socialismartnature:

On 12 April, Tarek Mehanna was found guilty of conspiracy and of giving material support for terrorism and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. The prosecution accused Mehanna of translating statements for al-Qaida and of disseminating pro-jihadist material on the internet. Mehanna maintains that he does not support the world view of al-Qaida, though he is unapologetic for supporting the rights of Muslims to defend themselves against their oppressors – in this case, US and British soldiers.

However, if Tarek Mehanna is guilty, so am I. I, too, support the right of Muslims to defend themselves against US troops, even if that means they have to kill them, and I try to give the Iraqi resistance a voice through my website. I have done everything that Tarek Mehanna has done, and there are only two possibilities as to why I am not sitting in a cell with him: first, the FBI is incompetent and hasn’t been able to smoke me out; second, the US judicial system would never dream of violating my freedom of speech because I am white and I am a veteran of the occupation of Iraq.

 … I’m not afraid to profess my support for Tarek Mehanna, or to advocate for his ideas, because I know the law does not apply equally to all in America. My whiteness and my status as a veteran will protect me. But Tarek was brown and he never made the mistake of enlisting in the Marine Corps, as I did. So he will spend the next 17 years in a prison cell.

socialismartnature:

So a man in Massachusetts who commits no actual violent crime is on his way to federal prison simply because he is Muslim and translated some anti-U.S. Arabic texts, but a guy in Florida who admits to murdering an unarmed teen remains free of any criminal charges simply because the victim was Black and the killer is friends with the police?!

America …

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Prosecutors call Tarek Mehanna a dangerous radical, but he says he’s being punished for not turning into an FBI informant.

On Thursday in a Boston court, a 29-year-old Muslim student faces being sentenced to life behind bars in a case that civil liberties groups raises profound questions for freedom of speech in America.

Tarek Mehanna, a bearded Islamist with fundamentalist beliefs, was convicted last year for conspiring to provide support to terrorists by downloading jihadi videos from the internet and translating Islamist documents that he found online.

socialismartnature:

President Barack Obama’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on December 31 shocked many people who hoped that Obama, a former constitutional law professor, would reverse the abuses routinely committed by the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

But while the NDAA—with its provisions that authorize the military, on the say-so of the president, to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens—is ominous, it certainly isn’t Obama’s first assault on civil liberties. After spending his presidential campaign in 2008 criticizing the Bush administration for providing a “legal” justification for torture, Obama has refused to take action against Bush-era officials for violating international law, and he has made sure the U.S. government’s repressive apparatus remains in place, at home and in countries around the world.

Abdul Malik Mujahid is a leader of Muslim Peace Coalition, an organization formed in 2011 to challenge Islamophobia. He spoke with Eric Ruder about the anxiety that the NDAA has caused in the Muslim American community—and what people are doing to stand up for their rights.

hip-gnosis:

logicallypositive:

straight out of 1984 I swear

This is a gross violation of personal freedoms.

socialismartnature:

David Judd reports on revelations about the NYPD’s spying against Muslims.

NEW DETAILS continue to emerge about the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) secret program for spying on Muslims, with the cooperation of the CIA. The CIA has now been forced to launch an investigation into the legality of its own actions, given that the agency is prohibited from spying on Americans.

The NYPD’s Islamophobic and racist surveillance tactics have become one of the most glaring examples of how the “war on terror” serves not only as a justification for imperialist war and occupation, but also for domestic political repression.

An Associated Press (AP) investigation has turned up documents which give new details on the Demographics Unit, which was led by a man “on leave” from the CIA, Lawrence Sanchez—a unit whose explicit purpose was to track Muslims in the course of their everyday lives.

According to the AP, the Demographic Unit “maintained a list of 28 countries that, along with ‘American Black Muslim,’ the department labeled ‘ancestries of interest.’” The unit compiled information on more than 200 mosques, a similar number of ethnic restaurants, bookstores and bars, a dozen Islamic schools, and 31 Muslim Students Associations (MSAs).

kateoplis:

Following a six-month long investigative research project, the Center for American Progress released a 130-page report today which reveals that more than $42 million from seven foundations over the past decade have helped fan the flames of anti-Muslim hate in America. The authors — Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matt Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and myself [Faiz Shakir] — worked to expose the Islamophobia network in depth, name the major players, connect the dots, and trace the genesis of anti-Muslim propaganda.

The report, titled “Fear Inc.: The Roots Of the Islamophobia Network In America,” lifts the veil behind the hate, follows the money, and identifies the names of foundations who have given money, how much they have given, and who they have given to.

Read on (video)

(via sarahlee310)