Juan Cole on the accused Miami terrorists

True to form for the Bush administration's high-profile "terrorist" busts, the one in Miami is already looking like a thin case for actual terrorist activity.

Juan Cole thinks they are more likely to be a eclectic cult that may have borrowed some elements of their doctrine from Islam. And even more from Christianity and Judaism.

He also focuses on a problem not fully appreciated, to put it mildly. That is, how should American law deal with coercive cults? He writes:

The other thing to say is that American law is soft on cultic practices, of dirty tricks against and smearing of critics, enforced third-party shunning, manipulation, and group coercion. These things are not protected by the First Amendment and I think one part of our counter-terrorism strategy must be to develop legal strategies to make it easier to disrupt the workings of cults before they accumulate a critical mass for violent action. The practice of just letting the head of the Internal Revenue Service decide if a group is a tax-free religion should also be revisited. In the past, some IRS heads appear to have been blackmailed by cults into granting them that status, which allows them to accumulate more wealth.

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