Digital Mind 🧠

🪵 The Threshold

The NYPD's radicalization model criminalizes ordinary Muslim piety and activism

Properties2
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/causal-relationships
aliases@green_fear_2015, loc. 574, @aziz_racial_2021, loc. 926, @kumar_islamophobia_2012, loc. 486

5 min read

The NYPD’s radicalization model criminalizes ordinary Muslim piety and activism

Evidence

The NYPD’s program depended on a theory of radicalization elaborated in its 2007 report, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. The report spells out four stages of radicalization: preradicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, and jihadization. Descriptions of these stages are telling. For example, Muslims in the preradicalization stage are young (under the age of thirty-five), middle-class men. They are recent converts with little or no criminal history. Oftentimes, they are not particularly devout, at least at this stage. As these men move through the other stages, they become more devout and politically active. They may stop smoking or drinking and grow a beard. At this point, the document assumes, Muslims are clearly on the path toward radicalization. — Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Introduction to…, 574 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Reminiscent of the COINTELPRO playbook that subverted African American civil rights groups in the 1960s, including Black Muslims, the NYPD sent paid infiltrators into mosques, student associations, and Muslim communities, where they took photos, recorded license plate numbers, and kept notes of political conversations. One of the informants, paid $1,500 a month, stated in a court affidavit, “My NYPD boss Steve told me that the NYPD did not think the John Jay Muslim Student Association [MSA] was doing anything wrong, they just wanted to make sure.” Moreover, the informant admitted, “the members of the MSA were religious Muslims, and according to my NYPD boss Steve, the NYPD considers being a religious Muslim a terrorism indicator.” — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 926 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

In 2007, the NYPD produced a document titled Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, in which it argues that there are four stages of radicalization: pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, and jihadization. According to this model, all young Muslim males from middle-class and immigrant families fall into the pre-radicalization stage. In short, simply being a member of this group places one on a conveyor belt aimed toward “radicalization.” Now if, by some chance, a member of this group should give up smoking, drinking, and gambling and start to grow a beard and wear traditional Islamic clothing, he is on the fast track toward acquiring “Jihadi-Salafist ideology,” which puts him squarely in the next stage: “self-identification.” Another characteristic of “self-identification” is political awareness and community activism. By the third stage, “indoctrination,” the NYPD tells us, the person has withdrawn from the mosque and has become politicized around a set of new beliefs leading to the fourth stage, “jihadization,” which is when he becomes ready to plan a terrorist attack. Signs of reaching this fourth stage include conducting research on the Internet, performing reconnaissance activity, and acquiring materials. While the report states that there is no profile for a potential terrorist, the thrust of its analysis is precisely about creating such a profile and predicting the activity of potential terrorists. Based on data from a grand total of ten cases, the report states that there is “remarkable consistency in the behaviors and trajectory of each of the plots across the stages” and that “this consistency provides a tool for predictability.” — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 486 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Law enforcement agencies operationalize the ideology that Islam is inherently violent; Anti-Muslim resistance organized across racial lines against NYPD surveillance; NYPD’s radicalization model makes Muslim identity itself a predictor of terrorism — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 486 (+17 more)

Broader Connections

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