I was a straight laced student well behaved, consistently on the Honour Roll, and repugnantly smug as the teacher’s pet. So Eid, an Islamic holiday that doesn’t have a set date and depends on the sighting of the moon, always presented a unique challenge. Taking the day off to celebrate with family meant rescheduling tests, making up assignments and missing lessons that, together, left me worried I’d fall behind. I’d come off as shifty and evasive (“Eid will be on Tuesday or Wednesday”) when informing my teachers of my forthcoming absence; needless to say, it was uncharacteristic of the prudish nerd I’d worked so hard to become.
So when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced recently that he would be moving forward with plans to observe Muslim holidays in the public school calendar, the bookish fifth grader in me smiled at the small victory.
I quickly snapped out of it, acutely aware that three extra holidays during the academic year do not a victory make. Eid Al Fitr on school calendars reminds the shrewd sceptic in me of the Eid postage stamp or the White House iftars glossy, hollow gestures meant to appease and, by extension, distract the Muslim community. In New York, the far more pressing, more egregious issue facing Muslims has to do with whether or not they are being tailed by an NYPD officer when attending a mosque for Friday prayer.
This is hardly unfounded paranoia. Muslims are now aware that frequenting a mosque in the greater New York region is grounds for suspicion. Thanks to groundbreaking reporting by AP reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, it is common knowledge that the NYPD operates a large-scale and aggressive intelligence division that tracks, surveils and monitors Muslims all across New York and beyond state borders. In the years following September 11, the NYPD’s Demographics Unit has infiltrated mosques and student groups, spied on the private lives of Muslims everywhere from their place of business to their homes, and systematically trampled their civil liberties without any evidence of wrongdoing. And despite the outcry over these explosive revelations and evidence that the unit never produced a single terrorism related lead in its years of investigating, the NYPD continues to unjustly target Muslims.
The move to recognise Muslim holidays is being warmly received by Muslim civil rights groups, and will likely continue to earn glowing praise from the new mayor’s Muslim constituents. Indeed, it’s a notable step that will keep Muslim students from having to choose between observing a religious holiday or avoiding jeopardising school work. It might also promote greater acceptance and tolerance for Muslim practices in New York, where a growing population of 700,000 plus Muslims live. But if de Blasio allows the NYPD to persist in a police culture that vilifies the Muslim community through discriminatory, gratuitous and imperious intelligence gathering, will the impact of commemorating a Muslim holiday be anything more than superficial and transitory? What good is stamping a holiday on a school calendar when the very act of praying in a mosque is treated like criminal intelligence?
By honouring Muslim holidays in schools, de Blasio will deliver on a campaign promise he made to Muslim supporters in a pre-election rally late last year. When addressing the widespread grievances over the NYPD’s controversial policy of monitoring Muslims and dubbing entire mosques as terrorist organisations, however, de Blasio wasn’t quite as forthright. He told the cheering Muslim crowd, “We will make sure that any actions by our police department are vetted properly and following constitutional guidelines,” implying that he would hold the NYPD accountable, but not making any discernible promises.
The reserved criticism of the NYPD’s tactics expressed at the tail end of de Blasio’s campaign trail were still bolder than earlier proclamations where he defended the NYPD’s surveillance programme, saying he believed police acted in good faith and followed the law. He may have changed his tune, but de Blasio’s soft, unclear stance on the policy may not bode well for the thousands of innocent Muslims hoping to see a paradigm shift away from the biased policing that coloured the Bloomberg era.
Further, de Blasio’s appointment of William Bratton as NYPD Police Commissioner may prove to muddle the prospect of introducing any serious reforms to the largely clandestine operations of the NYPD’s intelligence unit. While Bratton is hailed as the great reformer chief, he supported the mapping of Muslim communities during his tenure with the LAPD. To his credit, Bratton nixed the plan after local Muslim leaders voiced strong opposition to the policy on the grounds that it unconstitutionally profiled Muslims. But Bratton, who is an advocate for community policing and one of the country’s finest leaders in uniform, was operating from a mindset where mapping a religious minority community seemed tantamount to effective policing. When taking the reins of the NYPD’s incredibly expansive, far reaching, and powerful counter-terrorism force, that perspective may continue to dangerously prioritise broad brush counter-terrorism initiatives over the protection of individual civil liberties, whether or not they guarantee public safety.
Mayor de Blasio did make considerable progress however, when he effectively cleared the way for drastic reforms to the NYPD’s contentious “stop and frisk” policy, stating that it “unfairly targeted young African-American and Latino men.” Bratton added, “We will not break the law to enforce the law,” bolstering the mayor’s resolve to restore community trust in the police force. Since the NYPD’s pervasive surveillance of Muslims is predicated on profiling, the dynamic duo should be equally eager to restrict the policy in accordance with their lofty ideals.
In a city where the Muslim community has been subject to years of institutionalised discrimination, racial profiling, and targeted surveillance by the police department, recognising Muslim holidays simply won’t cut it. The mayor should introduce sweeping reforms to the NYPD’s intelligence division, ensure that the Demographics Unit is dismantled and prohibit the unchecked and potentially unconstitutional surveillance of Muslims. This may seem like a tall order, but minority communities should expect as much from the candidate they threw their weight behind in the election. While de Blasio’s victory was lauded as a huge gain for progressives, protecting the Constitutional rights of American Muslims may not be in the Mayor’s purview. I suppose we’ll tread lightly, wait and watch what happens next.
Until Mayor de Blasio institutes real reform in these matters, I’d rather stay at school on Eid than lead the NYPD to another venue where they can spy on Muslims. It might put a damper on the holiday spirit.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Uzma Kolsy is an independent journalist who focuses on issues facing the Muslim American community. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Salon, the Nation, and Foreign Policy. Follow her on Twitter: @ukolsy
