The War on (Yusef) Islam

This past Wednesday United Airlines Flight 919 was ordered down; Homeland Security’s Advanced Passenger Information System detected a member of the Terrorist Watch List on board. The flight made a special landing at Bangor International Airport where the would-be terrorist was unloaded and detained. The remaining passengers continued on to Dulles International in Washington, D.C., while Yusuf Islam was interrogated and sent back to London via Boston and Washington.

All of this for the man who sang “Moonshadow.”

Yusuf Islam is not one of the missing hijackers, or one of bin Laden’s advisors. Nor is he associated with Hamas, nor does he enjoy the illustrious status of being a playing card in the US Army’s Iraqi deck. He’s Cat Stevens. Cat “Peace Train” Stevens.

Yet according to the Department of Homeland Security, “there was some relationship between the name and the terrorists’ activity with this individual’s name being on that no-fly list, and appropriate action was taken.”

This leads to a few questions. What’s the nature of the alleged—and quite ambiguously termed—“some relationship?” “The terrorists?” Which terrorists? All terrorists? Did they form a union? Maybe the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Tom Ridge can clarify.

Islam is “one of my favorite artists,” Ridge commented at a press conference.

Thanks for that Tom; good for you.

If Tom Ridge is no help, perhaps other officials within the Department or Intelligence Community can clarify. According to CNN, officials cite Islam’s donations to various charities potentially connected with terrorist activities as the cause for his detention, though—surprise—they wouldn’t say which charities. Homeland Security’s spokesman commented that “the intelligence community has come into possession of additional information that further heightens our concerns of Yusuf Islam.”

I’m really glad that the intelligence community is concerned about Yusuf Islam, I really am. I’m just a little more concerned about Osama bin Laden and the degeneration of American values.

In all fairness, his celebrity and image should have no bearing on how he is treated by our government; if there’s evidence of a link between Yusuf Islam and “the terrorists,” or “the enemy,” then by all means he should be blocked from the country. The profile of his case simply raises the larger question: is this secret evidence, this contrived vaguery, actually evidence at all? According to Yusuf Islam’s personal statement, even he doesn’t know what the charge against him is. On some level I feel as though that’s fundamentally against what American Democracy and Justice are supposed to be about.

The opacity of this process – indeed, of this entire administration – is disturbing. They like to spin it as “strength” and “resolve” in the War on Terror, but I prefer to call it “McCarthyism.” Certainly the safety of our nation should be regarded as a top priority, but when do we consider the preservation of human dignity and the moral core of our country? Evidently, not after we’ve held people without charge in a base in Cuba for years without counsel; not after we torture prisoners held without charge in a country that we occupy; not after we watch our rights of privacy erode when we take a book from the library; not even after we watch Tom Ridge send Cat Stevens packing without any real justification.

I’m not in the position to say that a more transparent “War on Terror” is a better “War on Terror,” because I admittedly don’t have the expertise. But as a reasonable and educated citizen, I can question whether it’s effective for the United States to hold, interrogate, report and embarrass people because of some dubious affiliation with Islamist organizations. That’s certainly not lessening the tension between the United States and the Islamic world; it is, however, keeping us in a constant state of fear. It’s somehow evocative of the days before the US invasion of Iraq when Tom Ridge appeared at the podium to deliver a message not unlike the following exaggeration:

“We don’t know when, we don’t know where, but something terrible is about to happen. Buy plastic wrap. Thank you.”

The suspension of liberties and civil rights in times of war has a precedent in the US, but that doesn’t make it right. From Lincoln’s transgressions during the Civil War to FDR’s camps in World War II to Gitmo, it’s not the way that a democracy is to endure. Time of war or not, citizen or not, a man has the right to face his accuser and answer the charges against him. Our society has to decide where we place the line between our perception of safety and our respect for the rights of man. For me, the infringement upon the latter is far more dangerous.

Oh baby, baby it’s a wild world indeed.

Peter C. Mulcahy ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a government concentrator in Cabot House.