Muslims lay out Their Demands for the NYPD!

In the wake of the recent story about the CIA and NYPD gathering information on the Islamic community, Muslims and their leftist supporters have issued a list of demands for the CIA, State of NY, and NYPD.

Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition
c/o CLEAR – Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility
City University of New York School of Law, 65-21 Main Street, Flushing, NY 11367
CIVIL LIBERTIES COALITION CALLS FOR HEARINGS & ACCOUNTABILITY FOR NYPD
Responds to Reports of NYPD-CIA Collaboration

(New York, NY, August 25, 2011)—The Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC) is deeply troubled by the news of the New York City Police Department’s collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on American Muslim communities. The reporting suggests that the CIA may be violating the prohibition on domestic spying. Despite Mayor Bloomberg’s insistence otherwise, it is clear that the NYPD is spying on entire communities without any particular suspicion of criminal activity. Community-based surveillance falls well beyond the
purview of even the NYPD’s broad preventative mandate.

From growing reliance on unsubstantiated and discriminatory theories about radicalization, to revelations about law enforcement’s use of Islamophobic training materials, to a number of reports documenting government informants literally encouraging and devising terrorist plots, there is a growing body of evidence to confirm what Muslim communities have been long been saying: the NYPD and FBI are engaging in blatant religious, racial, and national origin profiling and broadbased surveillance of Muslim communities, absent suspicion of criminal activity. The FBI’s own guidelines authorize the agency to undertake “assessments” prior to any indication of criminal activity. Now every American must ask about the role of the CIA in these operations.

Together, these practices paint a dangerous picture of the ways in which law enforcement engages with Muslim communities under the banner of national security. These McCarthyite spying techniques threaten the civil rights of all Americans, and deepen the long-existing rifts between communities of color and police in the United States.

Since 2007 MACLC has raised concerns about NYPD policies that encourage police officers to spy on Muslim communities when there is no indication of wrongdoing. Despite MACLC’s best efforts, the NYPD has refused to engage meaningfully with those that draw attention to problems with its policies. We believe the time has come for this issue to be taken up more broadly.

MACLC calls on:
• the New York City Council to investigate and oversee the NYPD’s operations, as well as a City Comptroller Audit;
• the Obama Administration to initiate a federal investigation into the extent to which the CIA has engaged in domestic spying within the United States, in violation of law and its manadate;
• Congress and the New York State Senate to hold hearings into the NYPD’s, FBI’s, and CIA’s surveillance and policing practices in Muslim communities with a focus on the role of informants;
• Congress and New York State Senate to pass enforceable anti-racial profiling legislation;
• NYPD and the Department of Justice to revise their internal guidelines to disallow the use of surveillance and informants absent suspicion of specific criminal activity.

MACLC also calls on the civil liberties community and civil society to send a message to the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg that the public has not granted them a mandate for this surveillance operation.Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition
c/o CLEAR – Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility
City University of New York School of Law, 65-21 Main Street, Flushing, NY 11367

Submitted on behalf of Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition members:

Abdelhafid Djemil
Muslim American Society of New York
Aisha Al-Adawiya
Women In Islam, Inc.
Asim Rehman
Muslim Bar Association of New York

Cyrus McGoldrick
Council on American Islamic Relations – New York

Dalia Toor
Muslim Public Affairs Council – New York

Fahd Ahmed & Monami Maulik
DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving

Linda Sarsour
Arab American Association of New York

Megan Putney & Tahanie Aboushi
Muslim Consultative Network

Omar Mohammedi
Association of Muslim American Lawyers

P. Adem Carroll
Muslim Progressive Traditionalist Alliance

Professors Ramzi Kassem & Amna Akbar
CLEAR – Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility
City University of New York School of Law

Submitted on behalf of Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition allies:

New York State Senator Bill Perkins

Al-Awda New York
Alicia McWilliams
Arab American Action Network (AAAN)
Ashraf Nubani, Esq., National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF)
Asian American Legal Defense & Education Fund
Asian Law Caucus

Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition
c/o CLEAR – Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility
City University of New York School of Law, 65-21 Main Street, Flushing, NY 11367
Azadeh Shahshahani, Executive Vice President, National Lawyers Guild*

Bill of Rights Defense Committee
CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
David H. Remes
Fellowship of Reconciliation
George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary
Hamid Khan
The Interfaith Center of New York
Islamic Circle of North American (ICNA)
Jeanne Theoharis, Professor, Brooklyn College of CUNY; Co-Founder, Educators for Civil Liberties
Labor for Palestine
Michael Ratner
Muslim Justice Initiative
New York City Labor Against the War
New York Neighbors for American Values
Pakistan Solidarity Network
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center
Richard Abel, Connell Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA
Rights Working Group
Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology, Columbia University
The September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows
Sikh Coalition
South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)
South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD), Vancouver, BC, Canada
Stephen Downs and Kathy Manley, Project SALAM
Sue Udry, Executive Director, Defending Dissent Foundation
Veena Dubal, Staff Attorney, Asian Law Caucus
Zaheer Uddin, Muslim Leaders of New York

*affiliation noted for identification purposes only

The official statement can be viewed HERE.

Once again we see how quickly Muslims rally together to support their agenda. We also see they have an endless list of demands. To defeat them we are going to have to get more organized, and speaker louder than they do! All within the law, of course.