The Fine Print | Notes from the Legal Director
October 27, 2025 | Marium Uddin, Legal Director
MLFA Statement on the Detention of Journalist Sami Hamdi
I don’t want to speak too much about judicial redress in Sami’s case – much of what I know, you already know, too. We are living in a time when it feels as if we’ve stepped through the looking glass: a constitutional crisis unfolding in real time, due process eroding, and the rule of law being chipped away by executive order, policy, and memo. Sweeping decisions now represent a radical departure from years of established practice and precedent.
Similarly, I won’t speak at length about Sami’s legal case. There is no daylight between what you know and what I know: Sami is a 35-year old Brit, with a loving family, who is a globally renowned journalist and political commentator.
Last night, Sami made a public appearance where he said something quintessentially American: that Americans don’t have an aversion to truth; they are willing to see things with an open mind. Now, which of us, as the Americans he spoke of are willing to see things with an open mind and which of us are behind the overzealous and unjustifiable push to have him put in an ICE detention center?
After his appearance, Sami stopped to do yet another very American thing: he stopped to have late-night pancakes at an IHOP with some friends. Just a half-day later, he was detained by ICE while catching a domestic flight from California to Florida. Of note, Sami had noted that figures such as Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Representative MTG, like him, had criticized the U.S. for bowing to Israel in both its foreign and domestic policies. Is this why Sami was detained? For holding a viewpoint that is shared by Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and MTG?
Sami’s father wrote: “Anyone who truly wants to understand Sami Hamdi and how he thinks should start with Sami’s own words: Humanity can easily discern right and wrong. Racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, genocide, and war crimes need no explanation or definition for humanity to recognize them and stand firmly against them. I believe in humanity and the natural good that exists in human beings.” Is this the free speech we wish to punish?
As journalist Klaus Marre wrote, “We gotta be honest: trying to dictate to Americans what they can and can’t say, and threatening them with consequences if they don’t comply, sounds like some real fascist-level stuff.” This is especially true when the very people being silenced are the ones pointing out that what’s happening in this country shouldn’t be happening. Now, some of those people aren’t Americans per se, they’re our visitors.
We’ve sent a chilling message to our children, our students, and to visitors on our soil: Shut up. You are not allowed to join the rising chorus of voices for a national conscience. Stop thinking. Stop exploring. Stop expressing. Oh, wait—you weren’t born here? Then you had better think twice, thrice, and extra hard before speaking out. The right to free speech, apparently, doesn’t apply to you because we can do magical contortions and mental gymnastics with the law.
The playbook is clear: the government is conflating broken immigration laws with the right to free speech. How many more abductions before we recognize the clear pattern?
There is a lot to unpack here. We’ve slaughtered Native Americans, enslaved and lynched African Americans, excluded Chinese immigrants, and put Japanese Americans in internment camps. Where is this crescendo of fearmongering and hate leading us next? As a Muslim American, I ask myself: Are we next? I think of the fact that the American government authorized and delivered the very bombs that fell on Gaza *2,000-pound bombs* and I ask whether, morally, it’s now our turn to bear consequence for not doing enough to have stopped the war, to get food and medicine to innocent children in Palestine.
As another famous Brit, Nick Clegg, once said, “If you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” The flaky rhetoric behind this violently un-American conduct (hateful, harmful, unlawful, and unfair) has built to a clear constitutional crisis.
As a Muslim American – and I emphasize American here to signify U.S. citizenship in this context – I feel the emotional barbed wire enclosing us. America has been on the wrong side of history a few times and it has always been when there is a crisis of conscience.
History teaches us that conscience is rarely convenient. Muhammad Ali stood against the Vietnam War and was condemned – stripped of his title – before the world came to see the justice of his stand. Fred Korematsu defied Japanese-American internment and was branded a traitor, then honored as a hero. Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the Freedom Riders were jailed and beaten for challenging segregation, yet their courage transformed this nation. Abolitionists once dismissed as radicals paved the way for freedom, just as those who opposed apartheid and dictatorships abroad were voices crying in the wilderness before they became the conscience of history.
Over and over again, the lesson is the same: those willing to risk comfort, reputation, and even freedom are the ones who bend the arc toward justice.
We hope and we pray that, if we remain steadfast, history will place us alongside those who chose conscience when it mattered most.
One day, everyone will claim to have always been against this. One day, there will be a reckoning, and those on the wrong side of history will be held accountable. They tried to bury us, but they forgot we were seeds.
First, they came for the socialists. Then, they came for the trade unionists. Then, they came for the Jews. Are we next – and is anyone left to speak for us?
Those who speak for Sami now are the better angels of our nature, the ones I am eternally searching for.
I am proud to stand with CAIR and attorney Hassan Ahmad to fight for Sami.
If you choose to be a better angel, too, please do your part: speak for Sami with the courage, conviction, and conscience that he has always spoken with for others.
One thing is certain: the time for whispers is over.
But, if we speak out, do we risk liberty? Perhaps.
Then again, what is agency if not to do what Sami did and would have done for us?
The Fine Print | Real power and protection is always hidden in the fine print. MLFA brings the fine print to life with this series of articles, cutting through the noise to break down the rights, risks, and realities you need to know. No loopholes, no confusion, just clear, unapologetic insight into the laws that shape the lives of Muslims in America.
