The Arrest of a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Police Officer

James Sheehan

Last week, the FBI announced that it had arrested Nicholas Young, a Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) police officer, on charges of providing material support to ISIS. The FBI, with the help of the WMATA police, had been monitoring Young since 2009. Young allegedly provided an individual he believed to be an ISIS operative with 22 mobile messaging gift cards to assists ISIS communication capabilities overseas. Over the course of 20 meetings, Young was actually speaking with an FBI informant from the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

While FBI sting operations are a questionable law enforcement strategy with substantial ethical questions, it is still shocking and disconcerting that an officer responsible for ensuring the security of the transit system in the nation’s capital would attempt to support ISIS. A convert to Islam, Young joined the WMATA police in 2003. Citing an affidavit, the Justice Department reported that Young was first interviewed by law enforcement in 2009 because he was an acquaintance of Zachary Chesser, another DC-area convert who was eventually convicted of providing material support to al-Shabaab. Young was also associated with Amine El Khalifi, who pled guilty on charges to bomb the US Capitol complex in 2012. According to the affidavit, Young traveled to Libya twice in 2011. The affidavit also alleges that Young claimed to have fought alongside rebels to remove the Gaddafi regime.

Young is the first police officer to be arrested on terrorism-related charges in the US, although this is not the first case of individuals with close ties to the broader security establishment being arrested or convicted on similar charges. In 2009, Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter and former US Army Major and psychiatrist, killed 13 and injured 32 individuals, many of them fellow service members or DoD civilians. Furthermore, while not a member of the security services, deceased al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki was trusted to dine with and brief senior DoD officials on Islam after the September, 11th attacks. These briefings took place within the walls of the Pentagon.

There is no doubt that last week’s incident will put pressure on police departments across the nation (and perhaps globally) to apply more scrutiny to both new recruits and officers already in their ranks. However, it would be a mistake for the litmus test for officers to be their religious identity or even their level of religious fervour or conservatism. Indeed, the wrong reaction by police forces, the armed forces, and the national security establishment would be to hang a sign out front reading “Muslims need not apply”. This is not only because of religious liberty concerns, which stand on their own, but because Muslims and particularly devout Muslims serving as members of the police, military, or security establishment deals a substantial strategic blow to ISIS messaging.

ISIS propaganda, which presents a binary, black and white world, in which being a Muslim is incompatible with liberal democracy, is gutted by Muslims serving honorably in the security sector. This is not unique to ISIS. During the Troubles in Northern Ireland the individuals most despised and heavily targeted by IRA operations were not the British security services or Protestant paramilitaries, but Catholics, members of the community that the IRA claimed to protect and represent, who served in the police services. Similarly, ISIS claims to speak for all (Sunni) Muslims and as such Muslims who not only practice their faith with comfort and happiness in the West but also work to protect the West in its security institutions devastate the ISIS narrative.

Governments should double down on this unfortunate incident and encourage police departments to highlight the positive contributions of Muslim officers to ensuring public safety. This cannot just be the act of marching out Muslim officers as mascots for photo ops. There needs to be a genuine appeal to these officers to speak frankly and openly about their commitment to public service and why it is not only compatible with Islam but why their service is an extension of their faith. This messaging should be distributed not only through official government channels but through trusted intermediaries and community figures, particularly those with religious authority, both in Western nations and abroad in the Muslim world.

ISIS does not believe in the gray zone where individuals can have more than one identity. They are promoters of simple identities and the creation of a simple world. Therefore counter-messaging practitioners, governments, and academics should not look to craft simple responses. The answer is promoting a complicated world with many shades of gray.