Last Friday I was standing before a packed house at the Human Rights Watch film festival. The hundreds of New Yorkers were not there to hear me, but to see “Persons of Interest”, an excellent film about Muslim, Arab and South Asian detainees swept up and victimized after 9/11. (This moving film can be ordered from www.documentarycampaign.org). Graciously invited by the filmmakers to answer questions, I was struck how moved the audience members were by the humanity of the detainees and their families. And yes-- it is this bright, precious humanity that is so often obscured in the “smokescreen” of media, as well as hidden in the storm clouds of extremist ideology and the fog of government propaganda.

Indeed, I had just finished writing to the Times yet again to complain how its news stories sometimes support a dehumanizing and fictional version of the “war on terror”. In one week, the “newspaper of record” had uncritically printed two articles based on FBI leaks alleging outlandish terror plots.

One article was based on a very misleading FBI leak that smears two former detainee clients, and possibly exposes them to danger in their home countries, despite the fact that both were deported after the FBI investigations failed to turn up anything sufficiently serious.

Separately, the Times printed a strange front page story said to be based on the secret testimony of Abdurahman Alamoudi, former board member of ISNA, who according to un-named authorities was part of a Ghaddafi plot to assassinate Saudi Prince Abdullah. Secret evidence strikes again. One noted that neither news article included comments from lawyers or the detainee. This is trial by media. Kangaroo court. Humanity denied.

But, handled properly, perhaps all leaks are not so bad. Also last week, the same US newspapers exposed several rather chilling memos justifying torture, which were written by Bush Administration lawyers. Unlike individual detainees, however, the government has the power to respond, to spin, to deny. And in a hearing on Wednesday, John Ashcroft did refuse to officially release these memos to Congress.

Humanity is denied elsewhere as well. But at the same time, on a Saudi website, a “Sheikh Omar Abdullah Hassan al Shehabi” decreed that the dead can be mutilated when it serves the Islamic nation through terror or “makes the Muslim warrior happy”. Both these American lawyers and some of these so-called imams are fear-guided men denying the rights of humanity to others. Whatever they may claim their religion to be, these men shame themselves, and they also mislead many.

One such false guide is Omar al Bakri Muhammad, who heads the extremist London-based cult of Al Muhajiroun. This person likes to be provocative. In a recent interview in Publico magazine, al Bakri states that, “Terror is the language of the twenty first century.” Seeking to justify acts of terror, he also quite wrongly says that Muslims “don’t make distinctions between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and non-believers. And the life of a nonbeliever has no value.” Like a right wing Christian, he manipulates spiritual and social concepts to support a revolutionary and materialistic program of empire building.

These days it is easy to find examples of militaristic and one dimensional understanding of Islam, both by anti-Muslims and also by some Muslims themselves, whose own thought processes have been co-opted without them realizing it. This religion is not created to soothe our collective ego! We cannot continue using Christians and Jews as our scapegoats forever! As Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia wrote last month: “It has nothing to do with America or Israel or the Christians or the Jews. So let us stop these meaningless justifications for what those criminals are doing and let us stop blaming others while the problems comes from within us.” Time to stop blaming, but also time to reform.

However it is not easy to find Muslim institutions and websites that will clearly, constantly and publicly argue with wrong interpretations. And if we Muslims do not police ourselves, then others will police us. If leaders rely on subtleties, they will seem less and less relevant. And the situation will continue to go out of control.

Even a goat can grow a beard, so it was surely not beards alone that spread Islam. It was not only the solidarity of the early Community that spread the good news. Nor was it primarily military power. Surely the fuel for such miraculous growth was not a “modern” material like oil or nuclear power or an aggressively utopian ideology. Instead, like the green of springtime, a powerful and more focused faith in God arose.

What is faith to you? You can search the dictionary, or ask an elder, but what is Iman in your life? Is it a form of knowledge? A form of knowing or unknowing? Fatalism? Obedience? Giving the benefit of the doubt? Or is it something more? I do not ask you only to tell you the answer. I am not sure I can articulate it for you. Come back to the question when you are alone, when you put down the newspaper. It is a question we all must ask ourselves, and with Allah’s help, taste again and again.