Saturday, November 10

Protest Greets Police Plan to Map Muslim Angelenos

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR


A plan by the counterterrorism bureau of the Los
Angeles Police Department to create a map detailing
the Muslim communities in that city, an effort
described as a step toward thwarting radicalization,
has angered civil rights groups, which say it is no
better than racial profiling.

At least three major Muslim groups and the American
Civil Liberties Union sent a letter yesterday to top
city officials raising concerns about the plan.

"When the starting point for a police investigation is
'let's look at all Muslims,' we are going down a
dangerous road," Peter Bibring, a lawyer with the
A.C.L.U. of Southern California, said in an interview.
"Police can and should be engaged with the communities
they are policing, but that engagement can't be a mask
for intelligence gathering."

The objections started after Michael P. Downing, a
deputy Los Angeles police chief who heads the
counterterrorism bureau, testified before a United
States Senate committee on Oct. 30 that the Police
Department was combining forces with an unidentified
academic institution and looking for a Muslim partner
to carry out the mapping project. He emphasized that
he wanted the process to be transparent.

In his testimony, to the Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee, Mr. Downing said the
project would determine the geographic distribution of
Muslims in the sprawling Los Angeles area and take "a
look at their history, demographics, language,
culture, ethnic breakdown, socioeconomic status and
social interactions."

The idea, Mr. Downing said in an interview yesterday,
would be to determine which communities might be
having problems integrating into the larger society
and thus might have members susceptible to carrying
out attacks, much like domestic cells in England and
elsewhere in Europe.

"There are people out there who believe in extreme
violent ideology who present a threat to the American
people, and that is what we are trying to prevent," he
said. "This could be called another prevention
strategy."

The civil rights groups argue that contrary to what
has been found in Europe, the scattered cases exposed
in the United States have involved individuals with no
clear ties to international terrorism groups.

The estimated 500,000 Muslims living in the greater
Los Angeles area, including Orange and Riverside
Counties, make its concentration of Muslims the second
largest in the United States, after New York City's.

Not all Muslim groups in the area object to Mr.
Downing's idea.

"There has been a lot of discussion on the issue of
ghettoization and counterghettoization," said Salam
al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public
Affairs Council, which is considering being the Police
Department's partner in the project. Mr. Marayati said
his group supported anything that would help
integration as long as it safeguarded civil liberties.

Among those interviewed, whatever their position on
the project, Mr. Downing rated high marks for his
community policing efforts, and the letter to city
officials suggested that the groups opposed to his
idea meet with him to discuss it. Those signing the
letter included Muslim Advocates, a national
association of Muslim lawyers, and the Islamic Shura
Council of Southern California, an umbrella
organization for mosques.

The groups were particularly angered that in his
Senate testimony, Mr. Downing, discussing the
possibility of Muslims' radicalization, seemed to
suggest looking at factors like exposure to the
puritanical teachings of the Wahhabi sect, instability
in countries of origin and where they get their news.
He also suggested that the study would result in
helping amplify the voice of Muslim moderates who
could counter fanatics.

"Who is going to decide who are the moderates?" said
Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations for the Los Angeles area,
who also signed the letter. "Are Muslims who criticize
the war in Iraq moderate?"

The groups' letter coincided with the release
yesterday by Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa and other
city and law enforcement officials of an F.B.I. report
that Al Qaeda might be planning to strike at shopping
malls in Los Angeles and Chicago during the Christmas
season. But the F.B.I. report itself characterized the
information as uncertain.

The groups involved in protesting the mapping plan
said any threat from Al Qaeda, even a tenuous one,
underscored their point that limited police resources
should be directed at investigating real crimes rather
than at what they characterized as treating the entire
Muslim community with suspicion.

"Al Qaeda has always operated outside the United
States," Mr. Ayloush said, "and has miserably failed
to gain any support or sympathy among the American
Muslim population."

Michael Parrish contributed reporting from Los
Angeles.


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