FBI’s Approach towards Muslims No Different Than ‘Witch Hunt’: Lawyer
A senior lawyer at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington, Gadeir Abbas, said that the FBI monitoring report reveals that Muslims have been tracked and targeted for years, from the administration of former President George Bush to the current one of Joe Biden, referring to the FBI's watch list from 2019 that a Swiss hacker leaked on June 13.
"We've known for many years that Muslims are being watched," Abbas said, "but seeing this list firsthand is truly shocking."
Abbas said that "the US has been continuously spying on the Muslim community through electronic tracking and individuals placed in Islamic communities,"
He said that "Muslims in the US lived peacefully until 9/11, but after that, they were continuously viewed as threats and subjected to surveillance, which continued during the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, as security and intelligence agencies maintained secret lists.
"They knew Muslims were being profiled, but they couldn't hold the government legally accountable until the report came out," he told Anadolu Agency.
According to Abbas, there are about 2,500 mosques in the US where Muslims are monitored and thousands of people are recruited for intelligence activities.
Abbas highlighted in the report titled "Twenty Years Is Too Much, Call to Stop the FBI's Watch List" prepared by CAIR that only the names "Muhammad" and "Ali" appeared more than 350,000 times in the FBI database with different pronunciations.
The FBI's filing practices affect Muslims' daily lives because the reports are shared with over 60 countries, private companies, hospitals, and universities, resulting in restrictions for Muslims considered "potential terrorists" in various contexts.
Abbas said that "the method used against Muslims is no different from a 'witch hunt,' and there is no guarantee that this will not be done to others in the future."
He added that "the US will eventually target another group as a threat, leading to the use of secret lists. Therefore, it is critical for everyone to condemn and oppose anti-Muslim sentiment."
Noting that there is no legal basis for profiling Muslims, Abbas stressed that "as the FBI has given the authority to carry out the filings, there are no legal constraints on the filings, allowing agents to list individuals for any reason."
He blamed the government's lack of control for the access to this confidential list containing millions of Muslim names.
People on the watch list face a range of challenges, including travel restrictions, immigration issues, encounters with the FBI, instances of police violence, difficulties obtaining permits and licenses, professional consequences, and limited access to government buildings.
Source: Agencies
