The Jihadist as Civil Rights Hero

[Valin]

Weekly Standard:

Tarek Mehanna is an odd choice of ‘victim’ for so-called progressives
SOHRAB AHMARI
7/25/11

In late March, as Boston emerged from winter, so did the city’s protest community. On the 24th of the month I watched as antiwar students joined forces with partisans of the Palestinian cause and Nation of Islam members in their immaculately pressed suits and distinctive bow ties, to gather in Dockser Hall at Northeastern University. The pretext was a community panel on prosecutorial misconduct at the Boston United States attorney’s office. The star of the show was disgraced Boston city councilor Chuck Turner, there to make his “last stand” before reporting to Hazelton federal prison, where he is serving a three-year sentence for public corruption. As outspoken as ever, the erstwhile civil rights hero claimed federal prosecutors in Boston had colluded with “the oligarchy” to frame him after he called for troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, Turner had been tagged for accepting a $1,000 wad of cash from a cooperating witness in return for assisting a Roxbury nightclub obtain a liquor license.

Turner’s case comported nicely with the larger political theme of the evening—the unjust prosecution of free-thinking citizens by a racist American government. And so -Turner’s fate wasn’t the only cause celebrated that evening. There was also the curious case of Tarek Mehanna, a 28-year-old Ph.D. who was indicted in November 2009 by a federal grand jury returning a 10-count indictment against him, alleging, inter alia, that he had conspired to provide material support to terrorists. Like Turner, however, Mehanna sees himself as a victim.

So do his supporters. Laila Murad, a young organizer with the Tarek Mehanna Support Committee, stepped to the microphone to defend Mehanna as “a devout Muslim, an educator and mentor to the youth, a scholar, a good friend, a devoted and respectful son .  .  . a loved and esteemed member of our local Muslim community.” Murad’s voice quivered with palpable intensity as she described Mehanna’s bravery in speaking “out against U.S. foreign policy” and his advocacy on behalf of Muslim prisoners. Federal authorities, Murad claimed, had leveled false charges against him in retaliation for his taking a principled, unpopular stance. It was Mehanna’s activism, and his dogged refusal to inform on his own community, that had made him an ideal target for the “post-9/11 campaign of repression against Muslims.”

(Snip)