Salaam & greetings John,

COVID-19 is a real emergency. Civil rights need real protection. We need to make sure the government addresses the real emergency without using it as an excuse to sacrifice the Constitution’s real protections.

In an actual public emergency like the present threat posed by COVID-19, some of our constitutional liberties must temporarily be suspended for the greater good.

MLFA and CLCMA are committed to complying with all government directives concerning the present COVID 19 health crisis in the effort to avert a national pandemic. We are working from home, washing our hands, practicing social distancing and have eliminated travel except for Court mandated hearings.

These steps do not compromise our work to protect constitutional liberties. With the Ramadan fundraising drive - which accounts for more than half of our funding - they do, however, pose a threat to our ability to do the work in the future, and we ask that you - even though we are unlikely to meet with you in person this year - remain committed to us.

The differences between the present loss of liberty and
the loss of liberty for "national security"
demonstrate the need for our work.

As a lawyer working in the area of national security for the past 17 years, I cannot help but notice how stark the differences are in the steps being taken now - which are temporary, grounded in medical science instead of fear, and felt by all - and the so called national security measures implemented to combat the threat of international terrorism.

Like COVID-19, international terrorism posed a sudden and unexpected threat to the United States’ security. In a matter of hours, more than 2,000 people in the United States died and the United States economy was rocked by uncertainty and thrown into a recession.

But that is where the similarities end. Unlike the current efforts to prevent a pandemic where everyone is experiencing a temporary loss of liberty, American Muslims identified as known or unknown "suspected terrorists" suffer a loss of liberty that is neither rational nor temporary.

The actions are not rational.

The government largely labels persons as "suspected terrorists," not by what they have done, but out of a fear of what they might do based on some form of contact between the individual and a known source of terrorism. The flaw in this methodology is that, unlike COVID-19, which has been shown medically to be highly communicable, there is no evidence that people catch terrorism merely by being in contact with a friend or family member, from political associations, doing charitable work or visiting a foreign country.

The loss of liberty is not temporary.

The number of American Muslims being deprived of their constitutional liberties in the name of national security is growing. With each passing year, a greater number of American Muslims are identified as having some form of contact with terrorism. As a result, there are more persons added to the Terrorism Watch List, there are more resources devoted to surveillance, there are greater restrictions on immigration, and more persons incarcerated.

The actions are not protecting America.

The government argument that the continued and growing derivations of liberty is necessary to protect the American public of an outbreak of terrorism is false. All but a handful of the so-called plots against America were created by the FBI rather than an actual terrorist cell. In the handful of actual attacks that have occurred since 9/11, the measures were shown to be ineffectual, and in some cases may have contributed to the failure to prevent the attacks.

Social distancing is not the answer.

Terrorism is not contagious, but so long as the government thinks it is, American Muslims are understandably reluctant to speak up on behalf of individuals who have been labelled as terrorists based on guilt-by-association, out of an understandable fear that if they do, they too will be labelled.

Nineteen years ago, the founders of MLFA came up with a solution to this problem. They created a legal fund to ensure that there was a defense for these individuals.

Five years ago, they created the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America (CLCMA) because they had learned that the community was only as strong as its weakest members, and they needed a cost effective means to ensure representation for the greatest number of American Muslims possible. Not just to protect these individuals, but to protect the community from the threat posed by guilt-by-association.

In this difficult time, I ask that you remember MLFA and support it to the best of your ability. Not just for what it will do today, but to ensure that when the constitutional deprivations of COVID-19 end, that there are still voices fighting to end constitutional deprivations based on guilt-by-association.

Respectfully,