In July
also, Michele Bachmann and several other members of Congress insinuated that
Huma Abedin, one of the few American Muslims in a high-level government job,
was an agent of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. John McCain, Marco Rubio, and John
Boehner criticized Bachmann's smear campaign, but Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Eric
Cantor, and Romney adviser John Bolton defended it. To borrow Peter Benart of
the Newsweek, Romney, predictably, tried to have it both ways, saying that
Bachmann's attacks "are not things that are part of my campaign," but that "I'm
not going to tell other people what things to talk about." In other words, I
won't defame American Muslims myself, but if other prominent Republicans want
to, go ahead. After receiving threats, Abedin now receives FBI security
protection.
Exponential rise in the
U.S. anti-Muslim hate groups
Not
surprisingly, such anti-Muslim and anti-Islam rhetoric has fomented
discrimination, hate and intolerance against the Muslims and prompted the rise
of anti-Muslim groups. According to Southern Poverty Law Center (SLPC) the
number of anti-Muslim groups tripled in 2011, jumping from 10 groups in 2010 to
30 last year. In a special investigative report released in March 2012, the SLPC
said:
"Anti-Muslim
hate groups are a relatively new phenomenon in the United States, most of them
appearing in the aftermath of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks on Sept.
11, 2001. Earlier anti-Muslim groups tended to be religious in orientation and
disputed Islam's status as a respectable religion. All anti-Muslim hate groups
exhibit extreme hostility toward Muslims. The organizations portray those who
worship Islam as fundamentally alien and attribute to its followers an inherent
set of negative traits. Muslims are depicted as irrational, intolerant and
violent, and their faith is frequently depicted as sanctioning pedophilia,
marital rape and child marriage.
"These
groups also typically hold conspiratorial views regarding the inherent danger
to America posed by its Muslim-American community. Muslims are depicted as a
fifth column intent on undermining and eventually replacing American democracy
and Western civilization with Islamic despotism. Anti-Muslim hate groups allege
that Muslims are trying to subvert the rule of law by imposing on Americans
their own Islamic legal system, Shariah law. Anti-Muslim hate groups also
broadly defame Islam, which they tend to treat as a monolithic and evil
religion. These groups generally hold that Islam has no values in common with
other cultures, is inferior to the West and is a violent political ideology
rather than a religion."
"Americans
need to wake up to attacks on U.S. Muslims," is the title of Peter Benart's
recent article published by the Newsweek in which he argues that in the 1950s,
Joseph McCarthy--believing that it was too difficult to fight communism
abroad--declared that the real threat came from communists at home. In so doing,
he fueled a hysteria that ruined the lives of countless Americans who had
dabbled in leftist politics but never remotely posed a threat to their fellow
citizens, he said adding: Today, with the Bush era's epic "war on terror"
ending with a whimper, a new generation of anti--Muslim -McCarthyites is doing
something similar.
"The more
American politicians insist that Islam is inherently hateful and violent, the
more hate and violence they foment against Muslims in the U.S." Benard argues.
American Muslim community
remained under surveillance
Eleven
years after 9/11, the American Muslim community remained under surveillance.
Since
August 2011, the Associated Press has been reporting how the New York Police
Department's (NYPD) infiltrated mosques, eavesdropped in cafes and monitored
Muslim neighborhoods with plainclothes officers. The NYPD even conducted
surveillance of Muslim businesses, mosques and student groups in New Jersey.
Tellingly in more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques, the New York Police Department's secret Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation. The Demographics Unit is at the heart of a police spying program, built with help from the CIA, which assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed.
But in a
deposition by NYPD Assistant Chief Thomas Galati conceded that in the six years
he has commanded the NYPD Intelligence Division, he never got a single lead
from a demographics unit report and none of the conversations the officers
overheard has ever led to a terrorism investigation. Galati was questioned in a
lawsuit challenging the spying as a violation of a 1985 court-monitored
agreement that set federal guidelines prohibiting the surveillance of political
activity when there is no indication of unlawful activity.
In March
last, a group of 110 advocacy and activist organizations teamed together to
send a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to investigate whether
the NYPD violated the constitutional rights of American Muslims with its
widespread Muslim surveillance program.
However to
their disappointment, John Brennan, President Barack Obama's Homeland Security
adviser, supported the NYPD's surveillance of Muslim American communities.
Brennan said during a law enforcement conference in April: "I have full
confidence that the NYPD is doing things consistent with the law, and it's
something that again has been responsible for keeping this city safe over the
past decade" the Muslim community here is part of the solution to the terrorist
threat, and they need to be part of that effort, and that dialogue needs to
continue."
FBI's friendly visits to
mosques were for spying
American
Muslim community was shocked to know that for several years, the FBI's San
Francisco office conducted a "Mosque Outreach" program through which it
collected and illegally stored intelligence about American Muslims' First
Amendment-protected beliefs and religious practices. This was revealed by the
government documents released on March 27, 2012 by the American Civil Liberties
Union from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the ACLU of Northern
California, Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
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