FBI Ensnares Facebook User

Judge Puts Defendant in Mental Institution for Rant

In another heartbreaking story coming out of Raleigh, North Carolina, a young Muslim man with no criminal record, Abdul Basit Sheikh,  is being prosecuted by the same US attorney as Ziyad Yaghi faced, Jason Kellhoffer. Sheikh is accused of providing material support for a Foreign Terrorist Organization because he attempted to travel to Lebanon with the intention of training to join Al-Nusra Front. His parents described the 29-year-old Pakistani immigrant to the US as “depressed” and said he spent most of his time in front of the internet. Sheikh had contributed many religious and political comments to discussions on Facebook. He posted a number of gory videos of things like pro-Assad soldiers being executed, Mullah Omar of the Taliban and other famous Islamic preachers calling for the destruction of America, and had praised the Islamic fighters against Assad and the Islamic Caliphate.

In 2013, the FBI created a page in support of Islamic militants. Sheikh joined and thus began an online friendship with an FBI agent, who encouraged him to go to Syria and join al-Nusra and facilitated his travel arrangements. Sheikh booked a one-way ticket to Turkey for 9/5/13 but had second thoughts and failed to show up at the airport. He then informed the FBI agent that in November 2012, he already traveled to Turkey in order to join the Free Syrian Army but had become disillusioned with them because all they wanted was money, thus he became more interested in supporting the Caliphate. Via Facebook private message, the FBI agent offered to put Sheikh in touch with “a trusted brother with JAN (Jabhat al-Nusra),” who was in actuality an Online Covert Employee.

Sheikh then began to correspond via Skype with this FBI employee, saying, “I want to help the mujahideen, in any way I can.” He stated his belief that al-Nusra was the most disciplined group fighting Assad. The employee asked him if he would be willing to fight, and encouraged him to travel to Northern Lebanon for training before going to Syria.

On November 1, 2013, Sheikh bought a ticket to Beirut via Canada and Turkey. On November 2, upon his arrival at the airport gate, after being allowed to check in his bag and go through security, he was arrested by law enforcement. On November 12, the US government charged him with “Material support for a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

What the indictment fails to mention was that the FBI agent who communicated with him on Facebook was posing as a Syrian nurse, and that their messages contained romantic content. A large part of his motivation for traveling was marriage.

“The Sheikh case points out the hypocrisy of prosecuting people who support an anti-Assad group the government judged as terrorists while the Obama administration favors other fighters in the same bloody conflict,” said Jeff Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio.

On March 5, 2014, Sheikh told Federal Judge Terrence Boyle that he wanted to replace his government-appointed lawyer Joseph Gilbert with an attorney hired by his family, and stated that he was being “physically and morally abused” in prison.

"I am concerned about his competence," Gilbert said.

Prosecutor Jason Kellhoffer told Boyle that he saw no need for a psychiatric exam at this time, and Boyle did not order one. In June 2014, Sheikh was declared mentally competent to stand trial.

However, nearly a year later, on January 7, 2015 Judge Boyle suddenly ordered him to be involuntarily committed to a mental institution about seven minutes into the competancy hearing, when Sheikh interrupted the proceedings, telling the judge he was ready to tell a jury his story that day and it was a story a US jury should hear.

He was not only concerned about his arrest at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport in 2013 when he was attempting to leave the country. Sheikh also argued that the United States should pay reparations for war deaths in Pakistan, his native country, Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East – “100 camels worth of monetary compensation,” reported Anne Blythe in the News Observer.

“In a series of run-on sentences, he talked about cluster bombs, the pain he felt for Pakistanis killed in the conflict, President Barack Obama, the US attorney general, his family, the government and his desire to be released from custody.”

“If you’re trying to make a record that you’re not competent, you’re doing an excellent job,” said Judge Boyle.

“No, I’m competent,” Sheikh exclaimed. “I have a right to travel the world!”

Boyle ordered Sheikh to be involuntarily committed in a hospital for 120 days for psychiatric treatment. He told Sheikh he faced the possibility of the involuntary administration of psychiatric drugs so that he might better understand the seriousness of the charges against him.

“No thanks, no thanks,” said Sheikh. “I am perfectly all right. My belongings should be returned to me and I should be allowed to leave this country.”

In August of 2013, Thomas Walker the US Attorney for North Carolina’s Eastern District said he “made changes in his staff” after a federal appeals said it was concerned with the conduct of prosecutors. Judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals have publicly complained the offices did not turn over evidence to defense attorneys.

While the heads of government departments were “transferred out,” lower rung prosecutors such as Kellhoffer continue to engage in overzealous prosecution of idealistic Muslims who pose no threat to the United States.

This should serve as a warning to be very careful about anyone you meet online that seems to agree with all your opinions.

Worshipping While Flawed

TMO 

Editor’s Note: Karin Friedemann is a TMO columnist. The views expressed here are her own.

Alphonse Dinet painting, courtesy clipart.com.

Say: “O my Servants who have transgressed against their souls! Despair not of the Mercy of Allah: for Allah forgives all sins: for He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (Quran 39:53)

The Quran states many times that those who repent to Allah will be forgiven and will get a second chance at life. However, repentance is usually defined as promising never to commit the sin again. But how about the multitudes, who engage in habitual sin?

Orthodoxy says these people are hypocrites and that their prayers are suspect. Do these people have the right to pray in congregation with the other Muslims? Naturally, what is regarded as a sin so obnoxious that others would not pray next to you varies from culture to culture and also according to gender and social class. Yet, for those who sins are so bad that they themselves feel embarrassed to go the mosque: should they also feel ashamed to keep salat in the privacy of their own homes?

Are sinners allowed to pray?

Seems like a silly question since the sinner is the one most in need of prayer, but this kind of black and white thinking – either your lifestyle is “Islamic” or it is not – has perhaps kept a lot of people who wanted to be saved away from God.

It can be hard for those who are trying so hard to do everything right, or even for those who refuse out of cynicism to participate in religion, to understand how close Allah remains to the sinner. As long as someone continues to err, there always remains a certain window that stays open. The benefit of recognizing one’s own shortcomings and using that as an approach to Allah sometimes works a lot better than the technique of asking God to recognize you for everything you did right.

It is very important for those people who are mired in sin, whose blood flows with toxic substances, whose ears are ringing from the abusive situation around them, whose mailboxes are filled with bills they cannot pay, whose floors are dirty, whose children are angry – to realize that the practice of prayer is beneficial to all! The practice of prayer is even more important to the sinner than it is to the devout abstainer, because once prayer is renounced, then the bad habits or addictions are all that the person has left to live for. Prayer needs to always co-exist with sin, for hope to continue.

If you have a sin that is hard for you to give up, you should ask Allah to make your true need clearer for you, the need that you are covering up with this habit. Some people eat chocolate because they are lonely. Many people eat cookies when their bodies are begging for fresh fruit. Some people smoke because they never got breastfed as a baby. Most of the stupid stuff we do is because we did not get the correct nourishment, nor the correct guidance.

That is why giving up prayer – just because one cannot live up to the “lifestyle” of shariah – is the last thing one should consider! If it’s too awkward to join the splintered parts of your life, don’t! You don’t have to. Pray in secret. This is America, so worship when and how you like. Don’t let the “good Muslim vs. bad Muslim” divide ruin your opportunity to seek peace and inner guidance.

Pray in the darkest, most secluded part of your home, when nobody is looking. Pray from the deepest parts of your heart that you would like to start using more often. Do not care what other people are doing or thinking. Do not care what the atheists are thinking, and do not allow yourself to care about what the fundamentalists are thinking about your prayer, as it is solely for Allah.

Call me an anarchist, but I think the strength and unity of Islam comes from the individual, and the freedom of each individual to have his own spiritual experience of the One God – or in some cases, various takes on the One God; in other words, the many Names.

Some may mourn the lack of a Caliphate, yet the disorganization of the Muslims is one of Islam’s great protections. There is nobody you can kill in order to get rid of Islam. There is no leader that you could imprison that would cause the path of Islam to vanish from the world.

We actually live in the most beautiful time of the world, ever. We are winning. Nearly half the people in the world are Muslims. All you have to do, if you want to know why you are alive and why you are going to die, is to ask the person next to you, who will very likely be able to give you a well thought out and detailed answer! Never before in the history of mankind has basic Islamic knowledge been so readily accessible to all people!

Oh Allah! It is better to pray alone in sin than to be with those who do not understand us, but please, Oh God, bring us to those who will not leave us alone in sin, but who will encourage us to pray with them in congregation and who will not ask us about our sins. But also, dear God, bring from among them those who will understand our unique wounds, who will know, yet overlook our shortcomings, who will push us forward into the ranks of those who do good! 

Oh Allah, let us all invite humanity to share the peace of those who are content.