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Fear Inc.: Behind the $57 Million Network Fueling Islamophobia in the U.S.

Center for American Progress

In 2011, the Center for American Progress published “Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America” in order to identify and expose the organizations, scholars, pundits, and activists comprising a tightly linked network that spread misinformation and hateful propaganda about American Muslims and Islam. The report found that seven charitable foundations spent $42.6 million between 2001 and 2009 to support the spread of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

… Islamophobia in the United States takes many shapes and forms. It takes the form of a general climate of fear and anger toward American Muslims, as seen in the “civilization jihad” narrative, the religious right’s rhetoric, and the biased media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. It comes out in cynical political efforts to capitalize on this climate of fear, as seen in state-level anti-Sharia bills introduced across the country and in far-right politicians’ grandstanding. And perhaps most dangerously, it manifests itself in institutional policies that view American Muslims as a threat, as seen in the FBI training manuals that profile Islam as a religion of violence. …

February 11, 2015

The Demographics Unit of the New York Police Department, later known as the Zone Assessment Unit, was created with the help of the CIA following the 9/11 attacks to conduct surveillance and monitor Muslims in New York City and the Tri-State Area. However, the Demographics Unit never led to a single terrorism investigation.

In 2011, Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman won the Pulitzer Prize for revealing that since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the New York City Police Department had consistently spied on the Muslim community in New York City and the Tri-State Area.

In April 2014 under the leadership of its new commissioner, William J. Bratton, the New York City Police Department announced that it would end its controversial Muslim spying program by ending the Demographics Unit.

In its own public statement on the closing of its Muslim spying program, the NYPD conceded that “it has been determined that much of the same information previously gathered by the [Muslim spying program over the years] may be obtained through direct outreach by the NYPD to the communities concerned” instead of spying on them.

However, less than one month after announcing the end of the NYPD spying program, The New York Times reported that the NYPD has not backed away from other counterterrorism initiatives that it created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, including recruiting Arab and Muslim men charged with various crimes and trying to convince them to serve as informants on their mosques and local communities.

April 12, 2015 - Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , , ,

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