Western jihadists cause lawmakers to question citizenship, travel rights washingtontimes/news/2014/aug/30/western-jihadists-cause-lawmakers-question-citizen/ By Kellan Howell - The Washington Times - Saturday, August 30, 2014 Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, told a crowd of 3,000 at a conservative summit in Dallas that Americans fighting with Islamic State militants should be exiled from the country saying, “we need to not let into this country any American who is fighting with ISIS.” But some conservative politicians say that banishing American jihadists doesn’t go far enough, and that those who leave the country to fight for militant groups like the Islamic State, Hamas, or al Qaeda should be stripped of their citizenship. On Friday, former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in neighboring New Hampshire, called for Congress to pass legislation to strip “homegrown terrorists” of their American citizenship. “One of the greatest threats facing the homeland today is the mayhem that will happen when hundreds of American ISIS fighters return to the United States to spread their terror here. Their goal is to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and plant a flag at the White House, and mass killing is their means for achieving that goal,” Mr. Brown said in a statement Friday. The Islamic State, as its name implies, sees itself as not a terror group but a legitimate state, the successor to the Islamic caliphate. Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan asked for citizenship in the caliphate last week. Conservative commentator Allen West of Florida made the same argument as Mr. Brown Tuesday in a blog post discussing British Muslims’ involvement in terrorist groups when he wrote that more U.K. citizens are joining Islamic State forces than are signing up for the country’s own armed forces. “Here is the deal. There has to be a law clearly defining that on this 21st Century battlefield, if you depart your country of citizenship and travel to ally with Islamic terrorist organizations, you have in turn renounced your citizenship and become an unlawful enemy combatant,” Mr. West wrote. “If engaged on the battlefield, you will be treated as the enemy. If captured on the battlefield, you will have lost your rights and will be treated as the enemy.” The Obama administration, in defending the legality of the CIA’s drone-strike program, also has claimed the right to kill American citizens abroad if they are assisting al Qaeda or other Islamist terrorist groups, organizations that openly declare themselves to be at war with America. Read more: washingtontimes/news/2014/aug/30/western-jihadists-cause-lawmakers-question-citizen/#ixzz3C9vYaIhC Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Posted on: Tue, 02 Sep 2014 12:06:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015