Post-9/11 surveillance has left a generation of Muslim Americans in a shadow of distrust and fear

UpwshaSeptember 16, 2021

93 1 minute read

New Jersey Muslim Community Reacts To Learning Of NYPD Surveillance Operation — NEWARK, NJ - FEBRUARY 24: Men participate in Friday Prayer at the Omar Mosque on February 24, 2012 in Paterson, New Jersey. The New York Police Department (NYPD) has come under renewed criticism following revelations that officers crossed into New Jersey to conduct surveillance on Newark and area muslims, including students at Rutgers University. The NYPD contends that they informed their counterparts in New Jersey and that the surveillance was part of their post 9/11 security measures. Officials in New Jersey, including the mayor Cory Booker, claim they were not informed . (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

(PBS) Mohamed Bahe tries not to remember the overwhelming pain he felt the night he learned a volunteer with his organization, Muslims Giving Back, was a paid informant for the New York City Police Department.

In 2011, Bahe, a Muslim American whose family came to the U.S. from Algeria, had spent months kickstarting his community volunteer group, focused on feeding the homeless and delivering food to families in need. The group worked with different mosques near where he lived in Queens, and its members were becoming familiar faces in a community that had grown wary of outsiders. The heightened scrutiny of law enforcement on Muslim communities had mosque-goers skeptical of people they had not seen before. Mosques, once the center of social life in a community, had become a quiet place where people felt like a stranger could be an informant or an undercover police officer.