Quote:
Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I'm trying not to follow the Cat Stevens story because he generally depresses me -- fucking waste of talent. But I thought he was put on a watchlist because of his donations to certain Islamic "charities", not what he said about the fatwa against Rushdie No?
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As I understand the law, you can end up on a watch list for giving money to a charitable group which is suspected of misusing funds, even if the government can't prove it and/or you had no idea. So the better analogy is one where Cobourn gives money to an apparently legitimate anti-abortion group which is suspected of giving other aid on the side to Eric Rudolph (e.g.).* As applied to citizens, the First Amendment implications ought to be clear enough (freedom to associate, anyone?). If Stevens (or whatever his name is) is anti-violence in his public statement, and gave money to one of these groups, it seems at least as likely to me that he was defrauded by the group (or, more innocuously, that they used his money for whatever they said they would use it for and used other money for something else) than that he was saying one thing publicly and doing another thing with his money.
Stevens isn't a citizen anymore, and when you're dealing with foreigners it makes a certain amount of sense to err on the side of caution. But don't pretend that Stevens necessarily brought it on himself. It's the collateral damage of the way this crowd is fighting the war on terror. They've made it much harder for foreigners to come to that country, which is often not a good thing.
* We've had very, very little luck in getting to the bottom of the finances behind the terrorists and 9/11, so it would be a mistake to assume that the government has really good dirt on the terrorists involved.
