Protecting Our Children in a World Gone Mad

When I spent a year teaching 6-8 grade students in Detroit, Michigan, I had hoped that with my high ideals, I could influence the children to become thinkers, perhaps even sway them towards a Godly life. But I found a tragic situation. American children of today are seriously brain damaged from computer games, TV, movies and pop music. They have an attention span no longer than a commercial and if something is not flashing lights and making bleeping noises they have no interest in it. They have a huge problem translating their thoughts into written words and they have a hard time sitting still. They really require - and want - adults to manage their behavior.

Concerning sex education, it was painfully clear that there was nothing I could do for these kids, except maybe an occasional isolated miracle. How do you convince a girl not to date boys when her own mother goes out on dates? You and I know that she is too young to think about such things, but the fact is, by 6th grade these kids' minds are set into the pattern created by the mass media. It made me realize that you really have to focus on protecting your kids from a very young age and arm them with knowledge.

The religious kids, if they are going to stay clean and innocent, they have to have made that choice well before 6th grade. Parents need to realize that the kids are going to learn everything about the facts of life - if not from school then from the songs playing in the supermarket - so we have to protect them. We have to tell them that they are persons of value who deserve to be respected and cherished and to enjoy happy and healthy relationships. Many children never hear these words from their parents so they seek affection and positive encouragement elsewhere. Most kids chase after boyfriends or girlfriends because the media tells them this is how you find happiness. Parents really need to walk the middle line between saying too much and not saying enough.

Young kids don't need the "details" of how babies are made but they do need to be told at a young age, for example, which parts of their body are off limits, even to family members, and the child should be made to promise to report any violations even if done in jest. Since they are giggling about boys as early as first grade, girls need to be advised well in advance that their lives will be miserable if they fall in love with boys before they are old enough to get married. They need to know the rules of clothing. They need to be instructed never to be alone in a room with a boy. Their brother should go with them if they are visiting the neighbor kids or cousins. You really can't be under-prepared.

A child needs to make an internal promise to keep chaste until marriage, if it is to be. If the kid has not gotten any good advice by age eleven, he or she may easily get lost. Whatever you tell your kids, it has to make sense within the context of the way that their peers explain the world. Although, "We don't do that because we are Muslim (or whatever religion)" goes a long way.

American children have full knowledge of how babies are made and how to prevent them, but they are very protected from knowing how babies come out. I believe that in families where the mother gives birth at home and the children are there to emotionally support her and know what women go through, these children will probably have a healthier attitude and reverence for their bodies and for life itself and will be less likely to make light-hearted decisions. Even many religious men, who were chaste until marriage, still lack the appropriate respect and reverence for the extreme sacrifice that a woman makes when she obeys her husband. A man that heard his mother's screams when he was a boy will probably be more helpful and more emotionally supportive towards his wife than if he was raised in ignorance.

The good news is that there seem to be more and more kids in high schools and colleges that choose to be chaste and who give each other moral support, and I have to assume it's because their parents talked to them about when sex is appropriate. Looking at online teen discussions it seems clear that there is a group of kids who have zero self esteem and are actively striving to crash their lives because they have no guidance other than the desire to be "cool" - while there is another group of kids who are actively striving to be responsible. When I was a kid there were no kids striving to be responsible in matters of chastity. If anyone was religiously motivated they would be treated like a mentally ill person and no one would be their friend. America is becoming better in many ways. At least, there are better choices available. As parents we have to make sure our children are aware of the choices we hope our kids will make, to balance the information they are getting from society about the choices that corporate military consumer culture hopes they make.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

Whither After the Goldstone Report?

The debate over the Goldstone Report is a huge distraction from the real problem: the Report's inadequacy and the futility of bringing the case to the International Criminal Court. The Report itself, written by a Zionist Jew, is extremely flawed and biased in favor of Israel. Richard Goldstone's daughter Nicole told Israeli Army Radio (in Hebrew) that her father, as head of the UN Fact Finding Commission on the Gaza Conflict, had actually softened accusations against Israel.

Goldstone's Report creates a fictional equality of power and obligation between Hamas and the State of Israel. In addition, it incorrectly tries to fit both within the same legal framework, as Goldstone misapplies the Geneva Conventions to Hamas.

The Geneva Conventions apply to Israel because Israel is a state and a signatory while post-WW2 Nuremberg Law provides the appropriate legal framework for resistance movements like Hamas. The Nuremberg indictment of the Nationalist Socialist Government concerning German conquests and the Sudetenland, which was annexed to the Reich under international agreement, charges (International Military Tribunal, vol. 1, p. 63):

"In certain occupied territories purportedly annexed to Germany the defendants methodically and pursuant to plan endeavored to assimilate these territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich. They endeavored to obliterate the former national character of these territories. In pursuance of their plans, the defendants forcibly deported inhabitants who were predominantly non-German and replaced them by thousands of German colonists."

If State of Israel replaces Germany, Zionist State replaces German Reich, and Jewish replaces German, the Nuremberg accusation precisely describes Zionist goals from the start of the Zionist movement until the present day. Until Israel negotiates an agreement with the resistance, all Jewish colonists today just like German colonists back then are legitimate targets for the resistance anywhere throughout the occupied lands of Historical Palestine.

The Palestinian-Jewish conflict has existed since before I was born. The UN essentially caused the conflict and has not solved it. Current UN actions show no evidence of bringing any improvement. Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. Maybe we should try something else besides asking for UN help.

Furthermore, why waste time with the ICC? Even if it ruled against Israel, the ICC does not possess the power to enforce its decisions. One can only conclude that the Arabs are so traumatized by perpetual injustice that they confuse ineffective posturing with effective legal tactics.

Few Americans would ever argue that Jewish and Arab Americans should receive unequal treatment under US law. Yet the Department of Justice is unconstitutionally selectively targeting and prosecuting individuals and organizations. Jews file terror victim lawsuits against Palestinian organizations; for example a US judge ordered the PLO to pay $116 million to a Jewish American family; but no one files lawsuits on behalf of non-Jewish American citizens, who like Rachel Corrie and Suraideh Gharbieh have been victims of IDF terrorism.

In the American legal and political process, Jews seem privileged over non-Jews, thanks to efforts of the Israel Lobby, which is actively engaged in Conspiracy Against Rights (US Code Title18, 241). Yet no one in government or media discusses the situation. Obama administration Zionists want to bury the Goldstone Report because it provides specific evidence under US law that the IDF is a terrorist organization (e.g., paragraph 798):

"With regard to the shooting of Muhammad Hekmat Abu Halima and Matar Abu Halima, the Mission notes that the Israeli soldiers had ordered the tractor on which they were transporting the wounded to stop and had ordered the two cousins (aged 16 and 17) to come down. They had complied with those instructions and were standing next to the tractor, when the Israeli soldiers standing on the roof of a nearby house opened fire on them."

US anti-terrorism law is clear with regard to aiding and abetting, material aid, and conspiracy to aid terrorism. Practically all Israel advocates should be arrested forthwith, and their assets should also be seized. Such is the current US practice whenever Jewish Zionist groups or individuals accuse Arab or Muslim organizations of terrorist ties under flimsy, ridiculous or counterfactual evidence. Because Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey is clearly not applying US law to American Jews in the same way that he applies it to American Arabs and Muslims, he is preventing enforcement of US law in time of war and should face immediate charges for Seditious Conspiracy (US Code Title 18, 2384).

Criminal complaints should be filed with US law enforcement officials in order to bring charges against all Zionists violating US law or subverting the US government. If some number of Arab or Muslim American lawyers started to work on the project, US-based legal processes could start within a matter of weeks.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

The Business of Lobbying in American Politics

A lot of aging leftists invite us to march in the streets. Some say, “Mass action will defeat the empire.” Will protesting stop war? Everyone who has been paying attention probably already knows that marching on Washington will not even disturb President Obama’s breakfast.

In fact, by causing havoc on the streets we actually distract the public’s attention from the real crimes taking place like AIPAC’s lobbying of Congress to bomb this or that country or like Haliburton’s pocketing of our tax money. Americans and their politicians need to understand that invading other countries hurts America. This approach is the only way to get the anti-war movement into the mainstream and away from the fringes of society.

The Israel Lobby has made sure the Zionist perspective permeates American discourse from grammar school through the highest levels of government. No child is too young for brainwashing.

An official diverging one iota gets 
his knees shot metaphorically. Holocaust Studies in the public school curriculum can start as early as Pre-K. Anyone that wants to discuss the role the Holocaust plays in US policy-making is an insane Holocaust denier. The Israel Lobby makes no distinction between national, transnational, and international politics.

Obama told AIPAC, “... the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and 
forever.” As long as Zionist subversives dictate to Obama, patriotic Americans will not make much headway in attempting a direct effort to change US policy. Activists need to change tactics by focusing on the danger that the Israel Lobby represents to the American political system and by attacking the discourse on which the Israel Lobby stands.

The pro-Israel lobby operates on every level of American society. Holocaust propaganda serves to shield the most privileged group in America from just criticism of many of its members and of its collective conduct—especially in relation to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the destruction of America’s Constitutional liberties.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was one of the main proponents of the Patriot Act, which monitors the reading history of library patrons. Zionist organisations are heavily involved with Homeland Security and they use book banning and far worse methods to squelch criticism of Israel. While there is no limit to the amount of hate speech against Muslims or Christians that is tolerated now in the western world, the mere suggestion that Muslims and Christians should have equal rights with Jews in the Holy Land, or that the Hollywood version of the Holocaust is not entirely accurate, have in recent times resulted in the deportation, imprisonment, and even assassination of the speakers, writers, or publishers, and in the banning of their books or films because of Zionist pressure on western governments to abandon the principle of freedom of expression.

How about a turn-around in rhetoric? Instead of trying to make Americans care about Arabs—too hard—we need to increase their awareness that Jewish Lobby is undermining American democracy and costing taxpayers money. Since activists can destroy a movement if they dwell upon who the good guys are (there are various opinions), we should concentrate on what we can all agree on: The Lobby needs to be stopped. That’s the only way to stop war and war taxes. The Israel Lobby is the enemy of all Americans. I would suggest a public rhetoric campaign against all Israel lobbyists suggesting prison. It should be social suicide to participate with Hillel or other pro-Israel organizations training future lobbyists.

There are plenty of ways to address this issue in town meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and other mundane ways. Causing a huge stir at a Martin Luther King school assembly or sending a mass mailing to all the high school students will create a lot more word-of-mouth grassroots pressure than a protest in DC, which doesn’t even get discussed. We are at war because we allowed our country and our minds to be taken over by Zionists and other opportunists. We refused to take responsibility for our country or for our children’s education.

Every town has a web of pro-Israel groups that work together to undermine American democracy to promote their personal interests. Pro-peace advocates need to identify the Zionist individuals who are pushing their agenda in the local school system. As soon as you start engaging in anti-Israel activism, all the Israel lobbyists will come crawling out of the woodwork to try and discredit or stop you.

Once you know who these individuals are, then you will be able to protest directly to the local leadership and law enforcement specifically about those who are personally responsible for pushing Americans to die for Israeli interests. You probably know where they live. If Americans started talking to their neighbours we could probably stop this insanity.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women

Another Harsh Winter in Gaza Awaits

Winter is coming, and it will be bitterly cold in Gaza. Many Gazans, whose houses were destroyed by the Israeli Defence Forces, have no shelter and will suffer terribly. Families still live amid the rubble of their homes with no resources to fix the damage.

With the sea blockaded illegally by the Israelis, the people of Gaza are literally imprisoned by these actions. Not only is Israel preventing building supplies from entering Gaza but also coffee, tea, paper, school books, toys for children, and thousands of other items. Palestine is not a poor country, and Palestinians are not a poor people. They are being forced into poverty.

"The blockade, although initiated by Israel, could not be successful if world governments, including Arab governments, were not complicit with Israel. At the Rafah crossing, aid was denied entry by the Egyptian government. Egypt destroyed the food and medicine by setting it on fire. This is proof that the purpose is to ethnically cleanse Gaza, allowing its people to die from starvation and curable disease as in Iraq where approximately 650,000 children died from the
results of economic sanctions," says Anisa Abdel Fattah, Chairperson of the Committee to Ban Economic Sanctions, whose conference in Washington, DC is planned for September 29.

The continuing failure of the international community to protect the Palestinians demands that we, as private citizens have to directly intervene to solve the crisis.

"When governments fail to protect human rights, civilians must step up. Civilians have a very important role to play, especially when government institutions fail to do their job in upholding the law and human rights," said Huwaida Arraf, Chairperson of the Free Gaza Movement, during a talk at the American University of Beirut. Ms. Arraf described how she was approached by an
elderly Gazan man who stopped her in the street.

"He had tears in his eyes. He said you gave us hope that our people, our family outside have not forgotten us."

A year ago, 44 ordinary people from 17 different countries sailed to Gaza from Cyprus in two small wooden boats. They did what our governments would not do: they broke through the Israeli siege.

During the last year, the Free Gaza Movement has organised seven more voyages, successfully arriving in Gaza on five separate occasions, bringing in journalists, human rights workers, parliamentarians and other concerned people. They took out dozens of Palestinian students and medical patients, and helped to reunite families separated by the siege. They remain the only ships to sail to Gaza in over forty-two years.

On three occasions, including the most recent attempt in June, the boats were blocked from entering by the Israeli navy.

Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories declared, "The landing of two wooden boats carrying human rights activists in Gaza is an important symbolic victory ... Above all, what is being tested is whether the imaginative engagement of dedicated private citizens can influence the struggle of a beleaguered people for basic human rights, and whether their courage and commitment can awaken the conscience of humanity to an
unfolding tragedy."

Former Malaysian prime minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who met members of the Free Gaza Movement in Cyprus, was shocked at how tiny was the only fishing boat that they still have for future trips to Gaza. "Yet 25 people dared to sail in this tiny boat, sleeping on the open deck, being seasick, without proper food, and being made to face Israeli attacks… I don't think I would be able to endure the kind of discomfort and dangers faced by the activists of the Free Gaza
Movement. All I can do is give moral support to them…"

There is definitely urgency in raising funds for the purchase of the vessel because with winter approaching, the people of Palestine will be affected. "We want to carry building materials as we need to rebuild houses, because they (Palestinians) are now living in tents and when winter comes, it will be terrible for the old, sick and children. Many of them may die because of the
winter."

Ms. Abdulla, a banker from Bahrain who travelled by sea to Gaza with the group in 2008, said, "I think Arabs in particular should go. At the very least they should support the movement financially. Everyone is obliged to do something to stop this tragedy." Those who want to help the cause can visit www.freegaza.org.

Regardless of Israeli threats and intimidation, Free Gaza volunteers will continue to directly challenge the Israeli military with their small boats, concretely demonstrating that this siege has nothing whatsoever to do with security and is simply an illegal act of collective punishment.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women

Disengaging America from the Israel Lobby

"No taxation by a foreign government without representation" is a basic American principle. Yet, the taxation currently endured by US taxpayers because of the Israel Lobby far exceeds the level of taxation by the British that led to the American Revolution. Pro-Israel organisations do everything possible to prevent Americans from openly discussing the fact that they are being taxed without consent.

Through subversion Israel advocates have orchestrated passage of the Patriot Act, Homeland Security abuses, and other erosions of civil liberties. Pro-Israel organisations file lawsuits to keep the question of Israel investments off local ballots. Jewish communal organisations bribe elected public officials with free trips to Israel to gain their support — even against the will of the majority of their constituents!

Financing Israel at the expense of basic American values victimises every citizen to benefit a very small sub-group of the population and also creates worldwide anti-US hostility, which puts all Americans at risk of terrorist retaliation. Obeying the Israel lobby goes against all logical American self-interest. Obeying Zionist pressure to invade several countries at once means watching America commit suicide, economically and politically, for the sake of Israel. Zionist activists are a real and present danger to the USA. They should be stripped of their US citizenship and sent to Guantanamo for interrogation.

America’s free press, justice system, and democracy are dependent upon the separation of American from Israeli interests. To survive, America must disentangle itself from the Zionist web of control. The common Zionist argument that Jews should get to keep what they stole just because they’ve been sitting on other people’s property for so many years is not a valid legal argument. International law as defined by the post-WW2 Nuremburg Tribunals does not confer upon occupiers any entitlement to “security.” Zionism is nothing less than a criminal ideology that completely rejects the fundamental American principle of sacred 
property rights.

America stands for equal rights, which applies to property and residency rights and other legal norms such as use of public transportation and voting. The US has acknowledged the injustice involved in colonising America at the expense of the native population. Even though economic disparities still remain, Native Americans have US citizenship and are allowed to rent, buy and sell property just like other citizens. This is not true for millions of Palestinian refugees who are denied any passports while they live under Israeli curfews and martial law. It is even against Israeli law for sympathetic Jews voluntarily to reconvey stolen property that they currently hold without legitimate title to the original, rightful owners. In general, Jews cannot even sell homes to Arabs. Yet Germany returned homes stolen from the Jews in World War II to their descendants.

Many Americans are aware that the subsidisation of the Israeli military at the expense of the US taxpayer puts all Americans at risk of retaliation. Yet the criminal acts begin right under our noses here in America by bankers and real estate agents. With the deep enmeshment of Israeli agents in the United States political spectrum, the Israel Lobby acts as a mafia facilitating the looting of billions of dollars via US military acquisitions from Jewish-owned defense corporations like General Dynamics and via capital transfers including ongoing complex beneficiary-obscuring transactions. In addition to ongoing US foreign aid for weapons purchase, the USA buys billions of dollars of weapons, declares the weaponry to be obsolete and then consigns it to Israel at practically no charge. Using full-scale militarised equipment supplied and paid for by the United States, the Israeli government uses US tax money to pay the IDF to force the non-Jewish Palestinian rightful owners to vacate their own property so that subsidised real-estate magnates can bulldoze the place to build suburban-style condos for foreigners outfitted with supplies from Home Depot and JCPenney.

As the Israeli government orchestrates increasing demand for Palestinian property, ordinary American Jews wishing to escape their credit card debts buy up stolen Palestinian property by means of mortgages that roll in existing indebtedness at subsidised interest rates. American Jewish purchasers can then resell the stolen properties at a profit and return debt-free to the USA with cash in their pockets. This outrageous criminal conspiracy takes place in broad-daylight generally under the aegis of taxpayer subsidised Zionist “charities” that encourage “Aliyah” (Jewish ascension to Israel).

Are American law enforcement officials investigating this racist organised crime network operating in full daylight? The Jews who move into this stolen property are participating in an international crime. The FBI should be attending all the Pro-Israel training workshops that take place on US soil and that promote both the subversion of all our basic national beliefs and also the looting of the US economy. The United States has no choice but to start investigating, arresting, charging, prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating American citizens participating in the Zionist settlement process.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National 
Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article

Myths and Facts about al-Qaeda

The media myth of a global Islamic conspiracy never got much traction in America before 2001 because the minority Muslim American population simply did not seem like much of a threat, because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States are loyal US allies, and because Americans generally have a positive attitude toward wealthy investors. After 9/11 pro-Israel propagandists exploited public ignorance and created a nightmarish fantasy of al-Qaeda in order to put the US and allies into conflict with the entire Islamic world. What is al-Qaeda? What do they believe? What do they actually do?

Osama bin Laden first used the term “al-Qaeda” in an interview in 1998, probably in reference to a 1988 article written by Palestinian activist Abdullah Azzam entitled “al-Qa`ida al-Sulba” (the Solid Foundation). In it, Azzam elaborates upon the ideas of the Egyptian scholar Sayed Qutb to explain modern jihadi principles. Qutb, author of Social Justice in Islam, is viewed as the founder of modern Arab-Islamic political religious thought. Qutb is comparable to John Locke in Western political development. Both Azzam and Qutb were serious men of exceptional integrity and honor.

While Qutb was visiting the USA in 1949, he and several friends were turned away from a movie theater because the owner thought they were black. ‘But we’re Egyptians,’ one of the group explained. The owner apologized and offered to let them in, but Qutb refused, galled by the fact that black Egyptians could be admitted but black Americans could not,” recounts Lawrence Wright in The Looming Tower. Qutb predicted that the struggle between Islam and materialism would define the modern world. He embraced martyrdom in 1966 in rejection of Arab socialist politics.

Azzam similarly rejected secular Palestinian nationalist politics as an impediment to moral virtue. He opposed terrorist attacks on civilians and had strong reservations about ideas like offensive jihad, or preventive war. He also hesitated to designate any Muslim leader as an apostate and preferred to allow God to make such judgments. Inspired by the courage and piety of Afghan Muslims struggling against the Soviets, Azzam reinterpreted Qutb’s concept of individual and collective obligation of Muslims in his fatwa entitled “Defense of the Muslim Lands, the First Obligation after Iman (Faith).” Qutb would have prioritized the struggle of Egyptian Muslims to transform Egypt into a virtuous Islamic state while Azzam argued that every individual Muslim had an obligation to come to the aid of oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Afghan, Kosovar, Bosnian, Thai, Filipino, or Chechen.

John Calvert of Creighton University writes, “This ideology… would soon energize the most significant jihad movement of modern times.”

At Azzam’s call, Arabs from many countries joined America’s fight against Communism in Afghanistan. No Arab jihadi attack was considered terrorism when Azzam led the group, or later when bin Laden ran the group. Because the global Islamic movement overlapped with the goals of the US government, Arab jihadis worked and traveled frictionlessly throughout the world between Asia, Arabia and America. Azzam was assassinated in Pakistan in 1989, but legends of the courageous sacrifices of the noble Arab Afghans energized the whole Islamic world.

After the Soviets left Afghanistan, bin Laden relocated to Sudan in 1992. At the time he was probably undisputed commander of nothing more than a small group, which became even smaller after he lost practically all his money on Sudan investments. He returned to Afghanistan in 1996, where the younger Afghans, the Taliban welcomed him on account of his reputation as a veteran war hero.

There is no real evidence that bin Laden or al-Qaeda had any connection to the Ugandan and Tanzanian embassy attacks or any of the numerous attacks for which they have been blamed. Pro-Israel propagandists like Daniel Pipes or Matthew Levitt needed an enemy for their war against Muslim influence on American culture more than random explosions in various places needed a central commander. By the time the World Trade Center was destroyed, the Arab fighters surrounding Osama bin Laden were just a dwindling remnant living on past glories of Afghanistan’s struggle against Communism. Al-Qaeda has never been and certainly is not today an immensely powerful terror organization controlling Islamic banks and charities throughout the world.

Al-Qaeda maintained training camps in Afghanistan like Camp Faruq, where Muslims could receive basic training just as American Jews go to Israel for military training with the IDF. There they learned to disassemble, clean and reassemble weapons, and got to associate with old warriors, who engaged in great heroism against the Soviets but did not do much since. Many al-Qaeda trainees went on to serve US interests in Central Asia (e.g. Xinjiang) in the 1990s but from recent descriptions the camps seem to currently provide a form of adventure tourism with no future enlistment obligations.

Although western media treats al-Qaeda as synonymous with Absolute Evil, much of the world reveres the Arab Afghans as martyr saints. Hundreds of pilgrims visit Kandahar’s Arab cemetery daily, believing that the graves of those massacred in the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan possess miraculous healing powers.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women. Joachim Martillo contributed to this article.

Prisoners of a Special Kind

Not much is known about the new federal prisons that house primarily Muslims and political activists, that are called Communications Management Units (CMUs), except that they are located in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois.

Although the US government refuses to disclose the list of prisoners to the public, inmates include Enaam Arnaout, founder of Islamic charity Benevolence International Foundation, Dr. Rafil Dhafir, physician and founder of Iraqi charity Help the Needy, Ghassan Elashi, founder of Holy Land Foundation and Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), Randall Royer, Muslim civil rights activist, Yassin Aref, Imam and Kurdish refugee, Sabri Benkahla, an American who was abducted the day before his wedding while studying in Saudi Arabia, and John Walker Lindh, an American convert to Islam who was captured in Afghanistan, plus some non-Muslim political activists. Most of these prisoners were falsely accused of terrorist offenses and then imprisoned for lesser charges but given sentences meant for serious terrorism-related crimes.

Carmen Hernandez, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said, “The primary problem with the opening of (the CMU) is that no one knows the criteria used to send the person imprisoned to that unit.”

What the prisoners have in common is that they were well disciplined, studious, and often religious compared to those in the general prison population, they maintain strong commitments to various causes, and for some reason the government wants to keep them separate, to restrict their communication with the outside world.

Prison officials claim, “By concentrating resources in this fashion, it will greatly enhance the agency’s capabilities for language translation, content analysis and intelligence sharing.”

Attorney Paul Hetznecker stated, “These Communication Management Units are an expansion of a continued war on dissent in this country... of using that word “terrorism” to push a political agenda and to really dominate and to control—attempt to control these social movements.”

Andy Stepanian, an animal rights activist who is the first to be released from a CMU, called it “a prison within the actual prison.” He said that the prisoners “are not there because they harmed anyone. They’re not there because they approach anything that most reasonable people would consider even close to being terrorism.”

He further stated, “From what I observed, about 70 per cent of the men that were there were Muslim and had questionable cases that were labeled as either extremist or terrorist cases. But when I grew to meet them, I realised that the cases were, in fact, very different. What it appears to be is that they don’t want people that are either considered to be fundamentalist in Islam or more devout than your average American in Islam to be circulating amidst the regular prison populace in the Bureau of Prisons. Whatever their objective in doing so, I mean, that would have to come from the Bureau of Prisons. But one can surmise it’s because they don’t want the spread of Islam in the prisons or that they’re trying to silence communications from these individuals, because perhaps their cases are in question themselves, and they don’t want to allow them access to the media.”

He concluded, “At the end of this prison sentence, I’ll look back on the fact that I had a tremendous opportunity to meet people from different cultures, to be exposed to the Islamic world and understand that it’s not something 
to be feared, it’s not something to 
be vilified.”

Daniel McGowan, a non-Muslim political activist in “Little Guantamo” wrote: “The most painful aspect of this unit, to me, is how the CMU restricts my contact with the world beyond these walls. It is difficult for those who have not known prison to understand what a lifeline contact with our family and friends is to us. It is our link to the world - and our future (for those of us who are fortunate enough to have release dates).”

The US houses 2.3 million domestic prisoners. Conditions are far worse in some of the other prisons. Within the CMU, Muslim prisoners are at least safe from violence.

However, the discrimination against prisoners at CMUs, in addition to the severe limitations on visits, phone calls and letters, includes a lack of access to vocational training and paying jobs that are available to other prisoners. More than half of the men face deportation after their release, and the difficulty in obtaining law books makes it difficult to prepare for an immigration hearing.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed lawsuits on behalf of several prisoners challenging the CMUs’ “violation of federal laws requiring public scrutiny” as well as the prison’s restrictions on Islamic group prayer. This legal struggle must be supported by increased activism on the outside to demand the release of the innocent either falsely convicted or 
intimidated into pleading guilty to bogus charges.


Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women.