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AMP Report – November 29, 2007
Senate hearing on:
“The Role of Local Law Enforcement in
Battling Violent Islamic Extremism”
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Radicalization is a buzz word these days.
In August 2007, the New York Police Department, Intelligence Division, issued a report titled: "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat." The Report, which lays ground work for profiling of Muslims, contains language suggesting that a majority of Muslims in the United States present a threat to public order.
The NYPD Report makes an unsupported claim that violent ideologies are “proliferating at a logarithmic rate.” In each of its six case studies, it equates the relevant “environment” as the number of Muslims in a country. And, more worryingly, it baldly asserts that “radicalization permeates New York City, especially its Muslim communities.”
These statements convey a false and dangerous impression that a majority of American Muslims are dangerous radicals. Taken out of context — as they surely will be — these assertions are an invitation to other law enforcement agencies to engage in religious and racial profiling. It is not unlikely they will be picked up by private entities and used as justification for private discrimination, hate attacks, or worse.
The New York Police Department presented this controversial report at the Senate hearing of October 30, 2007, entitled: “The Role of Local Law Enforcement in Battling Violent Islamic Extremism.” Police officers from Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Miami/Dade County also discussed their approaches to counter “the threat of homegrown Islamist radicalization.”
Echoeing the NYDP’s Radicalization report, Major Thomas Dailey from the Missouri Police Department Homeland Security Division told the committee: “An understanding of how terrorists operate through pre-incident indicators and characteristics are key to preventing terrorism. Presenting specific case studies during training are a means to understanding both how terrorism has occurred and could have been prevented.”
Major Thomas Dailey suggested that the tenets of the NYPD report on radicalization should be included in the Counter Terrorism Patrol Strategy training. Tellingly, attachment four of Major Dailey’s testimony reproduces Radicalization definition from the NYPD report.
He pointed out that there is a concentration of Middle Eastern immigrants and some refugees around the Islamic religious centers in the country and “many of them are intensely loyal to their homeland and religious beliefs.”
Major Michael Ronczkowski of the Miami-Dade Police Department’s Homeland Security Bureau told the committee that “Islamist extremists represent a fringe element within the Muslim community inside the United States.”
He was of the view that if law enforcement personnel (federal, state and local) can have a basic understanding of the Islamic culture and the roots of extremist ideology, such as that posed by Wahabism and the Muslim Brotherhood, they will be better equipped mentally to identify behavior patterns of extremists. Just as within Christianity there are different denominations and individually held beliefs within each and the same can be said about Islam, he added.
Major Michael Ronczkowski argued that outreach and partnership with the public is crucial if local law enforcement is going to have any impact on the growth of violent Islamist extremism or the identification of any violent threat that may be developing in the homeland.
Los Angeles Police Department’s “Mapping” (profiling) plan
At the hearing Michael P. Downing, Commanding Officer, Counter-Terrorism/Criminal Intelligence Bureau Los Angeles Police Department, unveiled its "community mapping" plan. The intelligence-guided mapping plan, which was to be carried out in conjunction with the Homeland Security Department’s National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events at the University of Southern California, would collect information about Muslim communities in the Los Angeles area in an effort to identify who the Muslims are and where the Muslims reside.
According to Downing’s written testimony, once the Muslims in the Los Angeles area are identified, the LAPD would then, "take a deeper look at their history, demographics, language, culture, ethnic background, socio-economic status, and social interactions."
It looked a pilot profiling project as 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. According to Downing, if this program is successful it could be implemented in other major US cities.
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.
Not surprisingly, there was an uproar in the American Muslim community and many civil right groups and individuals about the ”Mapping” project that was in fact profiling of the 500,000 Muslims living in the greater Los Angeles.
The “Mapping” program was shelved on November 15 during a meeting between the LAPD Chief William Bratton and Muslim leaders. However, many Muslims doubt that the program has been scrapped but put off for the time being as other factors suggest.
NYPD Radicalization Report casts suspicion on all American Muslims
Reverting to the NYPD report - titled, "Radicalization in the West and the Homegrown Threat" that contains sweeping generalizations which are 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.
Consider the statement from the report that suggests “there is no useful profile to assist law enforcement or intelligence to predict who will follow this trajectory of radicalization.” It is followed by a detailed description of exactly who the NYPD considers suspicious: Muslim men, ages 15 to 35, of middle-class origin often with college degrees. The typical homegrown jihadists, the report continues, may “look, act, talk and walk like everyone around them” and “are often those who are at a crossroad in life.”
In releasing the report, Commissioner Ray Kelly insisted the NYPD was not targeting Muslims for being Muslim — just those who distort the faith. However, in its characterization of such rogues, the report uses a broad brush that threatens to cast a suspicious pall over entire Muslim communities.
Muslims in the U.S. are more resistant, but not immune to the radical message, the report said and added: “Despite the economic opportunities in the United States, the powerful gravitational pull of individuals’ religious roots and identity sometimes supersedes the assimilating nature of American society.”
The report purports to outline a four-step process of radicalization, but in fact describes ordinary activities, associations and behaviors as indicators of a potential terror threat.
The report lists sites that are 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 claims that signs of radicalization include positive changes in personal behavior such as giving up smoking, drinking and gambling. It also makes similar claims about those who wear Islamic attire or a religiously-recommended beard. It raises the question if Islamic attire or giving up bad habits, which is something recommended by leaders of all faiths, now to be regarded as suspicious behavior?
Drawing on five case studies of arrests and prosecutions outside the United States, the Report argues that “there is a remarkable consistency in the behaviors and trajectory of each of the plots across the stages” and that “this consistency provides a tool for predictability.”
Tellingly, the report relied heavily on news reports and not on the research of psychologists and sociologists. Of 133 report sources include more than 70 print and electronic media reports.
The report does not analyze terrorist acts carried out by non-Muslim groups, such as how Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing. How is this 100 percent a Muslim problem?
The report lays the foundation for the blanket surveillance of the entire Muslim population. The foreseeable consequence of the Report’s dissemination and endorsement is that Muslims will be obliged to curtail legitimate and in-fact innocent religious conduct that has no connection to any form of violence.
By promoting stereotypes and unwarranted suspicions, the report's authors encourage marginalization of and hostility toward the American Muslim community. Encouraging a policy that targets Muslims alone, as this report implies, is dangerous because it not only creates a perception of guilt, but risks prompting violence against the community from “outraged” fellow Americans.
Mainstream media coverage of the NYPD report has reinforced the fear of the American Muslim community about the negative fallout. Here are some headlines: Newsday: New York police report spotlights Muslim radicals; New York Times: Study Cites Danger of Homegrown Terrorism; Washington Post: NYPD Report Warns Of Homegrown Terrorists; Newsweek: How Homegrown Terrorists Are Made? Queens Chronicle: Monitoring The Threat Next Door and National Post, Canada: Why they blow up?
Mueller’s Congressional Testimony
Maintaining the theme of radicalization, Robert S. Mueller, FBI Director, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Sept. 10, 2007: “…we also have a problem with homegrown radicalization inside the United States.” However, he added, “the level and intensity of extremism inside the United States does not equal that in the United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe.”
Not surprisingly, the testimonies and studies on the “war on terror” are silent on the critical issue: What causes the so-called radicalization or anti-American sentiments? Surely, these are the US global policies, particularly in the Muslim world (Afghanistan and Iraq wars), which are causing anti-American sentiments.
Los Angeles Times recently published a report card for the so-called Global War on Terror by Law professors David Cole of Georgetown University and Jules Lobel of the University of Pittsburg. The two professors did not issue a grade per-se, but instead laid out the costs of pursuing such a tenuous strategy, while questioning whether the Bush administration can actually be credited with success. According to Cole and Lobel, while it is true the U.S. has not experienced another terrorist attack since September 11, acts of terror worldwide have increased from 1,732 in 2001 to 6,659 in 2006.
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