Fighting State-Sponsored Spying and Discrimination with Amira Al-Subaey
06/09/21 • 35 min
During the Obama administration (or was it in 1984?), a campaign known as countering violent extremism (CVE, and a profusion of other acronyms since) was initiated by intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies to identify and dissuade those prone to radicalization. The Muslim Justice League was founded in 2014 by Muslim women of one CVE pilot city to defund and dismantle that massive increase in state-sponsored surveillance. The league’s deputy director, Amira Al-Subaey, joins us on AMP to discuss the facts and fiction surrounding still-active CVE policy.
According to the government, CVE would put an end to aggressive law enforcement policies by instead recruiting regular citizens like doctors, imams, and teachers to engage in the “soft policing” of their community. What are some of the risks indicating to informants that a person is likely to become a violent extremist, you ask? Things such as, Amira says, growing a beard, political activism, stated feelings of alienation, or increasing your mosque attendance. The surveillance—no surprise—targets Muslims and other immigrant and POC populations deemed a threat. We talk about CVE’s failures (lack of violence prevention, legitimization of anti-Muslim discrimination, disproportionate spying on and incarceration of Black and Brown people) and successes (this parenthetical intentionally left blank).
Amira enlightens us on the sad reasoning behind surveillants and institutions cooperating with these counterterrorism measures and the lengths those facing the worse consequences have gone to to avoid false suspicion. Asad and Amira both ponder the likelihood that they’ve been put on the FBI or DHS’s radar. We cover the repercussions of fighting the movement and social justice groups like AJL that are doing it anyway. Our government’s historical use of the terms “terrorist” and “extremist” and the lack of scientific evidence for “the indicators” leading to extremism are broached, and better ways to keep society safe are posited. The episode transitions to record-breaking ways Amira challenges herself personally, which produces a fitting metaphor for navigating life. She introduces us to abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba's recommendation of practicing hope as a discipline.
American Muslim Project is a production of Rifelion, LLC.
Writer and Researcher: Lindsy Gamble
Show Edited by Mark Annotto and Asad Butt
Music by Simon Hutchinson
Hosted by Asad Butt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
During the Obama administration (or was it in 1984?), a campaign known as countering violent extremism (CVE, and a profusion of other acronyms since) was initiated by intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies to identify and dissuade those prone to radicalization. The Muslim Justice League was founded in 2014 by Muslim women of one CVE pilot city to defund and dismantle that massive increase in state-sponsored surveillance. The league’s deputy director, Amira Al-Subaey, joins us on AMP to discuss the facts and fiction surrounding still-active CVE policy.
According to the government, CVE would put an end to aggressive law enforcement policies by instead recruiting regular citizens like doctors, imams, and teachers to engage in the “soft policing” of their community. What are some of the risks indicating to informants that a person is likely to become a violent extremist, you ask? Things such as, Amira says, growing a beard, political activism, stated feelings of alienation, or increasing your mosque attendance. The surveillance—no surprise—targets Muslims and other immigrant and POC populations deemed a threat. We talk about CVE’s failures (lack of violence prevention, legitimization of anti-Muslim discrimination, disproportionate spying on and incarceration of Black and Brown people) and successes (this parenthetical intentionally left blank).
Amira enlightens us on the sad reasoning behind surveillants and institutions cooperating with these counterterrorism measures and the lengths those facing the worse consequences have gone to to avoid false suspicion. Asad and Amira both ponder the likelihood that they’ve been put on the FBI or DHS’s radar. We cover the repercussions of fighting the movement and social justice groups like AJL that are doing it anyway. Our government’s historical use of the terms “terrorist” and “extremist” and the lack of scientific evidence for “the indicators” leading to extremism are broached, and better ways to keep society safe are posited. The episode transitions to record-breaking ways Amira challenges herself personally, which produces a fitting metaphor for navigating life. She introduces us to abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba's recommendation of practicing hope as a discipline.
American Muslim Project is a production of Rifelion, LLC.
Writer and Researcher: Lindsy Gamble
Show Edited by Mark Annotto and Asad Butt
Music by Simon Hutchinson
Hosted by Asad Butt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Previous Episode
A Focus on Palestinians with Dr. Maha Nassar
Dr. Maha Nassar, a Palestinian American professor and expert on Arab cultural and intellectual history, shares her insights on Palestinians.
Naturally, we ask her to address the horrific situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip over the past few weeks. She enlightens us on several key points, including how the conflict is truly an anti-colonialist struggle, how the youngest Palestinians in Israel identify themselves, and how Palestinians have been covered by major U.S. news outlets the last several decades. [Spoiler alert: Very few articles written about Palestinians are actually by a Palestinian.] Find out why bias in major news outlets may matter less now.
Maha shares the impetus behind her award-winning book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World, as well as details from her 2007 trip to Palestine that turned “really icky.” After learning of the de facto segregation in neighborhoods and schools in Israel, we dive into a fascinating if not disturbing comparison to Jim Crow laws. You may also be surprised to hear about Black Lives Matter leaders studying structural suppression and institutional violence in Palestine, and American police forces attending trainings in Israel. How murals of George Floyd can be found across Palestine, where they too hope to translate the present online momentum into real change. Naturally, we finish with Maha’s predictions on how this all ends.
Follow Maha on Twitter @mtnassar and read her unsettling article documenting how opinion pieces about Palestinians in the US mainstream media are overwhelmingly written by non-Palestinians. Check out her first book, Brothers Apart, and upcoming book, The Palestinians: A Global History, on the construction of Palestinian identity under statelessness and transnational dispersal.
American Muslim Project is a production of Rifelion, LLC.
Writer and Researcher: Lindsy Gamble
Show Edited by Mark Annotto and Asad Butt
Music by Simon Hutchinson
Hosted by Asad Butt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Next Episode
Building a World without Hate with Rais Bhuiyan
Rais Bhuiyan is a Bangladeshi American who was shot by a white supremacist as retaliation for the attacks of September 11th, four months after arriving in the United States. He joins us on this episode of American Muslim Project to share his remarkable story and mission to promote empathy and compassion.
Rais was thrilled to start his own American dream in Dallas after being granted a visa from the State Department’s lottery. He relays how his life instead became an “American nightmare” as Mark Anthony Stroman went on a killing spree, murdering two other South Asian men and nearly killing Rais in an attempt to hunt Arabs. We talk about that horrific day and how he called out for his mother, like George Floyd. Miraculously Rais lived, but the incident cost him his home, fiancé, job, sense of security, and the sight in his right eye. We learn of the hospital discharging him after he regained consciousness because of insurance and the Red Cross only allotting him a week’s worth of groceries.
Instead of campaigning for personal justice, however, Rais engaged in a fight for clemency for his attacker. Joined by a team backed by Amnesty International, Rais describes why and how he petitioned to save Stroman’s life, going all the way to the Supreme Court and also taking on the lethal injection manufacturer in Denmark. Discover how his request for mediation with his attacker played out and both of their transitions after the crime. At the same time, Rais founded World Without Hate, a nonprofit working to prevent and disrupt the cycles of hate and violence through storytelling and empathy. He shares the promise he made to Allah for letting him live and the Quran verse that inspired him.
Find out how the campaign played out and about the mentorship Rais now has with Stroman’s son. Check out his website and follow World Without Hate @worldwithouthate and @WWHforgive as they work toward a 9/11 hate crime resolution, among other projects. If nothing else examine your own ability to forgive, then spread the ultimate story of compassion to better this country—ours and Rais’s—that he still somehow manages to love.
American Muslim Project is a production of Rifelion, LLC.
Writer and Researcher: Lindsy Gamble
Show Edited by Mark Annotto and Asad Butt
Music by Simon Hutchinson
Hosted by Asad Butt
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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