What the U.S. should learn from the high cost of protest in Iran

Azadeh Shahshahani is a member of TUPOCC and the chair of the NLG South regional chapter. Today she published this guest column on the struggle for religious freedom among Muslims in the U.S.

Religious freedom unkept vow in U.S.
By Azadeh Shahshahani
Wednesday, June 24, 2009

I have been watching with interest and apprehension the movement reverberating in my birthplace over the past few weeks. The cries of "Azadi" by the people who have poured out in the tens of thousands into the streets of Iran to demand greater freedom have defied the distance between us.

I was born in Iran four days after the 1979 revolution. My name, Azadeh, means free-spirited, signifying the great hopes that my parents and the many other parents who named their daughters Azadeh that year bore for the revolution.

Their hopes were soon dashed, however, as the oppressive regime of the shah was replaced by a theocracy where rules governed every aspect of people's lives in public, and even private, spaces.

In this system, advancement in professional and especially official ranks depends in part on the extent to which one chooses to profess religiosity, as dictated by the regime.

With this background, one of the freedoms that was most appealing to me when I came to the United States at age 16 was the right, free from governmental interference, to practice religion — or no religion at all.

I learned that this right is among the most fundamental of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. In my trips back to visit family and friends, I often boasted about the guarantee of religious freedom in the United States.

This fundamental right has been increasingly denied, however, to Muslim-Americans in the years after Sept. 11, tarnishing America's reputation as a beacon of religious freedom.

Last week, the ACLU released a report demonstrating how American Muslims' right to practice zakat, or charitable giving, has been violated.

Zakat is a religious obligation for all observant Muslims and is one of the five pillars of Islam. Given annually and in a calculated amount, zakat is a proportionately fixed contribution collected from surplus earnings of Muslims.

The ACLU report shows that U.S. terrorism finance laws and policies have had a chilling effect on Muslim charitable giving by creating an atmosphere of fear.

These laws have authorized executive branch officials to target charities based on secret evidence — without notice, charges, an opportunity to respond or meaningful judicial review.

Closer to home, I recently joined Lisa Valentine and her husband before the Georgia Committee on Access and Fairness in the Courts.

Valentine testified about the experience she faced at a Douglasville courthouse, where she was made to choose between her right to free exercise of religion and her right to access the court.

Valentine, also known by her Islamic name, Miedah, spoke about the experience of being denied access to the courthouse on Dec. 16 because she wore a head scarf, or hijab.

She found herself in handcuffs and in jail with her hijab removed after Douglasville Municipal Court Judge Keith Rollins sentenced her to 10 days in jail for contempt.

Valentine and other Muslim women were denied access to the Douglasville Municipal Court, even after they expressly conveyed to court officials that the wearing of the head scarf is an expression of their faith.

Muslim-Americans, like all people in the United States, should have the right to express their religious beliefs free from discrimination.

As eloquently stated by President Barack Obama in his Cairo speech last month, "freedom in America is indivisible from the freedom to practice one's religion."

The president acknowledged the right of Muslim women and girls to wear the hijab and recognized the adverse effect of terrorism finance laws on Muslim charitable giving.

The administration and governments on the state and local levels need to follow up on this premise by ensuring that our laws, policies and practices are in fact consistent with American values of due process and religious freedom.

These freedoms are too important to be violated, as evidenced by the willingness of people in my birthplace to risk their lives to secure them.

Azadeh Shahshahani is the National Security/Immigrants' Rights Project director for the ACLU of Georgia.

New FBI Guidelines: race as a 'generalized threat'

From the ACLU...

New FBI Guidelines Open Door to Further Abuse (9/12/2008)

Washington, DC - Following a briefing today at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its deep concern over new guidelines that would govern FBI investigations. The new guidelines would lower standards for beginning "assessments" (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, and would replace existing guidelines for five types of existing guidelines: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations.

The rewritten guidelines have been drafted in a way to give the FBI the ability to begin surveillance without factual evidence, stating that a generalized "threat" is enough to use certain techniques. Also under the new guidelines, a person's race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy. The guidelines would also give the FBI the ability to use intrusive investigative techniques in advance of public demonstrations. These techniques would allow agents to conduct pre-textual (undercover) interviews, use informants and conduct physical surveillance in connection with First Amendment protected activities.

Terror watchlist "upgrade" is "imploding," legislator says

Need another reason to oppose "watchlists," besides racial profiling? The Bush Admin has bungled everything from the administration to the coding. Caught this on slashdot, sourcing from ars technica:

Terror watchlist "upgrade" is "imploding," legislator says
By Julian Sanchez
| Published: August 25, 2008 - 12:03PM CT

The database used to produce the government's terror watch lists is "crippled by technical flaws," according to the chairman of a House technology oversight subcommittee—and the system designed to replace it may be even worse.

In a letter to the inspector general at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) complained that the National Counterterrorism Center's "Railhead" initiative, designed to upgrade the government's master database of suspected terrorists, "if actually deployed will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today."

Miller, who chairs the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, cited "severe technical troubles, poor contractor management, and weak government oversight," which he said had brought the Railhead program to the "verge of collapse."

The NCTC's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, established pursuant to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, is the government's centralized master database of people with suspected terror links. Containing some half a million names, it is used to create more specific watchlists used by other government agencies, such as the Transportation Security Administration's much-derided "no-fly" list.

Take Action to Stop Proposed FBI Guidelines Allowing Racial Profiling

"...Write to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and let him know today that racial
profiling -- in practice and in policy -- is unacceptable. His address is
Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20530..."

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From: CCR
Take Action to Stop Proposed FBI Guidelines Allowing Racial Profiling
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:42:35 -0400 (EDT)

Recent news reports have revealed that the FBI is planning to release new
Department of Justice guidelines, slated for implementation later in the
year. These proposed guidelines apparently make racial profiling not only an
unwritten practice, but an avowed policy of the FBI. The proposed guidelines
would give the domestic intelligence agency authority to investigate
American citizens and residents without any evidence of criminal acts,
relying instead on a "terrorist profile" that would include race, ethnicity
and "travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity" to spark
an initial "national security investigation."

These proposed guidelines would also allow, according to the reports, for
FBI agents to ask "open-ended questions" about the activities of Muslim or
Arab Americans, or investigate them if their jobs and backgrounds match
other criteria considered to be "suspect." Once this initial investigation
stage was completed, a full investigation could be opened ? allowing for wiretapping of phone calls or deep investigation of personal data ? all
guided merely by a "terrorist profile" that openly relies on race,
ethnicity, religion and community connections.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is deeply concerned about these
proposed guidelines, or any such guidelines that seek to institutionalize
racial profiling. There is a long history of the use of racial profiling not
only by the FBI, but by police departments and security agencies throughout
the United States. From the mass detention of Japanese Americans during
World War II in internment camps, to the creation of COINTELPRO, a domestic
intelligence, surveillance and infiltration program that targeted,
particularly, Black, Latino, Native American and other oppressed communities
and communities of color for spying and disruption, to the mass roundups of
Arab, Muslim and South Asian men following September 11, 2001, the FBI's use
of racial profiling has devastated communities and damaged lives. On a daily
basis, the use of racial profiling by police agencies has taken numerous
lives and wreaked havoc on communities of color.

It is critical that no such policies officially permitting racial
profiling --
a violation of Constitutional rights -- be implemented. Furthermore, full
investigations into the use of racial profiling at the national, state and
local levels should be opened, and those who practice racial profiling, or
encourage or order the use of such practices, should be fir ed and
prosecuted.

These latest reports of proposed guidelines fall directly in line with the
ongoing behavior of the Bush Administration's attempted destruction of the
Constitution and attacks on civil and individual rights and liberties. It is
critical that the next President immediately repudiate the policy and the
practice of racial profiling in his first 100 days in office, and ensure
that there is no tolerance for racial profiling within the new
administration's Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security.

Write to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and let him know today that racial
profiling -- in practice and in policy -- is unacceptable. His address is
Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20530.




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Salon.com - "The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims"

Salon.com:

"The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims"

It's unconstitutional, un-American -- and it might hurt, rather than help, the
FBI's effort to stop real acts of terror.

By Juan Cole

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/10/muslim_profiling/index.html

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CCR Challenges Findings of RAND Report on Racial Profiling by NYPD

CCR Challenges Findings of RAND Report on Racial Profiling by NYPD

Manzanar redux? - Article by David Cole

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cole16jun16,0,78692

>From the Los Angeles Times

Manzanar redux?
In an echo of Japanese internment, a judge's ruling allows foreign nationals to be rounded up on the basis of their race or religion. By David Cole DAVID COLE, a law professor at Georgetown University and volunteer attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, was co-counsel to the plaintiffs in Turkmen vs. Ashcroft.

June 16, 2006

'WHAT WILL they do to us if there is another attack? Will they intern us like they interned the Japanese?"

That is the single most common question I get when speaking about counter-terrorism policies and civil liberties to Arab and Muslim audiences. Until Wednesday, I assured them that such a response was unthinkable. The Japanese internment during World War II is now so widely recognized as morally, legally and ethically wrong, I told them, that it could not possibly be repeated.

But after a decision by a federal judge in New York, I'm no longer confident that I can be so reassuring. Dismissing a case challenging the detention of Arab and Muslim foreign nationals in the weeks after 9/11, U.S . District Judge John Gleeson ruled that it is constitutionally permissible to round up foreign nationals on immigration charges based solely on their race, religion or country of origin. What's more, he said that they can be detained indefinitely, even after they have agreed to be removed to their home countries.

In essence, he authorized a repeat of the Japanese internment - as long as the internment is limited to foreign nationals charged with visa violations (a group that at last count numbered about 11 million people).

The case, Turkmen vs. Ashcroft, was filed on behalf of Arab and Muslim foreign nationals swept up on the pretext of immigration charges in the weeks after 9/11. Many were initially arrested on no charges at all - only to be served with immigration papers days, weeks or sometimes months later. All were arrested in secret - in many cases without being allowed to contact anyone - and hundreds were tried in closed hearings that even their family members were not allowed to attend.

They were picked up on the slightest of suspicions. In one representative case, according to the Justice Department's inspector general, the FBI arrested several men on a tip that "too many" Middle Eastern men worked at a convenience store down the street.

Many of those arrested admitted that they had violated their visas and agreed to leave the country, but they were kept locked up for months so that the FBI could investigate them. They were not allowed to go until they were "cleared" of any connection to terrorism. In a complete reversal of the American system of justice, they were treated as guilty until proved innocent.

In all, the government detained more than 1,000 foreign nationals in the first seven weeks after 9/11, and more than 5,000 in the first two years after the attack. Yet as of today, not one of these persons stands convicted of a terrorist crime. From a security standpoint, the roundups were an utter failure.

In Turkmen vs. Ashcroft, the detainees argued that the government denied them equal protection of the law when it rounded them up on the basis of their race and religion, and violated their due-process rights when it kept them after their immigration cases were resolved. The district court rejected both claims, concluding that the government is free to detain deportable foreigners for as long as it wants as long as their ultimate removal is "reasonably foreseeable." And the judge concluded that using race or religion to select the foreign nationals subject to such detention was neither "irrational" nor "outrageous" because the 9/11 hijackers, after all, were Arab foreign nationals belonging to an Islamic fundamentalist group, Al Qaeda.

In other words, the next time we are attacked, the government is free to round up all foreign nationals with alleged visa violations who share the race or religion of the attacker and to keep them behind bars as long as it wishes. If the attack is perpetrated by an Arab Muslim, all Arab and Muslim immigrants are vulnerable. If the attacker is a Latino Christian, the government could round up all Latino Christians with alleged visa problems.

It's true that the World War II internment included citizens as well as foreign nationals, and in many cases, it rounded up people who had done nothing wrong. But what was most offensive about it was the fact that people were selected based on their race. And just as racial profiling of drivers is not acceptable merely because black and Latino drivers stopped are allegedly speeding, so racial profiling of immigrants is not acceptable even if the immigrants are alleged to have violated their immigration status.

WHEN THE Supreme Court in Korematsu vs. United States upheld the legality of the Japanese internment, Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the precedent would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

Until Wednesday, I thought history had proved Jackson wrong. Virtually every living Supreme Court justice has condemned Korematsu as wrongly decided - Justice Antonin Scalia has compared it to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the court refused to recognize that slaves were "persons." Congress has formally apologized to the survivors of the internment and paid reparations for their injuries.

Yet the Turkmen decision has taken the loaded weapon out of the closet, dusted it off and handed it to federal authorities, giving them explicit permission to let prejudice and fear run roughshod over the most basic of human rights - the rights to equal treatment and liberty.

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