Reyhana Patel examines the case of Talha Ahsan.
Category Archives: State Oppression
NYPD: Muslims’ conversations about anti-Muslim bias justify spying on Muslims
Adam Serwer has the details.
NYPD surveillance will only hurt anti-terrorism efforts, say Muslims
Controversial program risks alienating Muslims and hasn’t generated a single lead, but NYPD steadfastly defends it. Chitrangada Choudhury reports.
NYPD secret police spying on Muslims led to no terrorism leads or cases
In more than six years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloging mosques, the New York police department’s secret demographics unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation, the department acknowledged in court testimony unsealed late Monday.
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. Police infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and cataloged every Muslim in New York who adopted new, Americanized surnames.
Muslim trade unionist calls on Houston police to revise frisking rules on headscarfs
A Muslim protester is calling for revision of the frisking process at the Houston Police Department after she said she was stripped of her religious headscarf during a recent arrest this month while rallying for janitor wages.
The incident highlights the varying policies local police agencies have regulating when religious head coverings are allowed during the arresting and booking process. It also shows the fine line law enforcement must straddle when trying to respect one’s faith while ensuring that people who are arrested do no harm to themselves or others.
CAIR denounces PQ proposal to ban hijab
A national Muslim civil rights advocacy organization today condemned a proposal by Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Pauline Marois to ban the Muslim headscarf and other religious-based attire in provincial government offices if the PQ forms government after upcoming September elections.
The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) decried the remarks made Tuesday by Madame Marois at a campaign stop in Trois Riviere that, under a PQ government, Muslim women who wear the hijab would be barred from participating in the Quebec civil service. The PQ says other “overt religious symbols” would likewise be banned, while the Catholic crucifix would remain in Quebec’s National Assembly.
“Many Muslim women regard the hijab as an important and mandatory practice in their faith. The proposed exclusion of a targeted minority of women from the Quebec civil service under a PQ government undermines religious freedom and the democratic values of both Quebec and Canada. The PQ is once again using populist rhetoric and parochial ideas to advance their electoral strategy,” said CAIR-CAN Human Rights Officer Julia Williams.
Parti Quebecois would bar hijab from civil service with secularism charter
Pauline Marois is promising to end Quebec’s reasonable accommodation debate if she is elected premier on Sept. 4.
With a new Quebec Charter of Secularism, a Parti Quebecois government would seek to strike a balance between protecting the province’s values and allowing for different cultures to interact.
Under the proposed charter, civil servants would be barred from wearing any religious symbols, including the controversial wear of the hijab. The law would also prohibit citizens from refusing to be served by a member of the opposite sex.
“In Quebec, the state will be neutral. That is absolutely important. Next, the equality between men and women is a value that is not negotiable,” said Marois, at a campaign stop in Trois-Riveries.
Despite the rhetoric, the party leader said that Quebec’s cultural symbols would not be impacted, including Christmas trees and the crucifix that has hung in the National Assembly since 1936. “We’re not denying our past,” said Marois.
FBI Muslim spying lawsuit against U.S. is tossed by judge
A federal judge Tuesday threw out a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government and the FBI over the agency’s spying on Orange County Muslims, ruling that allowing the suit to go forward would risk divulging sensitive state secrets.
Comparing himself to Odysseus navigating the waters between a six-headed monster and a deadly whirlpool, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac Carney wrote that “the state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security.”
The judge said that he reached the decision reluctantly after reviewing confidential declarations filed by top FBI officials, and that he was convinced the operation in question involved “intelligence that, if disclosed, would significantly compromise national security.”
Carney allowed the suit to stand against individual FBI agents and supervisors on Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act-related claims.
Tensions flare in France over veil ban
MARSEILLE, France — Though it was almost midnight, streets were full of Muslim families taking a stroll after breaking the Ramadan fast with a late dinner. As two police officers drove by a storefront recycled as the Grand Sunna Mosque, they noticed a woman wearing flowing black robes and a full-face veil.
The police officers alighted from their patrol car and challenged the woman about her veil, which has been illegal in France since April 2011. After an angry exchange, police said later, the woman shouted that she would not abide by the anti-veil law, and a youth told police that they had no business patrolling the neighborhood and accosting its predominantly Muslim residents.
The confrontation quickly escalated into a shoving match, with several dozen young bystanders joining in and carloads of police reinforcements speeding up to lend a hand. Before long, it erupted into what was described in the National Assembly in Paris as a riot, during which a female police officer was bitten on the arm and two of her male colleagues were bashed and bruised.
The sudden clash, which took place July 24 in Marseille, was the most serious instance of resistance to the veil ban during its 16 months of enforcement, according to police. Although it subsided almost as quickly as it flared, the outburst focused national attention on simmering resentment over the ban among France’s most militant and tradition-minded Muslims.
FBI: New York police violate Muslims’ rights
The New York City Police Department’s surveillance of Muslims violates their rights and produces no intelligence of any value, the FBI has found.
Under Director J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI not only trampled on Americans’ rights but often failed to focus effectively on real threats such as spies and terrorists. That was because Hoover did not distinguish between criminal conduct and constitutionally guaranteed expression of free speech.
New laws and rigid oversight and guidelines put an end to these practices. But FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and other top FBI officials have been shocked to find that since 9/11, the New York City Police Department has been engaging in practices reminiscent of FBI abuses under Hoover.