Asia Times: Washington's targeting of Arabs, Muslims assailed


	March 26, 2002	atimes.com

WAR ON TERROR

Washington's targeting of Arabs, Muslims assailed
By Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON - State interrogations of and raids on Arab and Muslim individuals and institutions in the United States have intensified, sending shock waves through these communities.

The latest clampdown followed Wednesday's announcement by US Attorney General John Ashcroft of a new round of interrogations of some 3,000 foreigners in the country. They are to be questioned in a bid to root out any connections they might have with militant groups.

The announcement has been roundly criticized by Arab-American and civil liberties groups and have brought Ashcroft's own credentials as a right-wing Christian under the spotlight.

Critics of the questioning say it is part of a multiphased and multifaceted racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims that has swept the United States since the September 11 terrorist attacks. The campaign has succeeded in intimidating entire sections of the US population but not in netting terrorists or their supporters, they say, citing a recent Justice Department report. In it, Ashcroft's department acknowledged that interviews with a first batch of 5,000 Muslims aged 18-32 have yielded only a few arrests for immigration violations.

The Justice Department said the second round of interviews would complement the first set, which had targeted young Muslims who had come to the United States from countries where the al-Qaeda group of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden was said to be active.

The department, in its report, admitted that most interviews to date have uncovered no knowledge about the terrorist attacks. Ashcroft, however, said the real purpose of the months-long process was to send a message to the Arab and Muslim communities that they are being watched.

"Such a climate could cause would-be terrorists to scale back, delay or abandon their plans altogether," Ashcroft told reporters. He said this proactive strategy "may well have contributed to the fact that we have not suffered a substantial terrorist attack since September 11".

Officially, as are voluntary, meaning interviewees can choose not to cooperate. During the first round, however, teams of two or more investigators - typically from the Federal Bureau for Investigation (FBI) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) - often paid unexpected visits to the interviewees and forced their way into their homes and places of work. The officials routinely asked Arabs and Muslims what they thought of bin Laden, al-Qaeda and the war in Afghanistan, and whether there were things they did not like about the United States. Usually armed, the investigators told interviewees their eligibility for successful immigrating to the United States would improve if they volunteered information about anti-American statements or individuals who were possibly angry at America. The young Muslim males also were required to account for their background, contacts in the United States and elsewhere, places visited prior to arriving in the United States, and their plans.

Dozens of raids by law-enforcement officials were reported on the heels of Ashcroft's announcement. Arab and Muslim homes, businesses, and institutions were targeted in at least two states on Wednesday: Virginia and Georgia. Community advocates decried the operations as fishing expeditions, meaning they were intended to net evidence but were launched without legally defensible cause to believe the evidence would be found. Federal agents retorted that they had enough probable cause to persuade a federal magistrate to issue warrants authorizing the raids.

Among those raided was the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), a think-tank based in Herndon, Virginia, near Washington. Agents of the FBI and other federal agencies stormed the building and ordered staff members to leave their desks without touching anything. A number of homes also were raided.

Lawyer Nawar Shora of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) said he spoke with a man whose home was raided and was told by this man that he, his mother, and his family were deeply distressed by the episode. Shora withheld the man's name but said he is a US-born citizen and a Muslim. He said FBI, INS and local police officers, backed up by a paramilitary SWAT (Special Weapons And Tactics) team, conducted the raid.

"The Muslim community is deeply concerned about what appears to be a fishing expedition by federal authorities using McCarthy-like tactics in a search for evidence of wrongdoing that does not exist," said Jason Erb of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based advocacy group. Erb was referring to the late senator Joseph McCarthy, who led an anti-communist campaign of intimidation characterized by false charges and character assassination and who was finally censured by the Senate in 1954.

Congressman John Conyers, a Democrat, criticized the recent raids and the new round of interrogations as a threat to US liberties. "While the Bush administration speaks of uniting the nation, its continued racial profiling, interrogation and detention of thousands of Arabs and Muslims is having the opposite effect," Conyers said in a statement. "It is time for the president to realize that the only thing these practices will secure is the downfall of democratic freedoms in America."

Some Arab and Muslim Americans say they now live in an atmosphere of coercion and fear that could prove counterproductive in the US administration's self-proclaimed war against terror. "Many Muslims responded to the government's call for translators after September 11," said Raed Tayeh of the Washington-based American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice. "Now they know the government doesn't care about them anyway. This will only create hostility and animosity among the Muslim community."

Worshippers at the Dar-al-Hijra mosque, a few minutes' drive from the Pentagon in northern Virginia, told IPS that they noticed muscular men in dark glasses videotaping their car license plates and taking pictures of those who entered the house of worship. "They were not trying to hide themselves," said one worshipper. "I think they are trying to let us know they are monitoring the place. This could actually mean that their video cameras have no tapes."

Many attribute this wave of intimidation to the attorney general himself. "He said bad stuff about Islam before," said the same worshipper. "The funny part is that he is meant to be religious."

The Muslim man, who asked not to be identified by name, was referring to an Ashcroft interview with syndicated columnist Cal Thomas published on the Christian Internet site crosswalk.com. Ashcroft was quoted as saying: "Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him. Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you."

Muslim groups said these and other Ashcroft statements included inaccuracies about Islam.

(Inter Press Service)