If law reflects society, a recent decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a bias suit filed by six Muslim religious scholars against US Airways are a sad reflection of what American society has become since 9/11.

In El-Masri v. U.S., the 4th Circuit rubber-stamped the Bush administration's assertion of the state secrets privilege and upheld the dismissal of a German citizen's civil-rights claims related to his “extraordinary rendition” by the CIA. Khalid El-Masri spent five months in an Afghan prison after agents abducted him while he was on vacation in Macedonia.

The renditions program is no longer a state secret, having been extensively reported in the press, and a German court has ordered the arrest of 13 people suspected in El-Masri's abduction. Former diplomats and State Department officials were among those who urged the 4th Circuit to grant El-Masri a forum to seek justice in the U.S.

But all that went by the wayside as the court ruled that the plaintiff could make his case “only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes, staffs, and supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.”

The details of CIA rendition operations “remain state secrets,” Judge Robert B. King wrote, and El-Masri's “personal interest in pursuing his civil claim is subordinated to the collective interest in national security.”

King and his colleagues did not consider the public's interest in holding government officials responsible for acting outside the law. “If there are particular facts that need to be kept secret, the court could have found a way to separate them out, while letting the case proceed,” the New York Times said in an editorial.

The disregard of conservative judges for civil rights may not be surprising. But the case of the six Muslim “imams” -- one of whom is blind and walks with a cane -- indicates how deeply post-9/11 paranoia has inflamed the general public.

According to a complaint filed last week, US Airways unlawfully removed the imams from a plane awaiting departure from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and refused to let them travel home to Phoenix on another of its flights because of their race and religion.

The trouble allegedly began when the imams were at the boarding gate and three of them decided to conduct evening prayers. Unidentified passengers “contacted US Airways to report the alleged 'suspicious behavior' of Plaintiffs' performing their prayer,” the suit says.

A Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist has blasted the imams for naming those passengers as John Doe defendants. “The imams' attempt to bully ordinary passengers marks an alarming new front in the war on airline security,” Katharine Kersten fumed.

US Airways claims that the imams prayed loudly and shouted “Allah” while boarding the plane.

But after the scholarly six were removed from the flight, FBI and Secret Service agents interviewed each of them -- asking whether, among other things, they would like President Bush to be harmed -- and found no reason to detain them for disorderly conduct or anything else.

In this case, Muslim prayers may have ignited hysteria among the passengers and crew of US Airways Flight 300.

By Matthew Heller
3/19/07