Earlier this month, The New York Times Magazine published an article about a former FBI agent arrested by the US for revealing the atrocities that took place in the government’s “war on terrorism”. In the paper, Terry Albury described the FBI’s harassment and intimidation of American Muslims, their spies in their area, and the sentencing of many of its members for refusing to fight terrorism.
Shortly after joining the FBI on September 11, 2001, Albury recalled, “It was clear from day one that the enemy was not just a small group of illegal Muslims. Islam was our enemy.” This story may surprise many American Muslims.
Twenty years after the launch of the war that will put the suspicions of the minority on the ground, it is important to examine how the lives of American Muslims have changed dramatically. As defenders, they have been actively involved in the global war on terrorism, being pressured to reconsider their identities and priorities in their personal name.
Defending Islam
Although anti-Muslim discrimination in the US stems from 9/11, the global terrorist war brought a great moment of great security for the American Muslims who showed up in many ways. U.S. law enforcement officials are keen to uncover a “shelter” for mosques and Islamic sites. By reducing the actions of those who practiced 9/11 on their beliefs, all Muslims were converted to terrorists.
The horrific civil war will serve as a double standard for Muslims and Muslims alike. Led by intimidating journalists and self-centered journalists, faith alone was transformed into a dangerous ideology. Contrary to the communist protests when the Cold War reached its climax, Islam was shown to be hiding in all directions and threatening the American way of life, if not changed.
Islamic customs, beliefs and practices were rigidly modified by a group calling itself “terrorist experts”, citing suspicious themes and propaganda who made false statements such as “Islamofascism” and warned that Sharia was just the way to Orwellian dictatorship.
At the same time, Muslims began to discriminate on the basis of racism, which was similar to the treatment of the few people they had met throughout US history. More than 80,000 Muslims have been summoned for questioning by law enforcement agencies and are required to register on a national register. Tens of thousands were searched and interrogated at airports and banned from using airline lists. Just wearing a head covering or shaving off a beard raises doubts in the eyes of the police, who are constantly alert and in public.
Although sleep cells did not exist, the deadly civil war was disrupted, thanks to the Patriot Act, a law that was miraculously passed by Congress in October 2001 that increased government investigative powers in the fight for human rights. In the face of fear and suspicion, American Muslims were affected by a series of waves. In the early stages the authorities elected prominent leaders and organizations.
After 9/11, the government cast a huge net in protest of local leaders. As the files released on Intercept were later revealed, the government once looked at a lawyer, a politician, a student, and the leaders of two American security services. Superintendents have been threatened with prosecution for exercising their freedom of speech and association.
In 2004, the Department of Justice filed a criminal case against the largest Islamic criminal organization in the US, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), and arrested five staff members. Following the re-launch in 2008 after prosecutors failed to convict them, all of them were Palestinian-American, HLF officials and staff sentenced to 65 years in prison, although the government did not provide any evidence that the donations had anything to do with violence. .
The failure of the HLF case continued to escalate. In exchange, prosecutors released 246 names of no convicts in the case, a list that is often anonymous because corporations do not have the means to defend themselves in serious cases such as supporting terrorism. The list included several well-known Muslim organizations, from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). The purpose of this loss was obvious: to cast doubt on all American Muslim organizations, thereby weakening their ability to serve their territories and to play an important role in cultural life.
Similarly, in 2005 the government addressed Ali al-Tamimi, an imam from Virginia. He was charged with conspiracy in the United States and sentenced to life imprisonment on suspicion of issuing a fatwa to locals within 9/11 days. The massive terrorist attacks contributed to the outrage among American Muslims, as imams and local leaders across the country feared that their words could land them in jail.
While the US has taken over the militants of Afghanistan and Iraq, while carrying out covert operations in many other Islamic countries, the government seems determined to deal with dissidents who have barred me from expressing dissent at home.
False plots, real results
Over the past decade from 9/11, the FBI doubled the number of agents who investigated terrorism, exceeded its total budget, and $ 3.3bn provided for terrorism alone, as well as for legitimate law enforcement agencies. Also, no real criminals were found.
In the next phase of the civil war against terrorism, the FBI decided to take over and expand its recent 9/11 attacks. It intensified its deployment of rural donors to apprehend unsuspecting Muslim youths in a crackdown on FBI agents.
A 2015 study revealed that as of 9/11, more than half of all terrorism cases involve the use of paid intelligence, which is often charged with conspiracy to co-operate with FBI agents.
Well-known media outlets for notoriously unpopular cases have often said that the conspiracy was the work of FBI agents. Instead, stories of threatened threats such as those of Newburgh Four or Fort Dix Five provide a vicious diet for American Muslims.
The need for support for the uprising against local leaders, coupled with the rise of Islamic ideology throughout the United States, led to isolation, especially among young American Muslims who achieved 9/11 years of age.
With at least 15,000 publishers, the massive infiltration of the mosque and Islamic sites took over every Muslim’s security or safety. The cases that have been caught appear more frequently, it has become clear that the war on the worst victims is often the most vulnerable, suffering from poverty, mental illness, and other hardships that make them vulnerable to refugees.
Even young American Muslims who avoided being caught in traps by militants were subjected to surveillance programs, such as those pursued by the New York Police department (NYPD) and the CIA. Reported by the Associated Press in 2011, the secret program “organized, monitored and analyzed American Islamic life”, reaching out to Islamic student groups at various universities in New York City.
Transformed group
While the great protection of American Muslims has become a permanent feature of daily life, one has to wonder how any religious group can continue to meet their needs in such situations. Over time, the popularity of American Muslims has become increasingly divisive in the midst of the war on weapons of mass destruction. In his 2005 book Muslim Good, Bad Muslim, Mahmood Mamdani said the US imperial power had undermined the whole Islamic faith in the two groups “to strengthen the first and follow them”.
As a result, Islam, which was redefined in the context of Islamophobia, forced some American Muslims to change their promises to suit their own interests. After overthrowing his leadership, weakening his institutions, and intimidating those most at risk, the civil war of the third militant group became known mainly and called on the community to take care of themselves.
The age-old mandate for American Muslims to “do more” in protest of the atrocities committed by every Muslim in the world has changed dramatically. Not only were Islamic organizations in the United States forced to remain silent after persecuting others in their area, but they were also forced to report on a US royal project that devastated the entire world, for fear of being labeled a terrorist militant.
Instead, many local organizations have completely changed their minds to align with the government’s anti-violence program (CVE). Millions of dollars went to enroll Muslim groups in the United States in another civil war involving extremist activities.
These CVE activities include monitoring and mapping the regions as well as anti-Muslim tactics that led to violence by citing major Muslim traditions as skeptics.
As more areas received FBI agents in their area, an investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2011 revealed that security forces had used so-called “social networking sites” to spy on American Muslims.
In the early days after 9/11, the claim that the war on terror could be a ploy to ensnare the demons and lead to full confidence in their subjects while pursuing US imperial goals could be ridiculed and mocked. Twenty years later, the evidence is staggering, so to speak.
However, the American Muslim organizations did not approve of the changes in their area or what they brought. This has led to the fact that any criticism he makes is based on religious extremism or the excesses of President Trump.
No small effort has been made to recognize and challenge the culture of Islamophobia and the imperialist systems that support it. If so, the community has seen a dramatic increase in internal Islamophobia, as evidenced by a 2018 survey that showed that American Muslims were more than twice as large as any other religious group to express their belief that Muslims “like to do evil”.
There is hope in counter-theory from a growing group that has spoken out against the evils of past generations of American Muslim scholars who see themselves as defensive. These young freedom fighters were encouraged to form alliances with the great anti-apartheid movement and to hate immigrants.
More recently, he has also used the Palestinian alliance on the front lines – a controversial issue that was so steeped in promoting American Islamic politics that it became one of the mainstay of the armed forces in a series of terrorist attacks.
As American Muslims reflect on the pain and loss that has plagued them for the past 20 years, it is important that their experiences are not forgotten or ignored. Of course, their survival as a religious community depends on it.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor of Al Jazeera.