WASHINGTON, 18 November 2007 — Police in Los Angeles have abandoned a controversial anti-terrorism plan that would have created a database of the city’s Muslim population.
According to news reports, the LAPD’s counter-terrorism bureau planned to use US census data and other demographic information to locate Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies, rather than use the information as a form of profiling or targeting those who practice Islam.
The decision to drop the plans marks a major retreat for the LAPD — which backed off after howls of protest from Muslim and civil rights groups who said the mapping plan amounted to religious profiling.
The Census Bureau is barred by law from asking people for their religious affiliation. As a result, there is no scientific data on the size of the nation’s Muslim population, let alone its location, with estimates of totals ranging from about 1.4 million adults in a Pew Research Center study this year to the 7 million or more claimed by some community organizations.
Census data on ancestry would also fail to yield accurate Muslim estimates, because large numbers of people with Iranian backgrounds are Jewish and many people with Lebanese, Palestinian and Syrian roots are Christian.
LA law enforcement officials said police agencies around the world are dealing with radical Muslim groups that are isolated from the larger community, creating potential breeding grounds for terrorism. He cited terror cells in Europe as well as the case of some Muslim extremists in New Jersey arrested in May for allegedly planning to bomb Ft. Dix.
LA Police Chief William Bratton announced last week that the department’s counterterrorism bureau planned to identify Muslim enclaves to determine which might be likely to become isolated and susceptible to “violent, ideologically based extremism.”
He said the strategy came in part from a similar program he observed in England, where Muslim suicide bombers killed dozens of commuters on the London transport system in 2005.
Bratton said Muslim groups there worked with authorities to identify potential threats, and he believed it could work in LA. He said he floated the idea to a handful of Muslim groups in recent months.
Muslim leaders said trying to compare them to counterparts in Europe was a mistake. They said the LAPD plan to model the European experience of isolated and often-distressed Muslim enclaves didn’t apply to the United States, where the Muslim population is far more integrated and dispersed.
And they argued the profiling would make Muslims hesitant to work with authorities.
In a statement earlier this week, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that “while I believe the department’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim communities were well intentioned, the mapping proposal has created a level of fear and apprehension that made it counterproductive.”
Beyond the issue of “religious profiling,” some critics said it would be impossible for the LAPD to create an accurate map of where Muslims live. There are an estimated 500,000 Muslims in Los Angeles, Orange and Riverside counties.
Muslim groups praised the move, but said reversing the damage would take a long time.
“We hope to receive a written statement from the chief on the demise of the plan, and a recognition of the pain it caused in our communities,” said Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shoura Council of Southern California. “We’ll also wait to get new ideas of engagement from the chief.”
Syed and other leaders said they would take the written statement to mosques, community centers and schools.
According to Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, the meeting is the first step in putting together the “building blocks of mutual trust.”
“There needs to be a common ground of understanding on the nature of the problems that we’re talking about, whether it’s public safety or civil liberties,” Al-Marayati said. “I sense that there’s a gap of misunderstanding on those issues.”
The ACLU, Muslim Advocates and Islamic Shoura Council called the mapping project “religious profiling that is just as unlawful, ill-advised and deeply offensive as racial profiling.”
“Muslims are the central part of the solution,” said Maher Hathout, senior adviser with the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “We are the only ones who can say, ‘he or she is a radical.’”
LA’s police chief said he had learned a lot about Muslim communities in recent years. He said he knew that Muslims in America felt overly scrutinized since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.
