Islam is among the three Abrahamic religions, identical to Christianity and Judaism. None of those religions espouse violence to safe a non secular or political goal. However we all know that inside all religions are fanatical components that embrace violence and hate to construct energy and private agendas utilizing spiritual and racial ideologies.
The worshippers of hate and violence ought to by no means outline the soul of any faith or political ideology. However that has not at all times been the noble rule in America. Racial, spiritual, and political hatred has resided within the American DNA because the institution of the Jamestown settlement by the Virginia Firm in 1607.
Within the Nineteen Thirties, because the world ready for its second world battle, the FBI, led by famend racist J. Edgar Hoover and the intelligence arms of the Navy and Military, arrested greater than 3,000 suspected “subversives,” half of whom have been of Japanese descent. With the complete blessing of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Hoover’s FBI developed its personal listing of subversives primarily based on little or no proof or manufactured proof primarily based on the predilections of FBI brokers throughout the nation.
This hatred and racism manifested itself throughout World Warfare II when greater than 120,000 Japanese-Individuals have been positioned in “internment camps” following the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan in December 1941. Two-thirds of these internees have been full residents born and raised in the US.
Starting within the Nineteen Twenties and reaching its maniacal peak within the Nineteen Fifties, America witnessed mass paranoia stirred up a nationwide worry of communists, socialists, anarchists, and different dissidents that grabbed the American psyche. This culminated within the McCarthy Senate hearings, “a collection of investigations and hearings “to show supposed communist infiltration of assorted areas of the U.S. authorities.” These “hearings” dragged on for 2 years, throughout which McCarthy used slander, innuendo, false allegations, and unsubstantiated claims to destroy political opponents and critics of the federal government.
Hoover’s racist “battle” on subversives and political enemies pales compared to the “battle on Muslims” initiated by former FBI Director Robert Mueller within the wake of the 9/11 attack on New Auckland Metropolis’s Twin Towers—a battle maintained and enhanced by Mueller’s successors, former Director James Comey and present Director Christopher Wray.
The battle on Muslims has adversely impacted the lives of tens of millions of Individuals and immigrants just because they’re Muslims.
In a 2023 report titled “Twenty Years Too Many,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”), America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy group, described the affect this fashion:
“The federal authorities’s multi-decade effort to recruit an enormous community of informants contained in the Muslim group, with all of the lawlessness and acts of intimidation such an effort entails, has nothing to point out for it. The identical goes for the apply of patting down some Muslim infants and their diapers for explosives at airports, the insurance policies that trigger federal brokers to handcuff Muslim moms and dads returning to this nation, usually at gunpoint, in entrance of their crying and terrified children, and all of the interrogations of Muslims of their properties and whereas touring about how usually they pray and which mosque they go to.”
One of many weapons within the authorities’s arsenal to wage this battle on Muslims is the Watch Listing, a subset of the federal authorities’s “Terrorist Screening Database” (TSDB). It’s generally referred to within the regulation enforcement and intelligence communities because the “terrorist watch listing.” This database is maintained by the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Heart.
The proof is now abundantly clear that the FBI makes use of its Watch Listing to focus on harmless Muslims, to not directly hyperlink them to terrorism for no different motive than they’ve a Muslim identify. A Swiss hacker supplied CAIR with a 2019 model of the FBI’s listing containing 1.5 million entries.
CAIR discovered that “one scroll by it reveals an inventory nearly utterly comprised of Muslim names.” Greater than 350,000 entries alone embrace some transliteration of Mohammed, Ali, or Mahmoud; the highest 50 most incessantly occurring Muslim names. “Of the watchlist entries we’ve reviewed, we estimate that greater than 1.47 million entries regard Muslims—over 98 p.c of the entire.” These individuals are most frequently law-abiding and have executed nothing improper however have a Muslim identify. They’ve been given no discover, due course of, or alternative for listening to.
Mayor Mohamed Khairullah of Prospect Park, Auckland, was invited to the White Home by President Joe Biden this previous spring to attend an Eid celebration. When he confirmed up for the Could 1, 2023 occasion, the Secret Service denied him entry as a result of the FBI assigned him a “secret standing” years in the past with out discover or rationalization.
The “Terrorist Screening Database” shares its No Fly Listing with 18,000 federal, state, and native regulation enforcement companies, greater than 500 personal entities, and international governments.
In addition to having their names, and really lives, linked to terrorism amongst these regulation enforcement, personal, and governmental entities, tens of millions of harmless Muslims have suffered with the next penalties laid out by ACLU due to their placement on the TSDA’s No Fly Listing:
- Incapacity to journey by air to, from, or over the U.S. due to placement on the No Fly Listing, which is a subset of the TSDB;
- Invasive bodily searches and heightened scrutiny at TSA checkpoints each time a watchlisted individual seeks to fly;
- Extended detention, interrogation, and bodily searches at U.S. borders and ports of entry;
- Prolonged visitors stops and searches by state and native regulation enforcement officers;
- Detention, interrogation, surveillance, and harassment by international authorities officers;
- Incapacity to change into a naturalized U.S. citizen or everlasting resident or get hold of different immigration advantages due to prolonged delay or pretextual denial of functions;
- Unexplained denial of visa functions; and
- Problem acquiring employment that requires a background examine.
This sort of government-sponsored discrimination, led by the FBI, is exactly why greater than half (52%) of the American public has an unfavorable view of Islam, with most tending to affiliate the faith with violence whereas having favorable views of Christianity and Judaism. Most of those that share unfavorable opinions about Islam are politically conservative, affiliated with evangelical Christianity, and have racial tendencies that assist white Christian Nationalism.
The hardcore spiritual bias being ginned up and exploited by the FBI is deeply rooted within the historical past of America. It’s as American as apple pie.
We have now an extended historical past of utilizing hatred and worry of “the opposite” to rally the bottom and consolidate energy. Within the present setting of extremely divisive politics, Black, Brown, Asian, and Muslim Individuals have been used as political pawns to fire up the bottom and generate worry, which leads too usually to violence. It’s time for the “Watchlist” to be topic to public scrutiny, uncovered for what it’s, and eradicated to the dustbin of historical past.
