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CAIR slams Islamophobic US trainers

Press TV – December 22, 2010

The largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization in the United States has slammed the US government for using anti-Muslim trainers to teach the police.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, criticizing the US Justice Department for employing anti-Muslim trainers to teach city and state police how to deal with the Muslim community.

In his letter, CAIR’s Executive Director Nihad Awad says openly Muslim-bashing groups such as the Center for Security Policy run by neoconservative Islamophobe, Frank Gaffney, have been employed to train state and federal police about Muslims.

He argued that using taxpayers’ money to hire such extremist groups, who purposefully misinform those whom they train, must stop.

“What is shocking to us is that those who are training the government, those who are informing them about Islam and the Muslim community in the counter-terror area are the ones who see Islam as the enemy, and the Muslim community as the enemy of the United States,” Awad said in an interview with Press TV.

“So they give the government, therefore, inaccurate information — biased information — and we believe this is counterproductive and it is going to impact negatively the policies, the attitudes and the practices of the government law enforcement agencies at all levels vis-a-vis the Muslim community and Islam itself.”

He complained that the US government is hiring experts openly contemptuous of the Muslim population, who see them as a suspect community, who are teaching the police that radical Muslims are involved in a “jihad” in the United States to take over the country.

The CAIR director rejected the allegations and called on Washington to make sure the information the police are provided with is accurate.

“There are agenda-driven, anti-Islam activists, who under the facade of having institutions, come to the government and get paid with my — and everyone else’s — tax money to misinform the government about the Muslim population and Islam in general.”

The CAIR says it plans to send letters to the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to complain about the Islamophobic practice by the US Department of Justice.

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Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.

“Alabama, Colorado, Vermont,” said Montijo, a former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los Angeles Police Department investigator who is now a private security consultant. “California, Texas and Missouri,” he continued.

What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.

“They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House – not on my watch!” he said. “My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders.”

Source

December 22, 2010 - Posted by aletho | Islamophobia