The Rise of Islamophobia

By Arsalan Iftikhar, TomPaine.com. Posted May 23, 2005.

Nearly four years after from the 9/11 terror attacks—the greatest tragedy to befall our nation in modern history—our country has learned certain lessons regarding our role in the global community.  But we have more to learn about treatment of our own citizens—lessons that will hopefully lead us to a stronger, safer and more vibrant society for people of all races, faiths and cultures.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the most disturbing legal trend in America has been the growing disparity in how American Muslims are treated under the law.

Recently, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest American Muslim civil rights group, reported  that it processed a total of 1,522 incident reports of civil rights cases last year—a 49 percent increase in cases of harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment from 2003. That's the highest number of Muslim civil rights cases ever reported to CAIR.

In addition, CAIR received 141 reports of actual and potential violent anti-Muslim hate crimes, a 52 percent increase from 2003.

Overall, 10 states alone accounted for almost 79 percent of all reported incidents of discrimination. These states include California, New York, Arizona, Virginia, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois.

By far the greatest increase from last year occurred in the area of unreasonable arrests, detentions, unlawful searches/seizures and interrogations. In 2003, complaints concerning suspect law enforcement techniques accounted for only 7 percent of all reported incidents. In 2004, however, these reports rose to almost 26 percent of all reported cases to CAIR.

In the months after 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcroft, using his powers under section 412 of the now infamous USA PATRIOT Act, rounded up and imprisoned well over 1,200 Muslim and Arab men based solely on pretextual immigration violations. The most disturbing fact about these mass roundups was the fact that the Justice Department refused to disclose the detainees’ identities, give them access to lawyers or allow them to have contact with their families. The inspector general conceded in his official report that they stopped counting the detainees after 1,200 because the “statistics became too confusing.”

Georgetown University law professor and civil liberties expert David Cole has said that, “Thousands were detained in this blind search for terrorists without any real evidence of terrorism, and ultimately without netting virtually any terrorists of any kind.”

In June 2002, Ashcroft instituted the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, more commonly referred to as NSEERS. One of the most ambiguous and publicly debated aspects of NSEERS was known as “Special Registration.” Special Registration required all male nationals over the age of 14 from 25 countries to report to the government to be registered and fingerprinted. With the sole exception of North Korea, every single one of the 25 countries on the Special Registration bulletin was Muslim or Arab. The ACLU denounced the plan as “a thinly veiled effort to trigger massive and discriminatory deportations of certain immigrants.”

In one year alone, the Special Registration program registered 83,310 foreign nationals, placing 13,740 into deportation proceedings.

Arsalan Iftikhar is national legal director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest American Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. CAIR is based in Washington, D.C.

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