The leftist/Islamic alliance takes on and takes out law enforcement on its tireless efforts to keep America safe, in a new report issued by New York University School of Law. Who is more dangerous? The jihadis or their leftist enablers? I think law enforcement has done a damn fine job of keeping this country safe since 911. The paper contends:
The U.S. government’s focus on Muslims in counterterrorism operations appears to stem from a series of assumptions about Muslims and terrorism, including the following: that Muslims are more likely to become terrorists; that American Muslims are increasingly being “radicalized” and compelled into committing violence in the name of Islam; and that counterterrorism policies should focus on identifying individuals who hold certain ideologies and exhibit certain behaviors as indicative of “radicalization” in order to stop them before they can act.These assumptions, however, find no support in empirical research.
[...] this Report examines, the government’s informants held themselves out as Muslims and looked in particular to incite other Muslims to commit acts of violence. The government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and, moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe it was their duty to take action against the United States. In two of the three cases, the government relied on the defendants’ vulnerabilities—poverty and youth, for example—in its inducement methods.
Relied on poverty and youth? Not their religious beliefs?
So here is the next wave of stealth jihad designed to disarm us of our capabilities to thwart Islamic attacks in America. The Muslim Brotherhood-tied groups in America, i.e. CAIR, have been going to extraordinary lengths to demonize law enforcement officers who infiltrate jihad cells in mosques and expose plots before they blow. They have been challenging arrests of jihadists for years, while holding conferences and seminars urging Muslims in America not to talk to the FBI. And let us not forget the requisite litigation jihad -- CAIR lawsuits against the FBI.
Now we see the enemy within move to the next stage in the war to destroy America.
An L.A. Times article this morning claimed that Muslims were persuaded to commit terrorism-related crimes by undercover informants. The story was drawn by a new report by NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, which is here. Download Targetedandentrapped (hat tip Chris Chapman)
The report is pure Islamic propaganda, cheap and exploitative. Check out the numerous photos of grieving loved ones whose parents/spouses have been imprisoned.
As if these jihadists would be kind and loving and good, but the FBI turned them into bloodthirsty slaughterers. This is how played academia and the left are by Muslim Brotherhood. They are not ashamed to be unabashedly stupid.
"Mosques are our barracks, minarets our bayonets, domes our helmets, the believers our soldiers." by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
Every one of the close to 20,000 Islamic attacks since 911 has had the imprimatuer of a Muslim cleric. Behind every attack there is a mosque. Of course the enemy within must protect the base (al qaeda in Arabic means "the base").
Right: CAIR poster on their website.
The message is clear -- America is the enemy. Any action taken to defend her citizens is not in the interest of Muslims. So the message has gone out urging Muslims NOT to cooperate with law enforcement.
The authors of this fictional report blame the FBI for jihad:
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law was established in 2002 to bring together the law school’s teaching, research, clinical, internship, and publishing activities around issues of international human rights law. Through its litigation, advocacy, and research work, CHRGJ plays a critical role in identifying, denouncing, and fighting human rights abuses in several key areas of focus, including: Business and Human Rights; Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Caste Discrimination; Human Rights and Counter- Terrorism; Extrajudicial Executions; and Transitional Justice. Philip Alston and Ryan Goodman are the Center’s Faculty Chairs; Smita Narula and Margaret Satterthwaite are Faculty Directors; Jayne Huckerby is Research Director; and Veerle Opgenhaffen is Senior Program Director.
The International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) at New York University School of Law provides high quality, professional human rights lawyering services to community-based organizations, nongovernmental human rights organizations, and intergovernmental human rights experts and bodies. The Clinic partners with groups based in the United States and abroad. Working as researchers, legal advisers, and advocacy partners, Clinic students work side-by-side with human rights advocates from around the world. The Clinic is directed by Professor Smita Narula of the NYU faculty; Amna Akbar is Senior Research Scholar and Advocacy Fellow; and Susan Hodges is Clinic Administrator.
All publications and statements of the CHRGJ can be found at its website: www.chrgj.org.
This Report should be cited as: Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the “Homegrown Threat” in the United States (New York: NYU School of Law, 2011).EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has targeted Muslims in the United States by sending paid, untrained informants into mosques and Muslim communities. This practice has led to the prosecution of more than 200 individuals in terrorism-related cases. The government has touted these cases as successes in the so-called war against terrorism. However, in recent years, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents,5 local lawmakers, the media, the public, and community-based groups have begun questioning the legitimacy and efficacy of this practice, alleging that—in many instances—this type of policing, and the resulting prosecutions, constitute entrapment.
TARGETED AND ENTRAPPED
[...]
Part I.A. of this Report considers four trends that have enabled the aggressive and widespread use of informants in Muslim communities: (1) the conflation of Muslims with terrorism and terrorists; (2) the U.S. government’s adoption of unsupported theories about “radicalization” and “homegrown terrorism” in American Muslim11 communities; (3) a shift toward a preventative model of policing and prosecuting terrorism, which seeks to intervene prior to any plan to commit a particular crime; and (4) the lack of accountability and transparency of law enforcement activities.[....]
CHRGJ urges the U.S. government to act immediately to implement the following recommendations with respect to law enforcement and counterterrorism investigations, particularly those that involve the use of extensive surveillance and paid informants without particularized suspicion of criminal activity:
■ The U.S. government should reject “radicalization” theories that threaten the rights to freedom of religion, opinion, and expression, and should put an end to the preventative policing and prosecution methods that rely on such theories.18
■ Congress should hold hearings on the impact of counterterrorism policies on Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Middle Eastern communities in the United States. These hearings should include consideration of current in- telligence-gathering tactics and the use of informants in counterterrorism investigations.
■ Congress should pass the End Racial Profiling Act, proposed federal legislation to ban racial profiling by law enforcement.
I. The Context
The practices and policies that are the focus of this Report are, at their core, about the targeting of Muslims as “potential threats” to the United States. This section talks first about law enforcement and cultural trends facilitating the prosecutions featured in this Report; and secondly about the legal frameworks governing the FBI and NYPD in their law enforcement practices, including the use of informants and the low thresholds required to commence investigations.
A. law enforcement Trends
The U.S. government’s focus on Muslims in counterterrorism operations appears to stem from a series of assumptions about Muslims and terrorism, including the following: that Muslims are more likely to become terrorists; that American Muslims are increasingly being “radicalized” and compelled into committing violence in the name of Islam; and that counterterrorism policies should focus on identifying individuals who hold certain ideologies and exhibit certain behaviors as indicative of “radicalization” in order to stop them before they can act.19 These assumptions, however, find no support in empirical research.
Dead bodies, hundreds of jihad plots and thousands of acts of jihad don't count as empirical evidence?
1. Conflating Muslims with Terrorists and Terrorism
The first problematic contributing factor to the current situation is the conflation of Muslims with terrorists and terrorism. The popular notion of terrorism has become inextricably linked to Muslims and Islam, due in no small part to a host of government policies targeting Muslims as potential terrorists. There is also evidence to suggest that many law enforcement agencies are trained with materials that construct Muslims as potential terrorists.
Moreover, commentators have noted that the government tends to use criminal terrorism charges in cases involving Muslim defendants charged with violent crimes, but not against non-Muslims charged with similar conduct. Yet, since September 11, 2001, there have been more instances of politically-motivated violence in the U.S. committed by non-Muslims than there have been by individuals claiming to be motivated by Islam.
In addition, the construction of a terrorist “Other” has conflated notions of race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, gender, and political views, effectively racializing Islam, Muslims, and Muslim religious practice as radically threatening to U.S. national security interests.26 Muslim men have been constructed as particularly
[...]
A second explanatory factor is the view that American Muslims are increasingly being “radicalized” into committing violence in the name of Islam. The 2007 NYPD report entitled “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat” has been pivotal in popularizing radicalization theories.31 Though the theories underlying the report have been criticized as “thinly sourced” and “reductionist,” they continue to enjoy support at the highest levels of government. These theories are premised roughly on the notion that “the path to terrorism has a fixed trajectory and that each step of the process has specific, identifiable markers.”Yet no empirical, social scientific research supports the notion of a “religious conveyer belt” that predictably leads to terrorism. In fact, research suggests that there is no such process that can be identified with any confidence. Equally troubling, the so-called markers of radicalization are over-determinate and focused on Muslim religious practice in fundamentally discriminatory ways.Nonetheless, the U.S. government has played a role in nurturing the idea that “radicalization” is an identifiable process. In February 2011, under the leadership of Senator Joe Lieberman, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a report on the Fort Hood shooting, calling on the National Security Council and Homeland Security Council to develop “a comprehensive national approach to countering homegrown radicalization to violent Islamist extremism.” In March 2011, Representative Peter King held a widely criticized Congressional hearing, premised on the assertions that American Muslims are “radicalizing” at an increasing rate; that American Muslims are not doing enough to counter this trend; and that American Muslim communities are not cooperating with law enforcement. The only law enforcement witness called by Representative King rejected the premise of the hearing.40
The King hearing is only the most recent manifestation of the government’s adoption of the radicalization theory.
“Preventative” Policing
A third interrelated factor is law enforcement’s shift to a preventative approach to counterterrorism, whereby the government investigates individuals without any evidence of individual wrongdoing. The preventative model assumes that radicalization is as an identifiable process, and suggests that it is desirable to investigate and prosecute individuals while they are still in the early stages of “radicalizing” so that they will not develop into full-fledged terrorists. Rather than focusing on the policing of criminal activity, this approach facilitates the criminalization of those who “act Muslim,” either through their religious practice, attendance at a mosque, or their expression of political opinions critical of U.S. foreign policy. The use of informants appears to be a core feature of this model of policing terrorism.
Yeah, don't prevent -- it might offend our Islamic overlords. Let 'er rip.
