The Niqabi Paralegal

Here's an article that's very pertinent to the theme of this blog: Islam Put on Trial in Terrorism Cases, U.S. Muslims Say. Highlights:

"For a growing number of legal scholars and Islamic community leaders concerned about American courts discriminating against Muslims, al-Timimi's case is a harbinger of how Muslim believers are becoming the target of a new emerging kind of civil rights discrimination," says Jess Ghannam, former president of the Arab-American Anti-Defamation League in San Francisco.

This kind of discrimination, Ghannam says, also occurred in the case of Sami Al-Arian, a Florida professor indicted in Tampa, along with three codefendants, on 51 counts of conspiring to finance the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. Ghannam says the trial, now in the deliberation phase, is based mostly on circumstantial evidence. As with al-Timimi, he says, the defendants' religious beliefs have become a matter of debate.

Julie Howe, a New York-based jury consultant who's been active with the Death Penalty Project, agrees with Ghannam. "I think that there's a religious prejudice out there against Muslims," Howe said in a recent interview with a legal journal. "Some jurors are inclined to believe that Muslims are predisposed to violence."

I recommend you to read the whole thing.

BTW, I really will try to post to this blog more often, inshallah, at least with news stories if not the in-depth legal analysis that I started with.