Ayoon Wa Azan (They are killing Muslims)

President Barack Hussein Obama is killing Muslims, or allowing his intelligence services to kill them. Every militant or terrorist targeted by drones is killed along with many civilians, including children. The whole word, except the Muslims being targeted, is erupting in protest against the U.S. President’s self-given right to assassinate people without judicial justification, in clear violation of the U.S. Constitution by a former university professor who taught about the same constitution. I have dozens of news stories, reports, and studies from my usual sources, which cover both the right and the left wings of the spectrum, as well as human rights groups in the West. They all condemn the use of drones in raids that kill many more civilians than they kill suspects. The term ‘suspects’ here is key, because no one has been convicted of anything, and the U.S. president is approving killing on the basis of suspicion alone, in violation of the law. The only party which is not protesting the killing of Muslims is the Muslims themselves. To be sure, the media in Arab and Muslim countries only report on the subject timidly. And if they show interest in the issue one day, they neglect it for days on end, while the killing is ongoing, and the victims are primarily civilians before any alleged terrorists. Al-Qaeda terrorists deserve to be killed, but then I am not talking about them, but rather about innocent civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, all the way to East Africa, and possibly West Africa and the Sahel region in the near future. This is what is happening, without managing to awaken the consciences of the Muslims. The following examples may help shed light on the issue: - The New York Times International Weekly, a supplement of articles selected from The New York Times published by liberal paper The Observer, a liberal newspaper, had this front-page headline: “A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood.” The article below spoke about a deal between the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pakistani military dating back to 2004, and said that “The C.I.A. has since conducted hundreds of drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed thousands of people, Pakistanis and Arabs, militants and civilians alike.” I say that the majority of those killed or injured were civilians. - The moderate newspaper The Independent published details about classified official U.S. documents, obtained by the news agency McClatchy, which revealed that the Obama administration is using drones to target suspected militants who posed no immediate threat to the United States. - A new book titled The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti, a famed Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter, notes many examples of how President Obama approved targeted assassination of individuals who are not convicted of any crimes at the urging of CIA spies. - The Chicago Tribune, in an article written by William Pfaff from Paris, said that the United States armed forces are not police forces, and that the United States does not have a commission to rid the world of its radicals, jihadists and religious fanatics. - A U.S. website run by peace activists accused President Obama of violating the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees due process, that is, any citizen's right to a fair trial before a jury, and the Constitution’s protection of the right to life, liberty and personal property. The website cited a speech by Senator Rand Paul last month, wherein he accused Obama of killing Americans without judicial approval. But the problem is not at all about killing Americans, but about the targeting of Muslims, and the killing of innocent civilians including children. Oddly, while the whole world is sympathizing with the victims, Muslims have remained silent. The U.S. President may order the killing of an American or two or ten, but civilian casualties are in the thousands, and all of them are Arabs and Muslims. Does the reader want more? In Guantanamo, there are prisoners who were acquitted by courts years ago, but they remain in detention. They are currently on hunger strike. All of these are also Muslims, and President Obama had promised at the beginning of his first term to close the prison, but he did not fulfill his promise. Meanwhile, British lawyer Ben Emerson, who led an investigation by the United Nations into the use of drone, has decided that their victims are on par with victims of al-Qaeda-style terrorism. Where are the Muslims? Why are they not rising up in solidarity with civilians and children? Well, they are busy killing one another in Iraq and Syria, and all the way to southwest Africa. We once learned that silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor. But perhaps this was true in a bygone, better time. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.