FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’

[rug]

By Spencer Ackerman
September 14, 201i 8:45 pm

The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.”

At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents are shown a chart contending that the more “devout” a Muslim, the more likely he is to be “violent.” Those destructive tendencies cannot be reversed, an FBI instructional presentation adds: “Any war against non-believers is justified” under Muslim law; a “moderating process cannot happen if the Koran continues to be regarded as the unalterable word of Allah.”

These are excerpts from dozens of pages of recent FBI training material on Islam that Danger Room has acquired. In them, the Constitutionally protected religious faith of millions of Americans is portrayed as an indicator of terrorist activity.

“There may not be a ‘radical’ threat as much as it is simply a normal assertion of the orthodox ideology,” one FBI presentation notes. “The strategic themes animating these Islamic values are not fringe; they are main stream.”

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/fbi-muslims-radical/

FBI training materials:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/09/fbi_militancy_considerations.pdf

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/09/fbi_islamic_law.pdf

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/09/fbi_doctrinal_basis_for_jihad.pdf

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/09/fbi_militancy_charts.pdf

[Jim__]

1. I wondered what Islamic sources the FBI used to make these determinations about Islam.

But, the article makes this fairly clear: None:

The chief of the Training Division, Assistant FBI Director Thomas Browne, came into his current job in January. His official biography lists no terrorism expertise beyond serving as a coordinator for a bureau “Domestic Terrorism Program” in Tennessee sometime in the last decade.

It is unclear what vetting process the FBI used to approve these briefings; if any Muslim scholars contributed to them; and what criteria Quantico uses to determine Islamic expertise. “The development of effective training is a constantly evolving process,” says FBI spokesman Allen. “Sometimes the training is adapted for long-term use. This particular training segment was delivered a single time and not used since.”

Several of these briefings were the work of a single author: an FBI intelligence analyst named William Gawthrop. In 2006, before he joined the Bureau, he gave an interview to the website WorldNetDaily, and discussed some of the themes that made it into his briefings, years later. The Prophet “Muhammad’s mindset is a source for terrorism,” Gawthrop told the website, which would later distinguish itself as a leader of the “birther” movement, a conspiracy theory that denies President Obama’s American citizenship.

I hoped that after Hoover left the bureau, it might become a better source of intelligence rather than a source of crank political agitation. But, it doesn't appear that is the path it is taking.

[Denninmi]

2. Clearly this smacks of Christian fundamentalist thinking.

Its so helpful when one group of fundamentalists labels everyone who has alternate religious beliefs as terrorists and un-American.

I still say, when a Taliban is beating you to death, it makes little practical difference which holy book they profess to believe in, and it also makes little practical difference whether its being done to you in the mountains of Afghanistan or the Bible Belt of the USA. This seems to be the path we're headed down.

[MisterP]

3. pssssh, you and your Courtier's Replies

since when did someone need to know anything about something to criticize it?