Sarsour: Screening of Islamophobic Film To Police Officers Part Of A “Larger Pattern Of Religious and Ethnic Bias”

By on January 27, 2012  News
Jan 272012
 

bks_thirdjihad-300x187The director of a Bay Ridge-based Arab-American organization has called on Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to step down over his role in appearing in an anti-Muslim film, having it screened during mandatory counter-terrorism training sessions, and for the program of surveillance aimed at Arab and Muslim communities in New York.

When initially challenged by the Village Voice a year ago, the NYPD first denied that any officer had seen The Third Jihad, a film produced by The Clarion Fund (itself an offshoot of Aish Hatorah, described by Atlantic Monthly columnist Jeffrey Goldberg as “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today”). The Department eventually admitted that “some” officers had seen it, but it wasn’t until a Freedom Of Information Act request by The Brennan Center For Justice came to fruition did the full impact become known – the film was screened on “continuous loop” to 68 lieutenants, 159 sergeants, 31 detectives and 1,231 patrol officers. Continue reading »

Muslim-owned Ridge coffee shop caught between privacy rights and surveillance authority

By on November 9, 2011  Featured story, News
Nov 092011
 

 

In 1999, an alleged program of illegal government surveillance also affected the employability of a Maryland labor lawyer (pictured, left).

In 1999, an alleged program of illegal government surveillance also affected the employability of a Maryland labor lawyer (pictured, left).

The former owner of a shuttered 5th Avenue coffee shop was profiled in a lengthy Associated Press follow-up to their groundbreaking investigation into the NYPD’s surveillance program targeting New York’s Muslim community.

The AP reports that Mousa Ahman knew that the Bay Ridge International Café, the coffee shop on the corner of 5th Avenue and 71st Street that he owned, was under surveillance by the authorities long before the AP’s put the spotlight on the NYPD’s spying program – from suspicion of strangers stationing themselves inside the café or on nearby benches for hours, and from a police raid on a neighboring barber shop. Fearing that they would end up on a blacklist, customers stopped going to Ahman’s shop, which eventually closed down. The NYPD surveillance program has been criticized for illegally targeting an ethnic community with unreasonable privacy incursions without evidence of wrongdoing, though the Police Department disputes this.

Individuals such as Ahman who feel as though they are the victims of unconstitutional surveillance may not have any practical legal options in today’s legislative and judicial environment. The story quotes an executive director for the New York Civil Liberties Union as saying, “It’s really not clear that people can do anything if they’ve been subjected to unlawful surveillance anymore.”

Read the full AP article on the NY Daily News.