The NYPD and Muslim Monitoring

The AP reported that the NYPD conducted broad reaching monitoring of Muslim college students along the east coast, including Ivy League colleges of Yale and the University of Penn.

NYPD officials cite 12 people arrested or convicted of terrorism charges in the US and abroad who were once members of Muslim Student Associations (MSA) and the case of Jesse Morton, who pled guilty this month to posting online threats against the creators of South Park and had tried to recruit followers at Stony Brook University as grounds to pursue such monitoring practices and vow that no files have been kept on student activities

Source:http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0220/New-York-Police-Department-monitored-Muslim-students-all-over-the-Northeast

This story worries me, in spite of the assurances by the NYPD. It says that because of a few actions by a small minority of Muslims that Muslims have been marked for monitoring. It’s a very slippery slope the NYPD has engaged in. My great fear is that surveillance programs will actually end up alienating the very Muslims that we desperately need to recruit to report suspicious activity within American Muslim communities.

Of further concern, if we create a society where its’ okay to monitor certain groups because of their faith, we risk tarnishing the very fabric of America and hand the terrorists of September 11^th a victory that they don’t deserve because they have changed America into a society of fear and police.