ISIS girl doesn’t find chopping off everyone’s head or burning everyone alive shocking, but she does find shocking England revoking her citizenship. Maybe she’ll have better luck in Holland, hubby’s home.
ISIS girl doesn’t find chopping off everyone’s head or burning everyone alive shocking, but she does find shocking England revoking her citizenship. Maybe she’ll have better luck in Holland, hubby’s home.
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February 20th, 2019 at 11:15AM
nice of the UK to dump their problems on other countries.
meanwhile back on the ranch:
https://www.aclu.org/blog/womens-rights/womens-rights-education/wisconsin-school-district-shrugged-after-high-school
February 20th, 2019 at 11:22AM
dmf: I understand the problem – no one wants to take these people – but I’m afraid now that ISIS is gone the world’s nations are going to have to work together to figure out how to deal with the ISIS returnee wannabes. Certainly the US should follow England here and revoke citizenship for our ISIS people. Revocation is an important defensive as well as expressive act. Citizenship means something. And countries are under no obligation to embrace people who have demonstrated in word and deed that they devoutly wish to destroy them.
February 20th, 2019 at 2:01PM
if we can avoid taking responsibility in our courts and other governing bodies by just dumping people (in other countries or on island prisons and other black-sites/concentration-camps), if we can just put people outside of constitutional boundaries,protections, and accountability without something like due process we have gone a long way towards democratic illiberalism.
February 20th, 2019 at 2:14PM
The constitutional and statutory definition of Treason in this country is pretty narrow, and properly so–but it seems that it would apply to at least some of these people:
18 U.S. Code § 2381. Treason
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
February 20th, 2019 at 5:10PM
and here we go….
@realDonaldTrump
I have instructed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and he fully agrees, not to allow Hoda Muthana back into the Country!
February 20th, 2019 at 6:11PM
dmf: Why should the US let Muthana – who is apparently not a citizen – back in the country?
February 21st, 2019 at 6:53AM
In the case of Muthana, her attorneys claim 1) that she was born in New Jersey; and 2) that he father was not a Yemeni diplomat at the time of her birth (since the children of diplomats are not covered by jus soli. If that us correct (and I am not reflexively assuming that it is), then legal precedent makes clear that her citizenship cannot be revoked. To do so would violate the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punishment). It would make no sense to claim she renounced her citizenship since ISIS was never a recognized state, and she presumably never obtained Syrian citizenship. Obviously, the Trump administration has a poor record on upholding the rule of law, but that’s a separate matter.
The UK, of course, is not bound by the US Constitution, but revoking the citizenship of a native-born Brit is an act of global irresponsibility. Bangladesh–her father’s country, but not hers–certainly has no obligation to take on an Englishwoman, nor does any other country. Whatever symbolic value may adhere to the act, we are ultimately dealing with an actual person whose fate must be determined. The British (and, if relevant, American) legal systems are fully capable for adjudicating the crimes allegedly committed by these individuals.
February 21st, 2019 at 7:44AM
TAFKAU: On Muthana, as you say, the question of her American citizenship remains an open one, so we will have to wait on that. I also would like to know more about her activities as part of the ISIS propaganda apparatus. I find the sexism among many Western commentators about ISIS women – whom they dismiss as innocents because they didn’t shoot guns and cut off heads and after all they’re mothers – quite stunning. Muthana certainly seems to have done her bit, aggressively and consistently.
I wouldn’t wish the entirely unrepentant and quite scary (or is that impossible because she’s a woman?) Brit on Bangladesh or any other country on earth. She’s a time bomb, and must be dealt with as such.
Who says these legal systems are fully capable? Everyone I read points out the enormous difficulty everyone’s going to have establishing credible evidence in the wake of such chaos and destruction. Nuremberg had the advantage of German diligence about record-keeping (the Germans destroyed what they could, but plenty was left). Nothing like that here. The experts I’ve been reading say convictions will be rare and of short duration (2 – 3 years) and for the rest of their lives our governments will have to track these people.
*************
By the way, you’d think the track record of Kurdish women fighters would dislodge a tiny bit the broad tendency – which is about to grow, believe me – to decide that simply by virtue of being a woman you must have been entrapped, raped, etc. Give their enemies, ISIS women like Shamima Begum, their due: They haven’t yet gone in for that bullshit and they stand by their moral and political commitments. Western commentators will have to do the work of transforming them into hapless doting mommies.
February 21st, 2019 at 8:22AM
To be clear, I have no sympahthy for either woman, nor do I believe their sex makes them victims. It was their choice to join ISIS and they abetted monstrous activities and may well have participated in a few of their own. Still, unless we believe they should be summarily executed or delivered to whichever government will have them (presumably one that will employ barbaric measures against them), then we have to expect each country that pledges fealty to the rule of law to deal with its own monsters, irrespective of whether those monsters are men or women.
February 21st, 2019 at 10:33AM
the justice system is human and therefore limited so just abandon it when it suits people in power? I think you’ve taken up the wrong side of the Nuremberg trials.
https://www.publicbooks.org/the-right-to-have-rights/
February 21st, 2019 at 12:39PM
dmf: Nothing in what you’ve linked me to conflicts with my position on ISIS people whose American citizenship is in doubt, as Hoda M.‘s is – that is, my belief that under some conditions countries have a right to revoke citizenship. The author repeatedly asserts the negotiable nature of the granting of membership in a political community, and makes clear that not all people will make the cut. (For instance: “For undocumented residents, a solution to rightlessness is already provided by proposed laws offering a path to citizenship to at least some of them.”) Interestingly, though she is very thorough in listing reasons why vulnerable displaced people should be granted membership, she nowhere begins to suggest why some vulnerable displaced people should not. But unless she simply believes all human beings should be granted membership in any political community based on their being human beings (and she does not seem to believe this), it is incumbent upon her to specify conditions under which membership might be refused or revoked.
It seems to me, for instance, understandable that once Hoda M
She is certainly free now, from afar, to contest the government’s decision to in effect remove her (in any case uncertain) citizenship. I think people like her should be kept – legally, to be sure – physically out of this country. If they win their appeal, we have no choice but to let them back in. But they are eminently demonstrably too dangerous to be here (it would have been nice to have identified and thrown out this pair, for instance — one a citizen, one a permanent resident — before they killed or injured 38 people on behalf of the same cause for which Hoda so fiercely fought), so I can’t say this outcome would make me happy. I note that the British have a different system, for ISIS fighters:
ISIS women certainly saw themselves as fighters too – birthing lots of head-loppers, sending out massacre Americans broadcasts – and I think we should respect that self-representation.
Given the serious reluctance of all pertinent countries to take these people back (reasons here), I think the likeliest outcome is a series of very long-term refugee camps in place.