WASHINGTON(Al-Jazeera) - A Muslim-American advocacy group said it has uncovered a ‘mole’ in the leadership of one of its state branches as well as a ‘spy’ at a U.S. mosque that passed information to an “anti-Muslim group”.
The two incidents, revealed earlier this month by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have shaken Muslim advocates in the United States and renewed longstanding concerns about spying on the community.
“Community members were shocked and saddened to learn about this specific situation, but a lot of people were also not surprised that an anti-Muslim hate group was targeting CAIR and spying this way,” said Whitney Siddiqi, community affairs director at CAIR-Ohio.
The CAIR chapter said on December 15 that it had sacked Romin Iqbal, its executive and legal director in the Columbus-Cincinnati area, for “egregious ethical and professional violations”.
CAIR accused Iqbal of handing confidential information to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups in the U.S., has said was founded by an “anti-Muslim activist”.
Separately, CAIR’s national office in Washington, DC said on December 21 that another individual volunteering at a US mosque had come forward and said he was paid by Steven Emerson, IPT’s executive director, to provide information on the community.
“Community update: a second IPT ‘spy’ has voluntarily come forward, confessed and agreed to cooperate with us. He was not part of CAIR. He was an active volunteer in a large mosque who was invited to national community meetings & events,” CAIR said in a Twitter thread, without identifying the alleged spy or where he was volunteering.
Siddiqi said one of the aims of the spying is to create “fear and distrust in our own communities”, but she stressed that CAIR is moving forward “with transparency” and redoubling its efforts to battle Islamophobia.
“Again, we recognize the devastation of this news and it certainly takes time to process, but something positive to come out of this is the fact that we are strengthening our connections and our work to protect and defend Muslims,” she told Al Jazeera in an email.
For example, between 2002 and 2014, the New York Police Department dedicated an entire unit to spy on the city’s Muslim population. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), police mapped out where Muslim New Yorkers lived, recruited informants from within the Muslim community, and placed mosques under surveillance.