The United States is inherently built on the legal basis of stripping the civil liberties and human rights of racial and ethnic minorities. From the fundamentally racist Jim Crow laws to the dreadful Muslim ban, law enforcement has gradually revealed that the United States' long-living trademark, “the land of the free,” is fictional. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States took on several initiatives to further deny the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities—both domestic and international—any legal freedom. The federal government hypocritically bore a heroic face to these same communities after 9/11 on the sole basis of publicly displaying their emotional support and gratitude. However, the government’s support was merely a facade to operate their unethical and illegal systems secretly, which profiled and supervised specific racial groups. The gradual policing of racialized Muslim communities presumed that groups of specific races and ethnicities were an imminent threat to the general public, diminishing the civil liberties that those communities rightfully possess.
Throughout history, the United States has utilized the excuse of ensuring our country’s national security to continuously exploit different ethnic and racial groups through unlawful systems. Racial profiling masked through law enforcement has been a substantial issue in United States history. According to South Asian writer and activist Deepa Iyer, Law enforcement “assume[s] that someone will engage in criminal behavior based on her or his group status rather than specific individual actions.” So, a system that blindly scapegoated Black and Hispanic groups during the War on Crime and the War on Drugs will use its same tactics to blame Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians for the War on Terror. In the event that those mechanisms fail to be implemented legally, the government persistently denies taking accountability for their actions. Evidently, after the United States purposely mandated the USA Patriot Act (Uniting and Strengthening America Act by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) to profile Muslims after 9/11, government officials shifted the blame by claiming that they “didn't even read the bill.” However, disbanding these unlawful acts didn’t mean that the USA would stop targeting Muslim communities. Multiple unconstitutional legislations were revised and authorized to exacerbate the divide between the Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians from the general population, denying them their basic legal rights in the United States.
On September 14, 2001, Congress passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that granted the president “authoriz[ation] to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” Although the AUMF was implemented to ensure national security for the USA, it has been abused by the three presidents that took office post 9/11 and now poses a greater threat to American security. Due to the limited knowledge that congress possessed about people involved in the terrorist attacks, the AUMF criteria was vaguely written to authorize President George Bush’s lethal force against the Middle East and South Asian countries. In doing so, they racially profiled citizens from those nations. President George Bush used the AUMF to wage war on Iraq and Afghanistan based on the assumption that Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were entities that aided and harbored terrorist activities by providing “weapons of mass destruction,” which was merely a facade to increase hegemonic power and control over oil and mineral-rich nations. President Barack Obama used the AUMF to form a secret military operation team called JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) to target people on the kill list, some of which were American citizens. Essentially, the emergent implementation of the AUMF after 9/11 created a major backlash for domestic citizens and many countries. Internationally, the United States government was unrestricted with its actions against Muslims; they dehumanized citizens living in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and many more.
Shortly after implementing the AUMF, congress passed the USA Patriot Act. While the unconstitutional nature of the AUMF allowed the executive branch to use its hegemonic power to exploit countries and Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia, the passing of the USA Patriot Act allowed for greater control of the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian residents protected by the “stringent” law of the United States. It was an expansion of the AEDPA (Antiterrorism and Effective Death penalty Act) enacted in 1996. The acts expanded the power of searches, surveillance, and deportation of noncitizens in connection to terrorist activity. The USA Patriot Act disproportionately affected Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians by broadening the scopes of the connectivity to terrorist organizations or groups. It infringed on major constitutional rights and demonstrated the chaos of unchecked governmental power in the United States. Furthermore, it violated the first and most important amendment right by launching FBI investigations on the sole act of exercising freedom of speech.
The diminishing of a citizen's freedom of speech and their right to protection against unlawful searches is the stripping of the civil liberties that are meant to protect the population from any unjust governmental interference. This presented an even great danger to the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities because the government publicized that terrorism was born out of predominantly Muslim countries. In the following years, congress reauthorized and renewed the Patriot Act through multiple legislations, continuing the infringement of constitutional rights on many Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians in the United States and internationally. Specifically, law enforcement such as the FBI and the NYPD, increased investigative surveillance and monitoring of Muslim communities, igniting a greater racial divide and exacerbating the stereotypes placed on the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities. This was evident in the private Islamic school that I attended growing up, Al Noor School. During my last year of middle school, a new Islamic studies teacher had been administered to the high school division, which the school later found was an investigator for the NYPD. If the law enforcers were the ones breaching our privacy, where would the school go to report that their privacy was infringed? Following that event, there were no viable actions the school could take to be cautious of any other threats that may be posed to the school in the future.
The NYPD’s surveillance program was conducted on the false and unconstitutional premise that all Muslim communities practiced radicalized Islamic beliefs that were a threat to national security. Through the 2007 NYPD intelligence report, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, there was a large list of general locations—mosques, cafes, prisons, student associations, non-profit organizations, hookah bars, book shops, etc.—that were identified as “potential venues for radicalization.” The NYPD surveilled these locations for years and used these tactics to encourage the alienation of Muslim communities in the United States by creating further suspicion and prejudice. This not only infringed on the first and fourth amendments of Muslims across the United States but also inflicted psychological and social turmoil throughout Muslim communities.
Law enforcement has created a sense of mistrust between its Muslim American citizens and their order to “protect and serve” them in an event of an emergency. Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians continue to feel the psychosocial pressures due to the USA Patriot Act and the consistent surveillance of Muslim spaces. Governmental policies like the USA Patriot Act create tension between national security and the civil liberties of Muslims in the United States. After 9/11, Muslims have learned that freedom of speech is not an equal right for all and that their “guilt” is associated with their identity.
Take action- Ways you can support Muslims impacted by the lasting effects of USA interference and exploitation
Donate:
Islamic Relief USA
Charity Week USA x Islamic Relief USA
Educational Resources:
Books
We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future by Deepa Iyer
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11 by Lori Peek
Orientalism by Edward Said
Films/Documentaries:
Citations:
Iyer, Deepa. We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future. The New Press, 2017.
Sannar, Shirin. “Patriotic or Unconstitutional? The Mandatory Detention of Aliens Under the USA Patriot Act.” Stanford Law Review 2002-2003.