NationStates Jolt Archive

An American Muslim religious leader being interviewed on NPR today stated that John Ashcroft is the latest Muslim philosopher -- he has taught the American Muslim community the value of secularism.

Discuss.

Wise words, indeed. It's good to see that some people in this nation are learning something from this current administration.

Wise words, indeed. It's good to see that some people in this nation are learning something from this current administration.

Yes, unfortunately, Mr. Ashcroft is not the Secretary of Education, he is the Attorney General. He is the nation's chief prosecutor and his job is to, well, prosecute. By that measure, Mr. Ashcroft has been an abject failure in the administrations (arguably sensible) focus on terrorism. The administration has asked for and duly recieved extraordinary powers and limits to civil liberties in order to conduct the war on terrorism. Let us assume for a moment that these powers are necessary for a nation "at war". What has Attorney General Ashcroft delivered in return? Very little, if anything.

"We have seen major terrorist prosecutions brought with much political publicity fail with hardly a whimper. The major jury conviction his Justice Department finally did achieve in the war on terror occurred in Detroit, and those convictions were subsequently thrown out by the judge for prosecutorial misconduct. Even without the misconduct, that case was startlingly weak. In fact, there has been no terrorist conviction since 9/11. And as David Cole points out here, Ashcroft is now zero for 5,000, in that the Justice Department has detained 5,000 people on grounds that they are somehow connected to terrorism—and convicted none [...]

Perhaps Ashcroft's defenders would say that he's performing well but is overwhelmed by the devious brilliance of the terrorist criminals—who are so clever in hiding their behavior and plans that no amount of hard investigative work could succeed in uncovering their plans. But the report of the 9/11 commission details an American failure of investigation and coordination, not a story of tactical or operational brilliance by the enemy. Ashcroft's Justice Department simply does not do the hard work necessary to uncover the plots and prosecute the perpetrators.

What about the tool the government demanded from Congress to police the domestic terrorist front? The USA Patriot Act has been used almost exclusively to pursue non-terrorist cases. On Dec. 1, 2003, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reported that at least two-thirds of the searches relying on provisions of the Patriot Act were in money-laundering cases, with no terrorism connection whatsoever. As of May 2004, the Patriot Act had led to 310 charges against individuals and 179 convictions. But only a tiny fraction of these cases could be described as involving terrorist activity, and essentially none of that tiny minority involved an actual or threatened attack within the United States.
"

See:

http://www.alternet.org/rights/19948
http://www.slate.com/id/2108766/
http://www.infowars.com/print/ps/ashcroft_touts.htm

The Attorney General has been granted extraordinary powers to wage the war on terror. With those powers in hand his results in that area are pretty much zippo.

I think he's an expert on terror.

He is sending uniformed agents to many polls to control who gets to vote and how they vote. Check it out.

He must be an expert; I'm terrified!

Maybe Bush should have appointed the corpse Ashcroft lost an election to as Attorney General. :D

who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow Government knows...and they oughtta, the whole country (and select people from others, like mine) are being watched like hawks watching fieldmice.

My own telephone was tapped for months because a previous tenant ran a madrassah out of this address. When I finally twigged to what was happening, and made a big deal out of announcing in a clear, firm voice into the empty air that the 'madrassah was closed, please re-direct your eavesdropping to (and I gave their forwarding address)', all the mysterious clicking and whatnot immediately came to a dead stop. And hasn't happened since.

I tell you, I don't feel safer, I feel like I'm being told by a self-righteous, gun-toting tyrant-in-training that I'm safer.

Maybe Bush should have appointed the corpse Ashcroft lost an election to as Attorney General. :D

then at least the whole "being anointed with oils" thing would make sense - that dead body needs something to cover the smell.

An American Muslim religious leader being interviewed on NPR today stated that John Ashcroft is the latest Muslim philosopher -- he has taught the American Muslim community the value of secularism.

Discuss.
This is going right over my head. I don't get it.
Does this mean the Imam (or whatever type of American Muslim leader he is) is glad that America is secularist {in theory}, otherwise his religion would be outlawed in lieu of Christianity?

then at least the whole "being anointed with oils" thing would make sense - that dead body needs something to cover the smell.

Heh. :D

This is going right over my head. I don't get it.
Does this mean the Imam (or whatever type of American Muslim leader he is) is glad that America is secularist {in theory}, otherwise his religion would be outlawed in lieu of Christianity?

No, he meant that the Muslim community learned that religion is not a good reason to vote for someone and that secularism is good. Basically, because Ashcroft comes from a religious background and has been given the green light to do things based on his religion, he's been discriminating against Muslims left and right.

Muslims have learned from him that they would much rather have a non-religious leader in government than a religious leader willing to use his religion to oppress others'.