If people can forget about prophets and angels and tolerate others, we can get rid of problems that face the world. However, if people on this forum expect everybody to tolerate intolerance (as is expected by some extremist muslims inspite of them not tolerating other communities), this forum is just going to the waste bin.

Iam suprised that many indians are on this forum yelling out pro-extremist statements. iam sure these have always lived in ivory towers.

Earlier you said, “Nothing short of controversial psychological and physical methods will work in fighting terrorism.” Would you have supported the internment of Japanese in WW2? What about the controversial methods used by the British against Indian independence agitators? And what exactly are these controversial method? I suppose you in your state of benign omniscience know what literally millions of judges, lawyers, professors, police officers and intelligence agents just can’t seem to figure out!

Should criminal sanctions be applied to a certain group of people based on their relgion or race? Do you know anything about American legal theory, or even the basis for American/British criminal justice? Seems like you want to revert to some sort of Gestapo type tactics.

Your last post was a bit discursive, let me summarize and comment on each of the paragraphs into a sub-thesis:

p1. We shouldn’t use techniques used by British/Isreali counter-terrorism forces. p2. Killing civilians is inevitable p3. CAIR has done bafflingly little to integrate into “American culture”

To support this proposition you quote the following:

“The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America. And Islam the only accepted religion on earth….”

What is so “un-American” about this viewpoint? Replace Koran with Bible, and Islam with Christianity, and that quote could just as well come from a true blue, white, protestant, fully “integrated” AMERICAN from Alabama.

All this point does is exhibit your bias against Muslims.

p4. There are no functioning Muslim democracies This post was about whether or not surveillance of Muslims in Lodi is excessive. Your slander of Muslim countries is absolutely irrelevant to this issue, and all it does is exhibit your obvious bias against Muslims. Ok assuming there are no functioning Muslim democracies…does that mean Muslims people in the US have less rights? What an irrelevant point. Ever heard of Equal Protection?

You probably haven’t since you don’t seem to hold constitutional rights and civil liberties in very high esteem.

Moreover, go to Malaysia or to a lesser extent, to Pakistan for a fully functioning Muslim country.

Kumar

Finally, I must demur from your suggestion that all South Asians are viewed monolithically in this country. I think that such statements amount to a ‘reductio ad absurdum’ of your view.

You have not used that term in the proper sense. http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/reductio.htm Nor have you provided any relevant evidence to refute Veena’s argument.

The death of civilians in both Afghanistan and Iraq is a tragedy. But given that no war has been without civilian casualties, it is not unexpected. One can debate the validity of the war in Iraq, but I am just for the sake of brevity here only going to say that even in Germany in WW II possibly more civilians were killed than SS and Gestapo members. There is no current state of the art to prevent that even in 2005.

The biggest US Islamic public relations group CAIR has done bafflingly little to integrate into American culture over the years even prior to 9/11. Rather , one hears disturbing statements from CAIR’s National Chairman Omar Ahmad in July 1998, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America. And Islam the only accepted religion on earth….” Do you think this is going to help the Muslim community’s image in America to have such a high profile group represent them ? It is not suprising that there more than a little suspicion of the patriotism of Muslims in sensitive positions in the FBI and military. If CAIR does not represent the voice of the Muslim community, then perhaps they should dismantle its current structure and replace it with something else. But that has not happened. If they are unable to clean up things happening in their own community, I don’t see them being able to bridge the perception gap outside their community.

And the sad truth about the Arab and Muslim world is that there are no functioning democracies. It is either an Islamic Theocracy or a dictatorship. The US government unfortunately has to choose the less of two evils to deal with. Of course that brings up the question as to why didn’t we just deal diplomatically with Saddam. As we can see, he was a secularist despite being a dictator. Now the various factions have ripped Iraq apart. Just as what happened after the death of Marshall Tito to the former Yugoslavia.

You don’t start by reinventing fire and re-deriving algebra. You start from the state of the art in antiterror, where the Brits and Israelis have taken it, and move it forward.

Nothing short of controversial psychological and physical methods will work in fighting terrorism… there have been horrible cases of excesses by the Brit govt too.

The mentality that you must always break eggs to make an omelet is lazy and dangerous. That’s exactly why tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq have been killed. That’s precisely why people have rationalized torture, the one thing in our national story we were proudest of not doing. You need to work always to asymptotically take errors to zero. Innovation, yes; torture, no.

… the Brits could infiltrate the IRA, because to put it bluntly, in N Ireland, the Protestants and Catholics physically look the same and speak withe same accent.

I grant that recruiting is difficult, but again we’ve screwed it up. We’ve fired and demoted FBI agents and translators who are native Arabic speakers (those whose loyalty was not questioned) instead of using them in the cause. To infiltrate cells already in the U.S., we need to recruit American Muslims to live and work here, not Saudis to live in an Afghan bunker.

There was a case of a Muslim FBI agent refusing to surveil Muslim groups as they were “fellow Muslims”.

It happens, but it’s a rare outlier. There was also a case of a Muslim FBI agent causing a 16-year-old Muslim girl to be deported for the sin of listening to an Internet radio broadcast.

These guys have no interest in anything material.

These guys got that way in part because of economically failed governments which we are still backing in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, like amnesiac dunces.

Have you studied the methods the Brits used to fight the IRA ? It has been a long brutal war, almost a 100 years long. Yes,that is why the Brits have that experience. And there have been horrible cases of excesses by the Brit govt too. Have you heard of H Block ?

http://larkspirit.com/hungerstrikes/racs/obscenity.html

And all the hunger strikes by people who were potentially wrongly incarcerated ? Yes, long before Guantamo which the world bleats about today , there was H block. So don’t give me your BS about “ninjas of terror”. The IRA also almost killed Prime Minister Thatcher in 1984:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/301223.stm

A gross failure of British intelligence aka your “Ninjas of Terror” wouldn’t you say ? She escaped just out of sheer luck and not due to any fancy Sherlock Holmesian sleuthing.

As for infiltration, the Brits could infiltrate the IRA, because to put it bluntly, in N Ireland, the Protestants and Catholics physically look the same and speak withe same accent. Lets call it for what it is really is we are talking about here… Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists. How many people are there in US intelligence forces who can physically and culturally pass for that group ? That is the crux of the problem. There is the occasional John Walker Lindh type who is part of the group, but I doubt he was anything more than a stupid foot soldier. I doubt a non-Arab person/agent would have much luck penetrating the inner Al Qaeda leadership. And frankly I don’t think there has been or will be much cooperation by the Muslim community in America and the FBI/law enforcement in helping to infiltrate such groups. There was a case of a Muslim FBI agent refusing to surveil Muslim groups as they were “fellow Muslims”. Your precious Brit intelligence I’m sure did not cases of Catholic agents refusing to penetrate Catholic IRA groups because they were “fellow Catholics”. And I would appreciate any attempts on your part to refute what I have said to backed up with clear arguments and facts and not blanket “BS” remarks…

B.S.– the current approach lowers effectiveness in fighting terrorism. It chokes off tip flow and deports 16-year-olds.

We may not have much antiterror experience, but we can certainly learn from the Brits, who with the IRA grew much better at infiltration. The Brit squads turned into the ninjas of antiterror, while we’re still the Keystone Cops.

Granted that the FBI et al have bungled so many investigations … but who is to blame for that ? The FBI is a product of the way American society fights crime and the serious short comings of that approach are very evident. Criminals can be coaxed to talk for money and other promises of personal favors. That’s how most law enforcement works. Nothing short of controversial psychological and physical methods will work in fighting terrorism. The US has never had a history of fighting terrorists in its recent past, except for the SLA (the Patty Hearst story) in the early 70s. The closest comparison to what is going on now is the 7(I think) German saboteurs who were captured in NY during WW II. They were promptly executed. We are faced with potential sleeper cells who are carefully planning their next move.

Remember, their view of history is long, ours tends to be very short. And of course everybody is who taken into custody is always innocent. I think we need to give this story a bit of time to unfold. Remember, the FBI is not always stupid at the individual agent level. It was a sharp agent who figured something was fishy when so many Arabs were taking flying lessons in AZ. Of course, their supervisors, who were possibly inept paper pushers who got promoted via the Peter Principle shelved the reports for fear of it being taken as “racist profiling”. You can’t have it both ways in this war. There are going to be mistakes made. But is your warm fuzzy PCness going to interfere with practical realities of the world as it exists today ?

I agree that it’s essentially impossible to prevent violent attacks on U.S. soil (or in any other place) because of the widespread accessibility of technology and the relatively low cost of obtaining it, compared to prior eras (“terrorism” is essentially inevitable in one form or another). Your specific claim here is something of a fallacy though; I find it hard to believe that U.S. laws are “unable” to deal with ongoing criminal activity when laws like this) are on the books and widely used, particularly given how many people–even U.S. citizens–are arrested on pretexts (like Al Capone) and actions like sending a donation to particular organizations’ hunger relief efforts without knowing what it is to be used for or showing up to a training camp run by designated organizations is legally considered “material support” of “terrorism” and prosecutable these days.

I think it’s more that it is very difficult to find out what’s going to happen and when; particularly when you’re not particularly smart about it or committed to the process. See: Iraq War; firing of lgbt arabic-speaking linguists in defense department; FBI Director’s claim that knowledge of Middle Eastern societies is irrelevant to understanding Al Qaeda; failure to inspect ports; distribution of counterterrorism resources by state; alienation of potential allies domestically and abroad who might have insight; mass roundups of immigrants; complete waste of resources in rounding up nonviolent drug offenders; undermining of international arms control treaties; etc., etc.

Also, you have to be careful of people with other agendas (like Ashcroft) who are going to use the kinds of arguments you’re making to push for greater enforcement powers without much accountability and with little or no benefit to work to reduce or eliminate Al Qaeda’s capacity. This kind of structural change seems more likely to contribute to monitoring of “subversives” like Martin Luther King than to making a substanital contribution to the elimination of violent acts within U.S. borders.

Lodi Imam Admits Giving Speeches Urging Pakistanis to Fight Americans The spiritual leader of the Lodi mosque who was arrested in a sweep earlier this month admitted to the FBI that when he was in Pakistan he gave speeches to Muslims urging them to fight Americans in Afghanistan in the months following the September 11 attacks.

However, in his immigration hearing on Friday, Shabbir Ahmed told a judge that “it was a requirement of all imams. If you don’t people turn against you. They sort of force you to say something.”

Ahmed, 39, a citizen of Pakistan, is fighting to stay in the U.S. after he being arrested two weeks ago in a sweep that also netted two men accused of having ties to the terrorist group al-Qaeda.

Ahmed was a student and then a teacher at the Jamia Farooqia, an Islamic university in Pakistan, during the 1990s. He came to the United States in January 2002 after he was recruited to be the imam at the Lodi mosque.

Today’s testimony came during an immigration hearing in which Ahmed’s defense attorney argued to have his client released on bail. During questioning today Ahmed denied ever being affiliated with or supporting any terrorist organization. While he admitted making the speeches against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he said that since he’s been in this country he realized he was wrong. “Having come here, there are true values and respect for human life,” Ahmed said, speaking through an interpreter. “When I saw such a picture, my mind changed. Now I know what the truth is. I think there is justice here, respect here.”

Ahmed has returned to Pakistan several times since emigrating to the United States, because his wife and family still live there. He said that since he has been in Lodi, he has made speeches in favor of the U.S.

When asked why he admitted the earlier speeches to the FBI, he said “I don’t remember everything I said.” Ahmed was interviewed three different times after his arrest. One interview lasted 12 hours. At another, which lasted almost 20 hours, Ahmed said he nearly fell asleep.

Unlike many of his fellow students at the Jamia Farooqia, Ahmed said he did not volunteer to fight the Russians during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He denied support for Osama bin Laden.

Prosecutors said the U.S. government had identified the Jamia Farooqia as a terrorist organization. Ahmed said he was not aware of any direct terrorist affiliation.

Members of Muslim mosque have pledged support for Ahmed and said they would provide bail if it is granted.