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Exclusive: Muslim Leaders, Victims Denounce Federal Raids on Homes, Businesses and Institutions
By
Ayesha Ahmad and Neveen Salem, IOL Washington correspondents
WASHINGTON,
March 22 (IslamOnline) - It seemed like an innocent delivery at
first. At 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, a deliveryman approached the home
of Aysha Nudret Unus in Herndon, Va., bearing an appliance,
accompanied by another man dressed in black.
An
hour later, the man in black was banging at the door, demanding,
"Open the door!" in a very loud voice.
"All
I could see was the man in a black jacket," Unus said, speaking
at a press conference Thursday, March 21, about her ordeal. "I
could see the barrel of the gun [through the peephole] of the
door."
Unus,
an American citizen of Pakistani origin, yelled for her 19-year-old
daughter, who was sleeping upstairs, to call 911 and "tell them
someone is at the door with a gun."
Her
daughter came downstairs and picked up the phone, but at that point,
the man broke down the door and entered the house, pointing his gun
at them. The two women are Muslim, and because they were in their
home, neither were wearing her hijab - the Islamic head-covering
women are required to wear in front of non-related males.
The
man ordered Unus'sdaughter to drop the phone and raise her hands. He
then proceeded to handcuff them both, Unus said. Not until they were
handcuffed and seated were they told that the man was an officer
with a search warrant.
"I
was actually relieved at the time," Unus said. "At least
they are government people."
The
invasion of Unus's home was part of a series of federal raids
conducted on Muslim homes and Muslim-owned businesses and
institutions on Wednesday, March 20, in search for information based
on alleged support for terrorist groups. Fourteen search warrants
were issued for the Northern Virginia region, and one in Georgia;
all the groups and individuals involved were Muslim.
Publicly
the Customs Agency, which helped conduct the raids through the
warrants issued by the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., was
reported to have claimed that no one was handcuffed during any of
the raids.
Unus's
husband, Dr. Iqbal Unus, is the dean of students at the Graduate
School of Islamic Social Sciences in Leesburg, Va., which was also
raided Wednesday. Both were present at the press conference held
Thursday at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on
Capitol Hill.
Unus
also told reporters how she and her daughter were both photographed
without their head-coverings, despite asking to be allowed to cover
themselves; after one officer attempted to put the scarves on the
two women, their handcuffs were removed and replaced in front so
that they could don the scarves themselves.
When
she showed her driver's license to the agents, they told her it was
fake, before they checked it out and found it to be legitimate, she
said.
"We
feel the system has humiliated us," Unus said. "As
American citizens, we feel we deserved better."
The
Unus home was one of several others invaded; Laura Jaghlit, also an
American citizen and a schoolteacher in Fairfax, Va., whose home was
also raided, told reporters she knew of at least six homes involved
in the search.
Jaghlit,
who came home Wednesday afternoon to find her home turned upside
down and her 62-year-old husband speaking with the supervisors of
the federal agents who surrounded his house earlier that day,
denounced the raid on her home as un-American and began to weep as
she told her story.
"What
happened to us yesterday was the most un-American thing I have ever
seen in my life," said Jaghlit, whose father fought in World
War II and whose brother died in the Vietnam War.
Jaghlit
told reporters that federal agents targeted their home because of
her and her husband's associations with organizations listed on the
search warrant; her family's personal trust accounts were also
mentioned in the warrant.
She
told IslamOnline that agents told her family they "might even
find Osama bin Laden in the basement," when they searched her
house.
Muslim
leaders at the press conference denounced the raids as serious civil
rights infringements and a "fishing expedition" targeting
Muslims and Arabs. Many expressed concern that the "war on
terrorism" has become what some Muslims have been saying all
along - a war on Muslims.
"This
is a sad day," said Mohamed Omeish, the president of Success
Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian relief agency that was raided.
"This war claims to be against terrorism, but it is against
Muslims and Arabs. The track record of this administration does not
show otherwise."
Louay
Safi, director of research at the International Institute of Islamic
Thought (IIIT), said that the raid shocked his organization; federal
agents entered the building around 10 a.m. and kept the staff
confined in a room for several hours without showing them the search
warrant initially.
"My
organization is a research organization," Safi said. "We
are committed to reforming Islamic thought… and working… to
integrate the Muslim community into the American system. We are very
much surprised and even shocked at agents… looking for terrorist
support [in our offices]."
Safi
told IslamOnline after the press conference that the agents treated
staff members like criminals.
"They
were trying to intimidate us. They tried to take people's pictures
without individual warrants. Without those warrants you cannot treat
an individual like a criminal," Safi told IslamOnline.
"The
fact of the matter is that they [the agents] do not realize that
they are dealing with people who know their rights," he
continued.
Safi
told the press conference that such measures would only serve to
further remove American Muslims from their community. "This
effort to fight terrorism is heading now in the wrong
direction," he said, decrying what he called the government's
"attempt to alienate even the most moderate Muslim
voices."
Shaker
el-Sayed, head of the National Muslim Leadership Summit and of the
American Muslim Foundation, whose offices were also swept because of
their proximity to those of Success, also warned about the effects
of the raids on the American Muslim community.
"This
is a blatant harassment of respected Islamic institutions and
families, and it sends a hostile and chilling message to the
American Muslim community and contradicts President [George W.]
Bush's repeated assertions that the war against terrorism is not a
conflict with Islam," he said.
Abdul-Wahab
al-kebsi, executive director of the Washington-based Islamic
Institute, said that although his organization has stood by the
president in his war on terror, these raids constitute harassment
and raise serious civil rights concerns, making American Muslims
feel targeted.
"If
such raids and targeting of Muslims continues, the community will
begin to feel as though they are part of the problem when in fact
they have always cooperated and vowed to be a part of the
solution," Al-kebsi told IslamOnline after the conference.
"The
American Muslim community, as law abiding and patriotic Americans
are uniquely positioned to be able to help the government, but such
a blatant disregard for their civil rights has made them victims
twice over… once on September 11 and again now by our
government."
Asked
what the American Muslim community expects the U.S. government's
next steps should be, Al-kebsi had harsh words for U.S. Attorney
General John Ashcroft, demanding that he assume responsibility for
the violations and put an immediate end to the targeting of Muslims.
"Ashcroft
must call for an immediate halt to the sledgehammer approach to the
'war on terrorism'," he said.
He
also called on Ashcroft to "stop the media circus," and to
explain why media officials were told about and "practically
invited" to the raids. IIIT staff also told IslamOnline that at
least one television station was close at hand when their offices
were raided.
A
CAIR representative, Jason Erb, said that the destruction of civil
liberties was not needed for the sake of security, calling the raids
"a fishing expedition by federal authorities using
McCarthy-like tactics in a search for evidence of wrongdoing that
does not exist."
Al-kebsi
said the Federal Bureau of Investigation "categorically"
denied any involvement with the raids; however, witnesses said that
FBI agents were present, and media reports said Wednesday that FBI
agents were part of a team of about 150 law enforcement authorities
who carried out the raids.
El-Sayed
told reporters at the press conference that the Muslim groups were
planning to meet to discuss the next step for both the organizations
and the individuals whose civil rights were infringed upon. But he
said that the government had so far not been responsive, turning a
"blind eye and a deaf ear to our calls."
Erb,
whose organization has been working for years as a champion of
Muslim civil rights, said that the raids were the latest in a long
line of measures that target Muslims and Arabs, including
anti-immigration laws and secret evidence.
"We're
tired of telling people in the government that we don't like [what's
happening] and [then] not seeing any policy changes," he said.
Other
groups that were raided included the FIQH Council of North America,
a non-political religious organization which gave a religious ruling
in October in support of Muslims joining the U.S. anti-terror
effort, the Muslim World League, the International Islamic Relief
Organization, and twenty-two other groups, including those mentioned
above, some of which shared office space with each other.
All
of the organizations subjected to the raids are well known and
respected religious organizations in the U.S., as were the
individuals whose homes were raided, and all have time and again
denounced acts of terrorism. The organizations represented at the
press conference asserted their innocence of the allegations stated
in the warrant and reaffirmed their stance against terrorism and the
killing of innocent civilians.
Muslim community leaders
also stated that Friday's congregational prayer services would focus
on how to mobilize American Muslims towards proactively seeking to
ensure that the civil rights of all persons living in the U.S. are
protected and enforced by the government.
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