A Hostile Climate for Civil Liberties

Azadeh Shahshahani is the Muslim/Middle Eastern Outreach Coordinator for the ACLU-NC. With backing from a grant from Z. Smith Reynolds, the object of her work is to raise civil liberties awareness within the Muslim community. Since 9/11 the Muslim and Middle Eastern communities living in America have suffered an increase in racial profiling and discrimination, especially religious discrimination. Azadeh sat down with writer Kate Akin from the Institute for Southern Studies to discuss her work and current political policies that threaten the civil liberties of the Muslim and Middle Eastern communities in N.C.

Kate Akin: How have the civil rights of the Muslim-American communities been affected since September 11 and especially since the Military Commissions Act of 2006?

Azadeh Shahshahani: There have been a lot of random FBI questionings of Muslim and Middle Eastern Americans conducted without any basis for suspicion. After the 9/11 attacks people, especially middle-aged Muslim men, were detained in airports based on their religion or their native countries. People who did not know about their right to an attorney were being asked inappropriate questions. They were being asked about their religious beliefs, their voting history, and whether or not they make the Hajj (religious pilgrimage), and many people did not realize that their rights were being violated.

The [national] ACLU has since made a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI Terrorist Screening Center, asking them to streamline their list of Muslim and Middle Eastern people who are under suspicion, as innocent people have been repeatedly detained for no reason.

For example, a man was coming back from Canada, coming through the border check, and he and his family were greeted by border police with weapons drawn. He had never committed a crime and was detained for several terrifying hours and questioned without being offered an explanation or an attorney. And his children were there . . . it was a frightening and unnecessary thing to happen.

There is also the NSA wiretapping, warrentless wiretapping which threatens all Americans, not only Muslims. The President is ignoring the system that has been in place since 1978 and has deemed FISA courts (which used to look into and authorize all government wiretapping) unnecessary to regulate government wiretapping. The court was not a stringent one, either. In all its years of operation it only turned down nine proposals, and it was willing to allow people in emergency intelligence situations to file their requests one or two days after they had done the wiretapping.

K.A.: Can you give some specific examples of how the civil liberties of Muslims and people of Middle Eastern backgrounds in N.C. have been targeted, threatened and compromised over the past six years?

A.S.: Today I got a call from someone in Wake County schools who was upset because a speaker, who had been invited to a teacher’s classroom by the teacher, had been bad-mouthing Islam. This type of behavior is plainly illegal. The government can’t endorse any religion and cannot hold one set of religious values over another, and this speaker was from a group whose mission was clearly a proselytizing mission.

Unfortunately, a lot of things happen that the ACLU doesn’t hear about. Part of my job is to get people to be more assertive about their rights. Another part is helping to pull together attorneys willing to help victims whose liberties have been violated.

In 2001, throughout N.C., a memo was issued by the Commissioner of the DMV stating that no person should wear headgear when appearing in a photo for a driver’s license. If someone wished to wear headgear, the memo stated that they were required to have a court affidavit stating their issue and signed by themselves and a second person of their faith. The policy was applied in a discriminatory manner—people with wigs, for example, were not usually required to submit the affidavit while Muslim women wearing head scarves were. Because the Muslim community became more aware of their civil rights and more willing to speak out against injustice throughout the following years, people raised their voices against this issue and raised hell. A new policy was released in this year stating that only the person wearing the headgear must sign the affidavit.

On a larger scale, we can cite issues like the case of Khaled el-Masri and other secret detentions of Muslims. One of the scariest things is that now any one, citizen or not, regardless of their race or religion, can be branded as an ‘enemy combatant’ and put in indefinite detention.

K.A.: What work have you done surrounding the Khaled el-Masri case?

A.S.: Well, a suit has been brought by the ACLU national. At the ACLU-NC we have been involved in the case, engaging in advocacy on a grassroots level, because one of the defendants in the lawsuit is Aero Contractors out of Smithfield, whose plane took off to abduct el-Masri from facilities leased to them in Kinston, N.C., by the state-funded Global TransPark.

We, the ACLU and NC Stop Torture Now, are asking non-profits and faith-based groups to sign a letter asking for a formal investigation of Aero Con tractors by the SBI of N.C. There is also a petition for individuals to sign located online.

We feel that if more people were aware of what’s going on, no one would want to play host to a company that conducts torture flights. (See “Is North Carolina Running a Torture Taxi Service?” p. 18)

K.A.: Have you seen any uplifting response to the injustices that have occurred within the Muslim and Middle Eastern community? Are people coming together to support the Muslim community in N.C.?

A.S.: People are very supportive. The Durham and Orange County Bill of Rights Defense Committees conducted a national conference call on 9/11 of last year letting people know how they can and should support the rights of the Muslim and Middle Eastern communities in America. And certainly the 30 attorneys I have recruited have been more than willing to take up cases pro-bono for those who have come forward to claim their rights.