Manufacturing the Muslim Menace - Political Research Associates

Manufacturing the Muslim Menace
with a broad range of Muslim-American community
leaders and scholars to develop insight into how terminology
could be more strategic, that is, to “avoid
helping the terrorists by inflating the religious bases
and glamorous appeal of their ideology.” 306 Muslim
American leaders stressed three foundational
assumptions: 1) we should not demonize all Muslims
or Islam; 2) because some terrorists themselves use
theology and religious terms to justify both their
means and ends, the terms we
use must be accurate and
descriptive; and 3) our words
should be strategic; we must be
conscious of history, culture, and
context. 307
However, the private training
entities profiled in this report
routinely violate these principles.
Muslim community leaders have
expressed concern about the
information law enforcement
authorities are receiving on the
subject of Islam. On December
20, 2010, CAIR’s executive director
Nihad Awad wrote to U.S.
Attorney General Eric Holder to
urge the Department of Justice to
stop using anti-Muslim private
trainers to teach city and state
law enforcement. CAIR said that
neo-conservative Frank Gaffney’s
think tank, Center for Security
Policy, was hired by the
Department of Justice to educate local, state, and federal
cops about how to deal with the Muslim community.
Awad said that using trainers who suspect
that Muslims are conducting a “stealth jihad” “gives
the government “inaccurate information, biased
information” and “it’s going to impact negatively the
policies, the attitudes, and the practices of the government
law enforcement agencies at all levels.” 308
In August 2010, Reverend Jesse Jackson and the
Islamic Circle of North America joined a letter by a
coalition of Muslim, Sikh, Asian-American, and
other civil liberties groups sent to FBI Director
Mueller asking him to explain why Robert Spencer
was invited to train state and federal law enfocement
officers. Spencer co-founded Stop the Islamization of
America, which the coalition described as a “hate
group.” Spencer claimed in a blog post that he “gave
two two-hour seminars on the belief-system of
50 POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Security Solutions International advertised this
course, which included “The Legal Wing of Jihad
in America.” Massachusetts Bay Transportation
Authority Transit Police canceled the course after
community advocates raised concerns about its
message.
The Counter Terrorist magazine, Vol. 3, no. 1 Feb/March 2010.
Islamic jihadists to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism
Task Force,” including FBI agents. 309
When wholly lawful and nonviolent associational
activity is villified, such as lobbying by civil rights
groups, experts warn we are likely to waste valuable
resources tracking innocent people based on their
religious and political practices. This will, in turn,
make the communities that will inevitably be targeted
by such broad-brush measures far less likely to
cooperate with law enforcement.
Muslims in the United
States have been petitioning government
agencies for the redress
of grievances based on the
implicit bias being tolerated in
training of law enforcement officers
about the nature of Islam
and its alleged inherent tendency
for violence and terrorism. 310
Local police executives, when
alerted to the bias potential
raised by trainings that focus on
religion, have canceled such
courses. 311 When SSI collaborated
with Seattle Port Police to
teach “The Threat of Islamic
Jihadists to the World” at
Washington State Criminal
Justice Training Commission
campus in Burien, WA in 2008,
the Washington state chapter of
CAIR argued that SSI’s training
promoted stereotypes that could
lead to prejudicial profiling of Muslims. Arsalan
Bukhari, president of the Washington state chapter of
CAIR told the Seattle Times,
“Most police officers don’t have a basic
grounding in Islam, so before you teach
them about Islam, how can you teach them
about radical Islam? It just makes you nervous
because when a law-enforcement person
pulls someone over, when they see a
Muslim person or someone who appears
Muslim to them—all this information they
just learned kicks in.” 312
CAIR urged the Port of Seattle Police to ensure
that the course offered accurate and balanced information
on Islam and Muslims. 313 Bukhari says that
law-enforcement agencies need to learn about Islam,
but not just in the context of terrorism. “Linking any