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AMP Report – November 11, 2007
LA Police program to profile Muslims
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
In the latest government move to intidimate and marginalize the American Muslims, the Los Angeles Police Department has announced a program to “Map” (read profile) Muslim communities in southern California.
There are estimated 500,000 Muslims living in the greater Los Angeles area, including Orange and Riverside Counties, which make its concentration of Muslims the second largest in the United States, after New York City.
The LAPD ‘Mapping’ program appears a prelude to similar Mappings in other cities with concentration of Muslim population. The LAPD program is backed by the Homeland Department’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE) at the University of Southern California. The center, nation’s first university center for the combat of terrorism, was established in 2003 with a grant of 15 million dollars. Last May the center was given another 11 million dollars for such programs. Interestingly, the University of Southern California’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events is partnering with the University of Wisconsin at Madison, New York University, North Carolina State University, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, and others.
According to the Commanding Officer of Los Angeles Police Department’s Counter-Terrorism/Criminal Intelligence Bureau, Michael P. Downing, if this program is successful it could be implemented in other major US cities.
In his testimony to Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Michael P. Downing, pointed out that the project would determine the geographic distribution of Muslims in the sprawling Los Angeles area and take “a look at their history, demographics, language, culture, ethnic breakdown, socioeconomic status and social interactions.”
Michael Downing also suggested that the study would result in helping amplify the voice of Muslim moderates who could counter fanatics.
His suggestion raises two basic questions: The first question is who is a moderate Muslim? In other words who is going to decide, who is a moderate? If the police are entrusted with the task of ‘mapping’ Muslims, it means, it is going to decide who and where are the moderate Muslims in their jurisdiction. What criteria will be used? Will it be based on one’s religious beliefs or sect or his/her political views? Will the Muslims who criticize US foreign policy and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq be considered as moderates? Will the police seek guidance from the think tanks like the semi-official Rand Corporation which has tried to give a definition of a moderate Muslim?
And the second question is how to identify a moderate Muslim? Will there be inquisition of Muslims for their religious beliefs? Already there are many reports that Muslims are asked by the FBI about their religious beliefs and if they are practicing Muslims or not. Will police plant agents to gather such information about the Muslims? In other words, the ‘mapping operation’ will be a mask for intelligence gathering.
Michael Downing, has further explained that the ‘mapping’ idea would be to determine which communities might be having problems integrating into the larger society and thus might have members susceptible to carrying out attacks, much like domestic cells in England and elsewhere in Europe.
However, contrary to what has been found in Europe, the scattered cases exposed in the United States have involved individuals with no clear ties to international extremist groups. In this respect the PEW survey of last May is illuminating. The survey found that Muslim Americans reject extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in western European countries. The Muslims are overwhelmingly satisfied with their lives in the United States, and most say their communities are excellent or good places to live.
Hence any profiling on the religious basis would only alienate the community and create an ill will towards the law enforcement authorities. Many Muslim organizations have been building bridges with the authorities and such projects would only wash away these efforts.
The LAPD Mapping program follows the last August report of the New York Police Department (NYPD) titled "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat." The report warned of "radicalization" among otherwise unremarkable young Muslim men in the United States who grow disillusioned with life and sign on with jihadis.
The NYPD report also listed sites that were likely to be visited by any American Muslim as radicalization 'incubators.' The sites listed include mosques, cafes, cab driver hangouts, student associations, nongovernmental organizations, butcher shops, and book stores. The report also claimed that signs of radicalization include positive changes in personal behavior such as giving up smoking, drinking and gambling. It also made similar claims about those who wear Islamic attire or a religiously-recommended beard.
Muslim civil right groups were obviously concerned that the NYPD study contained sweeping generalizations which were likely to reinforce negative stereotypes and unwarranted suspicions about the seven-million strong American Muslim community. The report may also serve to further marginalize the community by labeling almost every American Muslim as a potential threat.
Not surprisingly, Muslim and civil rights organizations were alarmed by the LADP program. Three Muslim organizations - the Council on American-Islamic Affairs, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, Muslim Advocates - and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, have sent a letter to the LAPD expressing apprehensions over the “mapping” program.
“The mapping of Muslim communities as part of counter-terrorism efforts seems premised on the faulty notion that Muslims are more likely to commit violent acts than people of other faiths. Singling out individuals for investigation, surveillance, and data-gathering based on their religion constitutes religious profiling that is just as unlawful, ill-advised, and deeply offensive as racial profiling,” the letter stated.
The Muslim and civil rights leaders also requested a meeting with Michael Downing, scheduled for November 15, to discuss concerns about the “mapping” project.
“Based on statements of those involved, it is clear that the ‘mapping’ project would target the Muslim community based not on any suspicious criminal activities, but rather on the basis of legitimate religious and political views protected by the First Amendment,” said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR-LA. “This project would undermine many years spent building trust and partnership between the Muslim community and law enforcement agencies.”
“When the starting point for a police investigation is ‘let’s look at all Muslims,’ we are going down a dangerous road,” said Peter Bibring, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U. of Southern California . “Police can and should be engaged with the communities they are policing, but that engagement can’t be a mask for intelligence gathering.”
The LAPD Mapping program smacks “Mapping the Sharia” project of an anti-Islam group known with the acronym SANE: the Society of Americans for National Existence. The project is devoted to spying on 2,300 Islamic institutions in the United States.
There cannot be two opinions about the security of our nation and to prevent violence, extremism, and terrorism, but such programs as ‘mapping’ will only alienate and intimidate the Muslim community which remains under siege in the post-9/11 America.
Los Angeles Times - November 10, 2007
LAPD defends Muslim mapping effort
By Richard Winton, Teresa Watanabe and Greg Krikorian
The LAPD's plan to map Muslim communities in an effort to identify potential hotbeds of extremism departs from the way law enforcement has dealt with local anti-terrorism since 9/11 and prompted widespread skepticism Friday.
In a document reviewed Friday by The Times, the LAPD's Los Angeles Police Department's counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies.
LAPD officials said that it is crucial for them to gain a better understanding of isolated parts of the Muslim community. Those groups can potentially breed violent extremism, the LAPD said in its plan.
"This is not . . . targeting or profiling," Police Chief William J. Bratton said Friday in defending the program. "It is an effort to understand communities," he said.
But the effort sparked an outcry from civil libertarians and some Muslim activists, who compared the program to religious profiling.
Others noted that the effort faces enormous practical difficulties. The U.S. Census Bureau is barred by law from asking people for their religious affiliation. As a result, there is no scientific data on the size of the nation's Muslim population, let alone its location, with estimates of the population nationwide ranging from about 1.4 million adults in a Pew Research Center study this year to the 7 million or more claimed by some community organizations.
Census data on ancestry also would not yield accurate Muslim estimates, because significant numbers of ethnic Iranians are Jewish and many ethnic Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians are Christians.
"It's not realistic to think you are going to be able to find out where all the Muslims are," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.
Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim said the LAPD project seemed based on the European experience of isolated and often-distressed Muslim enclaves -- a model that doesn't apply to the United States, where the Muslim population is far more dispersed.
American Muslims differ from their European co-religionists in several other respects. A Pew survey of 1,050 adult American Muslims nationwide found them to be "largely assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate." Although two-thirds are immigrants, most respondents said Muslims should integrate into U.S. society rather than isolate themselves.
The survey found striking differences between American Muslims and their European counterparts, with more in the U.S. rejecting extremism and supporting coexistence with Israel. Only 2% of American Muslims were low-income, compared with rates of 18% and higher in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain.
Stung by decades of controversy over its monitoring of antiwar and civil rights groups, the FBI has been wary of post-9/11 initiatives that would draw criticism that its anti-terrorism efforts are based on racial profiling of Muslims.
As a result, its counter-terrorism efforts have been largely driven by informants, intelligence reports or specific incidents that direct attention to a particular group or community.
"We learned our lesson early on," one retired FBI counter-terrorism official said Friday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, questioned the logic of the mapping program, reasoning that the wholesale plotting of Muslim communities -- rather than zeroing in on suspected extremists -- could drain counter-terrorism resources and alienate Muslim residents at a time when they are crucial to law enforcement efforts.
Al-Marayati and others who gathered for Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Southern California questioned the premise of the mapping project. There were no clearly defined Muslim neighborhoods in Southern California, he said.
Some neighborhoods are known for large Middle Eastern populations, but often their residents are not Muslim. Beverly Hills, for example, has a sizable and well-known Iranian population, but many of them are Persian Jews.
Mosque member Omar Ricci, offspring of a Pakistani Muslim mother and Italian American Catholic father, said he has more Armenian Christian neighbors than Muslims on his street in Glendale.
Maher Hathout, an Egyptian native and retired physician, who is a spokesman for the Islamic Center, said his neighborhood in Arcadia is an ethnic and religious polyglot; he said he was more familiar with his Christian next-door neighbor than the Muslims who live a few doors away. The mosque is on Vermont Avenue in Koreatown.
The backlash against the program was intense enough Friday that LAPD's planned partner in the project, USC's National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, said it was carefully studying whether to join the endeavor.
"I realize that there are many concerns with a potential mapping project related to profiling, privacy and civil liberties," center Director Detlof von Winterfeldt said in a statement.
But LAPD leaders stood behind the proposal.
Hoping to defuse the controversy, Bratton said Friday that the LAPD's plan is in its early stages and extended an invitation to meet with critics to hear their suggestions on how to advance what he described as a "community engagement effort."
In outlining the program last week before a congressional committee, Deputy Police Chief Michael P. Downing, who heads the counter-terrorism operation, said the department's plan was designed to minimize the radicalization of Muslims in Los Angeles. Instead of relying on experts, he said, the mapping would produce a "richer picture" of the community and guide future strategies.
"While this project will lay out geographic locations of many different Muslim populations around Los Angeles, we also intend to take a deeper look at their history, demographics, language, culture, ethnic breakdown, socioeconomic status and social interactions," he said. "It is also our hope to identify communities, within the larger Muslim community which may be susceptible to violent ideologically based extremism and then use a full spectrum approach guided by intelligence-led strategy."
On Friday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa defended the LAPD's efforts. "Chief Downing has good intentions here," said Villaraigosa, who added that he had only learned of the new program through newspaper articles and at a short briefing…..
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lapd10nov10,1,2735182.story?ctrack=2&cset=true
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