Let it go

Since 9/11, some news outlets have been bending over backward to show how understanding they are of the plight of American Muslims who are unjustly suspected of sympathy for terrorism or connections to terrorists. While no one should condone treating people unfairly, reporters really ought to display some caution before going to bat with a public relations piece for a group like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which the FBI severed ties with some years ago over connections to terrorist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

The latest example is yesterday's Associated Press piece describing the difficulties some Muslims have traveling because they've made it onto a government watch or no-fly list. A quick Google search suggested that it appeared in dozens of publications across the country. Here's the lead:

The calls have reached a point of repetitive regularity for civil rights lawyer Gadeir Abbas: A young Muslim American, somewhere in the world, is barred from boarding an airplane.

The exact reasons are never fully articulated, but the reality is clear. The traveler has been placed on the government's terror watchlist - or the more serious no-fly list - and clearing one's name becomes a legal and bureaucratic nightmare.

On Monday Abbas sent letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and FBI Director Robert Mueller requesting assistance for his two most recent clients. One is a resident of Portland, Ore. who is trying to fly to Italy to live with his mother. The other, a teenager and U.S. citizen living in Jordan, has been unable to travel to Connecticut to lead prayers at a mosque.

Not until the fifth paragraph does the story reveal that Abbas is a CAIR lawyer. The story frames this as a basic denial of civil rights with Muslims being subjected to pointless anti-Islamic harassment:

Ultimately, though, the reasons are almost irrelevant. From Abbas' perspective, the placement on the no-fly list amounts to a denial of a traveler's basic rights: U.S. citizens can't return home from overseas vacations, children are separated from parents, and those under suspicion are denied the basic due process rights that would allow them to clear their name.

Abbas describes the security bureaucracy as Kafkaesque, a labyrinthine maze of overlapping agencies, all of which refuse to provide answers unless they are threatened with legal action. One lawsuit is still pending in federal court in Alexandria, Va. That case has followed what has become a familiar pattern: Abbas either files a lawsuit or exposes the case to public scrutiny through the media, and within a few days the individual in question is able to travel. Government officials then ask a judge to dismiss any lawsuits that were filed, saying the cases are now moot.

The story offers token responses from government lawyers and a ridiculous summary of the argument in the writer's own words (if they're barred from airplanes, the victims "can always take a boat"). It then goes on to profile a couple of obviously perfectly innocent young men. One is stuck in Portland, on a no-fly list because he declined to speak to the FBI after an "acquaintance" was "charged in a plot to detonate bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony." Still,

"I feel that I did the right thing," Migliore said of his decision to exercise his rights when questioned by the FBI. "I didn't do anything wrong. ... It's very frustrating, not knowing what's going to happen, if I'm ever going to get off this list."

In another case, "an 18 year-old U.S. citizen living in Jordan with his parents was bounced from an EgyptAir flight to New York. Amr Abulrub had planned to lead Ramadan prayers at a Connecticut mosque." The boy is allowed to fly but he has to fly on an American airline, which would subject him to stiffer security. He said he was scared to fly at all "for fear that he won't be allowed to go back to Jordan."

Eventually we learn that

Abulrub's father, Jalal Abulrub, suspects his son has come to the attention of U.S. authorities because of his own writings. Jalal is a Salafist scholar who has sometimes written provocative articles and antagonized Christian evangelists he believed were disrespectful to Muslims. While Jalal says his family is Salafist - generally considered a fundamentalist sect of Islam - he is quick to point out that he has a long history of writing in opposition to the ideology espoused by Osama bin laden and al-Qaida.

"I am not going to let this go," Jalal said, referring to his son's inability to travel. "We don't allow anyone to oppress us."

Journalists should expose the excesses and abuses of a government system, but it would be nice if there were at least a cursory attempt at balance or even a clear injustice. The writer of this article never explains why he is so confident that these two young men are innocent of terrorist activities or intentions and therefore deserve such public sympathy. Nor does he mention CAIR's questionable history and the fact that in 2003 Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR's spokesman, said that if Muslims were to become a majority in the U.S. they would try to replace the Constitution with Islamic law.

More importantly, pieces like this undermine support for the legitimate efforts the government must make at security. These efforts are of course far from perfect, but nowhere does this story articulate the obvious: that while some people may well be unjustly denied certain travel privileges, that's the regrettable trade-off society must make to attempt at least to provide security. We try for a similar balance in our justice system. Mistakes and even abuses happen, but we still need to make the attempt.

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