FBI Denies Targeting Islam

Source: OnIslam

CAIRO – Facing huge criticism over its Islamophobic programs, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) denied targeting Islam, adding that its training materials does not reflect the bureau’s views, the New York Times reported on Saturday, September 17.

The training material “does not reflect the views of the FBI and is not consistent with the overall instruction provided to FBI personnel,” FBI said in a statement posted on its website.

The FBI added that the materials were presented only once, in April, to an audience of 37 agents at the Northern Virginia Resident Agency.

Such a program “was quickly discontinued because it was inconsistent with FBI standards on this topic.”

“As of August 2011, the individual who delivered the presentation no longer provides training on behalf of the FBI,” the agency said.

“These corrective measures were made before recent media attention was given to this topic,” the agency said.

Earlier reports said that FBI agents are being trained that mainstream Muslims are terrorist sympathizers, who turn into violent people once they become pious.

The controversial FBI chart cited by the Danger Room magazine also said that Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him) is a cult leader, whose mindset is a source for terrorism.

Linking piety to violence, another presentation, titled “Militancy Considerations”, says that by time, followers of the Torah and the Bible move from “violent” to “non-violent”.

This is not the first time the FBI used anti-Muslim materials in training its counterterrorism agents.

In July, the FBI used training materials that claim Islam “transforms [a] country’s culture into 7th-century Arabian ways”.

Earlier in May, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), America’s largest Muslim advocacy group, called on the Home Security to investigate the use of foreign trainers who offer hostile, stereotypical and inaccurate information about Muslims and Islam to the nation's security personnel.

Several of the anti-Muslim materials were authorized by FBI intelligence analyst William Gawthrop, who holds hostile views about Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessing be upon him).

In 2006, Gawthrop told the website WorldNetDaily that the Prophet “Muhammad’s mindset is a source for terrorism.”

FBI Norm

FBI materials drew immediate criticism from Arab-American, Muslim groups and even American Senators who deplored the bigoted materials.

“It’s really troubling,” Abed Ayoub, the legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told the New York Times.

Ayoub noted that the use of the material in counterterrorism training was only one of numerous cases in which training materials for law enforcement agencies have portrayed Islam or Arabs in a negative light.

“The bigger question is how did this material get in there in the first place?” he said.

“Do you not have rules or guidelines that will prevent this from happening?”

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) agreed.

“This isn’t a revelation to us,” Hooper said.

“We’ve been dealing with this issue for quite some time now. There’s a problem with the use of anti-Islamic trainers and Islamophobic materials.”

Not only Muslim groups, FBI materials were denounced by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the ranking Republican on the committee.

Both Senators sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano expressing concerns that “some counterterrorism training provided to state and local law enforcement has been inaccurate and even inflammatory.”

“There is no room in America for the lies, propagated by al-Qaida, that the US is at war with Islam, or the lie propagated by others that all Muslims support terrorism,” Sen. Lieberman told Danger Room.

“Proper training about violent Islamist extremism is absolutely essential for our law enforcement personnel in order to empower them to identify and understand this grave threat, and then protect the American people from it,” Lieberman says.

“Part of this training must be an understanding of the clear and profound difference between Islamist extremism, which is a totalitarian political ideology that is at war with us, and Islam, which is a religion practiced by more than a billion people around the world, including millions of law-abiding and loyal Americans.”

Since 9/11, Muslims, estimated between six to seven million, have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was stigmatizing their faith.

US Muslims are particularly wary of the FBI’s history of targeting members of their community.

In 2009, Muslim groups threatened to suspend all contacts with the FBI over sending informants into mosques.