How do you prosecute those who might intend acts of terrorism, without rather ugly investigations into the thought (and religion) of individuals? It’s a problem faced in the US and elsewhere. The old principle of punishing acts and not minds seems important here.
Unfortunately, to an extent, in an era where violence is motivated and justified by some on the basis of ‘religious’ belief, it is inevitable that religious belief itself will be on trial. From the article:
In their exploration of Islam, the recent terrorism trials have had a similar, if perhaps less circuslike, feel. The prosecution introduces beliefs into evidence, and the defense challenges the meaning or significance of those beliefs. Expert witnesses in Islam then fight pitched battles of interpretation for each side. Some of the experts are mainstream scholars, others outliers with unconventional views. Together, they make up a small but often lucrative cottage industry where their expertise can command $200 an hour or more. In the courtroom, they create a theological thicket that may be shaped as much by their own agendas and perspectives as by the facts of the cases.
Jurors have been schooled in the difference between fatwa (religious edict), and fatah (conquest). They have had tutorials in the history of Islam, from the angel Gabriel’s revelation of the Koran to the Prophet Muhammad to the rise of Osama bin Laden. They have learned about the meaning of bida, or innovation; the authentic chain of transmission for a hadith; and the virgins awaiting a martyr in paradise.
Such a thorough judicial disquisition of a religion has no modern parallel in America. Unless religious beliefs bear directly on guilt—the use of the illegal drug peyote in religious rituals, for example—they are generally barred from trials as prejudicial. Why have the rules changed? Because, as Aziz Huq, a lawyer at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, puts it, in recent times no other religion has been “so intimately linked in the public mind to violence.” Since 9/11, judges have given lawyers wide latitude to bring religion into the courtroom.
This surfeit of information on Islam is being presented to non-Muslim jurors who in large part operate from ignorance. Most Americans can parse the differences among Catholics, Holy Rollers, and followers of Jerry Falwell, but when it comes to Islam they know only that “there are terrorists, and then there are good Muslims,” says David Nevin, a criminal-defense lawyer.