John Walker Lindh, Redux

My friend Andy sent me a fascinating story on John (Hamza) Walker Lindh in response to my post on conversion to Islam.  It’s a feature from the July ‘06 issue of Esquire that revisits how Lindh ended up in Afghanistan and describes his current life in a medium-security prison outside L.A.

The article gets really interesting when the author starts talking about righteousness and makes Lindh out to have the moral high ground and even compares him to Christ (note that the title of the article is “Innocent”).

What’s more, the author says Lindh’s case has implications for the future of Islam and America:

[H]e will get out, and the question is not what he will be like—that we know—but what we will be like.  For Hamza Walker Lindh has come to embody the challenge of Islam to America, and the challenge is simply this:  In response to what America has done to him, Hamza has become more Islamic—more himself, and a better Muslim.  And in response to what Hamza has done to it, America has become less properly Christian, and ever less democratic, and ever so much less than itself.  It is a simple, remorseless calculus, and it will transform the face of the country Hamza is released into, whenever he is released.

Maybe there’s a little too much us/them, Christianity/Islam, and “pre-9/11 good ol’ days” implied in that paragraph, but it’s a valid issue to wonder about the future of civil liberties and interfaith relations in this country.  Alas, I’m no futurist…

I hadn’t thought about Lindh for years, and according to the article, that’s not entirely an accident.  But if the facts presented in Esquire (or this article by John’s father) are accurate, there’s good reason to reexamine the official story.  One website, www.freejohnwalker.net, appears to have taken this up, but I don’t know if there’s actually a movement of any kind.

(Thanks to Vanessa at pervertedlogic.com for the great painting!)