, military, and political aid to dictatorships in the Muslim world, on the theory that dictators would provide stability and protect American interests in the Muslim world.

When Muslims tried to pick their own leaders, the U.S. government was unsympathetic. The CIA helped overthrow the democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. The first President Bush stood silently by as the Algerian military prevented democratically-elected leaders from taking power in Algeria in the early 1990s.

After 9/11 highlighted anti-American feeling in the Muslim world, the second President Bush declared in November 2003 that the U.S. would reverse its policy. “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe — because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our country and to our friends, it would be reckless to accept the status quo. Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.”

The second President Bush partly justified the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on the grounds of spreading “freedom and democracy.” He publicly called on allies, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and hostile states, like Iran, to allow more “freedom and democracy.” In addition, he said that spreading “freedom and democracy” will counter Al Qaeda’s vision of a “heartless system of totalitarian control throughout the Middle East.”

In Cairo in 2009, President Obama told the Muslim world, “But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.”

However, both the Bush and Obama Administrations continued to provide significant support to friendly (pro-American) non-democratic regimes in the Muslim world.

Many Muslims around the world are suspicious that the U.S. remains committed to controlling and dominating, not freeing, the Muslim world. Read the rest of this entry »