MUST READ: ISLAM IN AMERICAN COURTS: 2007 YEAR IN REVIEW

Islam in American Courts: 2007 Year in Review
by Jeffrey Breinholt

History is important. It gives us perspective into modern problems. We can gain immediate comfort seeing how so many " new" issues have been considered by courts in the past. As I have written, American court opinions explain that the threat of Islamic actions against out nationals is the very reason we have diplomatic assets overseas, and how al Qa’ida targeted the United States in part because of the economic sanctions we promoted against Iraq well before our 2003 military invasion. They also show that FBI wiretaps are hardly a new controversy, nor is the phenomenon of Muslims exploiting charities in hopes of achieving worldwide domination.

Legal history is particularly relevant to national security and counterrorism, and not merely because we are a country governed by the rule of law. Judicial opinions are interesting because of the facts they generate. Court cases are an undervalued source of strategic intelligence about the threats we face from radical Islam within the U.S. People is this category generally do not advertise that fact, and being parties in litigation forces them to disclose more about themselves than they otherwise would. Court opinions give us a vantage on the goals and methods of people who are not always willing to be transparent.

The history of Islam in the U.S. courts is not a long one, which is a good thing. It means this aspect of legal history is easily digestible. Most of it comes from the last 25 years. We now have another year under our belts. Which cases from 2007 will future historians and strategists use to glean trends relevant to American national security?

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Conclusion: Want to Bet?

There are some very real lessons from this past year’s cases involving .Islam Of course, there would not be as many prison cases if we did have so many Muslims convicted of crimes and incarcerated. We would see fewer Muslim asylum cases if Christians and ethnic Chinese were not threatened with persecution in Indonesia, or if Muslim countries were not so broken and inhospitable that their own nationals would rather throw themselves at the mercy of our courts to avoid being sent home. How about the Muslims we have here? Far too many are demonstrably involved in terrorism and more petty crimes. Many law-abiding Muslims claim discrimination in the workplace, without any real hope that these claims will succeed successful, and many resort to frequently-frivolous litigation designed to control how people express themselves and to frustrate government security efforts.

Is this going to change? Does the New Year portend a shift in these trends? Don’t count on it. I predict that this time next year, I will armed with new stories and writing another article describing how 2008 set an all-time high for cases in some of the categories described above. I hope I am wrong, but I somehow doubt it. Is anyone interested in a friendly wager on this proposition?

It need not be this way. Despite the insight these cases offer to national security professionals struggling with the mystery that is the American-Muslim community, we may someday reach a point when Islam is no longer relevant to many judicial proceedings. When that happens – and the "Islam cases" in American courts slow to a trickle – people like me will be deprived of an object of research, but you will not hear us complain. It will mean we have succeeded in establishing a society where another ethnic community is fully integrated into the American dream and realizes that we are all in this together, and that additional inconveniences must be tolerated as long as we face a threat from political Islam. At that point, we might focus our days on the next big problem, maybe Russian mobsters who have achieved a foothold here. Until that happens, we should continue to mine these Islam cases for strategic intelligence and insight into today’s challenges.



Pertinent Links:

1) Islam in American Courts: 2007 Year in Review