According to recent news reports, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has ordered its field supervisors to count the number of mosques in the United States as part of its anti-terrorism data gathering efforts. These reports raise serious questions concerning the FBI’s willingness to engage in religious profiling.
“The entire Muslim community in the United States should not be presumed guilty of links to terrorism simply because of the religious beliefs of some terrorists,” said Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. Program for Human Rights Watch. “This is as offensive as counting Christian churches on the assumption they may harbor abortion clinic bombers.”
In a FBI briefing last week to congressional staff, the FBI reportedly said the purpose of counting mosques was to create a yardstick against which to measure the number of FBI terrorism investigations and intelligence warrants. Today, however, an FBI spokesperson told Human Rights Watch that the FBI only wanted to count mosques to help prevent hate crimes against them. The FBI apparently did not provide the hate crimes rationale during the congressional briefing.
The director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, has not publicly explained the reason for the FBI order.
“The FBI should publicly explain the order,” said Fellner. “It certainly appears to be the latest in a series of Department of Justice counter-terrorist measures that target Muslims in the United States.”
Previous measures have focused on Muslim nationals of specified countries, primarily from the Middle East and South Asia. Those measures include: “voluntary” questioning of thousands of Muslim non-citizens by the FBI; special Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) registration procedures; the post-September 11 detention of hundreds of Muslim non-citizens while the FBI investigated them for possible links to or knowledge about terrorism; and the ongoing INS effort to detain and deport Muslim men from the specified countries who have violated the conditions of their visas.
Human Rights Watch documented the arbitrary, prolonged detention of hundreds of Muslim non-nationals as part of the Department of Justice’s investigation of the September 11 attacks (see, Presumption of Guilt). In a subsequent report on hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims in the United States, the organization warned that overbroad and indiscriminate intelligence gathering efforts and detentions encourage a public perception that Arab and Muslim communities as a whole are suspect and linked to the “enemy” in the U.S. war against terrorism. (See, We Are Not the Enemy).
Human Rights Watch strongly supports efforts to hold accountable those who engage in crimes against humanity and other acts of terrorism. Those efforts, however, should be constructed within the human rights framework.
“Law enforcement efforts to combat terrorism should not be based on sweeping generalizations against whole communities defined by their religion,” said Fellner.
