Opinion: Don’t view on Muslim students

Editor’s note: Dean Obeidallah is a former profession incited comedian and has seemed on Comedy Central’s “Axis of Evil” special, ABC’s “The View” and HLN’s “The Joy Behar Show.” He is co-executive writer of a annual New York Arab-American Comedy Festival and co-director of a arriving documentary: “The Muslims Are Coming!” Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) — First, there was “Flying While Muslim.” This countenance summed adult a additional hurdles of being an American Muslim when drifting on blurb airlines.

This conditions has turn roughly supposed as partial of a American Muslim experience. In fact, we have even comically offering recommendation to people in my village on how to equivocate additional problems when they fly: “Dress white, make your flight. Dress brown, never leave town.”

But now there is something new: “Studying While Muslim.” And there is zero humorous about it.

Documents achieved by The Associated Press exhibit that for a past few years, a New York Police Department has been intent in a weekly notice of American Muslim college groups during 16 schools opposite a Northeast, including New York University, Yale, Rutgers and a University of Pennsylvania. (The NYPD has conjunction commented on a series of years that this notice was conducted nor if it’s still happening.)

As partial of this tip program, a NYPD generated weekly reports about a Muslim tyro groups during these schools. They even set adult an clandestine “safe house” nearby a campus of Rutgers University to view on students. Ironically, that operation finished when a building superintendent became questionable and called a military meditative a NYPD officers were partial of a militant cell.

The NYPD also sent an clandestine officer on a whitewater rafting outing orderly by Muslim students during a City College of New York. The NYPD news indicates a students prayed 4 times a day and talked a lot about a inlet of Islam. No discuss if Muslims were good during whitewater rafting.

On a personal note, in a past years, we have achieved standup comedy during shows orderly by a Muslim tyro groups during many of a colleges that were underneath surveillance. Is my name now in a counter-terrorism files of a NYPD?

So since did a NYPD spend a taxation dollars to rivet in a weekly clandestine notice of students during 16 colleges? Did a NYPD have justification that students during any of a schools were a hazard to America? Had a FBI warned a NYPD to be on a notice for terrorists sheltered as college students? Did a NYPD’s examine exhibit that al Qaeda operatives adore to go whitewater rafting?

Nope. It was simply since these students were Muslim. Apparently, to a NYPD, being Muslim equals illusive cause.

No one should be astounded by this new explanation concerning a NYPD. After all, in late 2011, a AP also detected that a NYPD had been intent in tip programs — combined with assistance from a CIA — to guard American Muslims vital in New York City during a places where they eat, emporium and worship.

Let’s be brutally honest: If a NYPD were intent in this form of widespread espionage on any other religious, secular or secular group, a critique would be deafening. However, since a box involves Muslims, a overpower is deafening. There is simply no open cheer and small media coverage.

If specific justification indicated that an American Muslim — or a chairman of any faith, for that matter — were intent in rapist activity, a military should vigilantly examine that person. American Muslims are not seeking for special rights, usually a same rights as all other Americans.

Freedom of sacrament is not usually a leisure to pray. It also is a leisure to equivocate being tormented or being treated reduction than American simply since of your faith. That is a bedrock element of a nation.

Authorizing a weekly notice of American Muslim students usually predicated on a fact that they are Muslim is wrong. It is profiling during a worst.

But a emanate of NYPD profiling appears to go over Muslims. As a New York Civil Liberties Union recently reported, in 2011 a NYPD incarcerated 684,330 New Yorkers for questioning. Of those stopped, 59% were black, 26% were Latino and 9% were white.

To put this in perspective, whites contain 44% of New York City residents, though they make adult usually 9% of those stopped by a NYPD. But blacks — who contain 25% of New Yorkers — paint 59% of those stopped and questioned by a NYPD.

It appears that a use of skin color, ethnicity and sacrament as a basement for investigations is customary NYPD policy. That is both unconstitutional and implicitly wrong.

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly needs to make it transparent that bootleg profiling has no place in his department. If he does not, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs to reinstate him with someone who will honour a rights of all New Yorkers regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion.

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