CAIR, ACLU Sue FBI Over Mosque Surveillance

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Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 23
In a case that could test law enforcement's ability to identify and monitor potential terrorists inside the United States, an Islamic organization has sued the FBI for the actions of a paid spy who infiltrated several Orange County mosques in California in the mid-2000s. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations allege in the lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles, that a paid informant named Keith Monteilh violated the First Amendment rights of hundreds of Muslim worshipers when he performed "indiscriminate surveillance" on "people who were more devout in their religious practice, irrespective of whether any particular individual was believed to be involved in criminal activity."

The FBI responded that it doesn't ask its informants or agents to target people for their religious affiliations, and maintains it has done a good job of balancing civil liberties with its ongoing antiterrorism work. Nevertheless, the case threatens to erode already-tenuous relationships between law enforcement and the broader American Muslim community, which has the best potential to spot suspicious behavior in its midst. That ability--and willingness --was illustrated in this case. Mr. Monteilh "became an agent provocateur," says Ibrahim Hooper, national CAIR spokesman. "He was the one suggesting all these kinds of bizarre activities to the extent that community itself turned him in."

The Monteilh affair was particularly galling to Los Angeles-area Muslims, since he was working in a mosque where an FBI official had promised no such surveillance would take place under his watch.
More broadly, targeting mosques and even fervent believers is a sure way for the FBI to alienate moderate, law-abiding Muslims, says Ameena Mirza Qazi, staff attorney of CAIR-Los Angeles. "When Muslims perceive that they are viewed as a suspect community by law enforcement or the FBI, it really has a devastating effect on relations between law enforcement authorities and American Muslims," says CAIR's Mr. Hooper.

But the FBI can't ignore the role of mosques as potential hubs of terror activity, says Gabriel Schoenfeld, a national security expert at the Hudson Institute. Some of the organizers of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, for example, met at a mosque in New Jersey. "Mosques can't be sanctuaries for criminals," says Dr. Schoenfeld, author of "Necessary Secrets: National Security, Media, and the Rule of Law." "Even if the FBI did something wrong in this case, that would not eliminate the need for the agency to investigate places like mosques, where terror activities have been cooked up in the past. Does that cut against the First Amendment? Undoubtedly. But the First Amendment isn't a suicide pact. It has to be balanced against other provisions of the Constitution, like providing for the common defense," argues Schoenfeld.

The lawsuit contends that Monteilh's FBI handlers told him to collect e-mail address, phone numbers, and other pertinent information about Muslims, and "explicitly told Monteilh that Islam was a threat to America's national security." Legal experts say the lawsuit could succeed if the ACLU proves that the FBI targeted Muslims for their religious beliefs. But resting an entire case on a paid informant--with a criminal record, in Monteilh's case--can be tricky. "Using informants is an unsavory business, and informants often lie,'' John Baker, a Louisiana State University law professor, tells the Washington Post. "How trustworthy is his information? No one knows.'' Schoenfeld adds that lawyers could also parse the allegation that the FBI asked Monteilh to look for worshippers who were particularly devout. "What does that mean?" he says. "Are they devout in trying to memorize the Koran, or are they devout in preaching a political brand of Islam? That could be legitimate for the the FBI to investigate."

"Nobody objects" to the FBI investigating "when there's actual probable cause," says Hooper, "but to just say, 'go into these various mosques and see what you can dig up'--and even suggest to people that they should engage in criminal activity--that is something that is way beyond the pale."
San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 23
Monteilh's use as an informant has caused little but headaches for the FBI. The one-time machine operator has a lengthy rap sheet dating to the 1980s and a history of evictions and bad debts for everything from car payments to rent to credit cards.

After several months of gathering cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses for his handlers, agents asked Monteilh to talk more openly about jihad and his willingness to engage in violence, according to the lawsuit. Instead of responding approvingly to Monteilh's violent rhetoric, several mosque-goers called the FBI to say they were worried about his statements.

Monteilh himself is suing the FBI over his treatment by the handlers. He says the FBI failed to protect him from grand theft charges he claims were related to his work for the agency on a drug ring investigation. He eventually served eight months in prison on the felony counts.
 
"Using informants is an unsavory business, and informants often lie,'' John Baker, a Louisiana State University law professor, tells the Washington Post.

I really don't know how many more times this has to be repeated before people realize this. Sometimes informants can be very valuable, yes. But not always. You can't go on those alone.

I think it's hilarious this backfired on the guy. I mean, really...

After several months of gathering cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses for his handlers, agents asked Monteilh to talk more openly about jihad and his willingness to engage in violence, according to the lawsuit. Instead of responding approvingly to Monteilh's violent rhetoric, several mosque-goers called the FBI to say they were worried about his statements.

Because naturally, people who are planning such things just talk about it openly and freely. It's not like they don't want to, you know, get CAUGHT or anything. To say nothing of the assumption that Muslims would just automatically as a whole perk up at the mere mention of the word.

Also, I can think of certain aspects of Christianity that would fit the "criteria" suggesting worthy concern listed here.

Angela
 
I have no problem whatsoever with this.....and I would STILL have no problem if the same was being done in synagogues and churches or any other place of worship.

Why should they mind being watched if they have nothing to hide?

I think this says it all:
Even if the FBI did something wrong in this case, that would not eliminate the need for the agency to investigate places like mosques, where terror activities have been cooked up in the past. Does that cut against the First Amendment? Undoubtedly. But the First Amendment isn't a suicide pact. It has to be balanced against other provisions of the Constitution, like providing for the common defense," argues Schoenfeld.
 
I really don't know how many more times this has to be repeated before people realize this. Sometimes informants can be very valuable, yes. But not always. You can't go on those alone.

I think it's hilarious this backfired on the guy. I mean, really...



Because naturally, people who are planning such things just talk about it openly and freely. It's not like they don't want to, you know, get CAUGHT or anything. To say nothing of the assumption that Muslims would just automatically as a whole perk up at the mere mention of the word.

Also, I can think of certain aspects of Christianity that would fit the "criteria" suggesting worthy concern listed here.

Angela


Good point!


I thought the word jihad ment a personal struggle in order to become closer with Allah. To rid one's self of sinful behavior and to live according to their teachings.

I attend a local Catholic parish. The FBI would be bored since mass is a celebration of the Last Supper. No political rallies there.
 
I have no problem whatsoever with this.....and I would STILL have no problem if the same was being done in synagogues and churches or any other place of worship.

Why should they mind being watched if they have nothing to hide?

I think this says it all:
Even if the FBI did something wrong in this case, that would not eliminate the need for the agency to investigate places like mosques, where terror activities have been cooked up in the past. Does that cut against the First Amendment? Undoubtedly. But the First Amendment isn't a suicide pact. It has to be balanced against other provisions of the Constitution, like providing for the common defense," argues Schoenfeld.

I'm curious what you think about this:

FBI handlers told him to collect e-mail address, phone numbers, and other pertinent information about Muslims, and "explicitly told Monteilh that Islam was a threat to America's national security."

Something tells me you wouldn't be as ok with the FBI telling informers that your religion is a threat to America.
 
I have no problem whatsoever with this.....and I would STILL have no problem if the same was being done in synagogues and churches or any other place of worship.

Why should they mind being watched if they have nothing to hide?[/b]
That's very scary, to be honest. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of someone living in a country that has been under constant threat from neighbours for X years, and told it shouldn't exist, etc, and I still find it hard to use that as a reason to threaten civil liberties.

The main thing with this case is that the informant the FBI sent in was actively trying to garner support for organizing anti-US activity, so much so that the members of the mosque reported him to.....law enforcement.

Then again, this is the same FBI that threatened to expose Martin Luther King Jr. as an interracial sex freak to the country if he didn't back off the civil rights cause, so, meh, par for the course for the home of the brave.
 
^ It's not really Monteilh's 'jihadi' exhortations to mosque members that's the issue here, since the FBI never found cause to charge any of them for such activities (though that is an issue in the ongoing case of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Portland 'Christmas bomber'--i.e., whether or not the FBI's extensive undercover involvement in that bogus 'plot' constituted entrapment). Instead, this lawsuit is essentially challenging the sweeping revisions of FBI surveillance policies under John Ashcroft, which dramatically loosened requirements on reasonable grounds for suspicion and restrictions on surveillance methods that had been in place since Watergate. Those revisions disproportionately affect American Muslims in practice, and the alleged facts of this case may offer an opportunity to challenge them, primarily along First Amendment lines (failure to maintain religious neutrality), and secondarily along Fourth (unreasonable search) and Fifth (equal protection) Amendment lines.
...Schoenfeld adds that lawyers could also parse the allegation that the FBI asked Monteilh to look for worshippers who were particularly devout. "What does that mean?" he says. "Are they devout in trying to memorize the Koran, or are they devout in preaching a political brand of Islam?..."
Some elaborations on that allegation from the lawsuit (available here), according to Monteilh: He was told to focus especially on very religious people such as imams, anyone who'd gone to Mecca, anyone who led prayers, anyone who led youth groups, and anyone who attended both the early-AM and late-PM prayer services regularly. He was to seek private encounters with such individuals as often as possible, where he was to find out as much as he could about their political views, which charities they favored, how often and where they traveled, and what they thought about specific Quranic verses often given 'jihadist' interpretations, and/or the views of scholars known for propounding such interpretations. He was also given a few 'jihadist' websites to recommend his 'friends' visit (ones whose traffic his handlers were monitoring); was on occasion supplied by his handlers with controlled substances (painkillers, steroids) to give to mosque members interested in them, to build his reputation as a religious man who also knew his way around the black market; and was directed to present himself as a trained fitness instructor so as to create further opportunities to bond with young male members. Monteilh stated that his handlers repeatedly cited a maxim that "Everybody knows somebody"--i.e., that an Afghan immigrant probably has friends or relatives affiliated with Taliban, a Lebanese immigrant probably has friends or relatives affiliated with Hezbollah, etc. He regularly secretly filmed and/or recorded these conversations with other mosque members, and recounts being told by his handlers of at least 14 other area mosques which were under electronic surveillance by the FBI.

In addition to this focus on 'very religious' members, Monteilh further claims he was told to keep an eye out for members who might have immigration, drug abuse, or sexual orientation 'problems' which, under the right circumstances, might make them 'amenable' to becoming informants themselves. This was, in fact, how Monteilh's true purposes eventually become known to the former mosque 'friends' who'd (so they thought) turned him in--one of them was arrested on a minor immigration-related charge based on information gathered by Monteilh, and while the charge wound up being dismissed, it came out during the trial that 'an informant' (recognizable from the description as Monteilh) was the source of the allegations against the man.

So, at least as I understand it, basically this case comes down to whether the apparent design of the FBI's operation (and by implication others like it) violated plaintiffs' First Amendment rights by targeting them for undercover surveillance based on religious affiliation alone, in the absence of any reasonable grounds for suspecting their involvement in crime. That, and--as the OP article mentions--whether Monteilh's assertions about his work can be shown to be true.
 
Instead, this lawsuit is essentially challenging the sweeping revisions of FBI surveillance policies under John Ashcroft, which dramatically loosened requirements on reasonable grounds for suspicion and restrictions on surveillance methods that had been in place since Watergate. Those revisions disproportionately affect American Muslims in practice, and the alleged facts of this case may offer an opportunity to challenge them, primarily along First Amendment lines (failure to maintain religious neutrality), and secondarily along Fourth (unreasonable search) and Fifth (equal protection) Amendment lines.

Ooh, triple whammy.

Bang-up job, Bush administration. As usual :up:.

was on occasion supplied by his handlers with controlled substances (painkillers, steroids) to give to mosque members interested in them, to build his reputation as a religious man who also knew his way around the black market

That's...really beyond creepy, actually.

Monteilh stated that his handlers repeatedly cited a maxim that "Everybody knows somebody"--i.e., that an Afghan immigrant probably has friends or relatives affiliated with Taliban, a Lebanese immigrant probably has friends or relatives affiliated with Hezbollah, etc.

And that is just pathetically sad.

The immigration thing turning on Monteilh cracks me up, too. That's another thing-so the FBI wants an informant to gather this information, but they wind up picking one who apparently was pretty damn inept at doing the job! And yet it's the Muslims who are a threat to our national security?

Angela
 
I'm curious what you think about this:



Something tells me you wouldn't be as ok with the FBI telling informers that your religion is a threat to America.

Hello Diemen,

Saying that Islam is a threat to America is WRONG because its not the religion that is evil it is the people who twist the articles of their faith in order to fit their own agenda. For instance, the 911 terrorists who committed murder in the false belief that they were doing god's work....

It is RADICAL Islam that is the threat - and not just Islam. ANY radical element that is intolerant to other beliefs and ways of life is a threat to stability.

Let me give you another example - in 1995, our PM Yitzchak Rabin was assasinated by a Jewish right-wing law student who believed that he was saving the country from Rabin's policies, which included major territorial compromises to the Palestinians in exchange for peace.
He took what he was taught in the ultra right-wing environment he grew up in and adapted it to suit himself and his selfish purposes.

Back on topic, lately, it has been the RADICAL muslims who have been most vocal in mosques and who have been calling to intensify the war against the west (particularly the U.S.), and we all know that the mosques were hotbeds for the radical Imams who preached murder for the 911 terrorists - and others.

So its a good thing that they're being watched. The surveillance is ultimately saving lives.
 
Achtung Bono how do you know that "Radical" mosques are even located in the United States? We have thousands of Mosques here. One is located not too far from where I live and so far no bombings in my neighborhood.
 
I have no problem whatsoever with this.....and I would STILL have no problem if the same was being done in synagogues and churches or any other place of worship.

Why should they mind being watched if they have nothing to hide?

[/b]

So it's okay when people are guilty until proven innocent? In this case all muslims in the US are suspected of terrorist activity.

Monitoring should only be the case when there is really a threat of terrorism/ extremist preaching in some mosques or if terrorists are known to be from the same mosque 'parish'.
Why isn't the FBI working on white supremacy based churches or these freaks/trolls of the Westboro Baptist Church then? They have the same rate of danger with their hate speeches.

To me it sounds simply like an act of religion based discrimination.
 
So it's okay when people are guilty until proven innocent? In this case all muslims in the US are suspected of terrorist activity.

Monitoring should only be the case when there is really a threat of terrorism/ extremist preaching in some mosques or if terrorists are known to be from the same mosque 'parish'.
Why isn't the FBI working on white supremacy based churches or these freaks/trolls of the Westboro Baptist Church then? They have the same rate of danger with their hate speeches.

To me it sounds simply like an act of religion based discrimination.


Well said! :applaud:

I'm more afraid of the Westboro nut jobs than my Muslim neighbors.
 
Speaking of that group, anyone hear about the recent Supreme Court ruling with them? Ugh. I still say that if I were a family member at a funeral and those jackasses came anywhere near us, I'd feel a very strong urge to punch them in the face.

And on that note, that video? That makes me ill. If I were the child of that moronic Pauly speaking early on in the video, I'd beg to go to a different family.

And she had the nerve to say the other side was "pure, unadulterated evil"? Look in your own backyard, you idiot (I'm trying to refrain from using the words I'd really like to use on people like this).

That's disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. I'm so deeply embarrassed for my country right now. The quote from the last guy...sigh.

Angela
 
Thanks Irvine for posting the video. As an American it made me sick that people were waving flags and harrassing other Americans because of their religious freedom. I admire the dignity of the Muslim folks who were targeted. I'm not sure if I would have been so noble.
 
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim-American elected to Congress, broke into tears Thursday during a hearing investigating possible radicalization of Muslim-Americans, telling the House Homeland Security Committee the inquiry was “the very heart of scapegoating.”

“We’ve seen the consequences of anti-Muslim hate,” Ellison testified. “The best defense against extreme ideologies is social inclusion and civic engagement. … I fear these hearings may undermine our efforts in this direction.”

Ellison became emotional while recounting the story of Mohammed Salman Hamdani, a 23-year-old Muslim-American firefighter who died while saving others during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Hamdani, whose mother was in the audience, was castigated for his religion after his death, with some wondering whether he had been allied with the attackers, Ellison said.

“He should not be remembered as a Muslim, but as an American who gave everything for his country,” Ellison said.

The hearings, led by committee Chairman Peter King (R-N.Y.), have already yielded a storm of controversy, with critics questioning whether Congress should single out a particular minority group as a possible threat to national security.

King defended the hearings in his opening remarks Thursday, saying they fall in line with the Obama administration’s stated concerns over the radicalization of Muslim-Americans by extremists abroad.

“I remained convinced that these hearings must go forward, and they will,” he said. “To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness and an abdication of what I believe to be the main responsibility of this community: to protect America from a terrorist attack.”

King said to focus on extremism in general would “dilute” the hearings, listing a number of statements by Obama administration officials on attempts by foreign terrorist groups to radicalize American Muslims.

“There is no equivalency between al Qaeda and neo-Nazis, environmental extremists or other isolated madmen,” he said. “Only al Qaeda and its Islamists affiliates in this country are part of an international threat to our nation."

But a number of rights groups and Democratic members of Congress have spoken out against the focus of the hearings, arguing that non-Muslims have perpetrated a number of terrorist crimes in the United States.

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) told the committee he thinks the hearing could promote hate and violence against Muslim-Americans. He said he hung a picture of Joe McCarthy, who led infamous hearings in the 1950s to root out Communists, in his office to remind himself of what the hearing should avoid.

One controversial element of the hearing was King’s selection of witnesses, which bypassed moderate Muslim groups in favor of a Muslim activist who warns of creeping extremism and family members of radicalized youth.

M. Zuhdi Jasser, a doctor from Arizona who regularly appears on Fox News and has been called “Glenn Beck’s favorite Muslim,” testified that the Muslim community had focused too much on victimization rather than discouraging radical members. He said the Muslim community had allowed some individuals, such as Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan, to become radicalized.

“Pathology creeps up over time and just like alcoholism, there are enablers, and the enablers in our community are what is making the problem get worse,” Jasser said.

Melvin Bledsoe, whose son, Carlos Bledsoe, converted to Islam at the age of 19, testified that his son became radicalized by Muslims before moving to Yemen. When he returned to the United States, Carlos Bledsoe shot two U.S. Army privates outside a recruiting center, killing one. He is now in prison.

Melvin Bledsoe said the same could happen to other U.S. youth if radical Islam continues unchecked.

“It seems to me that Americans are sitting around doing nothing about Muslim extremists. It is a big elephant in the room,” he said. “Mr. King called it political correctness, you could call it political fear, but it is stepping down for a population ... even if some segment of that population wants to violate everything we stand for.”

During the hearing's question-and-answer portion, Democrats criticized King for even holding it, with a few members denouncing statements that there are “too many mosques” in the United States.

There was an awkward moment when Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) defended the committee, claiming that no one had said there were too many mosques in the country. He was interrupted by King, who acknowledged that he had made such a statement.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) lashed out at King during her question period, calling the hearing itself “an outrage.”

“Muslims are here cooperating,” Lee said. “They are here doing what this hearing is saying they do not do. I just question, where are the uncooperative Muslims?”
 
In last week's New York Times Magazine, there was a really fascinating feature story on the American Salafi cleric Yasir Qadhi, who has the uncomfortable distinction of being quite well-known to both the American Muslim community and the FBI. Since Salafism is a highly conservative fundamentalist movement, it isn't representative of the American Muslim mainstream; however, as American Salafi clerics have had ties to the perpetrators of several attempted or completed domestic terrorist attacks to date, as well as to American Muslims who've gone abroad to engage in militant jihad, the movement's influence in the US is closely monitored by the FBI.

The whole article is worth reading, as it helps bring into focus some key ideological divides among fundamentalist American Muslims, but I'll pull some select passages here:
In the spectrum of the global Salafi movement, Qadhi, who is 36, speaks for the nonmilitant majority. Yet even as he has denounced Islamist violence—too late, some say—a handful of AlMaghrib’s former students have heeded the call. In addition to the underwear-bomb suspect, the 36,000 current and former students of Qadhi’s institute include Daniel Maldonado, a New Hampshire convert who was convicted in 2007 of training with an Al Qaeda-linked militia in Somalia; Tarek Mehanna, a 28-year-old pharmacist arrested for conspiring to attack Americans; and two young Virginia men held in Pakistan in 2009 for seeking to train with militants.

Qadhi said that none of those former students had approached him for counsel. But in recent years, countless others have come to him with questions about the legitimacy of waging jihad. “We’re finding ourselves on the front line,” Qadhi said. “We don’t want to be there.”
(AlMaghrib is an American network of Salafi academies, for which Qadhi teaches.)
This is what makes Qadhi such a pivotal figure in a subculture that is little understood, even by the law-enforcement officials who monitor it. He is the rare Western cleric fluent in the language of militants, having spent nearly a decade studying Islam in Saudi Arabia, steeped in the same tradition that spawned Osama bin Laden’s splinter movement. Arguably few American theologians are better positioned to offer an authoritative rebuttal of extremist ideology. But to do that, Qadhi says he would need to address the thorny question of what kinds of militant actions are permitted by Islamic law. It is a forbidden topic for most American clerics, who even refrain from criticizing their country’s foreign policy for fear of being branded unpatriotic.

For an ultraconservative cleric like Qadhi, the picture is more complicated. Engaging in a detailed discussion of militant jihad—a complex subject informed by centuries of scholarship—risks drawing the scrutiny of law enforcement and, Qadhi fears, possible prosecution. If he were to acknowledge that Islamic law endorses the legitimacy of armed resistance against Western forces in Muslim territory, he could give a green light to the very students he claims he is trying to keep off the militant path. Yet by remaining silent, Qadhi says he is losing the credibility he needs to persuade them of his ultimate message: those fights are not theirs, as Westerners, to fight. “My hands are tied, and my tongue is silent,” he said.
Qadhi was in New Jersey that weekend to teach a seminar on the concept of faith-led action. During a break, a dozen young men flocked to him once again. A soft-spoken engineer lobbed the first question: Wasn’t it hypocritical for the same Western imams who supported the Afghan resistance against the Soviets to now condemn the jihad against American troops? After all, another student asked, don’t civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan “have an obligation to do something to defend themselves?”

“I am not commenting on what they should or should not do,” Qadhi replied. “I am commenting on what you should do as American Muslims.”

They had heard it before: vote, educate your neighbors, protest peacefully. But is that what Islam commands when your people are dying? The question haunts some of Qadhi’s brightest students. One of the deepest Islamic principles is that of the ummah—the global community that unites all Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad was said to have likened it to the human body. If one part hurts, the whole body aches.
Many of today’s young American Muslims are the children of educated, successful immigrants whose passage to the United States came smoothly, in contrast to Europe’s largely working-class Muslims. For years, this bolstered the theory that American Muslim youth had been spared the alienation that fostered militancy in Europe. But alienation has many faces. America’s youngest Muslims have grown up in a newly hostile country, with mounting opposition to the construction of mosques, a national movement seeking to ban courts from consulting shariah, or Islamic law, and rising hate crimes against Muslims. While some young Muslims have sought distance, abandoning Islam and even changing their names, others have experienced a spiritual awakening. The most conservative have found a home in Salafiya.

...While versions of Salafiya have persisted through history, its current iteration derives largely from the puritanical, 18th-century school of Saudi Islam known as Wahhabism. Today’s Salafis share the same basic theology but differ on how to manifest it. Many are apolitical, while another subset engages in politics as a nonviolent means to an end—namely, an Islamic theocracy. A third fringe group is devoted to militant jihad as the only path to Islamic rule and, ultimately, heaven. All three strains have surfaced in the West, where the movement has flourished among the children of immigrants.
(Qadhi is himself the son of Pakistani immigrants, a physician father and microbiologist mother, though his family also lived in Saudi Arabia for several years of his childhood.)
It is something of a curiosity that Qadhi, who was raised in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s birthplace, now lives in a landscape marked by church steeples and “What would Jesus do?” bumper stickers. But the American South seems to agree with Qadhi, who often preaches on the Islamic principle of polite conduct. He takes to the gentility of his students at Rhodes, who call him sir. There is no better place to be Muslim than in America, he says, because as a minority “you feel your faith.” At times, he seems oddly Pollyanna-ish about his future in Tennessee, where someone tried to torch the site of a planned mosque last year. Qadhi concedes that living someplace like Saudi Arabia might be easier, but “it’s not my land at the end of the day,” he said. “I am an American. What else can I say?”

...His introduction to Salafiya came in his sophomore year [at the University of Houston], when a Muslim convert from Colorado visited campus. A tall, regal man with a wispy white beard, the preacher displayed a command of Islam that Qadhi had never seen. When asked a question, he closed his eyes and recited a litany of evidence from the Koran and the Sunnah. This approach, a cornerstone of Salafiya, appealed to Qadhi’s empiricism. “It’s so disciplined and academic,” he said. Then 17, Qadhi began driving through the night to attend Salafi camping retreats, where legendary clerics lectured from Jordan and Saudi Arabia via teleconference. He drilled into Salafiya with a discipline that defied his adolescence. At a retreat in Boulder, CO, some of Qadhi’s friends skipped out to go fishing. When they returned, Qadhi refused to share his notes. “It was very clear that this guy was going to become something and we weren’t,” said one of the friends, Amad Shaikh.

...American Salafiya mirrored the movement abroad. It was largely apolitical until the first gulf war, when the United States set up a base in Saudi Arabia. The presence of American troops on Saudi soil, home to Islam’s holiest sites, was a defining moment for Salafis, giving rise to a political awakening and fueling bin Laden’s militancy. In America, some Salafi clerics began calling for political action against the Saudi regime, while others remained loyal. Qadhi was torn.
In Qadhi’s current incarnation, it is hard to make out the preacher he refers to as “the old me.” That Qadhi lives on via YouTube. In a television show recorded in Egypt in 2001, Qadhi, then 26, explains that one form of kufr, or disbelief, is adhering to man-made laws over God’s law. “Can you believe it?” he says. “A group of people coming together and voting—and the majority vote will then be the law of the land. What gives you the right to prohibit something or allow something?” His young students nod their heads. “Islam is a complete way of life, a complete submission to Allah and to the rulings of Allah,” Qadhi said on the show. “It is a complete package.”

...He had long thought of becoming a Muslim scholar. Shortly before graduating, Qadhi applied to the Islamic University of Medina, a leading Salafi institution...Qadhi and his new wife settled into a spare apartment, and he plunged into round-the-clock study. Life in Medina deepened his faith while narrowing his tolerance for the outside world. He came to identify with political Salafiya, denouncing secular democracies and declaring Sufis and Shia “heretics.” He took up the Palestinian cause—a pathway, he said, to the anti-Semitic rhetoric that ran rampant in his circles. In the summer of 2001, Qadhi traveled to London to teach at an Islamic conference. At the end of a class, he went into a diatribe arguing that Israel did not rightfully belong to the Jewish people. “Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews,” Qadhi said, telling the audience to read a book about “the hoax” of the Holocaust. He went on to say that most Islamic-studies professors in the United States are Jews who “want to destroy us.”

Looking back, Qadhi said he fell down a slippery slope where criticism of Israel gave way to attacks on Jews. Beneath the vitriol, he said, was a sense of victimization—that non-Muslims were to blame for the afflictions of the Muslim world. “When you’re young and naïve, it’s easier to fall prey to such things,” said Qadhi, who publicly recanted years later. Last August, he joined a delegation of American imams and rabbis on a visit to the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, which he said left him “sick” and more embarrassed by his Hitler remarks. “It was a pre-9/11 world,” he said. “The circumstances did not dictate that we think critically.”
In the aftermath of 9/11, the American Salafi movement fell apart. As federal agents raided Muslim mosques, charities and businesses, the most prominent Salafis vanished from clerical life or landed in prison. Some of the movement’s key figures were convicted on charges unrelated to terrorism, ranging from tax evasion to visa-immigration violations. “All of these people were jailed for different things, but if you look at them collectively, you see the Salafi movement,” Idris Palmer, a onetime Salafi activist, told me. Law-enforcement officials say that there was no policy singling out Salafis. They were rushing to root out a new enemy, with little time to grasp the theological differences separating nonviolent fundamentalists from the creed of the hijackers. Many agents did not even know what a Salafi was “and still don’t,” says Christopher Heffelfinger, a security analyst who consults with the government.

...From Medina, Qadhi followed the case closely. For American clerics, he said, the message was clear: those who engage in controversial rhetoric are treading on thin ice. While 9/11 had shaken Qadhi’s movement, it also unsettled him personally. “No matter how strange this sounds, after having lived in Saudi Arabia for so long and also in America for so long, I could fully understand the fear, the anger, the frustration, the paranoia on both sides,” Qadhi says. “I could understand ‘they’ and ‘us.’ ”...At the time, Qadhi was on track to become Medina’s first American doctoral candidate. He wondered if he had a more promising future in America, where the Salafi movement, bereft of leaders, was in crisis. From Houston, Qadhi’s father—who had retired and was volunteering as a prison chaplain—encouraged his son to leave Saudi Arabia, which he believed had left Qadhi “totally brainwashed.”

...In 2004, Qadhi applied to Yale...Qadhi’s Saudi professors were aghast that he would switch to a Western university to study Islam. Yale’s professors were also surprised. The religious-studies department had never taken on a graduate of the Saudi educational system...For Qadhi, the Koran remained the unequivocal word of God. But he began to think more critically about the “man-made” canon that informed Islamic theology. So much of Qadhi’s intransigence—especially toward other Muslim sects—was based on the view that his tradition was divinely ordained. He came to see Salafiya as yet another “human development” that was handed down over generations and therefore subject to imperfection. “I realized that, in many issues, only God knows the ultimate truth,” he says.

Qadhi landed on the American preaching circuit with force, and his following skyrocketed among young Salafis. America’s leading clerics were converts who had risen to prominence because they could translate an intricate theology into an American vernacular. Qadhi did the same but as the proud son of Muslim immigrants. Plus he was a Salafi—or so it seemed.

In July 2006, at a conference in Copenhagen, Qadhi did the unthinkable: he shook a woman’s hand in a spontaneous challenge to her perception of fundamentalists, he said. The woman, Mona Eltahawy, a columnist on Arab and Muslim issues, wrote about the exchange, which became known in Salafi circles as the “when-Yasir-met-Mona moment.” The handshake drew a death threat from a man in London. The following year, Qadhi further pushed the limits, making a pact of “mutual respect and cooperation” with American clerics of the Sufi order, Salafiya’s longtime enemy. Several of Qadhi’s former Saudi professors publicly assailed him, a signal he had become too prominent for them to ignore. 
Qadhi began to step away from the Salafi label, rebranding his movement “orthodox with a capital O.” While he remained devoted to Salafiya’s core tenets, his followers struggled to keep pace with his changes. Others remained skeptical. “Is he being instrumental and opportunistic, or has he really abandoned some of these Salafi beliefs?” said Haykel, the Princeton professor. “He’s engaged in an incredible performance of reinvention that I’m not sure he’ll be able to pull off.” The same question hovered over Qadhi’s institute, whose founder, Alshareef, once gave a sermon titled “Why the Jews Were Cursed.” Meanwhile, as Qadhi honed a new message, he was roundly dismissed on jihadist forums as a “sellout.”
From then on, he and his family traveled separately. “I’m not going to be humiliated in front of my kids,” he said. At airports, he became accustomed to long interviews with border agents, who downloaded his laptop hard drive and searched his cellphone. They photocopied notes he kept on his sermons and even asked for his definition of jihad. FBI agents in New Haven questioned him about two American acquaintances who had been charged with terrorism-related offenses. Qadhi said he knew nothing of their activities, but the agents pressed him to report on anyone who expressed views that “might be of interest,” he recalled. He refused, saying, “This is America, not Soviet Russia or East Germany.”

Increasingly, Qadhi felt backed into a corner. In August 2006, at a meeting for Muslim leaders in Houston, he walked up to Daniel W. Sutherland, a Homeland Security official. “Hi, I’m a pacifist Salafi,” Qadhi said to him. Looking stunned, Sutherland sat and talked with Qadhi for more than an hour. Then in May 2008, Qadhi received an invitation from Quintan Wiktorowicz, an analyst for a government agency that was hosting a conference on counterradicalization...In attendance were British and American intelligence officials, including the director of Homeland Security at the time, Michael Chertoff. During a break, Qadhi spotted a Houston acquaintance who happened to work for Chertoff. “I said, ‘Don’t you think it’s ironic that on the one hand, you’re reaching out for my expertise and wanting my help, and on the other hand, you’re harassing and intimidating me as if I’m a potential terrorist?’ ”
Even absent the question of war, Western Salafis ponder their loyalties. Internet forums buzz with talk about the concept of al-walaa wal-baraa, which is rooted in Koranic verses dictating allegiance to Muslims over non-Muslims. Qadhi’s students are divided over whether to vote, pay taxes that support the military or even celebrate Thanksgiving. “These sorts of things, they are the fault lines,” says [Ify] Okoye, [Qadhi's] student from Maryland. Qadhi sees in his students an earlier version of himself—the passionate Salafi who took comfort in a black-and-white world. He prods them to think “in colors” and find a balance between loyalty to Islam and to America. He urges them to pay taxes and vote, drawing the line at military service, given Iraq and Afghanistan. “There is no draft,” he said. “Thank God for that.”
The blog MuslimMatters, which appears to be curated by Okoye, has a condensed version of a 2009 lecture by Qadhi on the topic of al-walaa wal-baraa with reference to the place of Muslims in America.

As a South Asianist with some background in Indian communal politics, I find the allegedly fraught implications of this doctrine for American Muslims curious (perhaps it's only fraught for US fundamentalists?) since I've never heard of any Indian Muslim cleric--and Indian Muslims, of course, also live as a minority in a secular state--suggesting that his followers shouldn't vote, pay all their taxes, or celebrate the Indian national holidays. Perhaps it's because Indian Muslims don't live with the burden of (somewhat) feeling themselves as strangers in a strange land, as first-and-second generation immigrants?
The Abdulmutallab episode [i.e., Abdulmutallab the 'underwear bomber'--who had briefly been Qadhi's student] drew a new line in the long-distance battle between Qadhi and [Yemeni-American 'jihadist' cleric Anwar] Awlaki. The Yemeni-American cleric announced that Abdulmutallab’s operation was in retaliation for American “cruise missiles and cluster bombs.” By then, the United States had authorized the assassination of Awlaki, provoking outrage among many of Qadhi’s students. Qadhi seemed to be riding a pendulum of self-preservation. If he lurched too far toward appeasing the government, he risked losing his base.

That March, Qadhi rose before a crowd of thousands in Elizabeth, NJ, to finally speak about Awlaki. “I am against this preacher when he tells our youth to become militant against this country while being citizens to this country,” Qadhi told the packed auditorium. “But when my government comes and says, ‘We’re allowed to take him out; we’re allowed to kill him; we’re allowed to assassinate him,’ I also put my foot down, and I say to my own government, ‘Shame on you!’ ” The audience listened raptly. “Be angry every time a bomb is dropped on innocent civilians in the name of the war on terror,” Qadhi bellowed. “Be angry every time our tax dollars are spent to oppress yet another group of innocent Palestinians. Be angry every time more draconian measures are utilized against us in this greatest democracy on earth.”

Never before had Qadhi so forcefully condemned America’s policies in public. But “channel that anger,” he continued, “in a productive manner.” He urged a “jihad of the tongue, a jihad of the pen, a jihad that is not a military jihad.” American Muslims, Qadhi told the audience, needed to abide by the laws of their country, understanding that had they been born in Palestine or Iraq, their “responsibilities would be different.” He did not elaborate.

It is this kind of ambiguity that gnaws at some of Qadhi’s students. “We just get wishy-washy nonanswers,” one female student told me, adding that Qadhi’s “jihad of the tongue” was unconvincing.
Being martyred in the battlefield, she said, is “romantic,” while “lobbying your congressman is not.”
The central contest between Qadhi and militants like Awlaki hinges on a rather abstruse point: how to define America in Islamic terms. Qadhi likens his country to Abyssinia, the seventh-century African kingdom that gave refuge to the prophet’s followers. In exchange for upholding the laws of the land, they were allowed to worship freely—a contract Qadhi equates to an American passport or visa. Breaking the contract by joining militant groups at war with America constitutes treachery, Qadhi says, which is forbidden in Islam. Awlaki, by contrast, compares America with ancient Mecca, where the prophet’s followers were persecuted, forcing them to flee and later fight back.

Critics take issue with the technical nature of the debate. Qadhi’s students, they argue, could conclude that joining a militant group is permissible provided they renounce their citizenship. This is further complicated by his refusal to address whether the Islamist uprisings in Iraq and Afghanistan constitute legitimate jihads. Saying yes would open the door to public recriminations, but denying the legitimacy of those insurgencies would fly in the face of Islamic law, says Andrew F. March, a professor at Yale who specializes in Islamic law. “The conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are unambiguous examples of jihad or war against an outside invader,” March says. “There is no mainstream juridical opinion that says that Muslims cannot resist that.”

Under mounting pressure from students, Qadhi and another AlMaghrib scholar, Abu Eesa Niamatullah, considered teaching a course on the fiqh, or jurisprudence, of jihad. “What stopped us?” Niamatullah says. “Picture two bearded guys talking about the fiqh of jihad. We would be dead. We would be absolutely finished.”

...“It is an awkward position to be in,” [Qadhi] wrote of his situation. “How can one simultaneously fight against a powerful government, a pervasive and sensationalist-prone media and a group of overzealous, rash youth who are already predisposed to reject your message, because they view you as being a part of the establishment (while, ironically, the ‘establishment’ never ceases to view you as part of the radicals)?”
 
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Salon, April 7
One of the more striking things about the current anti-sharia craze is how often state legislators who introduce anti-sharia bills can't answer basic questions about Islamic law or why they see it as a threat. In Alabama, for example, when the state senator who sponsored an anti-sharia bill was asked by a reporter to simply define sharia, he responded: "I don't have my file in front of me." In Florida, anti-sharia bill sponsors couldn't name a single case where Islamic or international law had been used in a troubling way in U.S. courts. When, on Wednesday, I interviewed a Nebraska state senator behind a similar bill, I asked him about what cases were causes of concern to him. He responded: "I'm not in my office to look them up."

How could all these legislators be so uninformed about their own bills? A big part of the reason is that most of them did not actually write the legislation in question. Rather, many of the anti-sharia bills being considered around the country are either based on or directly copied from model legislation created by an obscure far-right Arizona attorney and activist named David Yerushalmi.
If you follow hate-group watchdog reports, you may already be familiar with Yerushalmi; Mother Jones ran a serviceable profile of him last month:
Yerushalmi, a lawyer, is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has been called a hate group by the Council on American-Islamic Relations [and the SPLC, and the ADL ~y.]...In a 2006 essay for SANE entitled "On Race: A Tentative Discussion," Yerushalmi argued that whites are genetically superior to blacks. "Some races perform better in sports, some better in mathematical problem solving, some better in language, some better in Western societies and some better in tribal ones," he wrote. Yerushalmi has suggested that Caucasians are inherently more receptive to republican forms of government than blacks—an argument that's consistent with SANE's mission statement, which emphasizes that "America was the handiwork of faithful Christians, mostly men, and almost entirely white." And in an article published at the website Intellectual Conservative, Yerushalmi, who is Jewish, suggests that liberal Jews "destroy their host nations like a fatal parasite." Unsurprisingly, then, Yerushalmi offered the lone Jewish defense of Mel Gibson, after the actor’s anti-Semitic tirade in 2006. Gibson, he wrote, was simply noting the "undeniable Jewish liberal influence on western affairs in the direction of a World State."

Despite his racist views, Yerushalmi has been warmly received by mainstream conservatives; his work has appeared in the National Review and Andrew Breitbart's Big Peace. He's been lauded in the pages of the Washington Times. And in 2008, he published a paper on the perils of Sharia-compliant finance that compelled Sen. Minority Whip John Kyl (R-Ariz.) to write a letter to Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Chris Cox. More recently, Yerushalmi co-authored a report on the threats posed by Islamic law—among other things, he worries Sharia-compliant finance could spark another financial collapse—that earned plaudits from leading Republicans like Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra. The report was released by [Washington Times columnist] Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy, for which Yerushalmi is general counsel. In 2007, he pushed legislation to make "adherence to Shari'a" a felony, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. That same proposal called for the deportation of all Muslim non-citizens, and a ban on Muslim immigration. The United States, he urged, must declare "a WAR AGAINST ISLAM and all Muslim faithful."

If his racially infused writings and rhetoric are any indication, it's Yerushalmi, not his Muslim bogeymen, who seems most determined to remake the American political system. Per its mission statement, SANE is "dedicated to the rejection of democracy and party rule," and Yerushalmi has likewise criticized the universal suffrage movement. As he once put it, "there's a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote."
Too bad for Glenn Beck the guy's in-your-face racist, otherwise he'd be the perfect guest!

As with Mother Jones pieces in general, the links drawn here between Yerushalmi and various mainstream figures should be approached skeptically; those individuals may only know a narrow slice of Yerushalmi's work, and the context in which it "appeared" in their publications isn't clarified. But if the irrationality on its face of 'anti-sharia legislation' isn't enough, the prominent presence of this dirtbag behind it ought to be one more nail in the coffin.
 
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Wall Street Journal, Oct. 6
NYPD spied on city's Muslim anti-terror partners


Reda Shata considered himself a partner in New York's fight against terrorism. He cooperated with the police and FBI, invited officers to his mosque for breakfast, even dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Despite the handshakes and photo ops, however, the New York Police Department was all the while watching the Egyptian sheik. Even as Shata's story was splashed across the front page of The New York Times in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series about Muslims in America, an undercover officer and an informant were assigned to monitor him, and two others kept tabs on his mosque that same year.

"What did they find?" Shata asked through an interpreter at his current mosque in Monmouth County, NJ, after learning about the secret surveillance. "It's a waste of time and a waste of money." Shata welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast, and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct during his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge. As police secretly watched him in 2006, he had breakfast and dinner with Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion and was invited to meet with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Shata recalls. "This is very sad," he said after seeing his name in the NYPD file. "What is your feeling if you see this about people you trusted?" This was life in America for Shata: a government partner in the fight against terrorism and a suspect at the same time.

The dichotomy between simultaneously being partner and suspect is common among some of New York's Muslims. Some of the same mosques that city leaders visited to hail their strong alliances with the Muslim community have also been placed under NYPD surveillance--in some cases infiltrated by undercover police officers and informants...An Associated Press investigation has found that the NYPD dispatched undercover officers into ethnic communities to monitor daily life and scrutinized more than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Some of its programs were developed with the help of seasoned CIA officers.

On Wednesday, seven New York Democratic state senators called for the state attorney general to investigate the NYPD's spying on Muslim neighborhoods. And last month, the CIA announced an inspector general investigation into the agency's partnership with the NYPD. A small number of Capitol Hill and New York lawmakers have called for greater oversight and controls over the police department's intelligence unit. But most in politics, including President Barack Obama, have shown no interest in even talking about what the NYPD is doing, much less saying whether they support it.
 
"Shata welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast, and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct during his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge"

For anyone who's seen the show Breaking Bad, two words:

Gus Fring.

Just sayin. . . .

:wink:
 
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