jack
The Legendary Troll King
When Mayor Bloomberg gave an impassioned defense of free speech just before slapping a two-week suspension on head prison chaplain Umar Abdul-Jalil for publicly criticizing the Bush administration, he was being a tad disingenuous.
While stressing that free speech is being attacked by the right wing and that no one should be allowed to use the war on terror or political correctness as a pretext to stifle political speech, the mayor nonetheless seemed to be fishing around for a reason to discipline the Muslim cleric. He should have just let it go.
Bloomberg said he suspended Abdul-Jalil for not explaining that he was speaking as an individual and not as a representative of the city when he made his controversial remarks. But the mayor was most likely trying to deflect criticism from Jews who might have been offended by the remarks and from Bushites who were angry about the imam's criticisms of the Bush administration.
It's the view of some of our more rabid newspapers that the imam is a crackpot. But that's just a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that he's a Muslim, for starters, and to the fact that he dared to publicly criticize the Bush administration, its foreign policy in general, and the war in Iraq in particular. One thing is certain, however. If the imam had expressed equally biased views in support of the Bush administration and the war, his comments wouldn't have raised a peep. Who ever gets punished for going along with the status quo?
I'm not saying I totally agree with what Abdul-Jalil said. Less than a year ago, at a meeting organized by a Muslim student group in Tucson, Ariz., he accused the occupants of the White House of being terrorists, dragged out the old saw that "Zionists of the media" (read: Jews) are dictating our view of Islam, and charged that Muslims are being tortured in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan.
A federal judge has in fact allowed a lawsuit by Muslim detainees at the detention center, who say they've been subjected to severe physical, verbal and psychological abuse. And there are plenty of folks who agree that the Bush administration has needlessly brought death and destruction to innocent people around the world. Whether you call that terrorism or not depends on your point of view. But even public employees have a right to express their political opinions when they're off the job.
What happened to him, though, is consistent with a pattern that's become more common since 9/11 and the start of the war. Someone publicly criticizes the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. Someone from a right-wing group is there to record the remarks on a tape recorder. In this case, it was The Investigative Project, which claims to be the world's biggest investigative center on counterterrorism. They take the remarks to some right-wing television commentator or right-wing newspaper, in this case The New York Post, which then goes ballistic. And suddenly the person who made the remarks is branded a kook and anti-American.
Since 9/11 and the start of the war, the Bush administration and its supporters have repeatedly used fear and patriotism to keep people in line and blunt criticism. If Abdul-Jalil deserves criticism for anything, it's for his thinly veiled anti-Semitic remarks. But if people can't criticize the government for fear of losing their jobs, then this country is in a sad state indeed.
Abdul-Jalil's fellow prison chaplains, some of whom are Jewish, say he's a great guy. Yeah, he was mouthing off and being emotional in Arizona. But it wasn't in the course of doing his job. And in America, you're allowed to mouth off about the government. You're even allowed to be wrong.
How ironic it is that the imam's suspension comes so close to the third anniversary of the war in Iraq. Aren't we over there fighting to bring American-style freedom to the Iraqis, which includes the freedom to speak one's mind? As I said, Mayor Bloomberg should have let this one go.
While stressing that free speech is being attacked by the right wing and that no one should be allowed to use the war on terror or political correctness as a pretext to stifle political speech, the mayor nonetheless seemed to be fishing around for a reason to discipline the Muslim cleric. He should have just let it go.
Bloomberg said he suspended Abdul-Jalil for not explaining that he was speaking as an individual and not as a representative of the city when he made his controversial remarks. But the mayor was most likely trying to deflect criticism from Jews who might have been offended by the remarks and from Bushites who were angry about the imam's criticisms of the Bush administration.
It's the view of some of our more rabid newspapers that the imam is a crackpot. But that's just a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that he's a Muslim, for starters, and to the fact that he dared to publicly criticize the Bush administration, its foreign policy in general, and the war in Iraq in particular. One thing is certain, however. If the imam had expressed equally biased views in support of the Bush administration and the war, his comments wouldn't have raised a peep. Who ever gets punished for going along with the status quo?
I'm not saying I totally agree with what Abdul-Jalil said. Less than a year ago, at a meeting organized by a Muslim student group in Tucson, Ariz., he accused the occupants of the White House of being terrorists, dragged out the old saw that "Zionists of the media" (read: Jews) are dictating our view of Islam, and charged that Muslims are being tortured in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Manhattan.
A federal judge has in fact allowed a lawsuit by Muslim detainees at the detention center, who say they've been subjected to severe physical, verbal and psychological abuse. And there are plenty of folks who agree that the Bush administration has needlessly brought death and destruction to innocent people around the world. Whether you call that terrorism or not depends on your point of view. But even public employees have a right to express their political opinions when they're off the job.
What happened to him, though, is consistent with a pattern that's become more common since 9/11 and the start of the war. Someone publicly criticizes the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror. Someone from a right-wing group is there to record the remarks on a tape recorder. In this case, it was The Investigative Project, which claims to be the world's biggest investigative center on counterterrorism. They take the remarks to some right-wing television commentator or right-wing newspaper, in this case The New York Post, which then goes ballistic. And suddenly the person who made the remarks is branded a kook and anti-American.
Since 9/11 and the start of the war, the Bush administration and its supporters have repeatedly used fear and patriotism to keep people in line and blunt criticism. If Abdul-Jalil deserves criticism for anything, it's for his thinly veiled anti-Semitic remarks. But if people can't criticize the government for fear of losing their jobs, then this country is in a sad state indeed.
Abdul-Jalil's fellow prison chaplains, some of whom are Jewish, say he's a great guy. Yeah, he was mouthing off and being emotional in Arizona. But it wasn't in the course of doing his job. And in America, you're allowed to mouth off about the government. You're even allowed to be wrong.
How ironic it is that the imam's suspension comes so close to the third anniversary of the war in Iraq. Aren't we over there fighting to bring American-style freedom to the Iraqis, which includes the freedom to speak one's mind? As I said, Mayor Bloomberg should have let this one go.
