Thirteen years ago, Mosaab and his father went to a mosque. He remembers his father going to meet with the sheikh after the last Isha prayer. Mosaab remembers sitting down to read a book. He had never heard of Hamas before a man came up to him and asked him what he thought of the group.
The woman was stunned. He was young.
The man was suspected of being an Informant, but it was never confirmed. Many never are. It was Mosaab's first encounter with a camera, but it wouldn't be his last. It is a common story among Muslims in New York, and in an age of oversharing, that experience has had a strange impact. Many, like Sadeia, have grown up cautious of saying too much online, wary of others like the man he met that day. A younger generation of Muslims is eager to break out of their fear of being watched. The experience of being watched and being Muslim in New York City are both connected to the experience of social media.
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The NYPD has been surveilled and profiled Muslims in New York City in an attempt to find radicalization. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the NYPD Intelligence Division has tracked people who changed their names and created intelligence databases. The extent of the NYPD's surveillance was exposed by the Associated Press in 2011. The NYPD acknowledged in testimony in 2012 that the Demographics Unit never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation in its years of operation.
The Demographics Unit was discontinued but it still casts a long shadow over the city's Muslim communities. He remembers a lot of other incidents where he felt he was being watched. He has had people ask him about his opinions on Israel and the caliphate. Some of the people who asked him the questions were later confirmed to be spies.
It's just someone who you don't know who they are. They come into the masjid and start asking weird questions, even though you have never seen them before. He told The Verge that you are sitting there and not sure how to react. A normal person doesn't ask questions like that.
I don't share a lot of information online. That is my way of protection.
Even though he attended an Islamic school, he was always cautious of what he said in class. He learned to speak smart in college. He is not as active on social media as other people his age.
There was a rule that you don't talk about politics on social media, and you don't talk about what happens in other countries on social media. The US government has a history of entrapping people and lying about it. I don't share a lot of information online. That is my way of protection. It isn't out there and can't be found, but why should I make it easier for someone who is following me?
The conversation around Muslim surveillance is shifting, but only slowly, according to Ainikki Riikonen, a researcher with the technology and national security program with the Center for a New American Security. Counter terrorism is an expertise. Riikonen says that people spend their lives getting PhDs and getting specific knowledge on very specific groups and ways of network analysis. There is no excuse for targeting people on the basis of their religion. There is absolutely no excuse.
Why do we pretend that we are not Muslim? Why do we bother not being ourselves?
Haris Khan, a community organizer and a board member at the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, is more active on social media. Many of Khan's classmates at the City College of New York were afraid and they told him about it. He was shying away from his faith publicly in college in an effort to fit in and not be so different. He realized there was no point in being silent.
You still get called a terrorist even if you fit in or are quiet about issues. Why do we bother pretending that we are not Muslim? Why do we not want to be ourselves? Either way, they are going to weaponize our identity. We could use it to organize and speak our truth.
Even though he works in the political field, Khan still uses the internet to showcase his opinions. After the historic Al-Aqsa Mosque was raided in Jerusalem during the holy month of Ramadan, Khan put up a tweets about how he was feeling. He had people tell him he should be fired from his government job because of his political views.
He sees the blowback as a small price to pay for being able to share his views openly. Khan said that he was not afraid of being surveilled for his viewpoints. They can copy and paste my posts. It is who I am. My family has taught me that. That is what I belong to.
In 2012 Asad Dandia found out that he had been surveilled for seven months by a person he had befriended. The man and his friends traveled with him and helped deliver food to homeless people every night. When Dandia found out that his friend was an Informant, the betrayal was real. He remembers paranoia and anxiety attacks. He joined a class action lawsuit against the NYPD over their practice of surveilling Muslims.
Dandia values his ties to the community even more after the experience. He said that they had to keep each other safe. One of the effects of surveilling is to stifle your speech, to stifle your community activity, and they want you to not be active. Do the reverse. Get in touch with organizations that can help you.
He said to not cower. They want you to cower.
