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Court: Lawsuit Over NYPD Surveillance of Muslims Can Proceed (washingtonpost.com)
PolygamousRanchKid sends this report from the Washington Post:
A federal court said Tuesday that a civil rights lawsuit accusing police in New York City of improperly singling out Muslims for surveillance could proceed, reversing a lower court's decision last year to dismiss the case. In its opinion (PDF), a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected the city's call to have the case dismissed and brushed aside any suggestion that media reports about the surveillance, rather than the surveillance itself, caused any harm.
The lawsuit claims that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several New Jersey Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department. ... Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) praised in a statement at the time as "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve."
The lawsuit claims that surveillance of Muslim people in New Jersey discriminated against them due to their religion. It was filed by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy group, and later joined by the Center for Constitutional Rights, another legal organization, on behalf of several New Jersey Muslims who say they were unconstitutionally monitored by the New York Police Department. ... Last year, the NYPD disbanded the unit involved in the surveillance activities, a move that Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) praised in a statement at the time as "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve."
This kind of discrimination is perfectly logical and desirable.
If these people had a non-religious ideology which included hating/killing/repressing Jews, Homosexuals, non-believers by violence, e.g. (Neo)-Nazism (Godwin's fallacy aside), then the Authorities would be allowed to be all over them.
After all, only just a few Nazis killed Jews, Romas, and Homosexuals. The vast majority of Nazis were good law abiding folk. You can't judge all Nazis by the actions of just a small minority- that would be racist oh sorry, I meant bigoted
Nazism is an ideology of peace! (eventually, for those who follow it)
Islamists are dangerous far beyond their numbers, statistically. The problem is that you can't tell them apart from Muslims. There is a lot of overlap, and neither Islamists nor Muslims are willing to help us differentiate the two groups.
A funny thing about people is that we tend to protect ourselves. If the peaceful means of protection are not available to people, the people will tend to use non-peaceful means. Attempting to identify and track a group that is a self-professed threat to us is a peaceful means of protection.
The world will tremble at the building backlash, if the pressure isn't allowed a safe release.
Posting anon. I can afford to burn the karma, but when something this obvious is pointed out, most people assume (even after I explicitly deny) that I'm in favor of it.
I have to wonder if Mayor de Blasio will force the NYC PD to take a dive on this suit to get a particular precedent into law like the Obama administration has done?
The would seem to be as easy method of advancing the agenda in a way hard to reverse. Of course that probably won't work out well for everyone else.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Islam is matched with Christianity and Jewish for all the time dumbest, most insane concepts on earth.
What's amusing about this statement is how related they actually are - all three (nearly-)linearly descend from each other, all rooted in the Abrahamic religion. Christianity's Old Testament is Judaism's Torah and other books; the Quran has very similar situations, oftentimes with names or small details changed (or sometimes not - "Mary" is a bigger deal in Islam than she is in Christianity).
Similarly, all three have equal numbers of people who pretend the horrifying parts of their books don't exist, and those who take those horrifying parts literally.
Islam is now the largest criminal prison gang in the UK. Muslim rape gangs run riot, and they openly target the military. Is it any surprise that we want to keep an eye on them?
In the early years of the expansion of the Islamic Empire, during the last years of its prophet's life, the empire used the technique of hit and run brigandage on the surrounding territories as a way to soften them up for subsequent invasion. The reality is that Islam can reasonably be argued to be a moral legitimation for an expansionist empire; that the Arabs got to FRANCE before being turned back is not usually known.
Of course there are some Muslims who are embarrassed by this history, and merely endorse Islam because that's what they grew up in. The problem is whether we should believe what they say, or realising that Islam regards itself at war with all outsiders, justifying deceiving them, treat all denials with great scepticism. And if so, do we argue that Islam is a criminal organisation? If not, why not?