Eloquent Incoherence

The Bush Administration recently fired seven U.S. attorneys. Firing a U.S. attorney is a drastic and rare action usually taken only in extraordinary circumstances (by comparison, of the 486 U.S. attorneys appointed between 1981 and 2006, only 3 were fired). The seven fired U.S. attorneys had solid resumes and good records, and some were replaced by candidates with weaker credentials but strong Republican connections. Particularly alarming was the dismissal of H.E. Cummins, a distinguished and well-respected U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas. Mr. Cummins was replaced with J. Timothy Griffin, a former deputy to Karl Rove who has limited legal experience but did opposition research for the Republican National Committee.

The position of U.S. attorney is a powerful and prestigious post; U.S. attorneys prosecute headline-grabbing cases involving terrorism, corporate misgovernance, corruption, and other high-profile crimes. U.S. attorneys have traditionally been insulated from political pressures and executive meddling, but Bush’s recent purges were made possible by a little-known provision of the Patriot Act that allows the president to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation. Adam Cohen’s column in the New York Times suggests three theories for this “political purge”:

1. Helping friends. Ms. Lam (one of the fired attorneys) had already put one powerful Republican congressman in jail and was investigating other powerful politicians. The Justice Department, unpersuasively, claims that it was unhappy about Ms. Lam’s failure to bring more immigration cases. Meanwhile, Ms. Lam has been replaced with an interim prosecutor whose résumé shows almost no criminal law experience, but includes her membership in the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

2. Candidate recruitment. U.S. attorney is a position that can make headlines and launch political careers. Congressional Democrats suspect that the Bush administration has been pushing out long-serving U.S. attorneys to replace them with promising Republican lawyers who can then be run for Congress and top state offices.

3. Presidential politics. The Justice Department concedes that Mr. Cummins was doing a good job in Little Rock. An obvious question is whether the administration was more interested in his successor’s skills in opposition political research — let’s not forget that Arkansas has been lucrative fodder for Republicans in the past — in time for the 2008 elections.

One of the greatest aspects of the system of government established by our founding fathers is the seperation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. No branch of government can amass too much power, and each branch acts as a check on the other branches. The process of appointing federal judges and U.S. attorneys (Presidential nomination followed by Congressional confirmation) is an important element of this separation of powers. The magnitude of Bush’s successful attempt to bypass the process can’t be understated. The Patriot Act’s sweeping expansions of executive power have enabled Bush to install cronies in powerful positions with the authority to investigate and prosecute (or, more importantly, the authority to refrain from doing so). These developments are alarming not only because of these immediate consequences, but because of the precedent they set in upsetting the delicate balance of authority that is a hallmark of American democracy. Though such excesses would normally be regarded as policies unbecoming of the United States, they seem to have become a sad reality of life under the Bush Administration.

According to a report by the Justice Department Inspector General, the FBI lost 160 laptops and a number of weapons during a 44-month period ending September 30, 2005. Of these 160 laptops, 10 contained classified information and 51 may or may not have contained classified information. Believe it or not, the figures represent an improvement over the FBI’s prior record of handling sensitive inventory; the Bureau lost 300 laptops and 300 weapons during the previous 28-month period. That’s an average of over 10 laptops and 10 weapons lost every month over the course of two years and four months.

In response to the report, Assistant FBI director John Miller acknowledged the problem and noted the “significant progress” the Bureau has made in the past five years. Miller also took issue with the report’s count of missing weapons, claiming that 43 of the unaccounted weapons should not have been counted because they had been reported missing prior to the time period covered by the report. In other words, “you can’t count those weapons; they were missing from a long time ago.”

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times about Shi’a-Sunni tensions within the Muslim community in the United States. The article mentions the Muslim Students Association here at the University of Michigan, as well as the Muslim community in Southeastern Michigan (home to the largest concentration of Muslims in North America).

(courtesy of Lubna)

There are some fights that I wish Muslim-Americans wouldn’t pick. Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis (who are mostly of Somali descent) are apparently refusing service to passengers who are accompanied by dogs (including disabled passengers with guide dogs) or carrying alcohol. Commissioners of the Minneapolis airport (from which a significant portion of taxi passengers originate) are considering suspending drivers who refuse service to passengers on these grounds. In my opinion, this is a foolish and dangerous battle for these cabbies to be fighting, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I’m no sheikh, but it seems to me that there are no simple, unambiguous Islamic rules relating to the issues in question. The majority position on dogs in Sunni jurisprudence relates to the impurity of their saliva, hair, and skin, not their mere presence in a particular place (except the home, which is not at issue here). Typically, a taxi driver never comes into contact with his passenger’s dog. And even if he does, each of the three Sunni madhabs (Islamic schools of jurisprudence) that prohibit contact with dogs allows exemptions for hunting and guard dogs, a category that guide dogs presumably fall into. Furthermore, the Maliki madhab does not consider any part of the dog to be impure and does not prohibit contact with them. The cabbies’ refusal to transport passengers carrying alcohol apparently derives from ahadith (oral traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, SAW) that appear to prohibit not just the consumption but also the sale, production, and distribution of alcohol. However, scholars in some Muslim countries that purport to enforce Islamic Law (such as Saudi Arabia) allow non-Muslims to sell and purchase alcohol and carry it aboard flights (which are presumably flown by Muslim pilots). Even in pre-modern times, Muslim rulers (with the blessing of the ‘ulema) traditionally allowed Christian minorities to import wine for use in their religious ceremonies.

Secondly, any litigation these cabbies pursue might set a bad precedent that could make it difficult for Muslims fighting legitimate cases of discrimination. Legally, these cabbies have very little chance of convincing a court that being allowed to refuse service to passengers is a “reasonable accommodation” of their religious beliefs. If the cabbies’ fight actually makes it into an appeals court and is struck down, the court’s opinion could subsequently be used by an unscrupulous employer against a Muslim fighting for the right to pray or keep a beard/hijab at work. Each legal battle Muslims pursue in the courts can’t be viewed in isolation. Our efforts to preserve our rights to practice our religion at work or school must be conducted within an overall strategy, and picking a fight you have no hope of winning is a pretty foolish strategy.

Thirdly, one of the most important battles Muslims are currently fighting is in the hearts and minds of our neighbors and colleagues. Attempting to impose our rules on others reinforces perceptions that Muslims are intolerant fanatics. Worse, it potentially gives publicity to the whacko bigots who insist that Muslim-Americans are evil infiltrators seeking to implement Shari’ah in America. Our community can ill afford to give our enemies more ammunition during a time of intensifying scrutiny of Islam and Muslims. The Minneapolis cabbies and those who counsel them would do well to weigh these concerns before pressing forward with this ill-advised fight.

A new sitcom on CBC called Little Mosque on the Prairie depicts a Muslim community in a rural Canadian town. The sitcom blends satire and drama to address internal and external issues routinely faced by Muslim communities in North America. It’s the first Muslim comedy to air on North American mainstream television (and an indication that the Canadian Muslim community is a bit more advanced than its American counterpart).

I’ll reserve comment on the show itself until I see it, but bravo to the writers, producers, and CBC for helping bring about this major milestone.