Political India: Engaging America

Citing flagrant violations of the Muslim community's rights by the New York Police Department, a group of inter-faith leaders in New York City has declined an invitation to attend an end-of-year breakfast event hosted by city Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Leaders from the Muslim, Jewish and Christian communities said in an open letter to Mr. Bloomberg they had decided to “respectfully decline” his invitation in the wake of a series of leaked police documents obtained by the Associated Press, which detailed how, throughout the 9/11 decade, “the NYPD has been monitoring and profiling virtually every layer of NYC Muslim public life, often with no suspicion of wrongdoing”.

This included the NYPD's attempts to monitor and collect data on New Yorkers at about 250 mosques, schools, and businesses throughout the city, “simply because of their religion and not because they exhibited suspicious behaviour,” the inter-faith group added.

Alluding to last year's controversial Last year, Park51 project, the so-called “Ground-Zero Mosque” aimed at fostering communal harmony at the site of the 9/11 attacks, the letter noted that the inter-faith group appreciated Mr. Bloomberg's “principled position in defence of Park51 and American Muslims as we endured attacks from hate groups and opportunistic politicians who promoted un-American, divisive rhetoric.”

At the time conservative elements including some Tea Party leaders had strongly criticised the choice of location of the Islamic centre as being insensitive to the families of the 9/11 victims.

The person behind the Park51 project, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf spoke to The Hindu about the NYPD surveillance issue, saying, “There is widespread recognition that both law enforcement agencies and Muslim communities need one another to safeguard against extremists activities. It is in the best interest of the public that NYPD work closely with Muslim communities to re-build trust and increase cooperation.”

Concern over the issue was aggravated by the fact that Mr. Bloomberg and police Commissioner Ray Kelly were reported to have defended the police's aggressive programmes to infiltrate Muslim neighbourhoods and mosques purportedly designed by a CIA officer.

Though Mr. Bloomberg has not yet issued a response to the letter and was said to have proceeded with the breakfast on Friday morning sans the inter-faith group, participants quoted the Mayor as saying at the event

“Discrimination against anyone is discrimination against everyone... We have to keep our guard up, but if we don't work together we won't have our own freedoms.”