[ad_1]
Earlier this month, the New York Times magazine published a feature article describing a former FBI agent who was imprisoned in the United States for exposing rampant abuse of power in the government’s “war on terror”. In this article, Terry Albury described the FBI’s systematic harassment and intimidation of American Muslims, surveillance of communities, and prosecutions of many of its members under the guise of combating terrorism.
When joining the FBI shortly after the September 11, 2001 attack, Albury recalled: “It was clear from the beginning that the enemy is not just a small group of disgruntled Muslims. Islam itself is the enemy. “Despite its unique frank and self-reflection tone, this narrative hardly surprises most American Muslims.
Twenty years after the outbreak of a war that put entire minorities under suspicion, it is worth studying how the lives of American Muslims have changed irreversibly. As the subject of securitization, they have always existed on one of the many front lines in the global war on terrorism, and they have been forced to reassess their identity and core values in the name of belonging.
Islamic securitization
Although anti-Muslim discrimination in the United States predates 9/11, the global war on terror has ushered in an unprecedented era of large-scale security of American Muslims, and its manifestations are countless. US law enforcement agencies quickly set out to discover “sleepers” hidden in community mosques and Islamic centers. By reducing the actions of the 9/11 perpetrators to their religious beliefs, all Muslims were effectively pathologically transformed into potential terrorists.
The domestic war on terrorism will be a double attack on Islam and Muslims. Under the leadership of alarmist media and selfish decision-makers, this belief itself has been repackaged as a dangerous ideology. Unlike the portrayal of communism at the height of the Cold War, Islam is portrayed as lurking behind every corner. If left unchecked, it will pose an increasing threat to the American way of life.
A group of emerging classes who call themselves “terrorist experts” made a hasty analysis of Islamic traditions, beliefs and practices. These people have problems with their qualifications. They created flashy buzzwords such as “Islamic fascism” and warned about Islamic law. It’s just a way to Orwell’s totalitarianism.
At the same time, Muslims have become an increasingly racialized category, subject to various forms of discrimination, which is parallel to the treatment of targeted minorities in the history of the United States. More than 80,000 Muslim immigrants were summoned by federal agents for questioning and were required to register with the national registry. Tens of thousands of people were also searched and interrogated at the airport and prevented from traveling through the use of a no-fly list. Just wearing a headscarf or growing a beard will become a suspect in the eyes of the vigilant police force and the highly sensitive public.
Although sleeper cells have never become a reality, the domestic war on terrorism has not stopped, partly because of the Patriot Act, which Congress passed a law overwhelmingly in October 2001 that greatly expanded at the expense of civil liberties. The government’s investigative powers. In a national context of fear and suspicion, American Muslims have become systematic targets in several waves of attacks. In the initial stage, the authorities selected outstanding community leaders and institutions.
Soon after the 9/11 incident, the government cast a net widely by monitoring community leaders. As the documents later leaked to Intercept revealed, in one example, the government targeted a lawyer, a political lobbyist, an academic, and the heads of two of the most prominent American Muslim citizen organizations. Those under surveillance face the threat of criminal prosecution for exercising the rights to freedom of speech and association protected by the Constitution.
In 2004, the U.S. Department of Justice filed terrorism charges against the Holy Land Relief and Development Foundation (HLF), the largest Muslim charity in the United States, and arrested five of its staff. In 2008, after prosecutors initially failed to convict these individuals for a retrial, they were all Palestinian Americans. HLF officials and employees were sentenced to up to 65 years in prison, although the government has never provided any evidence that charitable donations have any meaning. Link to violence.
The impact of the HLF case extends far beyond the scope of the trial. In an unorthodox move, the prosecutor announced the names of the 246 unprosecuted co-conspirators in the case. The list is usually kept anonymous because unaccused entities cannot defend themselves from supporting terrorism and other serious matters. Allegations. The list includes several of the most famous American Muslim organizations, from the Islamic Association of North America (ISNA) to the Committee on Islamic Relations of the United States (CAIR). The intention behind the leak is clear: to cast a layer of suspicion on all American Muslim institutions so that they cannot serve the community and play any meaningful role in the lives of citizens.
Similarly, in 2005, the government targeted the Imam Ali al-Tamimi in Virginia. He was accused of conspiring against the United States, and was sentenced to life imprisonment for allegedly providing community members with instructions on “jihad” a few days after 9/11. These high-profile terrorist trials have greatly exacerbated the chilling effect of American Muslims, because imams and community leaders across the country are worried that their words may be used to put them in prison.
When the United States launched large-scale military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq, and carried out deadly secret operations in dozens of other Muslim-majority countries, the government seemed determined to suppress political opposition and suppress dissent at home.
False plot, real consequences
In the more than ten years after the 9/11 incident, the FBI has more than doubled the number of agents specializing in terrorism investigations and tripled its overall budget, of which the budget for combating terrorism alone has reached In addition, it also provided a relaxed legal environment for operation. It also did not find a real terrorist organization.
In the next phase of the domestic war on terrorism, the FBI decided to take matters into its own hands and expand its practices that it started shortly after 9/11. It has stepped up its efforts to send paid informants to the community to lure unsuspecting Muslim youths into terrorist conspiracies, and then FBI agents will thwart them.
A 2015 study showed that since 9/11, more than half of all terrorism prosecutions involved the use of paid informants, who are usually responsible for colluding with their FBI agents to plan conspiracies.
Sensational media reports on the most high-profile cases rarely mention these conspiracies as the work of FBI informants. On the contrary, stories of frustrated terrorist conspiracies like the Newburgh Four or the Dix Five provide the material for the continued stigma of American Muslims.
The vacuum left by the attacks on community leadership, coupled with the steady rise in Islamophobia throughout the American society, has created a general sense of isolation, especially among young American Muslims who have grown up in reality after 9/11.
The FBI has at least 15,000 informants at its disposal, and the rampant infiltration of mosques and Islamic centers deprives Muslims of any sense of security or sanctity in their community spaces. As trapping cases unfold with surprising regularity, it is painful that the latest victims of the war on terror are often the most vulnerable members of the community, suffering from poverty, mental health issues and other issues that make them easy prey for undercover agents. Difficulties.
Even young American Muslims who avoid being trapped by informants are affected by large-scale surveillance programs, such as the New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Central Intelligence Agency’s tracing program. The Associated Press exposed the secret plan to “map, monitor and analyze the daily lives of Muslims in the United States” in 2011, and even penetrated into Muslim student groups in universities in the New York metropolitan area.
A community transformation
With the large-scale securitization of Muslims in the United States becoming a permanent fixture of daily life, people have to wonder how any faith group can continue to meet its basic needs under such circumstances. Over time, the public identity of American Muslims is almost inseparable from the rhetorical machine of the war on terrorism. In the book “Good Muslims, Bad Muslims” published in 2005, Mahmood Mamdani believed that the U.S. imperial power distilled the entire Islamic faith into these dual categories, “in order to cultivate the former and target the latter. By”.
Therefore, Islam, which was redefined mainly in response to systemic Islamophobia, forced some American Muslims to reformulate their moral commitments to meet the requirements of formal acceptance. After suppressing its leadership, weakening its institutions and targeting its most vulnerable groups, the main hallmark of the third phase of the domestic war on terrorism is to enlist the help of the community to monitor itself.
Over the years, demanding American Muslims to “take more action” to condemn violence committed by any Muslim anywhere in the world has clearly changed the priorities of the community. Not only are American Muslim institutions forced to remain silent when faced with abuses against their own communities, but they are also forced to criticize an American empire that has caused devastating damage to most parts of the world for fear of being labelled as a terrorist sympathizer. plan.
Instead, many community organizations have reformulated their agendas to accommodate the government’s Anti-Violent Extremism (CVE) program. Millions of dollars were used to recruit American Muslim groups to participate in the worst war on terrorism in the country.
These CVE projects include surveillance and mapping of the community and counter-radicalization initiatives, which mark basic Muslim rituals as suspicious, turning Muslims pathologically into prone to violence.
As more and more communities welcome FBI agents into their spaces, a 2011 ACLU survey revealed that federal agents use so-called “community outreach forums” to monitor American Muslims.
In the early days after 9/11, if anyone believed that the war on terrorism was actually an excuse to demonize the entire belief and its followers and target the entire belief and its followers while pursuing the goals of the U.S. Empire, they would be ridiculed and strongly denied. . Twenty years later, there is so much evidence in this regard that it is now obvious.
However, Muslim organizations in the United States have hardly acknowledged the changes within their communities or the practices that brought them. This is the disciplinary effect, so that any criticism they raise is limited to social Islamophobia or excessive behavior during Trump’s presidency.
Few people work hard to identify and challenge structural Islamophobia and the imperial practices it supports. If anything, the community has witnessed an alarming rise in internalized Islamophobia, as shown in a 2018 survey that showed that American Muslims express the belief that Muslims are “prone to negative behavior”. The probability is more than twice that of any other faith community.
The hope of challenging this popular narrative stems from the rising youth movement, which has sharply criticized the older generation of American Muslim professionals who believe that these professionals are complicit in their own security. These young activists drew strength by establishing links with the wider struggle against structural racism and anti-immigration hostility between communities of color.
Recently, they have also captured the cause of Palestinian unity in the broader progressive movement-ironically, this issue has historically been at the core of American Muslim political mobilization until it became the many casualties caused by the domestic war on terrorism. one.
When American Muslims reflect on the pain and loss they have suffered over the past 20 years, it is important not to forget or ignore the lessons of these experiences. In fact, their survival as a faith community depends on it.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
[ad_2]
Source link