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Protest over FBI plan to count US
mosques
By Yemisrach Benalfew
NEW YORK - Opposition is growing to plans by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to collect
information about Arabs and Muslim-Americans in the
United States. "It is absolutely religious
profiling,"said Monica Taragi, director of the New York
office of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination
Committee, in an interview.
Heads of the FBI's
56 regional offices received a six-page questionnaire
earlier this month asking them to compile data about
their regions, including the number of mosques, flight
schools, charity groups and "vulnerable assets" (dams,
bridges and nuclear plants) in order to establish a
better picture of the populations and possible terrorism
targets in each region.
The information will be
used to establish where to direct counter-terrorism
resources and set goals for each office as part of a
larger overhaul of the FBI, reports said. Describing the
FBI directive as "very flawed and extremely
problematic", Taragi said that "it is creating the
atmosphere in the American public of making a
distinction between Arab and Muslim Americans and other
Americans, and sending the message that Arab and Muslim
Americans are to be feared and questioned on religious
grounds, which will lead to the policy of internment".
Human Rights Watch (HRW) director Jamie Fellner
condemned the FBI policy, saying that "the entire Muslim
community in the United States should not be presumed
guilty of links to terrorism simply because of the
religious beliefs of some terrorists", according to a
press release. "This is as offensive as counting
Christian churches on the assumption they may harbor
abortion clinic bombers," Fellner added.
According to HRW, an FBI spokesperson told the
US-based group that the bureau wanted to count mosques
to help prevent hate crimes. The bureau argued that the
knowledge would help it decide how to apply scarce
anti-terrorism resources and identify vulnerable sites.
"This is not politically correct, no question about it,"
said an FBI official. "But it would be stupid not to
look at this, given the number of criminal mosques that
may be out there."
But the policy will
"encourage [FBI] agents to infiltrate mosques and other
houses of worship", said the American Civil Liberties
Union in a statement. "The mosque-counting scheme
virtually guarantees this invasion," added civil
liberties lawyer Dalia Hashad.
Last week, FBI
director Robert Mueller told the Senate intelligence
committee, "FBI investigations have revealed Islamic
militants in the United States, and we strongly suspect
that several hundred of these extremists are linked to
al-Qaeda."
A 2001 survey counted 1,209 mosques
in the United States, more than 60 percent of them
founded in the past 20 years. There are an estimated 6.7
million Muslim Americans. Some 40 percent are African
Americans, 30 percent are of Arab origin and 30 percent
are from South Asia, including Iran. Three million Arab
Americans live in the country.
Other security
measures that have targeted Muslims and Arabs since the
terrorist attacks of September 11 include "voluntary"
questioning of thousands of Muslim non-citizens by the
FBI and the re-registration of men from certain Middle
East and Asian countries by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service.
Hundreds of Muslim
non-citizens were detained without charges after
September 11 while the FBI investigated them for
possible links to or knowledge about terrorism. Some
recent activities against these groups by the Justice
Department - indefinite detention, round-ups, and the
use of secret evidence to build court cases - are
comparable to the internment of Japanese Americans
during World War II, Taragi said.
(Inter Press
Service)
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