Another week, another outrageous story about the NYPD targeting Muslim Americans based solely on their religious identity. The latest revelation comes from an Associated Press story detailing NYPD efforts to monitor Muslim student groups far beyond New York City, and without basis in credible intelligence:
Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.
This follows earlier reports that the NYPD has conducted massive surveillance on the city’s Muslim community and regularly shown an Islamophobic video as part of its training regimen for new police recruits.
As Rep. Keith Ellison wrote last week, these tactics fray relations between the Muslim community and the police, making the city and its residents less safe — not to mention the civil rights questions and privacy issues raised by the NYPD’s profiling and intrusiveness.
Given everything that has come to light, perhaps the most disturbing questions are why hasn’t Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly been held responsible for these abuses and why does Mayor Michael Bloomberg continue to defend these ethically questionable activities?
Photo Credit: Luke Roberts/Flickr
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The news that the NYPD showed an extremely Islamophobic film as part of its training and then tried to cover up the extent of its use remains alarming. Faith leaders have called for an investigation to ensure such mistakes won’t be repeated. Today, Rep. Keith Ellison weighed in with the important reminder these episodes actually make us less safe. The Congressman writes:
The NYPD’s use of “The Third Jihad” is disturbing because it leaves officers with the impression that American Muslims are the enemy, not an ally against terrorism. This notion hurts the ability of law enforcement to do its job. No one knows this better than the brave officers who have stood up to such bigotry – it was NYPD officers who objected to the screening of the film, just as it was FBI agents who recently objected to using equally harmful training materials at the bureau.
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Now more than ever, it is critical that law enforcement build relationships with the Muslim community to better fight against terrorism. In my hometown of Minneapolis, the relationship between law enforcement and the Muslim community is so strong that international dignitaries have visited to learn about our model. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has said he was able to solve several high-profile crimes only because Muslim community members voluntarily came forward to share information with the police.
The whole piece well is worth a read.
Photo Credit: Rep. Keith Ellison’s Congressional Website
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Contrary to the claims of Rep. Peter King and people promoting anti-Islam bigotry, a new report from the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security confirms that “…the rate of [Muslim-American] radicalization is far less than many feared in the aftermath of 9/11.”
As we’ve reported in the past, Rep. King has defended holding hearings that single out Muslim-Americans on the premise that they pose the singularly largest threat to homeland security. While fellow members of Congress and hearing witnesses attempted to debunk King’s baseless arguments, their testimony largely fell on deaf ears.
If King were to read the report, he would find that radical Muslim-Americans do not comprise a large portion of existing terrorist groups and that ethnicity is an insufficient metric to try to identify terrorists. From the New York Times:
…no single ethnic group predominated among Muslims charged in terrorism cases last year — six were of Arab ancestry, five were white, three were African-American and two were Iranian, Mr. Kurzman said. That pattern of ethnic diversity has held for those arrested since Sept. 11, 2001…
While Rep. King continues to blast false and prejudiced accusations at Muslim-Americans, the report once again proves that his unsubstantiated claims are narrow-minded and have no place in policy-making.
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After Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room helped expose the FBI’s extensive use of inaccurate and offensive training materials, the Bureau invited experts from the Army’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point to review all of their resources and help remedy the problem.
The review hasn’t concluded yet, but so far the investigation has uncovered over 700 pages of documents and over 300 presentations characterized by one of four criteria: “factual errors”; “poor taste”; using “stereotypes”; or containing information that “lacked precision.”
The update about the review came at a meeting between FBI director Robert Mueller and a host of Arab and Muslim advocacy groups and religious leaders.
While it’s troubling to hear about just how deep the problem with FBI training material ran, it’s encouraging to see such commitment to fixing it. The FBI’s actions set an example for law enforcement and counter-terrorism agencies around the country who are similarly the targets of unscrupulous, anti-Muslim “experts” who sell misleading training resources.
Recent developments in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s attempts to move into a larger space have been met by fierce opposition, including an arson attack, illustrate the importance of the FBI’s change of course.
The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office, which is responsible for investigating that very arson, is bringing in one of these anti-Muslim “experts” to train its officers in Muslim culture and terrorism. According to the Tennessean, the department is having Juan Guandolo, an activist who believes mosques are front groups for the Mulsim Brotherhood, give the training at World Outreach Church, a church whose pastor has publicly opposed the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s mosque.
I think these kinds of incidents are often the result of well-meaning local authorities not knowing any better. Drawing attention to the fact that these “trainers” have been rejected by major institutions like the FBI is an important step towards fixing the problem at all levels.
(H/T Islamophobia Watch, Think Progress)
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The New York Police Department and their commissioner Raymond Kelly have been in hot water the last few months for a series of controversies about training and surveillance decisions regarding Islam.
Adam Serwer sums up what we know already:
Last week, an NYPD internal strategy memo discovered by the Associated Press added one more line to this disturbing trend. The report documents a deliberate strategy of targeting Shiite Muslims across the Northeast based on their religion, including surveillance and covert infiltration of mosques that were not under investigation as specific threats.
The document is the clearest proof yet that the department was violating both city law and the FBI guidelines they claimed to be following, and it appears to disprove Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly’s public assurances that NYPD doesn’t make surveillance decisions based on religion and only goes ”where leads take [them].”
As counter-terrorism experts have said time and time again, community partners are law enforcement’s most important ally in the fight against violent extremists. Unfairly casting suspicion on and violating the civil rights of our Muslim-American neighbors only erodes the trust necessary to catch terror plots before they are realized and feeds the extremists’ recruiting message that America is a hostile place for Muslims.
Rooting out these kind of counter-productive practices and messages is essential at all levels of law enforcement if we want to get this right.
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