The Muslim Public Affair Council (MPAC), a part of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, has met with the Department of Justice to object to reported FBI surveillance of Southern California mosques. According to an MPAC announcement:
In a meeting with the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, the Muslim Public Affairs Council raised objections to reported FBI surveillance of Southern California mosques. Agency officials issued a statement on Friday denying that monitoring had taken place. …The inquiry came following an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune which stated that a group of military reservists and law enforcement officers at Camp Pendleton had stolen “a massive number of” classified records, some of which “pertained to surveillance of Muslim communities in Southern California.” Specifically, the newspaper reported that the Islamic Center of San Diego had been monitored as part of a “federal surveillance program targeting Muslim groups.” In response to MPAC’s inquiry, FBI Assistant Director John Miller said, in part: “The FBI does not monitor the lawful activities of individuals in the United States, nor does the FBI have a surveillance program to monitor the constitutionally protected activities of houses of worship. We do not target or monitor legal activity of Muslim groups anywhere in the nation.”…”Our objective is to clear the name of Muslim institutions like the Islamic Center of San Diego, which are working to serve their local communities,” said MPAC Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati. “We will continue in our endeavor to protect the civil liberties of Muslim Americans and all Americans, through government engagement and in coalition with other civil rights groups. The Muslim American community will not tolerate being treated as suspects rather than partners.
MPAC was established initially in 1986 as the Political Action Committee of the Islamic Center of Southern California whose key leaders likely had their origins in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Since that time, MPAC has functioned as the political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood. MPAC has opposed virtually every count-terror initiative undertaken or proposed by the U.S. government. At times this opposition was said to be on civil-rights grounds but, just as often, MPAC claimed that U.S. counter-terror efforts were aimed at the U.S. Muslim community itself. MPAC has consistently supported and facilitated terrorism by supporting terrorist organizations and, more broadly, constructing an elaborate ideology defending the use of violence by Islamists and Islamist organizations. More than any other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization, MPAC has developed extensive relationships with the U.S. government which have included numerous meetings with the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Discussion
This post was incorrectly headlined and has been corrected.