Posted on 07/16/2002 8:28:49 PM PDT by stratman1969
Although it came unexpectedly yesterday morning, John Walker Lindh's guilty plea to two of the lesser charges against him was no surprise to Bay Area Muslims who knew him and had little faith in his escaping punishment from the federal government.
"We Muslims didn't have much hope for him," said Ebrahim Nana, who sits on the board of directors at the Islamic Center of Mill Valley, where Lindh studied and converted to Islam in 1997, when he was 16.
Lindh, 21, grew up in San Anselmo; his father, Frank Lindh, lives in San Rafael and his mother, Marilyn Walker, lives in Fairfax.
"It just seems like all the American ideals - justice, fairness, the Bill of Rights - do not apply if you're a Muslim," Nana said. "In that general context, his defense probably felt this was the best he's gonna get."
Nana acknowledged that Lindh confessed to serving the Taliban, but qualified Lindh's actions as an attempt to follow the tenets of Islam.
"Maybe he, being idealistic, didn't realize some of the problems with the Taliban, but every Muslim's goal is to help establish a Muslim state, morally, physically, or financially," Nana said.
Of Lindh's 20-year sentence, he said, "It could have been worse."
Nana's son, Abdullah Nana, befriended Lindh at the Islamic Center and, like Lindh, went overseas to study the religion. Nana had not yet talked with his son about the outcome .
Zaid El-Amin, who attended a San Francisco mosque with Lindh in 1999 between Lindh's trips to Yemen and Pakistan, said he heard the news on the radio yesterday on his way to work. Like Nana, he felt a plea bargain was the best Lindh could hope for.
"I think that he was in a situation that he felt he probably didn't have any options. They wanted to get him on something," El-Amin said. "He was not going to go free."
As word of the plea bargain spread across Marin yesterday, Marilyn Walker's Bolinas Road neighborhood in Fairfax lay quiet in contrast to the hordes of television trucks and reporters that surrounded her townhouse when news of her son's Taliban involvement broke months ago.
While neighbors declined to talk, many people in downtown Fairfax and San Anselmo said they believed Lindh's maximum 20-year imprisonment is more appropriate than the three life terms he originally faced.
"It doesn't matter how much time he spends in jail, as long as he takes responsibility," said Benjy Rodriguez as he ate lunch at Red Hill Shopping Center in San Anselmo. A New York City native, Rodriguez worked in the subway station below the World Trade Center prior to the 1993 bomb explosion that killed six. That incident was also linked to al-Qaida.
"For what happened to the World Trade Center, he's not to blame," he said.
Others agreed, saying Lindh was an impressionable youth who got caught in forces bigger than himself that he could not control.
"I don't see him as the devil incarnate, and I think it's very wrong to say that," said Herb Mooney, a retired businessman from Woodacre. "I think he was in places he shouldn't have been."
Snow McIsaac, a Point Reyes resident: "I think we search for what we believe in spiritually, and I think that's what he was doing."
Given that, county residents such as McIsaac, Mooney and Alan Anderson of San Anselmo thought the initial terrorism charges that would have had Lindh serving three consecutive life-imprisonment sentences were too harsh.
"To put him in jail for life was pretty strong, but I think most people at the time got caught up in patriotism. I think that died down," Anderson said.
The fact that the government allowed Lindh to plea bargain surprised some.
"I thought he would've gone to trial," said Mason Buchanan, a high school student who is visiting from Newark, N.J. "I imagine he's pretty much guilty for all those things. I think he's probably getting the shortest sentence he can."
While waiting for his order at M & G Burgers and Beverages on Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, Fairfax resident Wade Russell said, "I think the fact that he wanted to plead shows something about his commitment to that cause. Otherwise, he would have fought if he was 100 percent committed to that cause."
Calling Lindh a "bystander" within the Taliban, Mooney said, "It's tragic enough to lose all those lives (in the Sept. 11 attacks). I don't think we need to lose any more."
However, Missie Meagor, a teller coordinator for Bank of America in Fairfax, said Lindh was "getting away with murder."
"He was part of the Taliban that killed all those people in 9/11. That was more people than Pearl Harbor," Meagor said. "For him to get only 20 years is asinine. I think he should've been executed."
Is it just me or does this quote bother anybody else?
No, he is an Islamic. He just states the goals of Islam more openly than most.
Um.......er.......that is........
I'll just go away now.
"'Maybe he, being idealistic, didn't realize some of the problems with the Taliban, but every Muslim's goal is to help establish a Muslim state, morally, physically, or financially,' Nana said. "Sounds like he understood it quite well, Nana.
After the September 11 Massacre, all Americans understand it quite well. That's why Americans are suddenly anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim. They understand Islam quite well. Oh--and they don't want to establish a Muslim state in America--or anywhere else for that matter.
In fact, the more Americans learn about Islam, the more they recoil in disgust.
"Is it just me or does this quote bother anybody else?"
Is there still anybody out there who is surprised by this statement?
Anybody who doesn't believe them?
Hitler wrote it all down in Mein Kampf.
Muslims are telling the world exactly what their intentions are!
Don't be surprised!
Don't say you weren't warned!
The murder/suicide/terrorists that carried out the September 11 Massacre were fulfilling the intentions of Islam!! Don't forget!
No Muslim has yet issued a fatwa against them, their supporters, or their enablers.
Guess why!
"every Muslim's goal is to help establish a Muslim state, morally, physically, or financially"...and by any means necessary!
Fifth columnists. I hope the FBI is watching the Islamic Center of Mill Valley closely, but I doubt it. Might look like "racial profiling".
The above is a silly-arse argument, but we see similar comments all the time. "The truck drove over the precipice, killing the driver," when what is really meant is that the driver drove the truck over the precipice and the driver was killed. "the gun went off and shot bubba in the head," when what was really meant is Bubba shot himself in the head with a gun.
Walker didn't have to control the forces. He only had to control himself.
Walker wasn't caught up in 'forces,' bigger than himself. These 'forces' are composed of nothing more than individulas just like Walker who have chosen what they want to be. The individuals choose to be terorists. The people who spout this kind of line are in denial about their own responsibily for their own actions, preferring to believe instead that their lives are wholly governed by outside conspiracies. It is easier to blame bad behavior on some inanimate object or some impersonal group than on one's self. Walker always had the choice to stay out of the fight, to avoid joining up with terrorists. Walker had the choice of studying instead of going off to Kashmir to kill Indian Hindus. Walker chose his own path right from the git-go.
Yes, some of us take up yoga, while others take up rifles and hand grenades. It's all one to the relativists. BlueZone-think at its finest here.
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