* The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist enterprises, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
* A covert national
security programme gives the FBI and
* North Carolina became the seventh state to adopt the so-called anti-Sharia legislation.
These three episodes of last month epitomize the dilemma faced by the seven-million strong Muslim American community which remains under seige 12 years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
As the Muslim American community joined the
Twelve years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks , American Muslims remained besieged through reconfiguration of US laws, policies and priorities. Profiled, harassed, reviled, attacked, peeped at by the CIA and the FBI, interrogated and permanently controlled at airports, the whole community felt excluded of American society . It will not be too much to say that the post-911 America has become less friendly to Muslims to the extent that they have probably replaced other minorities - Hispanics, Native Americans and Afro-Americans - as targets of discrimination, hate and prejudice.
Twelve years after the terrorist attacks, there's no sign that the pressure on the Muslim community is lifting. It remains victim of guilt by association.
On August 28, the Muslim American community was surprised to know that the New York Police Department (NYPD) has secretly designated mosques as " terrorist organizations ." The Associated Press reported that the designation allowed the police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, even without any evidence of criminal activity. According to the AP report , "designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an investigation and fair game for surveillance."
Two weeks earlier, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a shocking report that a covert national security programme allows the FBI and US immigration authorities the power to indefinitely delay immigration benefits to Muslims and those from Muslim countries. The report, titled "Muslims Need Not Apply," revealed that the previously unknown programme, which began in 2008 under George W Bush to identify those with links to terrorism, has continued under President Obama to blacklist law-abiding applicants and profile Muslims as " national security concerns."
In another anti-Muslim move, North
Carolina last month became the seventh state to approve the anti-Sharia
legislation. North Carolina joins
Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Tennessee in approving
the anti-Sharia legislation apparently aimed at alienating the Muslim
community.
Anti-Sharia bills
Twelve years after 9/11, the backlash against American Muslims shows no signs of improvement and recent years witnessed a wave of anti-Islam and anti-Muslim hatred campaign sweeping the country in the shape of the so-called anti-Sharia bills introduced in about 20 states. The bills were patterned on a template produced by a leading Islamophobe David Yerushalmi who founded an organization in 2006 with the acronym SANE (the Society of Americans for National Existence) with the aim of banishing Islam from the US. He proposed a law that would make adherence to Islam a felony punishable by 20 years in prison.
There is fallout on Muslims of these anti-Sharia campaigns which began in November 2010 in Oklahoma when the voters by a 70-30 percent margin passed a ballot question that barred "state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases." The new law -- which was widely considered as unfairly targeting the Muslim community and blaming it for the non-existent threat of Sharia law in the United states -- was blocked by an injunction issued just a few weeks later by federal judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange. The judge argued that the Sharia ban was unconstitutional because it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment and unfairly singled out Muslims. Last month, the same Judge made the temporary injunction permanent by prohibiting Oklahoma officials from certifying the results of a 2010 statewide election that approved a constitutional amendment to prohibit state courts from considering international or Islamic law when deciding cases.
However, on April 19, 2013, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin signed new legislation to stop the use foreign laws when they violate the Oklahoma Constitution. The House Bill 1060 would also ban foreign laws if they violate the United States Constitution.
Interestingly, on May 3 the Florida Senate dropped the controversial anti-Islam bill that Muslim, Jewish and civil rights leaders criticized as "unconstitutional and unnecessary."
A month later, on June 3, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon vetoed the anti-Islam bill passed by the state's legislature. In a statement announcing the veto, Governor Nixon said: --Senate Substitute for Senate Bill No. 267 seeks to introduce a solution to a problem that does not exist and, in so doing, puts in jeopardy some of the very liberties that the bill purports to protect"."
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