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Punishing Violent Thoughts: Islamic Dissent and Thoreauvian Disobedience in Post-9/11 America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 December 2017

REBECCA RUTH GOULD
REBECCA RUTH GOULD*
Affiliation:
College of Arts & Law, University of Birmingham. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

American Muslims increasingly negotiate their relation to a government that is suspicious of Islam, yet which recognizes them as rights-bearing citizens, within a culture they claim as their own. To better understand how the post-9/11 state is reshaping American Islam, I examine the case of Muslim American dissident Tarek Mehanna, sentenced to seventeen years in prison in 2012 for providing material support for terrorism. I read Mehanna's verbal and visual depictions of his persecution in relation to the American dissidents Mehanna claims as intellectual predecessors, above all Henry David Thoreau and John Brown, while situating this dissent within a long history of American activism

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Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 146 - 171
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2017 

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References

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5 The Supreme Court ruling around which the prosecution built their case against Mehanna is Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010), at www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-1498.pdf.

6 See Andrew March, “A Dangerous Mind?”, New York Times, 21 April 2012, SR1; Amna Akbar, “How Tarek Mehanna Went to Prison for a Thought Crime,” The Nation, 31 Dec. 2016, at www.thenation.com/article/how-tarek-mehanna-went-prison-thought-crime.

7 A more recent source for Mehanna's thinking which was not formally taken into consideration while working on this article are the posts on a Facebook page curated by his brother, and regularly updated with reports from prison: www.facebook.com/FreeTarekMehanna. This page has over 6,000 followers as of this writing.

8 The main Islamist text that Mehanna translated and disseminated on the Internet and which was a focus of his conviction is Muhammad bin Ahmad as-Salim (Isa al-Awshin), “39 Ways to Serve and Participate in Jihad, at-Tibyan” (pdf at Internet Archive, ia600405.us.archive.org). Although the prosecution could not demonstrate any use of this work by al Qaeda, Mehanna's promotion of this text was nonetheless regarded as “material support” for this terrorist group. See Said, Wadie E., Crimes of Terror: The Legal and Political Implications of Federal Terrorism Prosecutions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 This phrase is taken from Akbar.

10 Ibid.

11 Quoted from United States of America v. Tarek Mehanna and Ahmad Abusamra, archived at www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/1726.pdf.

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13 On the “material support” accusation see George D. Brown, “Notes on a Terrorism Trial: Preventive Prosecution, ‘Material Support’ and the Role of the Judge after United States v. Mehanna,” Boston College Law School Faculty Papers, 2012, Paper 392.

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19 Kareem Abuzahra was a co-collaborator who was granted immunity in order to testify in the case against Mehanna and was a key witness for the prosecution. However, as noted by several commentators, his testimony was compromised by his admission that he was willing to lie. See Brown, 18.

20 “Tarek's Sentencing Statement,” Appendix to Glenn Greenwald, “The Real Criminals in the Tarek Mehanna Case,” Salon, 13 April 2012, at www.salon.com/2012/04/13/the_real_criminals_in_the_tarek_mehanna_case. All future references are to the unpaginated text at this link. Mehanna's statement is available on numerous websites, including the dedicated website for Mehanna's case at http://freetarek.wordpress.com.

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24 Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government,” in Thoreau, Political Writings, 1–22, 13. Future references to this text are given parenthetically in the text, with the abbreviation “RCG.”

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26 A chronology is given in Middle East Journal, 65, 1 (2011), 123 and 64, 3 (2010), 467.

27 For a collection of accounts of what is known about Siddiqui's case see the articles listed by the New York Times at http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/aafia_siddiqui/index.html.

28 Declan Walsh, “The Mystery of Dr Aafia Siddiqui,” The Guardian, 24 Nov. 2009, at www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/aafia-siddiqui-al-qaida.

29 See the official Facebook page at www.facebook.com/FreeTarekMehanna.

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33 See Asad, Talal, Thinking about Secularism and Law in Egypt (Leiden: International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World, 2001)Google Scholar.

34 I do not intend to suggest that classical Islamic thought has nothing to say about the individual conscience, just that there is a difference in emphasis, and that Thoreau, rather than Islam, is closest to Mehanna in terms of his approach. For a discussion of the individual conscience in Islam grounded in classical sources see Mujeeb, M., “The Status of Individual Conscience in Islam,” Studies in Islam, 7, 3 (1970), 125–49Google Scholar.

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37 Henry David Thoreau, “A Plea for John Brown” (1859), in Thoreau, Political Writings, 137–58; and Thoreau, “The Last Days of John Brown” (1860), in ibid., 163–69. Future references to these essays are given parenthetically in the text, with the abbreviations “PJB” and “LDJB.”

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49 See http://saccoandvanzetti.org/sn_display1.php?row_ID=73. The speech was delivered in Boston on 22 Aug. 2010.

50 Studies that showcase the diversity of American Islam include Grewal, Zareena, Islam Is a Foreign Country: American Muslims and the Global Crisis of Authority (New York: New York University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; and many of the essays in Hammer, Juliane and Safi, Omid, eds., The Cambridge Companion to American Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 For the controversy preceding the speech see, among numerous media sources, “Free Speech: Testing,” Harvard Magazine, July–Aug. 2002, 64–69, 64.

52 Cited and discussed in Ahmed, Leila, A Quiet Revolution (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 234Google Scholar. The full text of the speech is reprinted, under the changed title “Of Faith and Citizenship,” in the Harvard Magazine, July–Aug. 2002, 65, and at http://harvardmagazine.com/2002/07/of-faith-and-citizenship.html.

53 Samantha Schmidt, “Muslim Activist Linda Sarsour's Reference to ‘Jihad’ Draws Conservative Wrath,” Washington Post, 7 July 2017, at www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/07/07/muslim-activist-linda-sarsours-reference-to-jihad-draws-conservative-wrath/?utm_term=.422b6eb91a84. The fifteen-year gap between these two example, both of which caused tremendous controversy and placed the speakers in grave danger, indicates that, unfortunately, no progress has been made in terms of educating the general American public regarding the meaning of “jihad.”

54 Many recent studies contribute to various lines of critique, including Lauzière, Henri, The Making of Salafism: Islamic Reform in the Twentieth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thurston, Alexander, Salafism in Nigeria (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wagemakers, Joas, Salafism in Jordan: Political Islam in a Quietist Community (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bonnefoy, Laurent, Salafism in Yemen: Transnationalism and Religious Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

55 See, for example, his appeal to Osama bin Laden as “my real father,” discussed in Pyetranker, Innokenty, “Sharing Translations or Supporting Terror? An Analysis of Tarek Mehanna in the Aftermath of Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project,” American University National Security Law Brief, 2, 2 (2012), 21–42Google Scholar, 21.

56 United States v. Mehanna, day 3, 39, cited in Brown, “Notes on a Terrorism Trial,” 5.

57 In support of this point see the important critique of tolerance by Brown, Wendy, Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.

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