Mapping Muslims: The LAPD's Plans to Keep Track of LA's Muslims

by yaman salahi

“Law enforcement and its advocates must also avoid name-calling exchanges with political jihadists, opting instead to engage them professionally on specific issues.”

These are the words of Michael P. Downing, the Commanding Officer in the Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Bureau in the Los Angeles Police Department, to the Committee on Homeland Security on October 30, 2007, regarding his plan to plot the areas Muslims have settled in Los Angeles.

One might wonder what exactly it is to to call somebody a “political jihadist,” if not a part of a so-called “name-calling exchange.” Downing, in a moment of rhetorical brilliance, appears to have himself coined the term, bringing together the stigma of jihad with something vaguely “political.” In doing so, however, he has made explicit what commentators have been saying for years regarding ideas of security in American political discourse--that “security” in our present lexicon is inevitably linked to one’s political orientation, rather than a disposition towards violent action. Explained as proactive security measures, Downing’s proposals, too, are vaguely “political.”

Law enforcement under Downing confirms the American legacy of mobilizing the law against “dangerous” political groups, movements, or ideologies. Under Downing’s stewardship the police department’s “ultimate goal is to engender the continued loyalty and good citizenship of American-Muslims--not merely to disrupt terrorist activities.” Here, it seems, Downing is a political jihadist in his own right; that is, one struggling against political ideologies he finds distasteful.

But let us give the man some credit. Consider the definition he presents to the Committee on Homeland Security of “political jihadists.” They are people “who are attempting to create division, alienation, and a sense of persecution in Muslim communities in order to create a cause.... [t]heir purpose is to create the conditions that facilitate the radicalization process for international political causes.”

Downing’s two goals, then, are (1) to fight “division, alienation, and a sense of persecution” amongst Muslim communities, so that those divisions cannot be exploited by “political jihadists;” and (2) to stifle the “conditions that facilitate the radicalization process for international political causes.”

It seems, though, that in pursuing these goals, Downing inevitably ends up dividing, alienating, and persecuting Muslim communities, among others, while also facilitating the support of those communities for a particular international political cause, namely the American one of spreading the Good Word of Democracy to all corners of the world.

One of his tactics will be “raising the moderate Muslim voice and creating the counter-narrative that offsets the fanatical trajectory of radicalization.” In a statement to the New York Times regarding this issue, Hussam Ayloush, an executive director of the LA Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, posed questions that poignantly illustrated problems with such an approach: “Who is going to decide who are the moderates? Are Muslims who criticize the war in Iraq moderate?”

As we have come to know her, the “moderate Muslim” might have some reserved criticisms of the war in Iraq, but she certainly does not disagree with the US’ “international political cause” of spreading Democracy with destroyers. Such a criticism might be considered too sympathetic to a variety of other “international political causes” that cause Downing great distress. Downing, as a police officer, believes that it is within his authority and responsibility to determine which of these “international political causes” are “moderate.”

I hesitate to create the impression that Downing’s behavior is atypical. It in fact reflects and embodies the dominant discussion surrounding Muslims and their involvement in politics. Their freedom to organize politically is always conditional on the content of their politics, just as the case has been for other communities throughout American history. Downing might be right to say that American Muslims’ sense of “alienation” and “persecution” is constructed—but he and his allies themselves are the architects of that alienation and persecution, feelings which are legitimate and real, not imagined and propagated as Downing suggests by foreign agitators. Does Downing really believe that the idea of mapping every Muslim community in Los Angeles will not be interpreted as hostile?

Those decrying alienation and persecution come from within America, and are a consequence of the American system itself, not of the outside world. Attempts like Downing’s to mischaracterize the source of those sentiments have the obvious effect of displacing blame, but more importantly, in making it impossible to actually approach the issues at hand in an informed way that allows a possibility for constructive results or responses.

More disturbingly Downing’s entire approach is plagued by a search for various sociological and cultural explanations for the alienation that Muslims, in his view, have invented for themselves. In the best case for Downing, the way the law itself behaves is only a problem when it does so recklessly, accidentally “advancing the purpose of political jihadists.” He does not consider that there might be something intrinsic to the law (here used in a general sense referring to the political system at large) in producing such feelings, not as an accident, but as something that reflects its perfect performance.

Though he explains that American Muslim communities differ from their European counterparts because they are generally integrated and economically successful, Downing ends up finding common ground with his European counterparts by placing extra scrutiny on the Muslim community. If Downing believes the two communities to be so different, then how is it that his solution ends up being of the same sort? Muslim communities in Europe and the US nevertheless end up sharing one thing in common: they are viewed, understood, and treated in similar ways and with suspicion in both systems.

With this analysis in mind, it makes sense that Downing, ignoring the possibility of structural or systematic reasons for the marginalization of Muslim communities in the United States, would suggest that the best response is an “educational process” that forms a “counter-narrative” (to the bad political jihadists, as opposed to the good ones like him) with “the goal... to inspire Muslim communities to responsibly partner with law enforcement to protect American values.” This is a reworking of the same philosophy that inspires President Bush in dealing with countries in the Middle East, that we have cultural problems to deal with, nothing more, and nothing less.

If these numerous analytical problems are not sufficient to illustrate Downing’s flawed approach, then a number of other practical issues should be cause for alarm. The function of law enforcement in the democratic formulation, after all, is not “to protect American values.” It is supposed to be the protection of Americans. Re-education is not something that police officers are commissioned to do. What Downing advocates is a propaganda program thinly veiled as a a security measure with the interests of “greater society” in mind, at the expense of the Muslim communities in the United States. Greater society, the way Downing invokes it, does not include the Muslim communities. It necessarily excludes them.

While some, like Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, have given conditional support to the program “as long as it safeguard[s] civil liberties,” it is actually impossible to speak of civil liberties in the first place when law enforcement is not concerned with enforcing the law, but with the political refashioning of our communities. We must ask ourselves whether it is the law that creates the citizen or the citizen that creates the law. We know where Downing stands on this question. Do the rest of us, however, really want to see the police deciding for us what “American values” are, and then ensuring that we are “good” and “loyal” citizens by making sure we follow their idea?

What is at stake, after all, is not our security, but the role of the police force in our society. Downing’s intolerable idea has already been temporarily halted, but the premises that inform it continue to prevail. This should be our real concern, as the challenges before us today will remain as long as this man and those like him are in power.

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Yaman Salahi is an undegraduate at UC Berkeley. He blogs at yamansalahi.com.