Yemens war on terror [Archives:2002/16/Focus]

Abdullah al-Kidd
[email protected]
This letter is to express my deep sadness at the current situation in Yemen in regards to the “War on Terror”.
In the past weeks we have read reports of various students of Islamic knowledge being arrested and deported under the suspicion that the are connected with al-Qaeda. In reality there is no real proof of these allegations and their only real fault is that some of these students did not have valid status to be in Yemen. Prior to September 11th, there had been students coming from all over the world to study under Yemen’s great Islamic scholars and teachers and there has been no problem. From pressure or fear from the U.S., Yemen has not really attacked terrorism, but has attacked the growth and spread of Islamic knowledge. In short, it is an attack against Islam and it is sanctioned by the Yemeni government.
On a personal level, I have been arrested for no reason other than that I am a foreign Muslim. Ironically, I happen to be an American. During my arrest, I told one of the arresting officers that “If I was a non-Muslim American we wouldn’t be going through this process” and he told me that I was right, again, confirming that this is a war against any and all foreign Muslims. They even tortured me continuously with the handcuffs. I told them that the handcuffs were too tight. They said, “O.k. you donkey I’ll make it tighter” and made it tighter. He did this three times until I had cuts on my wrists that were bleeding and my wrists began too swell very bad. It is very evident that now I have nerve damage because I have lost some of the feeling in my left hand. In addition, I was interrogated for about four hours; they never once asked me about terrorism. To me it was clear this is not about terrorism; this is about foreign Muslims being in Yemen. Currently, there are several foreign Muslims in the jails of Yemen and many are innocent; guilty of only their love for Islam and their love for Yemen.
To conclude, I would like to say that I love Yemen and its people, but from the recent events I can’t stay in this country and I have no intention of coming back in the future. To see Muslims fight against innocent Muslims is sad. We shouldn’t be surprised when we see weakening of our Nation and the killing of our brothers and sisters because we are our own worst enemy!

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