Will we care what John Walker Lindh thinks about prison prayer? Should we?

I must confess to having lost track of John Walker Lindh. Until reading the accounts on Monday about how he’s suing for the right to practice his religion freely, I didn’t realize he was an inmate at the federal correctional center in Terre Haute, Ind.

LINDH: From a decade ago, just after his capture



Not that anybody should get any delusions of Lindh and former Gov. George Ryan associating with each other. The latter is in the minimum-security work camp that helps service the maximum-security prison, while Lindh is in a special unit within the prison that keeps him out of circulation from the violent criminals who populate the place.

LINDH, FOR THOSE who have forgotten, is the alleged “American Taliban.” While some people like to use that phrase to denigrate Tea Party types (comparing their extremist, uncompromising behavior to that of the religious fanatics whose behavior taints Islam), Lindh is the U.S. citizen who converted his religious faith, then left this country to be among his new believers.

And back in late 2001 when U.S. troops started going into Afghanistan out of a sense that they were avenging the people who were killed when airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center, Lindh was captured by local forces being propped up by the U.S. military.

For he literally was fighting in opposition to the U.S. allies and alongside the people to whom Taliban is not an epithet, but merely a label of who they are!

The rest of those people could be regarded as prisoners of war and become faceless beings whom nobody ever gave much thought.

BUT LINDH, BECAUSE of that U.S. citizenship, wound up getting criminal charges in this country and the lengthy prison time. He’s getting treated more harshly than others because he’s the white face, a northern California kid, who’d have the gall to wear a keffiyeh and not think it looks absurd.

Which is why while it surprised me to learn that Lindh is so close to Chicago (Terre Haute is about a three-hour drive by car), it didn’t shock me to learn that Bureau of Prisons officials are giving him a hard time about his religious beliefs – which I have no reason to doubt are sincere!

Who remembers the "John Walker Blues?"

It seems that Lindh, due to the security restrictions of his particular unit within the Terre Haute Correctional Center, is being denied access to group prayer, which his particular faction within Islam believes is essential whenever possible.

But Lindh is not allowed to pray while in his once-a-week group sessions. Prayer would be regarded as subversive toward proper prison conduct.

ALTHOUGH I SUSPECT if it were Christian prayer of a specific denomination approved of by the warden, then somehow the rules could be bent.

Lindh filed a complaint asking for the right to group prayer. The part that caught my attention the most was his explanation of what is wrong with him being allowed to pray in his cell whenever he wants to.

It seems that having to kneel in the presence of a toilet in order to pray would be regarded as disrespectful to Lindh and other Muslims.

For those people who are reading this and saying “So What!?!,” and shouting that a prison inmate has no right being picky, I wonder how irritable they’d be if someone in another country wanted to engage in Christian prayer, and was being forced to use the toilet for their faith.

WE’D BE ARGUING that it is disrespectful. We’d probably be looking for every euphemism we could think of to describe it.

And yes, I am a firm believer in showing respect for all beliefs. That ultimately is what gives our society the moral high ground on such issues.

When we give up such tolerance, we become no better than the opposition that we’re all too eager to demonize.

So as Lindh appears this week in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis to argue his case, we ought not to be getting all high and mighty in our outrage toward him. It only brings us down to a level that we should be ashamed to drop to.

BESIDES, EVEN IF he behaves like the perfect angel while in the misery of a federal prison, he still has another seven years to go before anyone can even think of early release for him.

And if he’s being nitpicked over aspects of his prison life such as prayer, I’m sure the rest of his life isn’t any more pleasant.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: I realize that in this commentary, I provided a very truncated account of what Lindh did to warrant prison time. Much more detailed information can be found elsewhere, although one has to be wary of the partisanship of whomever chose to write any particular given account of his story.

Two more years. Then Ryan's free

There are no “holidays” in the federal corrections system. Nobody is doing anything special for the inmates to allow them to share in the joy of celebrating Independence Day.

RYAN: Two more years



It’s just another day in the time they have to serve. For the people who work there, I’m not sure if they get overtime for having to be on duty this day.

SO ANYBODY WHO thinks George Ryan is celebrating on Monday, I’d say the thought is highly unlikely.

Although Ryan has been back in the news in recent days, both because everybody is eager to compare the plight of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to his own. And also because Ryan (a.k.a., 16627-424) is now a widower.

One-time Illinois first lady Lura Lynn Ryan passed away June 27 (the same day Blagojevich was found guilty) following extended illness, and an even lengthier time period trying to twist the arms of anyone she could think of who might be inclined to grant some sort of sympathy toward her husband.

Either overturn his conviction, or somehow commute his prison sentence to the nearly four full years that he already has served (which by Chicago political corruption standards is fairly lengthy).

IN SHORT, RYAN the ex-governor lost his most outspoken advocate – along with his life-long partner.

Now from my perspective, I was pleased to learn last week that Bureau of Prisons officials allowed the warden of the work camp that is part of the Terre Haute Correctional Center in Indiana to be reasonable when it came to permitting furloughs so that inmate Ryan could help comfort his wife.

Officials didn’t use the distance between his Indiana prison and his Kankakee hometown (where Lura Lynn was hospitalized) as an excuse to justify a hard-line approach to keeping them apart.

Fortunately for him, Ryan was able to be at his wife’s side when she passed away, just a few hours after Blagojevich learned he likely will be “going away” somewhere for an even lengthier amount of time than Ryan’s 6 ½-year sentence.

ALTHOUGH HE WAS not permitted to remain in Kankakee once she died. So George was not able to attend the funeral services held for his wife. He got to grieve while tending to his usual prison routine – which includes a job in the prison wood shop.

Now anyone who has read my copy before realizes I feel a certain level of respect for the former governor, in part because I recognize the accomplishments of his time in elective office. They’re far more substantial than the gridlock that the Legislature became entangled in with Blagojevich.

A part of me still believes, and likely always will believe, that the most hard-core element against Ryan are the people who object to the accomplishments of his gubernatorial term on ideological grounds, and are all too eager to see him taken down for whatever reason they can justify.

Which just strikes me as being mean-spirited and petty.

THEY MAY BE just as petty and small-minded as Blagojevich himself, who truly seemed to let his ego run amok and put himself first over the public good when dealing with other government officials.

So those people who are now complaining that federal authorities allowed for Ryan to be on hand with Lura Lynn both last week and on three other occasions during the past year (at points when her health took a turn for the worst) are really indicting their own sense of decency, rather than saying anything bad about Ryan.

If anything, the fact that Bureau of Prisons officials were capable of transporting Ryan to Kankakee on so many occasions may well be the evidence that he is NOT a security risk, and that he doesn’t pose any threat to society at this point.

The man is 77 years old, and isn’t exactly in the best of health himself.

WHICH ACTUALLY IS the undecided factor in terms of how Ryan’s situation turns out.

It seems that President Barack Obama isn’t inclined to do anything that would let him out any earlier than Independence Day 2013 – the date that currently is scheduled by the Bureau of Prisons for Ryan’s release. Some might argue that the president would be more likely to approve some serious form of immigration reform than do anything favorable to Ryan – because both acts would equally tick off the ideologues.

Will Ryan survive for two more years to make it to his release date? Will we have the ideologues all worked up in a rabid lather 731 days from now, complaining that somehow Ryan didn’t suffer enough?

Anything is possible when it comes to this crowd. They just seem determined to complain anytime George Ryan’s name is brought up.

WHICH IS WHY I wonder if the likely outcome for Ryan is that he gets a pardon someday in the distance. I’m talking about something that comes AFTER he serves his sentence.

It would allow his family some sense of respect. It also is not out of the question. It is what ultimately happened to one-time House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski – who got to finish out his life as a political elder statesman, rather than an ex-con.

Somehow, I think it might be fitting, even though I’m sure Ryan at this moment is just trying to get through his “time” day by day, and is trying to figure out how to do it without his wife at his side.

For that latter point (and I don’t care how much you despise the man), we all ought to be offering him our condolences.

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