A special New York Police Department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said Tuesday.
NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the department’s Intelligence Division.
An ongoing review of the division by new Police Commissioner William Bratton found that the same information collected by the unit could be better collected through direct contact with community groups, officials said.
In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, called the move “a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys.”
Dutch politician Geert Wilders has once again become the subject of controversy after he led supporters in an anti-Moroccan chant during a campaign rally last month. Despite the mass condemnation he has received for the remarks, Wilders’ anti-Muslim counterparts in the United States are standing by his draconian approach to immigration.
“Arun Kundnani’s book, vastly more intelligent than the usual ‘war on terror’ verbiage, focuses on the war’s domestic edge in Britain and America. His starting point is this: ‘Terrorism is not the product of radical politics but a symptom of political impotence.’ The antidote therefore seems self-evident: ‘A strong, active and confident Muslim community enjoying its civic rights to the full.’ Yet policy on both sides of the Atlantic has ended by criminalising Muslim opinion, silencing speech and increasing social division. These results may make political violence more, not less, likely.”
FBI agents in Texas have arrested a man who allegedly was plotting to use C-4 explosives and weapons to kill police officers, rob banks and armored cars, and blow up government buildings and mosques, authorities announced today.
“The Clarion Fund (now the ‘Clarion Project–#1 news site on the threat of Islamic extremism’) rides again. After producing three classic Islamophobic films, Obsession, Third Jihad and Iranium, T-H-E-Y’R-E B-A-C-K with a new one, Honor Diaries. The new project focuses on honor killings and Islam’s supposed hatred of women. One has to ask why a film about the purported abuse of Muslim women was produced by Jews, and ones with a distinct ideological agenda at that.”