Civil Commotion

News junkies know the story by now: Twenty-year old Hoda Muthana, born in New Jersey about 2-months after her father left Yemen’s diplomatic service, left the United States and joined ISIS in Syria. While in Syria she became the wife of an ISIS fighter, bore a son, and urged violence against westerners. She has since grown disillusioned and would like to return, with her son, to the country of her birth.

Well.

The First Felon’s thoughts about the matter are very definite.

I have to admit to deeply mixed feelings about this case, and what follows is merely thinking-out-loud — not an argument.

Her citizenship

An exception is made to “birth citizenship” for the children born of diplomatic personnel serving in the United States; they are considered to be under the jurisdiction of the parent’s country. Muthana’s father, however, left Yemen’s diplomatic service about 2-months before Muthana’s birth, ending the application of that exception. Our State Department accepted the documentation of her father’s departure from the diplomatic service, and issued Muthana a passport; later, her passport was renewed.

In other words, our State Department has twice affirmed that Muthana is an American citizen. So, too, I should think, is her son. I’m hard put to understand Secretary Pompeo’s declaration that she is not a citizen, then. It has the look, frankly, that he is exploiting an oddity to summarily punish her without the aggravation of due process.

Another thing: Does the First Felon have the legal right to deny admission to the United States to an American citizen? I really don’t know, and will accept it if somebody competent tells me he does, but it sounds hinky. I say that because, if so, it enables exactly what appears to be going on here — the ability to screw-up somebody’s life just because the President doesn’t like him or her.

Treason

By any sane reckoning, Muthana gave aid and comfort to, and adhered to, America’s enemies. Her conduct certainly looks like treason to me. But how is her case different from that of John Walker Lindh, that stupid California teenager who went to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban and who is scheduled to be released from prison just a few months from now?

Assuming she is a citizen — and there is no reason to think otherwise — why shouldn’t she be permitted to return to face trial and, almost certainly, imprisonment?

Who is Hoda Muthana?

Ms. Muthana seems to have been a naive, sheltered fool.

The daughter of Yemeni immigrants, Ms. Muthana grew up in an ultra-strict household — no partying, no boyfriends and no cellphone.

When she finished high school, her father gave her a phone as a graduation gift. It soon became her portal to the world of extreme Islam, she said.

[ … ]

“I was crying because I thought I was making a big sacrifice for the sake of God and I was giving up my family, my home, my comfort, everything I know, everything I loved,” she said. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

That last bit sounds believable to me, because it is exactly the kind of thing I have heard Southern Baptist preachers demand; Jesus first, and everybody else can have the leftovers. Were her parents, especially her father, sometimes critical of America’s protracted war on terrorism? Was she the target of anti-Muslim animus? There is enough of it around.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that, once she made contact, the radical Islamists did exactly what evangelical youth groups are doing this very day — targeted a naive, confused, lonely kid who didn’t fit in with her peers and love-bombed her.

This story is unsettling from beginning to end, from a naive American woman, living in the land of the free and chicken-to-go, lured to join a depraved terror organization, to the summary declaration by high officers of the American government that she is to be denied the due process and trial that appear to be her birthright. I don’t see much to like about Ms. Muthana, and being a naive fool who lives in a romantic fantasy-world does not excuse treason. I don’t see much to like in a government that appears incapable of behaving better, though.

I barely noticed the story of Jussie Smollett’s alleged assault a few weeks ago. I don’t pay attention to celebrity news, and the story was quickly overtaken by other things.

I don’t mind admitting that it didn’t sound innately unbelievable to me; like events have become a commonplace in The Donald’s America.

• Just a couple of days ago, some guy stood up on his chair at a coffee shop in Alabama, shouted Nazi slogans, and flashed a gun at the owner.

• Presidential buddy Roger Stone published a photograph of the judge overseeing his trial — with a bullseye next to her, reminiscent of the images flogged by Sarah Palin shortly before Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot.

• A Coast Guard officer daydreams of killing Democrats and journalists.

• Neo-Nazis march through the streets of Thomas Jefferson’s “academical village,” carrying torches and howling “blood and soil.”

So … hell. A couple clowns waylay a black man walking down the street and hang a noose around his neck? Sure. Totally believable.

Andy Borowitz scoops the world — again

Bezos Says Amazon Drones Ready to Deliver
Mueller Report to Every American Household

Amazon drones stand “ready and waiting” to deliver copies of Robert Mueller’s official report, free of charge, to every American household as early as next week, the Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, confirmed on Wednesday.

What do you know? Once again, there is an effort afoot to teach the Bible in public schools.

The Missouri House Special Committee on Student Accountability voted to advance a bill from a Republican state lawmaker pushing for Bible classes in public high schools.

The bill, introduced by state Rep. Ben Baker, would require Missouri education officials to develop guidelines and standards for courses on the Old and New Testaments that could be offered as electives in public schools.

This is a more difficult issue than it might appear at first glance.

Christianity is a grab-bag of ancient philosophical schools — intellectually, a mongrel. Plato’s idea of ‘forms’ is the ground of Christian metaphysics since the 5^th-Century, stoicism appears in its ethics — but so does a fair amount of mysticism, and the Old Testament is shot through with political skulduggery. There is a great deal of World Net Daily-like propaganda and lies in the Old and New Testaments. This should not surprise anybody who is even modestly conversant in the history of the Bible; after all, it was written over the course of more than a thousand years by dozens of different authors reared in different environments and political circumstances.

What is more, the battle over which texts ought to comprise the Bible persisted for centuries (Catholics and Protestants have different Bibles), and there are contemporary battles over which translations of the Bible are valid. And, of course, no human in the history of the world has even held in his hands the Inerrant Bible, the original autographs of the texts which comprise that troublesome compendium of ancient philosophy, history, poetry, and porn.

And yet, in spite of the acute difficulty with even defining and identifying the Bible, that ridiculous old book has exercised a tremendous influence over the development of the West — chiefly because the bulk of mankind are cowardly simpletons, and the Catholic Church was, and is, amoral and ruthless in the maintenance of its power.  Auto da fe, anyone?

It isn’t difficult to make the case that a sound historical perspective, the ability to properly locate current events on a timeline of human thought, requires some understanding of Christianity and its holy text — the Bible.

The difficulty is that is never — Never — the real purpose of introducing the Bible into public schools; it is to smuggle Sunday School into public classrooms. So … No, thanks.