Najeeb Hasan offers this insightful commentary on the effect of the FBI's presence on the Lodi, California Muslim community [see previous posts on Lodi here, here and here].

Hasan criticizes the media for devoting considerable attention to the arrests of Muslims as suspected terrorists, taking the government's word on their guilt at face value ("The press runs without any critique. Rather than examining the veracity of the government's claims, it essentially takes the government's claims and runs with them as if they are valid"), and then paying little if any mind when the allegations are proven false or exaggerated.

For example:

• "When... Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, an Air Force translator who worked in Guantanamo Bay, was charged with spying for Syria two Septembers ago, The New York Times gave his case the front page and more than 1,000 words; three months later, when three counts against al-Halabi were dropped—counts that his attorney described as the "gut of the case"—the same newspaper reported the news on page 40 in 147 words."
• In Lodi, "Of the more than 60 stories that have been written by the four major California dailies... covering the recent arrests, only a tiny fraction, including a Los Angeles Times piece published June 9, saw fit to point out that the federal government's track record on terrorism convictions is, in the words of the Times, 'not unblemished.'"