The Army and the FBI have detained a Muslim chaplain who ministered to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay for suspicious activities.
A chaplain?
According to The New York Times, the chaplain Capt. James J. Yee faces charges of showing "sympathy to prisoners and preparing to aid them in some undetermined way."
On Sept. 10, Yee, also known as Yousef Yee, was arrested by the FBI and taken to a military prison in Charleston, S.C. No formal charges have been brought against him, but he is suspected of espionage. Agents found sketches of the prisoners' facilities on his person, and he possessed documents about the detainees and their interrogators, according to The Washington Post. Authorities worry he may have shared confidential information with others.
According to The New York Times, if the investigation finds grounds for the charges against him, he will be subject to the military justice code, which will include a trial 120 days after his arrest.
We can only speculate as to why chaplain Yee gathered documentation on the Guantanamo jail facilities. Was it to gather materials for a book he was to write, to compile more information on the people he was serving or for more nefarious reasons?
But the charges against him include showing sympathy for the detainees.
Our nation has gone too far when a chaplain, whose job is to show some level of sympathy to his parishioners, is apprehended by law enforcement for doing just that.
Yousef Yee is Chinese-American and a graduate of West Point. He converted to Islam in 1991 after serving in the Gulf War. He lived in Syria briefly, and then re-entered the military as a Muslim cleric.
Since Sept. 11, we as Americans feel the FBI can never be too careful when it comes to preventing future attacks on the country.
Last week, a Tennessee man held students at a community college hostage and professed to be a member of al-Qaida. I am guessing he was probably just some crazy loon wanting airtime and attention, but where was the FBI then? Why wasn't that incident prevented? Isn't that its job? Maybe this guy didn't fit a profile.
Prisoners at the American naval base at Guantanamo have been provided Islamic clerics since the camp opened. Yee reassured prisoners their food was prepared according to Islamic dietary guidelines and arranged to have recordings of the ritual calls to prayer broadcasted throughout the camp.
Before these recent events, media members who interviewed Yee while at Guantanamo portrayed him as model of a Muslim cleric in American uniform.
"An act of terrorism, the taking of innocent civilian lives is prohibited by Islam, and whoever has done this needs to be brought to justice, whether he is Muslim or not," Yee said in an interview after Sept. 11.
I wish I could ask Capt. Yee why he felt the need to add the last phrase, "whether he is Muslim or not." Maybe he felt what many Muslim Americans feel as an anti-Muslim sentiment when it comes to National Security.
The FBI is not ensuring Americans' safety merely by rounding up people of the same religion as the 9/11 hijackers. We should appreciate the hard work those men and women put in to help us sleep better at night, but detaining a clergyman under suspicion of having sympathy for others is ludicrous. On that charge, you can almost guarantee he'll be found guilty.
Catherine Portillo is a journalism senior. Reach her at catherine.portillo@asu.edu.