Justice Department to prohibit agents from considering religion in counterterror investigations

The further dismantling of terror programs. The further disarming of law enforcement and intel and security agencies. The prohibition of criticism of Islam in the ongoing war is de facto sharia compliance and enforcement.

Islamic terror is all Islam. 100%. Al Qaeda behind 95% of world’s suicide bombings — suicide martyrdom is a religious imperative in Islam. Al Qaeda unabashedly proclaims that their holy war is in the cause of Islam.

The poison fruit of  these suicidal policies was evident in the intel failure of the Boston jihad bombers. Law enforcement was warned, the FBI was warned and they did nothing — they didn’t monitor the Tsarnaevs’ mosque. They were too busy doing “outreach,” stepping and fetching.

Prohibiting investigation and discussion of the religious motive behind jihadi attacks is akin to prohibiting investigation and discussion of Nazism in the Allies’ war against the Axis powers. It is mad delusion or worse — complicity and surrender.

What are they going to use to “profile” and examine? The color of their socks?

“U.S. to Expand Rules Limiting Use of Profiling by Federal Agents,” by Matt Apuzzo for the New York Times, January 15 (thanks to Linda Sarsour): (hat tip Robert Spencer)

The Justice Department will significantly expand its definition of racial profiling to prohibit federal agents from considering religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation in their investigations, a government official said Wednesday.

The move addresses a decade of criticism from civil rights groups that say federal authorities have in particular singled out Muslims in counterterrorism investigations and Latinos for immigration investigations.

The Bush administration banned profiling in 2003, but with two caveats: It did not apply to national security cases, and it covered only race, not religion, ancestry or other factors.

Since taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been under pressure from Democrats in Congress to eliminate those provisions. “These exceptions are a license to profile American Muslims and Hispanic-Americans,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in 2012.

President George W. Bush said in 2001 that racial profiling was wrong and promised “to end it in America.” But that was before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. After those attacks, federal agents arrested and detained dozens of Muslim men who had no ties to terrorism. The government also began a program known as special registration, which required tens of thousands of Arab and Muslim men to register with the authorities because of their nationalities.

“Putting an end to this practice not only comports with the Constitution, it would put real teeth to the F.B.I’s claims that it wants better relationships with religious minorities,” said Hina Shamsi, a national security lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

It is not clear whether Mr. Holder also intends to make the rules apply to national security investigations, which would further respond to complaints from Muslim groups.

“Adding religion and national origin is huge,” said Linda Sarsour, advocacy director for the National Network for Arab American Communities. “But if they don’t close the national security loophole, then it’s really irrelevant.”

In other words, she even wants it to be forbidden for Muslims to be placed under surveillance in the interests of national security.

Ms. Sarsour said she also hoped that Mr. Holder would declare that surveillance, not just traffic stops and arrests, was prohibited based on religion.

The Justice Department has been reviewing the rules for several years and has not signaled how it might change them. Mr. Holder disclosed his plans in a meeting Wednesday with Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, according to an official briefed on the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversation was private.

Mr. de Blasio was elected in November after running a campaign in which he heavily criticized the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactic, which overwhelmingly targets minorities and which a federal judge declared unconstitutional. The mayor and attorney general did not discuss when the rule change would be announced, the official said. A senior Democratic congressional aide, however, said the Obama administration had indicated an announcement was “imminent.”

The Justice Department would not confirm the new rules on Wednesday night but released a short statement saying that the mayor and the attorney general discussed “preventing crime while protecting civil rights and civil liberties.”

In the past, Mr. Holder has spoken out forcefully against profiling.

“Racial profiling is wrong,” he said in a 2010 speech. “It can leave a lasting scar on communities and individuals. And it is, quite simply, bad policing — whatever city, whatever state.”

Officials in the Bush administration made similar statements, however, which is why civil rights groups have eagerly waited to hear not just Mr. Holder’s opinion, but also the rules he plans to enact.

As written, the Justice Department’s rules prohibit federal agents from using race as a factor in their investigations unless there is specific, credible information that makes race relevant to a case.

“Authorities may never rely on generalized stereotypes, but may rely only on specific race- or ethnicity-based information,” the rules say….

The rules cover federal law enforcement agencies such as the F.B.I. and the Drug Enforcement Administration. They do not cover local or state police departments.

That is significant because Muslim groups have sued the New York Police Department over surveillance programs that mapped Muslim neighborhoods, photographed their businesses and built files on where they eat, shop and pray….

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