Remember: Yusufi Vali is saying this about the Countering Violent Extremism program, which Barack Obama has taken great pains to ensure is not “founded on the premise that your faith determines your propensity towards violence.” If even that weak, fantasy-based, toothless program is too much for Yusufi Vali, one has to wonder what counter-terror measures, if any, would be acceptable to him. Then recall that Yusufi Vali is affiliated with the Islamic Society of Boston, which has numerous ties to jihad terrorists.
Anyway, what with Islamic jihadists exclusively targeting the non-Muslim (and “heretical” Muslim) community, this focus, such as it is, seems reasonable.
“Islamic leader says US officials unfairly target Muslims,” by Bryan Bender, Boston Globe, February 18, 2015 (thanks to Tarn):
WASHINGTON — A top leader of Boston’s Muslim community on Wednesday strenuously objected to a new Justice Department strategy to prevent disaffected youth from taking up terrorism, complaining that the effort is “exclusively targeting the American Muslim community.”
In a strongly worded protest to a report that US Attorney Carmen Ortiz delivered to a White House summit on Wednesday, Yusufi Vali said he could not support the framework because the programs “are founded on the premise that your faith determines your propensity towards violence.”
The comments by Vali, executive director of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, demonstrate the difficulty the Obama administration faces in taking preemptive action to prevent troubled youths from becoming violent extremists, while not trampling on individual rights or singling out particular communities for scrutiny.
Last fall, Boston was chosen along with Los Angeles and Minneapolis to spearhead a Justice Department effort known as “Countering Violent Extremism.”
Vali has been one of the local participants, and the Boston experience was the subject of a 28-page report released at the White House summit.
“It clearly appears that the CVE initiative is exclusively targeting the American-Muslim community, in spite of the best efforts of the local US attorney to redefine it expansively,” Vali wrote, using the acronym for the administration effort.
Ortiz did not respond to requests to comment directly on Vali’s charge, and some other members of the local Muslim community said the emerging outreach effort seemed to be working.
President Obama, in remarks to the attendees on Wednesday, insisted that the effort would not single out Muslims for their religion.
“Nobody should be profiled or put under a cloud of suspicion simply because of their faith,” he said, pledging that outreach to the Muslim community would not be a “cloak for surveillance.”…