This appalling article is a quintessential example of how wrongheaded and foolish police departments all over the country are in their dealings with Muslim communities. Comments interspersed below.
“Police in Las Vegas forge close ties to the city’s Muslim community,” by John M. Glionna, Washington Post, May 22, 2016:
LAS VEGAS — The two officers were on foot, chasing down a skinny street player who was peddling crack and pot from a grimy West Las Vegas alleyway.
The dealer was fleet-footed, and the last they saw, he had ducked into a nearby mosque. Breathless, the officers stopped at the gate and considered their options. It was 2008.
“We stood there, hemming and hawing,” said Lt. Sasha Larkin of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. “We didn’t know anything about the place other than it was green. We were like, ‘Can we even go in there?’ In the end, we just walked away, saying, ‘Maybe another day.’ ”
OK, so a drug dealer goes inside the mosque, and police officers don’t know if they can go in there? If he had ducked into a church, would they have been so circumspect? And as it happened, they let him go altogether, because he was inside the mosque. That’s an indication of how thoroughly cowed police forces are today regarding Muslims and Islam.
The luckless pursuit, however, was not a total bust.
Looks as if it wasn’t a bust at all, in fact.
The department soon decided it needed plainclothed foot patrols in the high-crime neighborhood to better know the people who lived there, including the adherents of the Masjid As-Sabur mosque.
Now, Larkin and a cadre of officers are regular guests at a half-dozen mosques across this gambling mecca as part of a concerted outreach effort to the Muslim community. They grasp the tensions between Shiite and Sunni factions and have learned to observe key Islamic customs — officers remove their shoes, and female officers don hijabs during Friday prayer sessions. In an effort to build trust, they have emerged as empathetic problem solvers, helping religious leaders cut through city red tape, responding to reports of vandalism and cleaning up trash and abandoned vehicles.
So a criminal ducked into a mosque, police feared to pursue him into it, and subsequently established an outreach program in which they signal to the Muslim community their submission and acceptance of Islamic norms. This is progress?
And at a time when many police departments are trying to build better ties to the country’s estimated 6 million Muslims worshiping at 2,000 mosques across the country, Las Vegas’s program could prove a model for others.
“Very quietly, Las Vegas police have created a national model on how to connect two disparate cultures,” said Aslam Abdullah, director of Masjid Ibrahim, a Las Vegas-based nonprofit organization dealing with Muslim American issues. “I travel to Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and many Muslims there don’t believe me when I tell them that this kind of relationship is possible.”
After terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, Abdullah said, police here reached out to area mosques to offer increased patrols as a precaution against any backlash against Muslims. And when community members pointed out that a police terrorism training video included an actor wearing a religious skullcap — something leaders see as more representative of faith than violence — the segment was removed and the department sent a letter of apology.
If you didn’t know the details of the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels, you might get the idea from that paragraph that Muslims were the victims; in any case, the feared “backlash,” as always, failed to materialize — but Las Vegas police nonetheless reinforced the idea that whenever Muslims murder non-Muslims, it’s Muslims who are really the victims. And by the removal of the segment featuring a terrorist with a “religious skullcap” — apparently not a yarmulke — the cops signaled that they knew they must not focus on the motivating ideology of the murderers. To do so would be “Islamophobic.”
The police department’s goal, Larkin said, is to help better operate within a tightknit and often mistrustful community of 30,000 Muslims, and to help Muslim leaders police their own community as well. She leads a team of six: five police officers and a fire captain.
Larkin’s team networks with a dozen religious groups that also include Sikh, Bahai, Chaldean and Coptic Christians. They help school new immigrants on how to handle encounters with U.S. law enforcement. (Never, they advise, offer bribes.) But the work that stands out is with Muslims, whose religion is perhaps the country’s most misunderstood and surely its most politically attacked.
Las Vegas is not alone in its Muslim outreach. Police departments across the country have tried to tackle tensions.
Paul Di Lella, the director of law enforcement affairs for the California-based nonprofit organization Not In Our Town, which tries to combat hate in U.S. communities, said that 30 law enforcement agencies tuned in to the March webinar, which featured talks with such titles as “Facing Controversy and Ensuring Safety When a New Mosque is Built in Your City: How to Break Down Stereotypes and Build Trust.”
Not, say, How to Make Sure Jihad Terror Plotting Is Not Going On In Your Area.
Di Lella said that Muslims are among many U.S. subcultures — including the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community — that rarely seek out contact with police and present distinct challenges.
What? But we’re constantly told that U.S. Muslims are closely collaborating with law enforcement, although we never seem to get any specifics on this. Now we hear that they “rarely seek out contact with police.”
Recently, Larkin and Sgt. Ivan Chatman arrived for a regular visit to the Masjid As-Sabur mosque, where they ran into a local imam, Mustafa Yunus. They inquired about his limp.
Do they regularly visit synagogues and churches? Why not? Because Jews and Christians are mounting terror attacks on a regular basis. But the idea that all this sucking up is going to prevent terror attacks in Las Vegas is, to put it mildly, unproven.
“I’d like to say it’s an old football injury or shrapnel from Vietnam,” the gray-haired Yunus laughed. “But it’s just old age.”
Another mosque member pulled up in a new Nissan Armada SUV. “I like this ride,” Larkin said, leaning into the passenger window. “I just got a new one, too. It’s a 2008, which is new to me.”
See? They’re just ordinary folks, semaphores the Washington Post. Just forget Paris and Brussels and San Bernardino and Chattanooga and Garland and Fort Hood and Boston and 9/11, etc.
During the visit, Larkin and her team sat in a conference room and drank bottled water with several leaders as children poked their heads in the door, asking for faux police badges.
Imam Fateen Seifullah said many worshipers at first saw police as unwanted spies. When introduced to an officer, one man raised his hands in protest, saying, “I’m not down with the police.”
Seifullah said, “We had a talk with him about that.”
The apprehension went both ways. When police started their full-time outreach in 2010, Sgt. Braden Schrag patrolled the area around the mosque for months, too timid to make contact, waving at members through the wrought-iron fence.
Too timid? Why do our police cower before these people?
Finally, one night, he got the courage to step out of his patrol car and ask the mosque’s community affairs director Ahmad Ade what he could do to help.
That’s what he had to summon the courage to do: ask how he could be of service to Muslims. He didn’t remotely have the courage to ask, say, what Ade could do to help stop jihad terror plotting.
Ade pointed to a nearby lot littered with a hulking old boat and cars that had become a backdrop to drugs and prostitution — the unsavory scene greeting mosque worshipers as they emerged from prayer.
Within days, the vehicles were gone.
How helpful and kind of the police. How much time and money do they devote to cleaning up ugly lots near synagogues and churches?
The pair became fast friends, and Ade calls on Schrag when he goes too long without contact. Within the mosque, many tease Ade for his work with officers, calling him “po-po” and asking to see his badge.
But the relationship has produced results. Seifullah recently persuaded a worshiper who was wanted by police to turn himself in. And officers were called in on a domestic-violence case involving an Afghan family, something unthinkable just years ago.
Abdullah, from Masjid Ibrahim, keeps an office at an area mosque. “Yesterday, the FBI came and wanted to talk,” he said. “We were open to the discussion” — a scenario unlikely in other cities, where lawyers would probably be called in.
They are less suspicious of law enforcement in general “because of the trust fostered by police,” he says. “We are not living in perpetual hostility here.”
There have been awkward moments. In 2012, after a massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, Larkin’s bosses asked about outreach to the local Sikh community. There wasn’t any; Larkin’s team had been so focused on Muslims that other groups vanished from her radar screen.
An officer soon rushed over to a local temple, apologizing that he had visited only after a traumatic event. Now, officers find themselves attending Sikh concerts and birthday parties.
Larkin, a former ballet dancer who once performed in a casino show here, says her learning curve on religious cultures was steep: “There was no blueprint.”
She was particularly curious to learn about the culture of Muslim women, why they covered their bodies even in the summer heat.
Once, Larkin was taken aside by a Muslim woman she had approached with ideas on volunteering. The woman told of her former life in an Afghan village, where U.S. troops had built a well to save residents a trip to a nearby river. Or so the troops thought.
Those river trips were the only time women had to get away from the men — a respite that was suddenly gone.
“It was a huge lesson for me,” Larkin said. “I learned to ask what was needed and not just push my American views.”
The soldiers never realized that the women might want to get away from the men, because they had no honest training about women under the heel of Sharia. Such training would have been “Islamophobic.”
Keith says
“She was particularly curious to learn about the culture of Muslim women, why they covered their bodies even in the summer heat.”
Maybe if she was to read the koran and hadith she would learn everything she needs to know about Islam.
Champ says
Maybe if she was to read the koran and hadith she would learn everything she needs to know about Islam.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Indeed!
Woman leaves islam, after reading the quran for herself …
Video:
https://youtu.be/8xmGTwWrams
Christianblood says
(…If he had ducked into a church, would they have been so circumspect?…)
If he had ducked into a church they would probably blow up the church!
Their modus operandi is respect and tolerance for islam and muslims. Disrespect and hatred for anything Christian.
DFD says
Brain damaged leadership, as usual. However, Folks, I have to share this with you, translation from German of the post upheld by this lady:
I want to give to all Muslims here (in Germany) all the rights which they give to Christians in their country of origin.
The picture itself has been published in PI (Politically Incorrect) Magazin, link:
http://pi-news.net/wp/uploads/2016/05/rechte_muslime.jpg
Trico says
“Too timid? Why do our police cower before these people?”
I believe it’s more Fear Of Unemployment than actual Fear Of Muslims.
linnte says
OK guys. I can’t read this stuff anymore! I am taking a break from Jihad Watch until my head and heart are in better shape.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR WORK!
Lizzy says
I’m not surprised…..often I feel the same.
KnowThyEnemy says
OK…. but remember, the Left and the Islamists are not taking any breaks. Their attacks on freedom and liberty are relentless!
Carmel says
Irt is not the first time you say so . It look more like a threat .
Dick says
You are really strange.
somehistory says
When th police wish to enter a church, they do so and in uniform. They aren’t told to take off their shoes, even during the services.
This totally different treatment of moslims and their barracks is just bowing to the beast; and the police are fully aware of it.
PRCS says
“many police departments are trying to build better ties to the country’s estimated 6 million Muslims worshiping at 2,000 mosques across the country”
The number of Muslims in America was estimated to be 2.35 million in 2007, according to the 2007 Pew Study (http://www.pewresearch.org/files/old-assets/pdf/muslim-americans.pdf).
Must have been a whole lot of tilth plowing to more than double the population in nine years.
Angemon says
I bet that 6 million number is an overinflated estimate.
Gail says
I read that the number is purposely exaggerated=taqqiya so that they can quote that number to have more clout with politicians.
Huck Folder says
I bet that:
“the world’s most perfect man”
“islam means peace”
“the ‘holy’ koran”
“the koran is perfect”
“who can write one verse like it”
“awad never lies”
“men and women are ‘equal’ (but ‘different’)”
…
are overinflated estimates!
SD says
How many more allah akbar muslims have to kill Christians, Jews, Atheists, Women, gays etc. before it will be a universal fact that islam has a problem with violence.
Trico says
“that islam has a problem with violence.”
Islam does not have a problem with violence.
You do. Me too!
Mockingjay says
“Islam does not have a problem with violence.”
Aptly noted Trico!
Angemon says
I bet it’s the other way around. I bet it’s the LV muslim community that’s forging (faking) ties with the LVPD – keep your friends close and your enemies closer, etc.
Wellington says
This particular stupidity in Nevada is indicative of the fundamental problem, i.e., Islam is still not treated for the giant negative which it surely is.
As long as Islam continues to get a pass, and I note here that Republicans aplenty, like Paul Ryan, John McCain and Lyndsey Graham, still give Islam a COMPLETE PASS, never mind Democrats, not one of whom at any level of government in America, from the local municipality to the national level, has demonstrated an accurate knowledge of the spiritual fascism which is Islam, then more nonsense along these lines, as evidenced by this article, will continue to occur with great regularity.
Knowledge is power and sundry police departments in America, the media in general, certainly those over-educated rubes now running almost all of America’s institutions of higher learning (lower learning?), and the vast bulk of those in the political realm, know didly squat about Islam and what this profoundly warped faith really preaches. Shame on all these doofuses.
The time is out of joint. Boy, is it ever. And Islam profits by this and one knows this or should know it since ignorance of Islam is just about the greatest ally of Islam. Yes, ignorance and Islam have much in common, whether emanating from Muslims or non-Muslims.
Lots of ignorance of this decrepit faith out there now in America, in Canada and in all the West. Sadly and tragically, mega-amounts. The price for this ignorance increases exponentially with each passing year.
Jay Boo says
Unfortunately, much of that ignorance is carefully cultivated by Muslim propaganda organizations
http://daralislam.org/
The Dar al Islam campus is anchored around a Mosque and a school building on a hilly plateau across from the historic village of Abiquiu in Northern New Mexico.
Guest says
Will someone explain to me why Muslims would want to live in Las Vegas? They hate fun, gambling, and alcohol.
Wellington says
Because they think all the earth will eventually be in their control and then they can end fun, gambling and alcohol. Think dar-al-Islam everywhere, that is if you can stand it, which is not an easy thing to do.
utis says
Great question. They are either putting themselves in the way of temptation and sin, or they’re forming an army to blow the place up when Sharia comes.
Jay Boo says
Las Vegas used to have a legalized brothel.
Trico says
“they hate fun, gambling, and alcohol.”
Right, so they will get rid of fun, gambling, and alcohol…and everything else they don’t like or find offensive.
KnowThyEnemy says
Why? Answer: Muruna. See this video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HeK_N-YbQo
In the video, Walid Shoebat says Sheikh Qaradawi invented Muruna in 1989, but I believe that Muruna is centuries old. The mullahs and other Islamists have always preached “Make Islam win”, and what they mean is make Islam win any way you can; only the end-result is important, the means are not! A Muslim will open a casino and run liquor bars in it, if s/he thinks doing so will advance Islam (doesn’t matter whether in the short run or long-run)!
I used to think that Muslims could do anything as part of Muruna except do ‘shirk’. (According to Islam, Allah would forgive all crimes and sins if he so wants, but he will not forgive shirk.) But over time I realized that even THAT was not correct. In India, where I grew up, many religious hymns to Hindu deities have been composed by Muslims. Many other Muslims have sung those hymns, and many Muslim actors have worshiped Hindu deities [on screen for all to see]. A Muslim laid the foundation to the holiest shrine in Sikhism (Golden Temple at Amritsar). And when asked, they have always credited Islam (“Islam teaches me to be a good, tolerant person and see all humanity as one”)!
And the non-Muslims of India, especially the educated ones with fancy degrees, always fell for it!
Conclusion in short: Never trust a Muslim, even when s/he is doing shirk, and even if he is doing it in Las Vegas!
KnowThyEnemy says
I forgot to add that in India, many artisans who make idols (to be placed in Hindu temples), have been Muslims!
Needless to point out, gambling, drinking, or even eating pork, are minor things compared to such shirk-deeds.
Jack Diamond says
The Sunni version of “taqiyya” is known as muda’rat and it is as old as the Ulema. Since Muhammad said “war is deception” pretty much anything goes when it comes to jihad and concealment, the greater “good” outweighing countless smaller sins (or collateral damage).
“We must deal with our enemies with smiles on our faces and curses in our hearts” says Muhammad in Bukhari, a deception that goes on both on a personal level and operational level (Muhammad in Yathrib claiming friendliness and co-existence with the Jews all the time he was making secret pacts for their destruction–the model of conduct for all Muslims).
And…at least regarding Muslim men in dar al-harb, they are well aware of the following:
(Video exchange between Sheikh Omar Bakri and Wafa Sultan, 2012)–
“The general rule is that the blood and property of non-Muslims are permissible for us. Their blood and property are not inviolable. It is in their interest to have a peace treaty or dhimmi pact with me…either you accept it or we live in a state of war. The general rule is that the blood and property of infidels are permissible for Muslims…But a Muslim coexists with an infidel either through a peace treaty, a dhimmi pact, or a state of war.”
(ex-Muslim) Abdul Kasem described how as a Bangladesh Muslim studying in Thailand, seeing three Pakistani Islamists, whom he knew as extremely religious, enjoying themselves at a seedy joint in Bangkok. He engages one of them about their sins and the Paki laughs it off:
“He told me that Thais were not Muslims; so having fun with their girls were all right. In fact, he told me that that had been the practice in Islam for centuries. Whenever the Muslims defeated the non-Muslims, they could do whatever they (the Muslims) wanted with the non-Muslims. The Muslims can use the non-Muslim women as sex slaves and please themselves as they wished. A Muslim even had the right to kill the women if he wished. In simple language the non-Muslims were not really human beings. They (the non-Muslims) were inferior even to cattle and animals. Moreover, the Pakistani told me that the Prophet had allowed to have sex if a man is living overseas….You see, the Pak army did not rape any women. They simply enjoyed the flesh of non-Muslims. Even if there were some excessive force being applied, there is no need to feel guilty about that.”
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/abulkazem/rape_of_unbelievers.htm
Viva Las Vegas.
Jay Boo says
Muslims are dogs.
There have no religion.
Islam is a shabby excuse to behave like dogs.
Jack Diamond says
I believe the Shoebat piece was about the Muslim Brotherhood revival of the doctrine of muruna (stealth-flexibility) not it’s invention. The Qur’an and Sunnah already permit the taking of false oaths when necessary and even the denouncing of Muhammad: “Hajaj Ibn ‘Aalat told ‘O Prophet of Allah I have in Mecca some excess wealth and some relatives, and I would like to have them back; am I excused if I bad mouth you (to fool the non-Muslims)?’ The Prophet excused him and said ‘Say whatever you have to say.'” (Sirah al-Halabiyyah v3 p61). What else can you expect considering Allah hisself is known as the best of all deceivers?
—————-
Dogs are pretty noble creatures, Muslims identified themselves more with snakes, but I’d leave the natural world for the infernal one for comparisons.
KnowThyEnemy says
You are correct. Shoebat talked about the revival of muruna, I made the error of thinking he was crediting Qaradawi with inventing it.
On a separate note, I think we complicate things too much. We talk about taqiyya, mudarat, kitman, muruna, etc but Joe-six-pack does not need to study all this academic stuff. We need to keep things simple, just as the mullahs do with Muslims. The mullahs only tell them “Make Islam win! There is nothing more important than making Islam win!” Then Muslims figure out by themselves how to make Islam win.
(From the mullahs’ perspective such instructions make total sense. Because when Islam wins, it is the mullahs who are going to be in power.)
But the point that I try to emphasize is that the mullahs keep things (instructions) simple for Muslims, and that we need to do the same. We simply need to keep two things in mind-
1) That Islam and its followers are in a state of war with us, that they will do anything to make Islam win this war, and that Muslims winning this war means we will all be subjugated under Islam (and its followers)., and
2) That Muslims will extensively employ all kinds of deception to make Islam win this war, hence like snakes, they are not to be trusted no matter how nice, charitable, and humble they are and even if they are eating pork and worshiping idols in Las Vegas!
If we can make our fellow non-Muslims remember these two things, chances are we will be safe in the long run. We simply do not need to complicate things for Joe-six-pack trying to teach him academic terms like kitman, muruna, etc.
Jack Diamond says
Discussing taqiyya, muda’rat, muruna is not for the benefit of Joe Sixpack, he only needs to know that Islam sanctions lying to him. It is because of the Reza Alsans’ who lie about the lying, who lie about Islam, because of the apologists and whitewashers and sowers of confusion, that we have to counter with the actual doctrines and sources. Otherwise who is going to believe that a “religion” actually allows lying? (Or rape and murder?).
Luke Andrews says
This is ridiculous. The police weren’t “submitting” to Islam; they were showing respect. Here in NYC, the police and other gov’t functionaries will often don a yarmulkah before entering an orthodox synagogue.I’m 100% in favor of seeing Islam clearly, but that includes acknowledging that most of the Muslims make good citizens and should be treated with respect and dignity.
DFD says
Brilliant. Let me get this right:
1) A Muslim ‘community’ in Las Vegas… (What are they doing there? That’s like a Muslim community in a pig farming area.)
2) The Vegas police (unclean kafurs) is taking a gamble on receiving help from those Muslims?
Regardless of the odds, where can one place a bet?
========================================
Mockingjay says
Er –
shouldn’t the sentence “Because Jews and Christians are mounting terror attacks on a regular basis.” read “Because Jews and Christians are NOT mounting terror attacks on a regular basis.” ?
Lizzy says
It was the same in my small town eleven years ago following the 7/7 London bombings. There was a newspaper article explaining how the police were going round the muslim area (a no-go area to whites bty) and reassuring the muslims that there would be no backlash against them as they would be provided with extra patrols.
Nothing for the indigenous…no extra patrols on public transport…go take your chances whitey was the implication.
mortimer says
Robert Spencer wrote: “the cops signaled that they knew they must not focus on the motivating ideology of the murderers”
What motivates terrorists is the jihad terror ideology, the sixth pillar of Islam (and many say the most important one, since it supports the others).
Vigilante terrorism is normative Islam supported by Al Azhar University, but we must not quote them.
Westman says
“Ade pointed to a nearby lot littered with a hulking old boat and cars that had become a backdrop to drugs and prostitution — the unsavory scene greeting mosque worshipers as they emerged from prayer. Within days, the vehicles were gone.” Did they remember to mow the dead grass?
What is this tolerance for left-handed toiletry and trash? Is there some ethnic blindness that precludes picking up trash? Did it never occur to them to clean it up themselves? The ME migrants to Europe leave a trail of trash so large that can be seen by passing airliners.
b.c.terry says
And they wonder why Trump is getting so much support.
Americans are tired of this bullshit.
The West is tired of it as a whole.
Strong leaders have never before in history been more needed than now.