Shame

Marine Lands on No-Fly List

After emailing Muslim cleric about interfaith marriage.

Thanks a lot, Peter King. Abe Marshal, a 31-year-old dog trainer and honorably discharged Marine Corps veteran, landed on the government’s no-fly list after exchanging emails with a Muslim cleric that the FBI was monitoring. Marshal had sought the imam’s advice about raising children in an interfaith household, since he is Muslim and his wife is Christian. Marshal found out he was flagged last April while trying to fly to Spokane, Washington, for a dog-training job, and said he has since lost significant business because he can’t fly. Marshal said that the only way the agents would remove him from the list is if he would become an undercover informant at mosques—an offer he refused and compared to blackmail. “I feel like I’m living in communist Russia, not the United States of America, for someone to jump into my life like that,” said Marshal. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit back in June over the list, counting Marshal as one of 17 plaintiffs.