Naeem's Blog

I won’t go into all the details as I believe the various talking points have been discussed and presented.  Those of you who are regular readers will know where I stand on the issue.  For all others, I simply sat that he shouldn’t have been targeted.  He should have had his day in court.  

I would only add that Muslims should not be so quick to throw out the baby with the bath water.  While he may have adopted abhorrent views that are clearly antithetical to our religion, his previous works that brought countless young Muslims back to the folds of Islam should never be discounted or disregarded. 

On the subject of his more fiery political views that he advocated after his release from Yemeni incarceration, Muslims must be get a backbone and be willing to acknowledge the truth regardless of who says it.  He was very forceful in stating his views against the US Empire that some Muslims in the West were simply not comfortable hearing; and so this group felt no qualm in throwing him and his entire message under the bus.

That was unfortunate because there are too few Muslim voices out there with the necessary level of stinging criticism.  If only we Muslims had such a voice – courageous enough to denounce the Pharaoh of our day and disciplined enough to adhere to the Prophetic way.

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Despite all this mess of constitutional interpretations and legal wrangling over the targeting of an American citizen, what really upsets me is this tidbit of Obama’s unforthcoming approach to the whole process: 

“But the actual legal reasoning the Department of Justice used to authorize the strike? It's secret. Classified. Information that the public isn't permitted to read, mull over, or challenge.

Why? What justification can there be for President Obama and his lawyers to keep secret what they're asserting is a matter of sound law? This isn't a military secret. It isn't an instance of protecting CIA field assets, or shielding a domestic vulnerability to terrorism from public view. This is an analysis of the power that the Constitution and Congress' post September 11 authorization of military force gives the executive branch. This is a president exploiting official secrecy so that he can claim legal justification for his actions without having to expose his specific reasoning to scrutiny.” [Source]

So not only is the supposed evidence against Imam Awlaki being kept secret and hidden, but now even the legal reasoning and jurisprudential methodology on which the case is built upon has become a state secret?!

Wow.

What a stretch.

How much further can the government flaunt the very principles they are supposedly fighting for?  And to think, we all thought it couldn’t get any worse than Bush and Cheney.