Muslim Leaders, Others say Blair’s Measures Would be Unconstitutional Here

c. 2005 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ Civil liberties activists say British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s tough new anti-terrorism plan has troubling implications for the United States, but some legal experts and Muslim groups contend the Constitution would stop any similar effort here. Blair’s measures _ unveiled in response to July’s subway and bus bombings […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Civil liberties activists say British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s tough new anti-terrorism plan has troubling implications for the United States, but some legal experts and Muslim groups contend the Constitution would stop any similar effort here.

Blair’s measures _ unveiled in response to July’s subway and bus bombings in London _ would enable Britain to deport foreigners who preach hatred, to close extremist mosques and to bar suspected radicals from entering the country. The prime minister’s plan also designates a new crime _ glorifying terrorism _ and strips citizenship from naturalized Britons who take part in extremist movements.


Several of the proposals already have been employed in the United States since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But a number of Blair’s initiatives will be implemented immediately without a legislative debate that civil libertarians say is essential to prevent the government from seizing too much power.

“Absolutely it can happen here, and it frightens the dickens out of me,” said former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., a leading critic of the Bush administration’s legal approach in fighting terrorism. “We need to go back and start teaching people what the Bill of Rights means and about their history, so they’re not willing to chuck it out the window.”

Blair said his proposals focus on foreigners in Britain because authorities believe “the ideological drive and push is coming from outside.”

If the United States is attacked again, some officials here would try to follow a similar path, predicted Michael Greenberger, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Health and Homeland Security and a former Clinton Justice Department official.

Though he declined to comment on the substance of Blair’s proposals, Greenberger said, “God forbid there’s another serious attack, but if there is, and foreign nationals are involved, I would expect the same debate taking place here.”

Timothy Edgar, the American Civil Liberties Union’s policy counsel for national security, was less concerned.

Edgar pointed to a section of the USA Patriot Act authorizing the government to prosecute people who “provide expert advice or assistance” to terrorist groups. In January 2004, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled such language unconstitutionally vague, but declined to impose a nationwide injunction against the provision.


“It hasn’t worked here, and I see no evidence it will work over there,” Edgar said. “There’s no question that, just like after 9/11, people are going to want to give government the benefit of the doubt. But that honeymoon will end because the policies are not likely to be effective and will alienate communities and backfire in a way that doesn’t make people any safer.”

The House and Senate have passed separate bills to reauthorize most sections of the Patriot Act and are expected to work out differences this fall.

Blair’s announcement led some Patriot Act supporters to call for tougher measures from President Bush.

“The president has been AWOL on the issue of expelling illegal immigrants and dealing with those who spread terrorist bile here, in Saudi-sponsored schools, and elsewhere,” Jed Babbin, former deputy under secretary of defense for Bush’s father, President George H.W. Bush, wrote in an online column in the American Spectator. “What are we, the society that suspends from school 10-year-old boys for making a gun sound over a pointed index finger and folded thumb, willing to do to protect ourselves?”

In response, supporters of the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies cite the deportations of thousands of immigrants to Muslim and Arab countries since Sept. 11. Critics say many immigrants were unfairly targeted and that few if any were proven terrorism suspects.

But some legal scholars and terrorism experts said the Constitution places far more rigid restrictions on what can be done in the United States.


For example, Blair’s proposed crime of glorifying terrorism “would run afoul of First Amendment doctrines which draw a distinction between glorifying activity in the abstract and inciting people,” said Rodney Smolla, dean of the University of Richmond School of Law.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, agreed that similar measures “would be very difficult to implement here, based on the Constitution. There would have to be a suspension of constitutional rights.”

MOLF/RB END McCUTCHEON

(Chuck McCutcheon can be contacted at chuck.mccutcheon(at)newhouse.com)

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