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In
an interview on National Public Radio, host Bob Edwards reported
that Islamic
American advocates are
outraged in the way the U.S. government is conducting and
carrying out surprise
raids on Islamic organizations, homes and businesses in America.
More than 150 law
enforcement officers working as part of a counter terrorism task
force
carried out the raids,
which have begun in the southern states. The Muslim community
views these raids as
“fishing expeditions” which have grown less out of evidence and
more out of anti-Islamic
fervor. McCarthy like, red-scare, tactics in order to
intimidate law
abiding Muslim
citizens. Riad Saloojee, the executive director of the Council for
American
Islamic Relations, CAIR,
told reporters, “I think the Muslim community is very, very anxious
about the fact that
they may be targets of racial profiling or that they may be scapegoated.”
During the searches of
private homes, women and children are being terrorized.
Laura Jaghlit, a Muslim
American English teacher, gave a tearful account of the raid upon
her home in an U.S.
television interview. Government officials rifled through her
children’s
photos, tossed out the
contents of bureau drawers, and confiscated the family’s home
computer, credit cards,
passports and bank statements. “This is the most un-American
thing I have ever
seen.” Mrs. Jaghlit cried.
Mrs. Aysha Unus, the
wife of an employee at the International Institute for Islamic
Thought, (IIIT),
described her family’s experience of the unwarranted raid. “We
heard loud
banging on the door and
could see a man in a black jacket holding the barrel of a gun
against the glass door.
My 19 year old daughter started to call the police when the agents
broke open the door and
one of them pointed a gun at her and asked her to put down the
phone.”, Mrs. Unus
said. She also stressed that the agents did not present them with
any
I.D. badges. During the
raid, Mrs. Unus and her daughter were handcuffed and held on
their living room sofa
for 6 hours.
In the
different institutions that have been included in the raids, of
which are the IIIT,
the Graduate School of
Islamic Social Sciences, the Muslim World League, and the Fiqht
Council of North
America, similar gangster tactics have been employed. Computers,
files,
books, and paperwork
have been confiscated while the employees of these institutions
were herded up and
placed in isolation rooms.
These new activities of
the U.S. government are the latest in the anti-Islamic fervor of
which
the government renames
under the guise of anti-terrorism. Government officials claim that
they are searching for
money laundering directed towards funding terrorist groups. In the
anti Islamic opinion,
any individual or group that donates funds to other than Anglo or
Jewish organizations
must be funding terrorism. The loss of Muslim life, property and
life
does not count to these
officials as charitable or good works.
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