“As a former police sergeant who worked with the squad said: ‘We are there to collect intelligence about criminal activity or terrorism. Why are we asking, “Are you Muslim?” “What mosque do you go to?” What does that have to do with terrorism?’” The Times, of course, leaves that out there as a rhetorical question, without bothering to inform its readers that a Long Island mosque was recently revealed to have supported jihad terrorists, or that mosques in Austria were recently raided for supporting the Syrian jihad, or that Nigerian clerics are recruiting for Boko Haram in mosques, or that a mullah was recently killed in a bomb-making accident in a mosque in Afghanistan, or that a London mosque was used as a base for international jihad terror operations. Should the NYPD have informants in mosques? Absolutely. Is the New York Times once again on the side of America’s enemies by publishing a story suggesting that the placement of such informants is gratuitous and unwarranted? Absolutely.
“Muslims and the N.Y.P.D.,” by the New York Times Editorial Board, May 25, 2014 (thanks to Bill):
New York City’s police commissioner, William Bratton, made the right decision last month when he said he would disband a unit used by his predecessor, Raymond Kelly, to spy on law-abiding Muslims as they worshiped or patronized businesses in their communities. Beyond proving useless for intelligence purposes, the Demographics Unit undermined the fight against terrorism by alienating Muslims who were understandably angry about being singled out, not for illegal conduct but because of their religious affiliation.
This problem has yet to be fully resolved. As The Times’s Joseph Goldstein reported, the department is still running a program that singles out Muslims in a problematic way, this time to recruit them as informants. The department says the program, run by a squad of detectives euphemistically known as the Citywide Debriefing Team, has led to breaks in important cases. But the department has a long history of trampling on people’s rights during investigations of political activity, while making inflated claims about the value of its intelligence operations.
Since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, this unit has been searching the city jails for immigrants, typically Muslims, whom it then tries to persuade to become informants. Historically, informants are asked to provide information about criminal enterprises they know something about or have been part of. This effort has sought to recruit Muslims regardless of what they know, based largely on origin or Muslim-sounding names. As a former police sergeant who worked with the squad said: “We are there to collect intelligence about criminal activity or terrorism. Why are we asking, ‘Are you Muslim?’ ‘What mosque do you go to?’ What does that have to do with terrorism?”
Some of those potential recruits have been hauled in for petty offenses or even noncriminal violations. In some cases they have been held in custody longer than necessary so that detectives can interrogate them about where they attend religious services, the names of relatives and where they spend their free time.
The department insists that the subjects answered voluntarily. But since they were already in custody, many of them understandably feared further punishment if they failed to cooperate….
jihad3tracker says
Why do believe it is wrong to “single out” Muslims ? Very simple, basic human psychology : White privilege guilt.
We can be sure that members of the New York Times Editorial Board do not have to worry about whether there will be enough moolah in the bank for the next mortgage payment, or if they can afford a gold-tier membership at a tennis & exercise spa.
But the preponderant chunk of Manhattan Muslims, and of course Allah’s army around the world DO HAVE such money worries. VOILA !!! That inequity becomes the operative subconscious bias we encounter in this piece.
As P.T. Barnum is reputed to have said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
WVinMN says
The current version of the New York Times might even shame Walter Duranty .
Shane says
This is another example of willful ignorance by the Left. These twits try hard to deny that our enemies are devout Muslims who are engaged in a Jihad against the USA and the West, and they use terrorist tactics in this holy war. The liberals are dhimmis at best, traitors at worst. How can we defeat the enemy when the left refuses to identify them?
jewdog says
Don’t worry, most people have much more common sense that the Times.
Remember that the canon of left-wing morality is Western racism. That’s why the Times, a left-wing rag, is intent on demonizing the cops for doing their job, when they should be concentrating on the hatred and incitement coming out of so many mosques.
45charlie says
This SOB lived only minutes from me. His father is a VIP at the local Mosque I have had words with ! “Canadian gets life in embassy bomb plot
Mohammed “Sammy” Jabarah, the St. Catharines school boy who grew to be a high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorist with direct ties to Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to life in a U.S. prison for plotting to bomb American embassies in Southeast Asia.
By The Ottawa CitizenJanuary 19, 2008
Mohammed “Sammy” Jabarah, the St. Catharines school boy who grew to be a high-ranking al-Qaeda terrorist with direct ties to Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to life in a U.S. prison for plotting to bomb American embassies in Southeast Asia.
The heavy penalty was due to “the nature of your participation in two conspiracies at the very highest level,” U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones told the 26-year-old Canadian in a New York courtroom yesterday.
Prosecution documents unsealed by the court reveal fresh details in the case, which was so shrouded in secrecy that American justice officials have never acknowledged they were holding Mr. Jabarah, who was arrested in 2002.
The new information portrays a Canadian teenager who became so thoroughly indoctrinated by radical Islam that by 2001, at the age of 19 and with a “clean” Canadian passport in his pocket, he was rising to become one of al-Qaeda’s earliest and most trusted operatives from North America.
He pledged allegiance to Mr. bin Laden in person that summer and met the al-Qaeda leader to discuss strategy on at least three other occasions. His first controller was none other than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Mr. Jabarah, who was 12 when his family moved to St. Catharines from Kuwait in 1994, now stands as Canada’s only convicted “homegrown” Islamic extremist (he holds dual citizenship), the first to plead guilty to waging a jihad against Americans, and the highest-ranking known al-Qaeda member from Canada.
“Jabarah was a deadly serious terrorist,” said Mark Mershon, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s New York office. “Fortunately he did not succeed in his plans, the consequences of which would have been devastating.”
In her 2004 book Seeds of Terror, Jakarta-based investigative journalist Maria Ressa, who had access to CSIS and FBI files, chronicles Mr. Jabarah’s progression from a Roman Catholic school in St. Catharines, through the radical Muslim education system to the terrorist training camps of Afghanistan.
As a teenager, he returned to Kuwait for summer holidays and, along with an older brother, Abdul Rahman, became increasingly involved with radical Islamic teachings. He later trained in guerrilla warfare, explosives and electronic operations, ambush and assassination techniques, sniper courses, the use of hand-held missiles and as a candidate for Mr. bin Laden’s corps of bodyguards.
When he saw pictures of the hijackers following the 9/11 attacks, he recognized four as fellow trainees. He also picked out Richard Reid, the British shoe bomber who was overpowered while trying to ignite a bomb on a transatlantic flight.
Shortly before the 9/11 attacks, Mr. Jabarah tried to persuade Mr. bin Laden to assign him to an attack in North America because of his excellent English.
“I have a clean Canadian passport. I can travel anywhere and merge into western cities better than others who work for you,” he argued, according to the book.
Thomas Quiggin, Canada’s only court-appointed expert on jihadism and a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said the Jabarah case is another in series of signals that Canada has a radicalization problem and, “we are doing little to address the ongoing issues or prevent further radicalization.
“We are seeing an increasing amount of evidence that radicalization is occurring in Canada, but we have no religious rehabilitation program to deal with this kind of individual. If he were to serve his time in Canada, would we know how to deal with him, or would he continue to spread his views of radicalized Islam in the jail system?”
In 2001, before the al-Qaeda attacks in the U.S., Khalid Sheikh Mohammed dispatched Mr. Jabarah to meet with terror group Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia and organize attacks on western embassies and other targets there.
The idea was to strike in Manila, preferably at the U.S. or British embassies, with Mr. Jabarah — code-named “Sammy” — acting as a key planner and paymaster, according to Seeds of Terror. But the targets were hard to hit, and they moved on to Singapore with the same type of target in their sights. Again there were problems as Singapore cracked down in the wake of the New York and Washington attacks.
Mr. Jabarah fled to Thailand and Oman, where he was arrested and deported to Canada. After confessing to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, he surrendered to the FBI in April 2002 and soon after pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens in the plots.
While Mr. Jabarah was pursuing his bombing campaign in Southeast Asia, his brother, Abdul Rahman, one year older, was doing his al-Qaeda duty in Saudi Arabia. (He died in a 2003 gun battle with Saudi police.)
Jemaah Islamiyah, meanwhile, switched to Plan B, the bombing of the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar in Bali, killing 202 people, mainly foreign tourists.
After his arrest, Mr. Jabarah initially co-operated with authorities. But the death of a friend killed by U.S. marines in his native Kuwait turned him against the Americans. “By Allah I will Revenge your death,” he wrote on a newspaper article about the death that was found in his cell.
Officials say he started, “secretly planning to exploit (a) perception of co-operation,” so he could get close enough to FBI agents and prosecutors to kill them with steak knives.
“Weapons and papers seized from Jabarah during an impromptu search of his quarters left little doubt that Jabarah was bent on carrying out a martyrdom mission to murder the ‘infidel’ agents and prosecutors whom he considered responsible for his capture,” according to sentencing memorandum made public in court yesterday.
Mr. Jabarah asked the judge to allow him to return to live with his family, which has moved back to Kuwait, instead of being sent to prison. He said he would like to study medicine and become an ophthalmologist.
“I do not believe in terrorism, violence or killing,” he told Judge Jones. “I am not, I repeat, I am not an infamous terrorist who was indoctrinated at an early age to kill Americans on a terrorist mission.”
The judge said it was “tragic” that he had ceased co-operation with the government and told him that, while he claimed that he’d been brainwashed at age 19 by the al-Qaeda leadership, it was his decision to participate in the terror plots.
“I understand how young people can make foolish mistakes,” the judge said. “It seems to me that even a 19- or 20-year-old who’d make a decision to go ahead and kill people at the embassies had gone past being duped.”
Mr. Jabarah’s lawyer, Kenneth Paul, said his client intends to appeal the sentence.”
Islam_Macht_Frei says
“The department says the program, run by a squad of detectives euphemistically known as the Citywide Debriefing Team, …”
How ’bout his: “Jihad recruitment, training, and munitions storage sites, euphemistically known as ‘mosques’…”
Leith Wood says
If the FBI and Boston police had checked the mosque the brothers were attending, they might have prevented the terrorist attack at the marathon. Another stupid NYT’s article. You have to name the enemy before you can stop it. The pc mentality is helping to ruin American freedoms. Obama and his henchmen and women are helping. Wake up!
Jaladhi says
Mosques are terror breeding holes. Period!! If all the imams of all world mosques are gotten rid of by some means, Muslim terrorism will be reduced considerably. Its the imams who incite Muslims to do all atrocious acts by quoting Mo and Quran. Cut head of the serpent!!
Tradewinds says
“As a former police sergeant who worked with the squad said: “We are there to collect intelligence about criminal activity or terrorism. Why are we asking, ‘Are you Muslim?’ ‘What mosque do you go to?’ What does that have to do with terrorism?”
Somehow, the Times left out that this “former police sergeant” is a Muslim.
Kind of important info, don’t you think? (That’s why they left it out).
Aardvark says
I read it as:
“We are there to collect intelligence about criminal activity or terrorism. Why are we asking, ‘Are you Muslim?’ ‘What mosque do you go to?’ What does that have to do with terrorism? /sarc”.
I wonder what facial expression this ‘former police sergeant’ was wearing as he said it?
Richard Sherman says
Muslims revere the sociopath Muhammad who personally decapitated 900 unarmed Jews and kidnapped and enslaved approximately one thousand Jewish girls and women..muslims think everything Muhammad did was wonderful and should be emulated…the 1993 Wtc bombing, the 9/11 etc bombing,…but Bratton is clueless; he cannot prevent teenagers from climbing to the top of the Freedom Tower …and has no idea that for 1400 years Muslims read the Koran and then run out and kill infidels…
Salah says
Looks like the Muslim Brotherhood thugs are running the New York Times!
The New York Times’ Propaganda War on Egypt (by Raymond Ibrahim)
http://blogs.cbn.com/ibrahim/archive/2014/05/20/the-new-york-times-propaganda-war-on-egypt.aspx