In the midst of (possibly overhyped) heightened concerns about domestic radicalization, and a few weeks after the Muslim Public Affairs Council released a report making recommendations to law enforcement about how to counter radicalization in American Muslim communities without creating a backlash, the New York Times reports that the relationship between Muslim communities and law enforcement are beginning to show signs of strain:
But those relations have reached a low point in recent months, many Muslim leaders say. Several high-profile cases in which informers have infiltrated mosques and helped promote plots, they say, have sown a corrosive fear among their people that F.B.I. informers are everywhere, listening.
“There is a sense that law enforcement is viewing our communities not as partners but as objects of suspicion,” said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, who represented Muslims at the national prayer service a day after President Obama’s inauguration. “A lot of people are really, really alarmed about this.”
Part of the source of the strain is the fact that several recently foiled plots have involved FBI informants infiltrating Muslim communities who -- in the view of some Muslim leaders -- have "promoted" the plots to operational capacity before acting. The FBI has also kept Bush-era rules regarding the use of race and ethnicity as a factor when "selecting subjects for scrutiny," something that suggests complaints about "political correctness" in law enforcement are nonsense.
As I've said before, a positive relationship between American Muslim communities and law enforcement is a crucial national security issue. But if Muslims are viewed by law enforcement merely as potential terrorists, informants, or -- as the article put it -- part of a terrorism "early warning system" rather than American citizens who are entitled to the same rights and protections as everyone else, then establishing and maintaining that relationship will ultimately prove difficult.
-- A. Serwer
