Muslim stereotypes in FBI training manuals

Abdel Aziz Aluwaisheg

American Muslims have long complained about being singled out for negative profiling and unjustified surveillance by law enforcement agencies in the United States. Last week, one source for this mistreatment was revealed during a routine three-hour-long Senate hearing.

On Nov. 8, 2011, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary conducted a hearing on “Oversight of the US Department of Justice.” The main witness was Attorney General Eric Holder.

Way down in the third hour, Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois expressed concern about how FBI training manuals negatively portrayed Islam and Muslims. He pointed out that agents receiving counterterrorism training were taught stereotypes of Islam and Muslim Americans, such as, “Islam is a highly violent, radical religion,” “Mainstream Muslim Americans are likely to be terrorist sympathizers,” “The Arabic mind is swayed more by ideas than by fact.”

Durbin also mentioned how training manuals referred to wearing traditional Muslim attire, growing facial hair, and frequenting mosques as indicators of extremism. He then questioned the apparently unjustified, widespread surveillance of mosques and innocent Muslim Americans.

As expected, Holder distanced himself from such explicit bigotry, although he admitted that the statements were in fact part of an FBI training program. He said they were flat out wrong and did not reflect the views of the Justice Department or the FBI. Holder said the person who prepared the guidelines was no longer with the department and that a review of the material was underway to ensure that such misinformation was not in the guidelines.

As Durbin seemed to imply in the hearing, it might be difficult for Muslim Americans to reconcile the offensive training of government agents and relentless surveillance with the high-minded principles expressed by Holder and others.

Regrettably, average Americans are subjected to a relentless barrage of anti-Muslim misinformation and stereotypes in the media. One hopes that they might dismiss such hateful information for what it is, media hype and ignorance. But when their own government-issued training manuals tell them the same thing, they might regard it as the ordained truth.

The existence of those training manuals has been uncovered for some time, yet according to the attorney general, the Justice Department was still reviewing them to excise offending material. Some may take this delay as indicative of the lower priority given to the issue.

The slow reaction to remove offending language from FBI training manuals is not consistent with the attorney general’s repeated emphasis that such misinformation can undermine government outreach efforts to the Muslim community. Nor does it comport with Holder’s high praise for the community for its unreserved cooperation with law enforcement agencies, and in particular its help in fighting terrorism.

What was also disturbing in this hearing was the fact that Holder sidestepped Durbin’s question about profiling rules that do not exclude religion and thus may be used to stereotype all Muslims as terrorism suspects.
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Article published here: Arab News
URL: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/12/02/muslim-stereotypes-in-fbi-training-manua