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AMP Report – December 5, 2009
The Status of American Muslims’ Civil Rights in 2009
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
The seven-million strong American Muslim community continued to face barriers to their full and equal participation in American society while certain individuals and institutions persisted in profiting by smearing Islam, says the 2009 CAIR report on the status of American Muslims.
American Muslims continued to fear profiling, surveillance and undue scrutiny by law enforcement and other authorities, the report said adding: “The government’s ability to conduct surveillance without adequate oversight or control has expanded and shows no immediate sign of contracting.” The report was alluding to the Attorney General’s Guidelines issued in the waning days of Bush Administration and adopted by the Obama administration.
The CAIR report dubbed as “The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States” is a summation of incidents and experiences of anti-Muslim violence, discrimination and harassment reported to the civil advocacy group during the 2008 calendar year.
The CAIR and its affiliate chapters processed a total of 2,728 civil rights complaints. This number represents a 3 percent increase in reported cases from 2007 (2,652 reports) and an 11 percent increase over cases reported in 2006 (2,467 reports).
The occurrence of reported civil rights complaints continues to increase at mosques and Muslim organizations, rising from 221 cases in 2006 to 564 cases in 2007 and to 721 cases in 2008. This represents a 28 percent increase from 2007 to 2008.
There were 118 reported cases of discrimination in schools in 2007 and 153 in 2008. This represents a 31 percent increase.
Interestingly, anti-Muslim hate crime complaints fell by 14 percent this year, decreasing from 135 total complaints in 2007 to 116 in 2008.
Consistent with previous years, an individual’s ethnicity/religion remained the primary factor that triggered discrimination. This factor accounted for 42 percent of the total cases reported to CAIR during the 2008 calendar year. It is important to note that many acts of discrimination occur due to the perceived ethnicity or religion of the victim. For example, many Sikh-Americans, who are not Muslim, have been targets of anti-Muslim bias as a result of their appearance
Specific issues of concern
The CAIR report highlights a number of specific issues of concern for the American Muslim community including watch lists, surveillance and the Attorney General’s Guidelines implemented by Michael B. Mukasey in 2008.
The report pointed out that the government’s ability to conduct surveillance without adequate oversight or control has expanded and shows no immediate sign of contracting. In their places of worship, on the telephone and in their private affairs, large numbers of Muslims continue to report fear that protected speech and constitutionally-sanctioned political activity will leave them with a Suspicious Activity Report on some government official’s desk. As one survivor of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan put it, “I feel like it’s 1980 in Kabul all over again.”
The report said that near unchecked expansion of watch lists strongly contributes to the “flying while Muslim” phenomenon. “The ongoing problems for those who have had their names added to government watch lists coupled with the absence of meaningful methods to address their complaints are unacceptable in a free society. It is inexcusable that Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was forced to call upon the Secretary of State to have his name removed from an American watch list.”
Surveillance
Fear of government surveillance ranks consistently high as a key concern in the American Muslim community. Two main concerns are: mosque surveillance and the warrantless wiretapping component of the Presidential Surveillance Program.
In this respect, the report pointed out the case of a Marine gunnery sergeant who in earlier this year pleaded guilty to leaking classified intelligence information to a detective with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. A Marine reserve colonel, who was also a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officer and co-founder of the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group, was also charged.
The ACLU has filed a Freedom of Information Act request “to determine if the intelligence including spying on civilians, particularly Southern California Muslims and their mosques.” The request is currently pending.
In early 2009, The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY) called on the FBI to confirm or deny a claim by Rep. Peter King (R-NY) that “a number” of Long Island mosques are under law enforcement surveillance. In a Newsday interview, King said, “right
now there are a number of [Long Island] mosques under surveillance by law enforcement agencies.” King also claimed the mosques have been under surveillance “for four or five years.”
Attorney General’s Guidelines
The report also highlighted the American Muslim community’s concern for the Attorney General’s Guidelines implemented by Michael B. Mukasey and adopted by the Obama Administration to oversee domestic FBI investigations.
In October 2008, in the waning days of the Bush administration — FBI director Robert Mueller signed new guidelines allowing broader FBI authority in pursuing potential threats to national security. The new guidelines allow agents to consider race or ethnicity in determining whether someone is a suspect. These guidelines – which became effective Dec. 1, 2008 — allow the FBI to launch a criminal investigation against someone without any factual predicate and without approval from FBI headquarters.
The guidelines are similar to COINTELPRO, an FBI program used in the 50s and 60s to spy on civil rights, environmental and labor groups, with the goal of unearthing Communist ties those organizations may have had. At Congressional hearings last May, FBI Director Mueller — who continues to serve as FBI director in the Obama administration — said the guidelines simply formalized processes the FBI had begun to use, post-9/11. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have not indicated whether they intend to scrap the new guidelines.
The CAIR Report said that these guidelines:
1) Allow Investigations without Suspicion - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has reported: “The new guidelines, inter alia, give the FBI the authority to open investigative ‘assessments’ of any American without any factual predicate or suspicion. Such ‘assessments’ allow the use of intrusive techniques to surreptitiously collect information on people suspected of no wrongdoing and no connection with any foreign entity. These inquiries may include the collection of information from online sources and commercial databases, and the use of grand jury subpoenas to obtain telephone and e-mail subscriber information.”
Under the new “assessments” authority, the FBI can recruit informants and send them, undercover, into any organization to spy on them. This seems eerily reminiscent of FBI counter-intelligence programs in the 1960s and early 70s, used to spy on political leaders and organizations that the government considered radical, such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
2) Reduce Oversight - The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) has reported: “…FBI field offices do not have to report the opening of most preliminary investigations to FBI headquarters, even though the preliminary inquiries can use all investigative techniques except wiretaps and physical searches requiring a search warrant. Likewise, field offices do not have to report the opening of full national security investigations unless they pertain to a U.S. citizen of lawful permanent resident. Even when notification is required under the new guidelines it need not be timely.”
3) Open the Door to Racial or Religious Profiling – The Constitution Project has reported: “The new guidelines ‘Do not authorize any conduct prohibited by the Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies.’ That sounds nice but the Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies included an exemption for national security and border integrity investigations. By erasing the line between criminal investigations and national security investigations the guidelines open the door to racial profiling.”75 “In testimony regarding the new Guidelines, FBI officials have confirmed that race, religion, ethnicity and national origin can be used as ‘a’ factor in determining whether a person is subject to investigation, though not the ‘sole’ factor.”
The CAIR has been publishing report – about Muslim civil rights - annually since the 1995 terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, after which unsubstantiated linkage of the perpetrator to Islam prompted stereotyping, harassment and actual attacks on Muslims and Arab-Americans around America.
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