This is becoming really embarrassing now.
After the exposure of the FBI’s and US army’s anti-Islam training and deep-rooted anti-Islam bias, comes yet another story. This time it is an Imam who for years railed against terrorism, dined with New York Mayor Bloomberg, welcomed the FBI to his mosque and threw parties for NYPD officers. And what did he get in return? A huge surveillance file on him with the NYPD, a designation as a “tier one” person of interest, and someone specifically assigned by the NYPD to secretly spy on him.
Extracts from the article:
The New York Police Department’s intelligence squad secretly assigned an undercover officer to monitor a prominent Muslim leader even as he decried terrorism, cooperated with the police, dined with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning series by The New York Times about Muslims in America.
Sheikh Reda Shata was among those singled out for surveillance because of his “threat potential” and what the NYPD considered links to organizations associated with terrorism, despite having never been charged with any crime, according to secret police documents obtained by The Associated Press.
This was life in America for Shata: a government partner in the fight against terrorism and a suspect at the same time.
During his time at the Islamic Center of Bay Ridge since 2002, he welcomed FBI agents to his mosque to speak to Muslims, invited NYPD officers for breakfast and threw parties for officers who were leaving the precinct. As police secretly watched Shata in 2006, he had breakfast and dinner with Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion and was invited to meet with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, Shata recalls.
“This is very sad,” Shata said after seeing his name in the NYPD file. “What is your feeling if you see this about people you trusted?”
In April, more than 100 area imams publicly supported a rally to “oppose wars, condemn terrorism and fight Islamophobia.” Of those, more than 30 were either identified by name or work in mosques included in the NYPD’s listing of suspicious people and places in 2006.
Police assigned an undercover officer and an informant to watch Shata personally, and two others were assigned to watch his mosque, according to the NYPD files.
The full article can be read here, but how telling is Shata’s last comment:
“You were loving people very much, and then all of a sudden you get shocked,” Shata said. “It’s a bitter feeling.”
I can’t help but wonder why did he love them so in the first place? Verse after verse in the Qur’an commands the believers not to get too close to those outside of our community, nevermind getting close to those who send their employees and hire the munafiqeen amongst us to spy on our Imams and masajid.
There’s ‘getting close’ and then there’s kissing a**.
It also makes you wonder about the extent of surveillence of US Muslims- one man just to watch Shata, and another two to infiltrate his mosque!
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