Suicide Bomber-to-be or Teen Rebellion?

Hanif Kureishi writes about this kind of thing a lot: South Asian immigrant dad, Muslim but on the secular side, struggling to make it financially, whose immigrant kid is much more into Islam than his parents, falls in with a conservative Muslim crowd, starts dressing differently, praying more, maybe even getting into some kind of political movement. (In Kureishi, it’s usually a “he,” but there’s no gendered monopoly on this kind of thing.) In Kureishi’s stories, when this dynamic happens, it’s trouble. I’m thinking mainly of “My Son the Fanatic,” from Love in a Blue Time, and the film which it sprouted, but The Black Album also concerns itself with Muslim fundamentalism among second-generation immigrants.

But in this NY Times story, one wonders if the alleged “would-be suicide bomber” did anything–or planned to do anything–wrong, besides embracing religion in a secular country.

Obviously, it remains to be seen–we don’t have the whole story. However, what we do know is a young teenaged girl who liked Bollywood soap operas and shopping gradually became more and more interested in Islam, taking on conservative dress, teaching classes in religion to other teenaged girls at Mosques, becoming put off by the world of teens in her co-ed public school, a school where her chosen conservative dress was not welcomed, dropped out to study at home. In short, it was the opposite of classic American teen rebellion: she became more conservative than her parents. She wanted to marry a Muslim boy she barely knew, and her father refused. What comes next is frightening. According to the NYT article:

“A few months later, when the teenager stayed out overnight for the first time, the father, fearing an elopement, went to the police for help.

“It is a decision he regrets deeply. His daughter and another 16-year-old girl are now described by the government as would-be suicide bombers and are being held in a detention center for illegal immigrants in Pennsylvania. He is sure that his visit to the police set off the F.B.I. investigation that led to a chilling assertion, in a government document, that the girls are “an imminent threat to the security of the United States based on evidence that they plan to be suicide bombers.” Family and friends call that absurd.”

The article implies that the police saw the second teen being detained with this teen, for the same reason–a female Guinean immigrant–give some sort of sign of solidarity to her fellow Muslim female in a public place. Apparently this is suspicious behavior to the Feds:

“Little is known about the second 16-year-old. The mother of the Bangladeshi girl, conveying her daughter’s account, said the two girls met for the first time at 26 Federal Plaza after her daughter’s arrest. But when the other girl, a Guinean who was facing deportation with her family, noticed her daughter’s veil, she gave her a traditional Muslim greeting, and federal agents seemed to think they were friends. The second girl ended up in the Pennsylvania detention center, too.”

Although we obviously need to prevent actual terrorists from perpetrating acts of terrorism, I worry that goal is not being achieved. There’s detention centers full of people whose main crime appears to be having brown skin and a Muslim-sounding name. If you haven’t seen it, watch the documentary Persons of Interest, which has been on the Sundance channel, and is probably available at only the finest video stores. It consists of a series of interviews with people in just this situation–families and friends of those “Persons of Interest” scooped up after 9/11. It’s harrowing, and it is important.

According to the article above, and this one too, there doesn’t appear to be any real evidence here. Maybe the detectives know something they’re not telling us.

Or maybe this is another witch hunt.

Update: Commenter Saurav’s site tipped me off to the update on the NY Times–this time, an article on the “Guinean Girl,” and things are looking even more suspicious. I actually know a teacher at this girl’s school. Anyhow, it’s a chilling story. I hope Nina Bernstein at the Times keeps on it.

Another Update (4/11): more discussion over at Daily Kos and Sepia Mutiny.

And now, a Times editorial (4/12).