March 26, 2021
Imprisoned
The war on terror was an error which diminished America and, in the process, inflicted collateral damage on innocents.
This was the unmistakable takeaway after viewing the landmark 2021 movie, “The Mauritanian,” based on a true story.
Mohamedou Slahi was a bright young lad from the northwestern African country of Mauritania, alongside the Atlantic coast. Portraying Slahi onscreen was 2021 Golden Globe Best Actor nominee, Tahar Rahim. Actress Jodie Foster, who played Slahi’s attorney, Nancy Hollander, won the Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress.
Slahi, detained by authorities in Mauritania in November 2001, eventually was transported in August 2002 to Guantanamo Bay military detention camp, where he was imprisoned for 14 years, undergoing varying degrees of torture and torment. He was never charged.
Slahi’s heroic lawyer, Nancy Hollander, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, contested his detention as violative of habeas corpus safeguards embedded in the US Constitution, eventually winning the case. She never gave up, nor did her client. The sad part is after the US District Court ordered Slahi released on March 22, 2010, the Obama administration kept him locked up for nearly 7 additional years (October 17, 2016.) Mohamedou Slahi was never charged with a crime.
The movie spotlighted how captors and interrogators can degenerate into cruelty and allow themselves to become bereft of integrity.
What made it particularly egregious was that these were men and women in military uniform, schooled and disciplined with tenets of duty, service, and honor.
Slahi was an unusually bright young lad who had won scholarship to Germany and, in detention where he learned English, was able to pen letters documenting his harrowing experiences, which formed the crux of his blockbusting bestseller, “Guantanamo Diary”. Throughout his chilling ordeal, Slahi kept himself going through sustained Iman, which kept his spirit unbroken, with the unflappable conviction that God wouldn’t abandon him.
His Iman never faltered and he ended up forgiving his tormentors. He was a ‘high-value’ detainee. Astonishingly, in prison, his winsome nature won the heart of his guard, Steve Wood, who had a key to his cell.
Such was the impact of Slahi on his guard that Steve Wood embraced Islam, stating about Slahi; “I trust him. He is an honest person, impossible not to like the guy.” Slahi was the first Muslim Steve had ever met.
A remarkable documentary on the bond forged between the captor and the captive encaptioned “My Brother’s Keeper” was posted on the Guardian’s website. In it, Slahi says both “transcended stereotypes and hatred when it mattered, during the darkest moments.” Steve mentioned that they were “two people from two different parts of the world who crossed that divide.” That divide evaporated in May 2018, during the month of Ramadan, when Steve visited Slahi in Nouakchott, Mauritania, and stayed at his home. Captor and captive now address each other as “Brother,” with Slahi saying that “being Muslim means first and foremost being a good person” and that “I believe in humanity.” Slahi still cannot leave Mauritania but, with his forgiving nature and infectious smile, he leads a purposeful life and has married an American lawyer, Kitty, and is now the father of a cute chubby boy, Ahmed.
In the aftermath of the overreaction on 9/11, American Muslims bore the brunt of misdirected humiliated rage, with elements of the Asian-American community quick to join the bandwagon. Notable among them was Korean-American John Yoo who, as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States, demeaned his legal training through his drafting in 2002-2003of the infamous “torture memos”, which gave legal rationale for sordid terror practices on detainees, which led the United States on the road to Abu Ghraib.
Caught unprepared, the American Muslim community lacked the collective determination to rally together.
Asian Americans similarly were not prepared. In the aftermath of the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles on March 3, 1991, I was invited to a White House briefing where Korean-American attendees were perplexed as to why their stores (many of them liquor) in Black neighborhoods were burned and ransacked. There was a palpable lack of self-awareness of their perceived money-centric attitudes.
Facing the Coronavirus fallout are Asian Americans. 20 years after 9/11, President Biden, in his first national address on March 11, was seen condemning the scapegoating and hate crimes directed against Asian Americans, the numbers of which have soared exponentially. A non-profit center, “ Stop AAPI Hate,” has compiled over 3,000 incidents of anti-Asian violence and harassment over the past year.
The syndrome of targeting vulnerable groups makes ever more pertinent the quote of prominent German theologian Martin Niemöller (1892-1984):
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left to speak out for me.
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