HisAlways
February 21st, 2008, 11:29 AM
Jeffrey Breinholt, who is on leave from a counterterrorism post at the Justice Department, has been studying what he calls “an undervalued source of strategic intelligence about the threats we face from radical Islam within the U.S.” He has been looking at court decisions.
Last year, 888 judicial opinions mentioned Muslims, Islam or variations on those terms, more than in any other year in the history of the United States. In contrast to the views of many academic researchers and civil liberties groups, Mr. Breinholt says the decisions show that terrorism prosecutions work and that American Muslims are prickly, litigious and poorly integrated into American society.
“Next time someone claims that American prosecutors never win terrorism cases, or that Muslims are not more likely to be terrorists than other ethnic enclaves,” he wrote in a report last month, “recommend that they visit a law library, where they will find several published 2007 opinions in the case books where Muslims were successfully prosecuted for conduct related to religiously inspired violence.”
Mr. Breinholt, who is now director of national security law at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a Washington research group, conducted his study by plugging words into a database of judicial decisions. After eliminating cases in which Islam figured tangentially and 280 cases brought by Muslim prisoners claiming violations of their religious rights, about 500 pretty interesting cases remained. Most of them involved garden-variety crimes, requests for asylum and claims of employment discrimination. Relatively few concerned terrorism. :ohno
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19bar.html?ei=5070&en=85f8f9876d0654bf&ex=1204088400&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1203433360-xrSC4ITHJ/%20KqYTJOFZ22Q&pagewanted=print
Wake up America. :doh These are from actual court cases here in the US.
Last year, 888 judicial opinions mentioned Muslims, Islam or variations on those terms, more than in any other year in the history of the United States. In contrast to the views of many academic researchers and civil liberties groups, Mr. Breinholt says the decisions show that terrorism prosecutions work and that American Muslims are prickly, litigious and poorly integrated into American society.
“Next time someone claims that American prosecutors never win terrorism cases, or that Muslims are not more likely to be terrorists than other ethnic enclaves,” he wrote in a report last month, “recommend that they visit a law library, where they will find several published 2007 opinions in the case books where Muslims were successfully prosecuted for conduct related to religiously inspired violence.”
Mr. Breinholt, who is now director of national security law at the International Assessment and Strategy Center, a Washington research group, conducted his study by plugging words into a database of judicial decisions. After eliminating cases in which Islam figured tangentially and 280 cases brought by Muslim prisoners claiming violations of their religious rights, about 500 pretty interesting cases remained. Most of them involved garden-variety crimes, requests for asylum and claims of employment discrimination. Relatively few concerned terrorism. :ohno
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/19bar.html?ei=5070&en=85f8f9876d0654bf&ex=1204088400&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1203433360-xrSC4ITHJ/%20KqYTJOFZ22Q&pagewanted=print
Wake up America. :doh These are from actual court cases here in the US.