NYPD declares mosques as terrorist organizations

[Peter Lemkin]

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NYPD declares mosques as terrorist organizations

By Abdus-Sattar Ghazali
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[TD="width: 40%"]9/1/13[/TD]
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The seven-million strong AmericaMuslim community was shocked to know that the New York Police Department (NYPD)has secretly designated mosquesas "terrorist organizations." The Associated Press reported on August28, 2013 that the designation allowed the police to use informants to recordsermons and spy on imams, evenwithout any evidence of criminal activity. According to the AssociatedPress report , designating an entiremosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer servicesthere is a potential subject of an investigation and fair game forsurveillance.

TheAP report further said: "Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at least adozen "terrorism enterprise investigations" into mosques, accordingto interviews and confidential police documents. The TEI, as it is known, is apolice tool intended to help investigate terrorist cells and the like. ManyTEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to continue even though the NYPDhas never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic organization with operating asa terrorism enterprise."
Thedocuments show in detail how, in its hunt for terrorists, the NYPD investigatedcountless innocent New York Muslims and put information about them in secretpolice files, the AP said adding: "As a tactic, opening an enterpriseinvestigation on a mosque is so potentially invasive that while the NYPDconducted at least a dozen, the FBI never did one, according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials. The strategy has allowed the NYPD to sendundercover officers into mosques and attempt to plant informants on the boardsof mosques and at least one prominent Arab-American group in Brooklyn, whoseexecutive director has worked with city officials, including Bill de Blasio, afront-runner for mayor."
It may bepointed out that in August 2011, the Associated Press (AP) exposed the NYPD spyprogram, which is allegedly being conducted with the assistance of individualslinked to the CIA. Following a month-long investigation, the AP reported thatthe NYPD is using covert surveillance techniques "that would run afoul of civilliberties rules if practiced by the federal government" and "does so withunprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the brightline between foreign and domestic spying."
LastWednesday's revelations, about declaring the mosques as terrorism enterprise, arein documents recently obtained by The Associated Press and part of a new book,"Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden'sFinal Plot Against America." The book by AP reporters Matt Apuzzo and AdamGoldman is based on hundreds of previously unpublished police files andinterviews with current and former NYPD, CIA and FBI officials.
Interestingly,on June 18, 2013, civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit charging that theNYPD's Muslim Surveillance Program has imposed an unjustified badge ofsuspicion and stigma on hundreds of thousands of innocent New Yorkers. It wasfiled on behalf of religious and community leaders, mosques, and a charitableorganization that were all swept up in the NYPD's dragnet surveillance ofMuslim New Yorkers.
Thelatest revelations prompted the Council on American-Islamic Relations, aleading civil advocacy Muslim group and other Muslim organizations to call for theDepartment of Justice to investigate the policy of "terrorism enterprise"investigations. "The NYPD has proven itself unwilling or unable to respectthe constitutional and religious rights of minorities, and it is now up to theDepartment of Justice to step in," said council board member Lamis Deek ina statement.
One of the groups under surveillance was theArab American Association of New York, a non- religious social services organization thatprovides immigrants with English language and citizenship classes, as well asrunning a food pantry and after-school programs. A secret police document obtained by the AP described the department's plans to find aninformant to get on the association's board of directors. The documentdescribed the potential informant as a male between the ages of 40 to 60,preferably Palestinian or Yemeni, and an owner of a small business.
Oneof the plaintiffs in the last June's lawsuit, Asad Dandia, a sophomore atKingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, helped found a charitableorganization called Muslims Giving Back. Founded in 2011, thesmall student group provides groceries for needy families. Dandia'sorganization was infiltrated by a police informant in 2012, according to the lawsuit. Dandiainvited the informant to his home for dinner and to meet his parents, and evento spend the night. The informant gave the police pictures of people at thegroup's meetings, obtained after Dandia "friended" him on Facebook. Butthe informant eventually revealed himself after the group heard from a crediblesource that it was being targeted by the NYPD. The lawsuit charged that thegroup then lost its meeting location at a local mosque, while donationsdeclined. It has also been unable to attract new members, and current membersworry another informant may be in their midst.
ThePresident of the Arab American Association of New York, Dr. Ahmad Jaber, saidthe discoveries in the AP report made him feel "betrayed" after the work he andothers have been doing to try to build a relationship between the NYPD and theMuslim community. Jaber used to be the President of the Dawood Mosque on StateStreet in Brooklyn, which is said to be the oldest mosque in Brooklyn. TheDawood Mosque was also reportedly designated a terrorist organization andtargeted in the NYPD's "terrorism enterprise investigations." Jaber was appointedby the Police Commissioner, Raymond Kelly to a position on the Muslim AdvisoryCouncil to the NYPD -- a position from which he will resign.
Notsurprisingly, New York City Comptroller John Liu has announced an audit of theNYPD's so-called Domain Awareness System, which involves 3,000 surveillance cameras citywide. Community organizations from groupsincluding the Arab-American Association of New York, Desis Rising Up and Movingand the Council on American and Islamic Relations also asked Liu to expand hisaudit to the department intelligence division as a whole in light of the AP'sfindings.
New York's network of surveillance cameras was installedin contract with Microsoft and announced last year originally for counterterrorpurposes. With a now all-too-common mission creep, the camera system has beenexpanded to local law enforcement use.

[Peter Lemkin]

Hey NYPD, Being Muslim Isn't a Crime

by Dean Obeidallah Aug 29, 2013 2:07 PM EDT

What's it like being a Muslim in New York City? The NYPD may have monitored your mosque under suspicions that it was a terrorist organization.

• How
  w would you feel if the police considered you suspicious simply because of your religious faith? What would be your reaction if the police viewed your religion as probable cause to monitor where you pray, study, and eat? Would you even attend your place of worship if you knew that someone there is possibly an undercover police officer sent to investigate you?
  
  

A New York City Police Department officer watches the 27th annual Muslim Day Parade on September 23, 2012. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty)
Well, that's what it's like to be Muslim in New York City. Paradoxically, as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech where he shared his hope that Americans "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character," we discover that the NYPD is still judging Muslims by their faith.

By way of a brief background, in 2011 the Associated Press released documentsrevealing that the NYPD had engaged in the widespread surveillance of Muslims in NYC. The NYPD monitored Muslims at mosques, restaurants, bookstores and even Muslim college-student groups in neighboring states.

And this week we found out that the NYPD surveillance of Muslims was moreinvasive and troubling than previously known. The NYPD had labeled at least a dozen NYC mosques as terrorist organizations under the "terrorism enterprise investigations," or TEI.

This designation allowed the NYPD to treat those attending a mosque as members of a terror cell. Police could monitor mosque leaders and attendees without any specific evidence of wrongdoing. It also empowered the police to infiltrate these mosques with undercover agents and informants.

Is the NYPD aware that Arab and Muslim don't mean the same thing?

Oddly, the NYPD tried to secretly place an undercover officer on the board of the Arab-American Association of NY. This raises two questions for me: first, is the NYPD aware that Arab and Muslim don't mean the same thing? Arabs can be any religion and, in fact, a majority of Arab Americans living in the U.S. are Christian.

Secondly, Im the co-producer of an annual NY Arab-American comedy festival. Did the NYPD try to infiltrate our event? Perhaps that explains why some of the people auditioning were so bad.

In response to the release of these documents by the AP, the NYPD once again denied that it targets Muslims based on their faith. But then again, the NYPD denied that they were racially profiling blacks and Latinos with their "stop-and-frisk" program. But they clearly were. And that's not just my opinion, but also the recent ruling of a federal judge who found that NYPD program to be unconstitutional.


Religious profiling is just as wrong. And there are currently three lawsuits pending in federal court to declare the NYPD's profiling of Muslims as unconstitutional.


I want to make one thing clear: I'm a Muslim, and if there was any credible evidence that Muslims were planning a terror attack, I would want the authorities to swiftly and vigilantly investigate and prevent it. I don't want to see another terror attack perpetrated by a Muslim in the United States ever again.

But that doesn't mean that American Muslims should have any less rights than Americans of other faiths. There's no Muslim exception to the protections afforded by our Constitutionnor should there ever be.

Here's the bottom line: we all agree that we want to prevent terrorism in our nation. The question that needs to be addressed is: what is the best way to achieve that?

It's a truism of law enforcement that one of the most effective ways to combat crime is by working closely with local communities and creating a partnership with them to help combat wrongdoing. However, the NYPD policy of religious profiling does the opposite. It causes law-abiding American Muslims to not see the police as their partners but as their adversaries.

In contrast, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca hasn't used confrontation but cooperation to build a close relationship with the Muslim community over the past few years. In fact, Sheriff Baca testified before the House Homeland Security Committee that out of all the diverse ethnic, racial, and religious groups in L.A. county, "Nowhere is that relationship more positive than that which exists between my agency and the American Muslim community." Baca made it clear that law enforcement needs to build trust with Muslims, as well as all communities within its jurisdiction, in order "to maintain a safe society free of violent extremism."

The NYPD should follow the lead of Sheriff Baca, and stop the antiquated, illegal, and immoral ways of using religious and racial profiling. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. invoked in his historic speech 50 years, we must never forget the promise contained in our Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

It's time that we treat all Americans equally as wellregardless of their faith.