Terrorist Sues Over Jail Uniform’s Violation of Muslim Doctrine

Here is one of those shameful only in America stories: A convicted terrorist serving 20 years in a high-security Indiana facility is suing the Federal Bureau of Prisons because the mandatory jail uniform violates Muslim wardrobe rules.

Can anyone imagine this occurring in any other country? The unbelievable story comes out of the Terre Haute Federal Penitentiary in western Indiana. The facility houses 1,514 male offenders, including a convict dubbed the American Taliban. His name is John Walker Lindh and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks he was captured in Afghanistan for aiding the Taliban against United States troops.

Lindh subsequently pleaded guilty to helping the Taliban and carrying explosives. His trial was held in Virginia, a stone’s throw from the Pentagon, and he was slapped with a 20-year sentence. The story made international headlines because Lindh was born in the U.S. and he spent his formative years in an upscale Northern California community. No one could fathom how he ended up in al Qaeda training camps in the Middle East. Here’s how his defense attorney explains it to the mainstream media: “He was a soldier in the Taliban. He did it for religious reasons. He did it as a Muslim, and history overcame him.”

A few years ago Lindh sued the Federal Bureau of Prisons for the right to pray five times a day with fellow Muslim inmates. The facility allowed prisoners to pray alone in their cell, but banned group prayers for security reasons. The Koran says that prayers must be conducted in a group, Lindh said, and a federal judge agreed, ruling that barring Muslims from engaging in the daily group ritual violates a 1990s law that forbids the government from curtailing religious speech. “The denial of daily group prayer opportunities substantially burdens Mr. Lindh’s religious beliefs,” the judge wrote.

Now the convicted terrorist, who is going by the name Yahya (the prophet of Islam in Arabic) instead of John, is again invoking religious rights to change his prison uniform. In a lawsuit filed against the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Lindh claims that Islam prohibits Muslim men from wearing pants below their ankles. Federal jail attire includes pants and forbids hemming those pants above the ankles. That’s why it’s called a uniform, because all the convicts must be dressed exactly the same.

Here’s a snippet from the complaint filed by Lindh’s attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): “Yahya Lindh is Muslim and it is a clear tenet of Islam that Muslim men are prohibited from wearing pants below their ankles. Despite this, it is a formal policy of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons that ‘Islamic inmates may not hem or wear their pants above the ankle.’ This policy imposes a substantial, and unjustified, burden on the religious exercise of Mr. Lindh and all Muslim prisoners with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

The actual tenet of Islam involves the length of a robe, but is also applied to pants. Mohammed claimed that having a long robe was arrogant and those who wore them would go to hell. That means if your pants are too long, you go to hell as well. The prophet Allah said that “the dress that is under the ankle is in the Hellfire.” That means convicted terrorists, who tried to murder Americans, can sue to wear the shorter pants, so as to avoid Islamic hell.

This brings to mind a separate case demanding “Islamically permissible” food for all prison inmates in the U.S. The federal government already provides Muslim prison inmates with special meals prepared according to Islamic law, but only a few states do it and a U.S.-based terrorist front group demanded a change earlier this year. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which pretends to be a Muslim civil rights group, actually ordered Florida prison officials to offer Muslim inmates halal meals, which would cost taxpayers in the Sunshine State a lot more than the regular jailhouse cuisine. It would fall under religious accommodation.  It’s fair to say that this one will also end up in court.