Abu Huraira, r.a., reported:
The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him,
said:
"Beware of assumptions, for assumption is the falsest of
speech, and do not be inquisitive, and do not spy upon one
another, and do not vie with one another, and do not envy
one another, and do not hate one another, and do not shun
one another; be fellow-brothers and slaves of Allah."
Al-Bukhari: Book 8 Vol. 73
with thanks to Sis.Kristi
Research by New Trend
Ford waited 36 years.
What does Islam say?
Kevanaugh did not Rape anyone.
[Read to end. Surprise about ME TOO movement.]
Sexual assault iis common in America. If you are assaulted
or touched physically, go to the police.
If scared, get your family's support and then go to the
police.
If still too scared, wait till you feel secure, one, two,
three years and then go to police and get a lawyer.
However, if you were involved in teenage misbehavior and
decades pass, you should not think that you will have
credibility.
People change. If a perpetrator [alleged perpetrator]
repents, seeks forgiveness and lives a moral life for
decades, why should you come out with allegations from
teenage years.
It should come as no surprise that hardly any teenager inn
America has stayed away from sexual misbehavior.
All that Ford did was to create a atmosphere of filth and
disgrace.
Even Felons are recorded as on good behavior after a decade
or two.
In Islam, RAPE and all crimes against women are severely
punished but silence for decades does not mean you can come
up with a story meant to destroy the credibility of a
political opponent.
Spreading your filth when you did not have recourse to any
legal measures means you are out to create an atmosphere of
immorality.
Kavanaugh had support from 63 women for 36 years of pure
behavior.
Ford, did you think you were waiting for an appointment of
someone as pure as Jesus Christ, pbuh?
This country already has too much gossip and dirty stories.
If every teenage tale of woe goes coast to coast, America
will become the joke of the world.
so:
Police
Family.
Lawyer.
Waiting period.
If there was no rape or murderous behavior, look:
Is the perperator repentant.
Seeking forgiveness.
Has changed over the years, then
Don't go for revenge.
In Islam we have concepts of CONVERSION.
We don't blame people for what they did before repentance
and conversion.
Christianity teaches Original Sin which means NO ONE is
without sin.
Now let's look at the leader of the ME TOO movemennt.
Asia Argento, exposed Weinstein for his sexual assaults on
actresses in Cannes. She became famous as leader of
victimized women.
Now it turns out that she herself is accused of sexually
assaulting a 17 year old boy acto Jimmy Bennett..
In the meantime, she entered into a casual sexual
relationship with Anthony Bourdain. He was sent all over the
world to taste food [!]. No one knows his real mission. He
was a self-confessed Jew and was very wealthy. Why would he
be going all over the world? CNN has made him famous.
When Bourdain found that his mistress was being sued by the
boy actor for assault, he decided that Asia should give the
boy $380,000 to shut his mouth.
Asia, the ME TOO leader, says it was all Bourdain's
idea.
Unfortunately Bourdain has committed suicide so we can't
know his version.
He was a vociferous supporter of the Me Too movement.
So, dear reader, don't take the Me Too movement as your
inspiration to rush to the media with your story of
molestation. Teenagers in America are allowed to date and
party mostly without supervision.
What do you expect?
[Sources for Asia and Bourdain story: USA Today and New York
Times.]
Catonsville, Maryland
Document on Gaza, relevance of Maudoodi & Ibn Taymiyyah, war
in Syria, Iraq, Iran.
On October 5, a Jamaat al-Muslimeen document 7-pages long,
extracted from New Trend, ,was given to 72 Pakistani
Americans after Juma'.
This is a masjid where almost the entire congregation is
Pakistani American. Some young people bring their
grandparents for Juma and they don't know English.
A long speech in Urdu is given before juma khutba [very
brief] and prayers.
So Jamaat's 7-page document had to be given selectively.
Here is an outline of the 7-pager.
Race in Washington DC to support Gaza. [Sis. Nadrat].
Hadith against begging [Sis. Kristi]
&
&
Global influence of Ibn Taymiyyah and Maulana
Maudoodi. [Dr. Kaukab]
by Sis. Yasmin
'Bismillah Walhamdulillah Was Salaatu
Was Salaam 'Ala Rasulilillah
'As-Salaam Alaikum Wa Rahmatullahi Wa Barakatuhu'
Narrated Abu Huraira ...
[ Allah be pleased with him ] .
*PROPHET* ~{Peace Be Upon Him} said....'The first batch of
people who will enter Paradise will be glittering like a
Full Moon {!} and those who will enter next will be
glittering
like the Brightest Star ~ {!}
Their Hearts will be as if the heart of a Single Man....!
for they will have no Enmity among themselves.
And everyone of them shall have Two Wives...! each of whom
will be so Beautiful.... Pure and Transparent that the
marrow of the Bones of their
legs will be seen through the Flesh.
They will be glorifying Allah in the Morning and Evening,
and will never fall ill, and they will neither blow their
noses, nor Spit. Their utensils will be of gold and silver,
and their combs will be of gold, and the fuel used in their
centers will be the aloes-wood, and their sweat
will smell like Musk."
{ Source: Sahih Bukhari~ Volume 4~ Book 54 'Hadith' #
469.}
[The Begining Of Creation]
Narrated Sahl bin Sad ...[ Allah be pleased with him ]
The Prophet ~{Peace Be Upon Him} said.. ' Verily! 70,000 or
700,000 of my followers will enter Paradise altogether !
so that the first and the last among them will enter at the
same time, and their faces will be glittering like the
bright Full Moon'~ {!}
{Source: Sahih Bukhari Volume 4~ Book 54 # 470
My 'Salaams' To All...
... Y a s m i n ..
Children in Africa Need Help
by Br.Abu Talib, Jamaat al-Muslimeen
Here is an example from Gambia, which shows how small
amounts can change a child's life. (see example here)
We have also received pictures of students who have
memorized the Quran.
A barrel full of educational material and toys is being
filled up to be sent to Gambia.
May Allah bless all who are helping.
Anyone interested in assisting Br.Abu Talib in this much
needed work, can reach him thru New Trend - see contact
information below.
newtrendmag.org
New Trend's Web Site:
Humble but doing Surprisingly Well.
In September, New Trend's web site received
87307 hits
with daily average of
493 visits.
Thank you Br. Rich.
Also on our amazing web site"
Readers should check complete Qur'an with three
translatios (
quran.htm
), plus all of Bukhari (
bukhari.htm
) and photos of Israeli
destruction in Palestine (
pictures3.htm
) .
Check links for politial prisoners (
links.htm
) .
Also see Br. Kaukab's extensive interview on CIVIL
DISCORD (
civildiscordshow.htm
)
funny but hard hitting.
Palestine
On Friday, October 5, thousands of Palestinians again
demostrated on Gaza's border. Israeli troups opened fire
repeatedly killing 6 Palestinians youths and injuring 358,
all unarmed.
However, a Palestinian youth from Tulkarem (on the West
Bank) grabbed a gun and killed two Israelis, wounded a
third, and escaped. Israel has launched a manhunt for him
and also carried out two airstrikes in Gaza.
Editorial
by Kaukab Siddique, PhD
Nobel Peace Prize indicates Intense hatred Against Islam and
Islamic Women.
Selections are made for Vicious Propaganda Value.
The suffering of Islamic women today is horrendous beyond
all known historic examples of genocide.
Here are a few examples:
Genocide of Rohingya Muslims with mass rape and mass murder
of women and children.. More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims
have fled their homes after brutal assaults by the Buddhist
regime in Myanmer.
In Kashmir, the largest occupation army in the world sent in
by India has turned this Muslim territory into a land of
terrorized unarmed civilians. The Indian army uses rape as a
weapon of suppression.
In Syria, more than a hundred thousand civilians have died
under torture and severe living conditions in prisons
imposed by the Alawite Shia regime. Among those tortured to
death are more than 10,000 Muslim women and more 10,000
children in Assad's efforts to force the entire population
into surrender.
Entire Syrian cities and towns have been destroyed, among
them major cities of eastern Aleppo by the Russians and
Iranians supporting Assad and al-Raqqa and Kobane by the
Americans supporting YPG Kurds.
In Iraq, the US air force with Iranian artillery and Baghdad
regime's fire power destroyed the entire city of Mosul,
killing nearly 40,000 civilians and making more than one
million civilians homeless. Even women and children part of
Islamic State families were not spared. Those women and
children who survived are under trial in severe captivity.
Scores of women affiliated to the Islamic State have been
executed by the Shia regime in Baghdad after perfunctory one
minute trials.
[The 40,000 civilian deaths in Mosul were reported by the
Independent.]
In northern Nigeria the military has brought about the
deaths of thousands of Islamic women on suspicion of being
part of the Boko Haram uprising.
The claims of the Yazidis.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been given to a Yazidi woman who
claims that she was a "sex slave " of ISIS for three months
before she escaped. There is absolutely no evidence for this
claim. BBC and various western media have been claiming "sex
slavery" by Isis for years but could bring no evidence at
all. BBC brought two women who claimed that they had been
sex slaves. Their faces were not shown and BBC projected
their claims without any kind of corroboration or
identities. Recently BBC brought an ISIS "commander" facing
the death penalty to claim that he had raped thousands of
women. Use of prisoners' interviews for propaganda is
against international law. [BBC is refusing to answer]
It is true that Yazidis felt threatened by ISIS and fled to
the Sinjar mountain where they were supplied by the US air
force. They not only survived but were later trained and
armed by the Baghdad regime and fought against ISIS.
The links of Yazidis with Israel and European countries
saved them from the extreme suffering of war. In July last
year, the Baghdad regime reported that more than 90,000
Yazidis left Iraq for various European countries.
Please note that Yazidi hatred for Islam and Muslims
preceded the war. When a Yazidi woman embraced Islam, she
was stoned to death by the Yazidi population.
Nobel Peace Prize has a track record of supporting
anti-Islam persons.
Among them. Here are some:
One case is that of Malala who was working with Pakistani
and American secret services. She was made world famous
because she claimed through her father that Taliban oppose
education for women .
Burmese female leader Su Kyi who refuses to say a word
against the genocide of Rohingya Muslims.
Most dangerous move by Nobel was the "honor" given to Begin,
the Israeli terrorist leader, and the Egyptian dictator
Anwar Sadat which undermined the cause of Palestine and
destroyed the unity of the Arab world.
Same effort went into the prize given to Shimon Peres and
Yitzhak Rabin.
President Obama was chosen for peace but he damaged Muslim
countries more than any other American President.
Elie Wiesel was projected to strengthen the Israeli
holocaust narrative.
Documentation of killings perpetrated by the Assad Shia
regime are stated by the UN and SOHR as follows.
"UNICEF reported that over 500 children had been killed by
early February 2012.[. Another 400 children were reportedly
arrested and tortured in Syrian prisons. The United Nations
stated that by the end of April 2014, 8,803 children had
been killed, while the Oxford Research Group said that a
total of 11,420 children died in the conflict by late
November 2013. By mid-September 2018, the opposition
activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR)
reported the number of children killed in the conflict had
risen to 20,616, while at the same time 12,964 women were
also killed.
PAKISTAN
New Government seeking Vendetta.
On October 5, the leader of the opposition party was
arrested. A writer for daily newspaper Dawn is being charged
with "treason" for his interview with former Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif.
Criticism of Imran Khan government by Jamaate Islami.
Elections were rigged: Sirajul Haq.
LAHORE, Oct. 6; Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Senator Sirajul Haq,
has said that the NAB should not make itself controversial
and cases against the arrested political leaders should be
heard in open courts. He was talking to the media at
Mansoora after addressing the JI Ijtema.
Sirajul Haq said that when the Anti Corruption establishment
itself became corrupt, the NAB was set up but it must also
keep itself above board.
The JI chief said there were no two opinions that the
elections were rigged and all political parties except the
PTI had reservations about the election results. He said the
government had set up a parliamentary commission for probe
in rigging but the commission was headed by a federal
minster. He questioned how a commission under a federal
minister could conduct an impartial enquiry into rigging. He
said that somebody from the opposition should have been the
commission chairman.
The JI chief said that the Foreign Minister had courageously
presented the Kashmir issue in the UN General Assembly.
However, he said, that the actions of the government should
be in conformity with this stance.
He said that instead of providing any relief to the masses,
the PTI government had raised the prices of gas, POL and
electricity which would lead to a flood of price hike.
Sirajul haq said that the JI strongly supported construction
of dams but these mega projects could not be built through
donations and the government must allocate necessary funds
for that. He said that the vast tracts of land in Sindh had
become barren due to shortage of water. He said that the PPP
ministers had amassed heaps of wealth but the plight of the
poor had not improved.
JI Secretary General Liaqat Baloch and JI Sindh chief Dr
Meraj ul Huda also addressed the gathering.
War News
Iraq
IS Hitting and being Hit across Iraq
October 5: Iraq's beauty queen, Tara Fares,was shot and
killed by unknown gunman in Baghdad shortly after she
arrived from Erbil. She was known for her semi-nude dances.
Two other women, known as beauty experts with Western
connections, have also been killed in mysterious
circumstances in Baghdad.
October 7: Iraqi regime has launched new military offensive
in Mosul, a city which the regime said it had captured last
year.
Protests againt a lack of facilities are continuing in
Basra, where drinking water is polluted. The number of
people poisoned has risen to 102,000.
October 6: U.S. Airforce launched airstrikes against IS
fighters in Kushaf village, in northern Iraq, killing at
least 5.
IS fighters have appeared in various parts of central and
northern Iraq.
There was a bomb explosion in southern Baghdad attributed to
IS; casualities are not being revealed.
October 6: IS fighters launched an attack o al-Asadiyah,
south of Mosul. There were several casualties. Another
attack by IS took place in Tikrit, in the form of a roadside
bomb.
A gang which demanded ransom from a church, and then killed
the priest when he did not receive the ransom, has been
sentenced to death.
Syria
Regime forces stuck in the desert, SDF stuck on Euphrates'
banks.
Turkey trying to pursuade fighters to withdraw.
Heavy fighting continues in the desert between "Hizb"
supporting Assad and IS fighters. Casualties are increasing
on both sides. Russian airstrikes are continuing but with
little effect in the desert. [4th week.]
U.S. Airforce is bombing three IS enclaves on the banks of
the river Euphrates. However, SDF (communist Kurds) could
not advance for the fourth week and is suffering losses
owing to ISIS counter attacks at night when the U.S.
Airforce is not operating.
In the northwest of Syria, Iranian artillery and Russian
airstrikes supporting Assad are continuing against various
towns who are supporting Islamic groups in the provinces of
Lattakia, western Aleppo, and northern Hama. These attacks
are violating the cease-fire promulgated by Russia.
Turkey is pressing Islamic groups to withdraw from facing
Assad's forces so that Russian cease-fire should prevail.
It's not working. Turkey has also sent in more troops
hoping that it will stop Assad from attacking.
On Friday, again there were demostrations by the public in
16 towns of Idlib condemning the Assad regime and calling on
the Islamic groups to unite and fight Assad.
There are reports that U.S.A. has built 20 small bases with
air strips all the way from Raqqa to southern Deir ez Zhor
province.
SOHR has noticed 8 more truck loads of American weaponry and
ammunition heading towards these bases.
Iran launched balistic missiles which crossed over all of
Iraq and hit IS forces on the Euphrates, but missed their
targets. SOHR says 3 IS fighters were killed along with 4
civilians, including 3 who are women. Iran says this was in
response to the IS attack on Iran's military parade in
Ahvaz.
Afghanistan
October 5-7
Taliban took over the central town of Wardak province,
killed all the poicemen and withdrew with large quantities
of weapons and ammunition.
According to the BBC, the forces organized by the US are
being killed by the Taliban at the rate of an average of 27
a day.
Somalia
October 7
US air strike killed 9 Islamic fighters near Kismayo after
they attacked an
Italian army convoy. A human bomber entered the convoy
killing unknown numbers of Italians.
October 5: A Shabab human bomber destroyed regime regional
offices in Mogadishu.
News Within the U.S.
Eyewitness Account
One Woman for Aafia
Saturday, October 6, 2018
By Nadrat Siddique
As I am in Chicago to run the "Bank of America Chicago
Marathon" for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui this weekend, I decided to
stop at the Pakistani Consulate. The Consulate is located on
the seventh floor of a high rise building on Michigan
Avenue, a vibrant and bustling street in Chicago's downtown.
Just as I arrived at the Consulate, a Black Lives Matter
(BLM) protest passed, proceeding quickly onto E. Lower
Wacker Drive (the site of many of the organization's
protests). The protesters chanted slogans decrying the
killer police. Earlier that afternoon, in a radical
departure from the norm of impunity, a police officer was
convicted in the death of an innocent Black man. I itched to
join the BLM march, but knew I must fulfill the purpose for
which I had come to Chicago: to call attention to the case
of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an innocent Pakistani Muslim woman
scientist entering her 15th year of illegal detention. As
the BLM march disappeared from view, my heart went with
it.
I stood in front of the Pakistan Consulate, a silent
one-woman protest, my sign calling for Dr. Aafia Siddiqui's
freedom. The security guard, a heavy set Black man, asked me
to move away from the building. He indicated that I should
stand closer to the Starbucks which was next door. I naively
told him I was there for the Pakistan Consulate, and not
Starbucks. He insisted I move away from the Consulate
entrance. I really didn't want to be in front of Starbucks,
so I re-positioned directly in front of the Consulate, but
closer to the street side.
The only problem was that the street side was lined with
police officers. Chicago panicked whenever Black people
marched for justice. The heavy police presence there was in
anticipation of "riots," Orwellian Double-Speak for Black
protesters making Whites uncomfortable.
I was not eager to be in close proximity to the cops, so I
temporarily moved towards Starbucks. Thankfully, the cops
cleared out shortly thereafter, and I returned to my
position closer to the Consulate.
As it was late Friday afternoon (the one woman protest for
Aafia was 4:00 - 6:00 PM), I saw only a small handful of
Pakistani officials emerge from the building. A few glanced
in my direction, but it was not clear if I made a dent.
Soon after I arrived, a Pakistani couple passed me and went
into the Starbucks. The wife was in full niqab. They
remained in the coffee shop for some while. When they came
out, I was in plain view in front of the Starbucks. They did
not bat an eye, and continued on their way.
During the two-hour protest, hundreds, if not thousands, of
pedestrians walked by me. Others were in cars or buses. Many
of those on foot turned around for a second look at my sign.
A few cars honked their horn for me to turn toward them, so
that they could read my sign (if it was not oriented in
their direction at the time that they passed). Many made eye
contact, which I returned with a smile. Some gave me a nod
or a thumbs-up.
The ordinary (i.e., non-consular) Pakistanis who passed by
were of two extremes: The first group were those who were
extremely interested, and stared or turned around for a
second look at my "Free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui" sign after they
had passed. The second group was completely disinterested
(or at least feigned disinterest).
I was surprised to see how many of the passersby were
extremely fit runners. Like me, they were there to run the
Chicago marathon that Sunday. They came from all over the
country, and were notable by the race packets--distributed
by all major races--slung over their shoulders. Many of them
wore Boston Marathon jackets, indicating they had completed
that highly competitive race. Others sported the blue 2018
Chicago Marathon commemorative shirt loudly proclaiming
their participation in the event. Many of the runners passed
my one-woman "Free Aafia" protest with looks of interest on
their faces. We runners--particularly marathoners--tend to
be very narcissistic. Also, marathons charge on average $100
registration fee, making marathoning a rather expensive
hobby, and as a result, largely the dominion of the
well-to-do. I wondered how many of my fellow Chicago
Marathon participants would stand for a cause higher than
themselves, particularly a political prisoner whose false
imprisonment their tax dollars supported. The marathon had
not even started, and inadvertently I'd introduced a large
number of runners to the Aafia case.
As I left the Consulate and headed to the nearby subway
station, I prayed that the newly elected Pakistani
government would reverse the ignominies of its predecessors,
and work to free Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. It was a shame and a
travesty that a Muslim nation had allowed one of its most
innocent and vulnerable citizens to languish for 15 years in
American, Pakistani, and Afghan prisons, all without just
cause. I prayed that all those complicit in her torment--and
in the torment of Muslim political prisoners--would be
punished by Allah Almighty.
The Innocence of Abu Zubaydah
Joseph Margulies
October 28, 2009
I have defended men and women on death row for nearly all of
my thirty years as a lawyer, and have represented people
caught up in the excesses of the "war on terror" since very
shortly after that war was launched. For more than a decade,
I have been counsel for Zayn al-Abedin Muhammad Hussein,
known more widely as Abu Zubaydah. Abu Zubaydah was the
first person immured in a "black site," the clandestine
prisons operated around the globe by the CIA from early 2002
to late 2006. He was the first prisoner to have his
interrogation "enhanced," and the only person subjected to
all the DOJ-approved interrogation techniques, as well as a
number that were never approved (including, for example,
rectal rehydration). The infamous torture memo was, in fact,
written specifically to legitimize Abu Zubaydah's
torture.
At the time of his capture and for years afterward,
government officials took great pains to demonize Abu
Zubaydah in order to justify his abuse. "The other day,"
President George W. Bush announced at a Republican
fundraiser in April 2002, "we hauled in a guy named Abu
Zubaydah. He's one of the top operatives plotting and
planning death and destruction on the United States. He's
not plotting and planning anymore. He's where he belongs."
Various senior administration officials described Abu
Zubaydah in comparably colorful terms.
These pronouncements, however, are not what set the torture
scandal into motion. For that, we can thank a "psychological
assessment" written by unnamed CIA officers and faxed to
John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who was the lead
author of the torture memo. This document described Abu
Zubaydah as "the third or fourth man in al-Qaida" and "a
senior Usama Bin Laden lieutenant" who had been "involved in
every major al-Qaida terrorist operation" and was "a planner
of the 11 September hijackings." He "managed a network of
[al-Qaeda] training camps," "directed the start-up of a Bin
Laden cell in Jordan," and "served as al-Qaeda's coordinator
of external contacts, or foreign communications." He was
also alleged to be "engaged in ongoing terrorism planning
against US interests." For good measure, he had supposedly
written the organization's "manual on resistance techniques"
and had a particular expertise in thwarting conventional
interrogations. It was this assessment that provided Yoo
with the "facts" needed to legalize the unlawful and
rationalize the unthinkable.
And so Abu Zubaydah was tortured. As often as it has been
repeated, the litany of this torture is still shocking. His
captors hurled him into walls and crammed him into boxes and
suspended him from hooks and twisted him into shapes that no
human body can occupy. They kept him awake for seven
consecutive days and nights. They locked him for hours in a
freezing room. They left him in a pool of his own urine.
They strapped his hands, feet, arms, legs, torso, and head
tightly to an inclined board, with his head lower than his
feet. They covered his face and poured water up his nose and
down his throat until he began to breathe the water, so that
he choked and gagged as it filled his lungs. His torturers
then left him to strain against the straps as he began to
drown. Repeatedly. Until, just when he believed he was about
to die, they raised the board long enough for him to vomit
the water and retch. Then they lowered the board and did it
again. The torturers subjected him to this treatment at
least eighty-three times in August 2002 alone. On at least
one such occasion, they waited too long and Abu Zubaydah
nearly died on the board.
*
The "facts" recounted above to justify this torture were all
false. Abu Zubaydah was no lieutenant to Osama bin Laden. He
held no position in al-Qaeda, senior or otherwise. He had no
part in September 11 or any other al-Qaeda operations. He
did not operate a network of al-Qaeda camps, open an
al-Qaeda cell in Jordan, or manage al-Qaeda's external
communications. He did not draft any resistance manual, for
al-Qaeda or anyone else, and had no special expertise in
resisting interrogations.
The government no longer maintains that these assertions are
true, and now concedes that Abu Zubaydah was never a member
of al-Qaeda.
This was the conclusion of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, which undertook the most meticulous study of
the torture scandal to date, eventually publishing a
500-page summary of its findings. The drafters reviewed more
than six million pages of contemporaneous records, from the
CIA and other sources, and concluded there was no support
for any of these assertions. The CIA has likewise admitted
error, and now affirms that Abu Zubaydah was not part of
al-Qaeda. This is also the conclusion of the United Nations
Security Council, which has removed Abu Zubaydah from its
Islamic State and al-Qaeda sanctions list, based on the
earlier recommendation of the UN ombudsman, who similarly
concluded that Abu Zubaydah was not a member of al-Qaeda.
And years ago, the Department of Justice withdrew all
allegations that Abu Zubaydah had a connection to the
September 11 attacks or played any part in al-Qaeda's
terrorism.
When I point this out, many people ask whether I am claiming
that Abu Zubaydah is "innocent." Here, they mean innocence
in the Hollywood sense—the wrong-place-wrong-time sort
of innocence that has acquired such purchase in American
life. Do I maintain that Abu Zubaydah is innocent?
This preoccupation with my client's innocence reminds me of
conversations I have often had about capital punishment. The
question that occurs to many people when they reflect on the
death penalty is whether he (it is almost always a he) "did
it." Other questions—about the limits of state power,
the fairness of the penalty, and the legality of the
proceeding—simply do not arise. They do not matter so
long as the accused committed the offense. The plain fact of
guilt supersedes any constitutional qualms.
We have now brought this orientation to the new world we
once designated "post-9/11," but now simply accept as
normal. Because the demonization of radical Islam has been
uncritically embraced by a significant portion of the
population and a great many of our elected officials, there
is widespread (though not universal) agreement that the
federal government may do things to followers of radical
Islam that it would never do to a conventional
offender—even one the government would seek to
execute, like a domestic terrorist who blows up a federal
building in Oklahoma City.
Thus, many people have come to accept that the government
may "enhance" such a person's interrogation in a way that
their former selves would have called torture, and that it
may hold him on a remote island without trial or meaningful
legal process for the rest of his days. The only question
that matters is whether the person falls within the
forbidden category. If he does, then he is not "innocent"
and his special fate is not only justified, it is salutary,
regardless of the constitutional consequences. But if he
does not belong to the category of radical Islamist, then he
can be considered "innocent" and may be spared.
The tragedy of innocence-speak, whether in capital
punishment or the post-9/11 world, is that it encourages a
childlike fantasy that we live among saints and demons. And
it compounds this folly by supposing that the challenge of
our time is merely to separate the two as accurately as
possible. Having satisfied ourselves that we have done so,
we then grant the state the authority to impose nearly any
penalty on those who fall on the wrong side of an imaginary
line. The obsession with innocence encourages the
transmogrification of a human being into a character in a
Marvel Comics movie.
*
The short answer to the question "Is Abu Zubaydah
Hollywood-innocent?" is that it doesn't matter. At least, it
shouldn't. It shouldn't matter in the legal sense, because
if the law were humane, it would not authorize the
government to imprison someone for the rest of his days
unless he had some specific responsibility for the event
that triggered our entry into this endless war. And it
shouldn't matter in the moral sense, because regardless of
what he may have done, regardless of whether he is
"innocent," we should not authorize the government to treat
him in a way that we would never tolerate if it were done to
a dog, or to imprison him incommunicado, in a small,
windowless cell, without charges or meaningful process,
until he dies, forgotten by a world that has long since
moved on.
But we do not live in the world that ought to be. We live in
the world that is, and most people who ask whether Abu
Zubaydah is innocent are not satisfied with what they regard
as a non-answer. So for them, the answer is no.
Abu Zubaydah would describe himself as a mujahid, which
means simply that he is engaged in jihad (literally,
"struggle"). Like many others, he has long believed he has a
religious obligation to come to the defense of other Muslims
who have been attacked, even if the attack comes from an
entity as powerful as a government. He has believed this for
years, which is why he dedicated himself to the defense of
Muslims in Afghanistan during its war against the
Communists. And it was a piece of Soviet shrapnel that
lodged in Abu Zubaydah's brain in 1992 as he fought
alongside his fellow Muslims against the Soviet-installed
puppet government.
Back then, Ronald Reagan called the mujahideen "valiant
freedom fighters." He said we supported the mujahideen, and
would continue to support them as long as it was needed,
because "their cause is our cause: freedom." Reagan made
sure the mujahideen received funding from the CIA, and
American leaders thought men like Abu Zubaydah were heroes
of the anti-Soviet resistance.
After the Communist government in Afghanistan collapsed,
bickering factions dragged the country into civil war. Like
most mujahideen, Abu Zubaydah had no interest in a conflict
that pitted Muslim against Muslim. But there were other
places around the world where Muslims were under organized
attack. Places like Bosnia. Because of his injury, Abu
Zubaydah could no longer serve as a soldier; he simply
lacked the physical and mental capacity. So he became a kind
of mujahid travel agent. He coordinated the travel of other
Muslims into Pakistan, and from Pakistan to a training camp
on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, known to the West as
Khalden.
Contrary to what the United States believed when its agents
tortured Abu Zubaydah, the government now agrees that
Khalden was not an al-Qaeda camp. Under bin Laden's
influence, al-Qaeda considered any American a legitimate
target, including innocent civilians. Abu Zubaydah, however,
like the vast majority of mujahideen, rejected this
extremist view; he believed then, and believes now, that
attacks on non-combatants, whether American or otherwise,
were and are explicitly forbidden by the Koran. (This is
also why he believes, like most mujahideen of his era, that
the actions of ISIS are an egregious violation of Islamic
law.) Although Abu Zubaydah knew bin Laden, the two held
irreconcilably opposing views of Islam. The ideological
antipathy between bin Laden and the leadership at Khalden
was widely known among the mujahideen in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. It was precisely because of this antipathy that
bin Laden forced the Taliban to close Khalden in 2000.
Khalden trained Muslim men to fight in the defense of other
Muslims. The men who passed through the camp, however, like
people everywhere, were free agents who could use their
training as they deemed appropriate. Like most mujahideen,
the majority of Khalden trainees went to places like Bosnia
to defend Muslims under attack. Some, however, came under
the sway of bin Laden and moved to camps run by al-Qaeda.
And some of these men would later be recruited by al-Qaeda
to take action against the United States. But the leaders of
Khalden opposed al-Qaeda's campaign. In fact, the man
described by the United States as a former commander of
Khalden, Noor Uthman Muhammed, who was arrested at the same
time as Abu Zubaydah and who trained hundreds of men at the
camp, was released from Guantanamo nearly five years
ago.
Abu Zubaydah is thus not Hollywood-innocent. He helped
facilitate the movement of scores of Muslim men to a camp
that trained them in armed combat. Some of these men were
later recruited by al-Qaeda. If the government believes this
adds up to a legal indictment, my co-counsel and I will see
them in court. We have demanded that he should be either
charged or released. The government has never brought any
charge against Abu Zubaydah, in either civilian or military
court, presumably because it understands that he has
committed no crime.
Instead, the United States is content that he should be
forgotten, out of sight and out of mind. And for this, the
government relies on people continuing to imagine him a
monster. Because if he is a monster, the government was
right to torture him. If he is a monster, it is not just
lawful but good that he remains imprisoned indefinitely. If
he is a monster, we may do with him what we will.
But there are no monsters. There is only us.
