For a number of years, I lived as a university student in Terre Haute, Indiana. In view of that, I believe I have as much right to talk about the last week’s execution of one of the worst American criminals as the nearly 1,700 US journalists gathered in that relatively unknown city to cover the event. In such a bizarre situation, the journalists succeeded in transforming the criminal into a victim. This particular art is the bread of the American media. It is illustrated most tragically by the US media’s coverage of the Palestinian intifada. Within the city of Terre Haute, there was an area known as West Terre Haute which, being foreigners, we always avoided. The residents of West Terre Haute were known as anti-foreigner, anti-black and anti-gun control laws. In other words, they were fanatics and troublemakers. Couldn’t we say then that Timothy McVeigh was executed at home in front of his people? Such fanatics are even organized into militias with their own camps where people are trained to use arms and explosives. In addition, they publish books and magazines as well as websites, which make clear their beliefs and objectives — including a very conspicuous animosity toward the federal government. The Oklahoma bombing in which hundreds of adults and many children were killed alerted US officials that the real danger was in the US itself. The danger was not, contrary to the usually encountered Zionist propaganda, a bearded Middle Easterner with a headscarf. Even more significantly, in the McVeigh case, the Americans adopted the great Qur’anic principle, “ Nor can a bearer of burdens bear another’s burden” which is both sound and correct. Unfortunately, this principle is not applied across the board by the Americans due to their well-known and frequently lamented double standards. In the Oklahoma bombing case only McVeigh and his friend were implicated ignoring the possibility that others may have collaborated with him. The sheer magnitude of the bombing suggests that McVeigh could not have been the only one responsible. It is known that McVeigh stayed on a ranch belonging to a friend (the co-accused) while he made his plans, but evidence was insufficient for convicting anyone except McVeigh. In the case of the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1992, seven people were killed but the situation was different. Many Arabs and Muslims were sentenced to life imprisonment and others to long US jail terms. Oddly, two of those convicted were already in jail at the time of the bombing: The first for illegally entering the country and the second for assassinating Meir Kahane, the right-wing Israeli fanatic. The same lack of logic and good sense was repeated the next year when numbers of Muslims were unreasonably imprisoned. Their leader, the blind Sheikh Umar Abdul Rahman, was sentenced to life imprisonment when judges revived an old law originally passed during the US Civil War era - the 1860s. Many Americans would be imprisoned if the same law were applied to those who agree with McVeigh and others who openly instigate action against the federal government. Those who advocate violence against the federal government are well known. They express their beliefs without fear in their speeches and writings and they are protected by the first amendment to the American constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression. American society, in general, enjoys this freedom, including fanatics of all kinds, racists, pornographers and those who support the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland in order to resettle the homeless Jews of Brooklyn in the Palestinian homeland. The US government cannot suppress or outlaw these outspoken advocates of violence because of its fears of civil rights organizations. These organizations defend the rights granted to Americans — but for Arabs and Muslims, the situation is different because no one is brave enough to stand up for them, including Arab governments or any independent organization. While covering the cases of the World Trade Center and the New York bombing as a journalist, I never saw the slightest concern by any government for the defendants. The defendants were Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians and Sudanese but no representatives of any embassy attended the trials nor did any representative ask about the proceedings. The least we could say about their ideas and actions is it was stupid to consider moving of armed conflict to the streets of America’s cities and towns. But everyone is presumed innocent until proved guilty. I do sincerely believe that even among the convicted, there may be those convicted on circumstantial evidence. A man such as Umar Abdul Rahman and his point of views are nothing for any Muslim to admire. I was appalled by Umar Abdul Rahman’s reply when I asked in a press interview if it was right to kill a soldier in his country — Egypt —while doing his duty guarding a bank. He said it was right to do so as long as the soldier was loyal to the government. I found neither knowledge of Islamic law nor reasonable logic in his answer but regardless of this nonsense, my own belief is that every government is fully responsible for its citizens even when they go astray.
