ISLAMABAD
\nIn an interview prominent Muslim Mayor Mohammad Khairullah revealed that he was invited at White House on the occasion of Eid ul Fitr on 1st May but FBI didn\u2019t cleared and he was informed that he is no longer invited in the gathering.
\nKhairrullah told that half an hour before he was scheduled to arrive at the White House, he received a phone call telling him he was no longer invited: the Secret Service had refused to allow him in.
\nKhairullah says after this phone call, he contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) regarding the incident; they confirmed that he had been barred from entering the White House because of a secret status the FBI had assigned to him years earlier without notice or explanation.
\nI don\u2019t know how I got on that list,\u201d he tells TRT World. \u201cBut the majority of the people on that list are either Muslims or Arabs, which tells you that I can easily get on this list basically by sneezing the wrong way.\u201d
\nA recent report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) highlights the disproportionate number of Muslims in the FBI\u2019s Terrorism Screening Database and on its No-Fly List.
\nThe report reveals that more than 98 percent of the individuals on the FBI\u2019s watchlist are Muslim, with Muslims comprising a whooping 99 percent of the Bureau\u2019s No-Fly List, which contains the names of those who can be stopped from boarding a commercial airliner.
\nKhairullah, who had sought refuge in the US after escaping violence in Syria in the 1990s, never imagined he would end up on the list.
\nIn an interview with TRT World, he discusses how being on the list impacts his political career, personal life and the wider Muslim community.
\nKhairullah reminisces about his childhood dreams of becoming a firefighter and how his political career in the United States began.
\n\u201cWhat I wanted to do, always, as a child, was to be a firefighter. The United States gave me the opportunity to become a volunteer firefighter, and that was my first experience dealing with the political system,\u201d he recalls.
\nSince becoming a firefighter required US citizenship, Khairullah was told that local rules could be changed on a town level to allow him to join the fire department.
\n\u201cYou could make rules locally \u2014 and that made me intrigued by local politics,\u201d he says.
\nKhairullah became a member of the City Council after obtaining his citizenship in 2000. In 2005, he received support from his colleagues on the Council to fill the seat of the previous mayor, who had moved out of town. Since then, Khairullah has run for five terms, each term lasting four years.
\n\u201cI think we could change the narrative by being involved within the system. They no longer can say, \u2018any Mohammed is whatever we see on TV, because the Mohammed in Prospect Park, NJ, is the person we know that helps people and raises funds for areas hit by disaster\u2019,\u201d he says.
\n\u201cThey know us (Muslims) for who we are, not for what the media tells them.\u201d
\nMayor Khairullah emphasises that reforming the process of compiling the watchlist should be a top priority in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections. \u201cIt\u2019s crucial for Muslim organisations and the Muslim community to address this as a serious and major topic,\u201d he states.
\n\u201cHow you get on it (the FBI list), we don\u2019t know. Until it was leaked, the government did not acknowledge that it exists. I think, until now, they kind of don\u2019t acknowledge its existence,\u201d says Khairullah.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s the crazy part in the United States, a country of institutions and a constitution that protects civil liberties. I am guilty of something in their eyes, which prevents me from being a normal citizen, but they won\u2019t tell me what it is, which is, in my mind, the core issue of what is wrong with that list.\u201d
\nAccording to Khairullah, federal agents provide no explanations regarding the watchlist to elected officials, congresspeople or senators. This lack of transparency further exacerbates the situation for Muslim citizens listed by the FBI.
\n\u201cThey won\u2019t even answer to federally elected officials. They won\u2019t answer to senators. They won\u2019t answer to congressmen\u2026 I mean, these are people who sit in Congress, in the Senate and they vote on major bills that fall on US policy, but they still can\u2019t get an answer. So what do you think of this humble servant or any other average citizen?\u201d
\nKhairullah is calling for urgent reform in both the creation and maintenance of the watchlist. He stresses the need for a transparent process to allow individuals to defend themselves against whatever allegedly incriminating \u2018evidence\u2019 had them included on the list in order to be removed from it altogether.
\nThe repercussions of being on the watchlist extend beyond Mayor Khairullah\u2019s political career. He recounts a personal experience at the Canadian border, where he was detained in a glass room for three to four hours. \u201cMy toddler daughter was asking me why I can\u2019t get to her,\u201d he recalls.
\n\u201cThat is not an experience that I want my children or the children of others to go through because that will give the impression that you are a second- or third-class citizen.\u201d
\nWhile Mayor Khairullah\u2019s inclusion on the FBI watchlist is a high-profile case, he highlights that there are hundreds of thousands of people suffering silently.
\n\u201cA flight between the New York area and Chicago could be less than two hours by plane, but then some people choose to take a 16-hour car ride if they need to go there\u201d \u2014 because many would rather avoid harassment at the airport.
\nThe CAIR report sheds light on the severe impact the watchlist has on the lives of Muslims. Saadiq Long, a US Air Force veteran with no criminal record, is just one of many Muslims who has faced significant challenges due to his watchlist status. Flight bans prevented him from visiting his critically ill mother in Oklahoma, forcing him to undertake arduous overland journeys. Stories like Long\u2019s are a dime a dozen among Muslims in the US.
\nAvoiding airports and travelling by car doesn\u2019t always shield individuals from the far-reaching consequences of being on the watchlist. They often find themselves confronted by a swarm of CBP (Customs and Border Protection) officers at frontiers, where they face a series of distressing ordeals. They are often held at gunpoint, handcuffed and subjected to hours of relentless interrogation. In some cases, they may even be detained under hazardous conditions.
\nAnas Elhady is another Muslim whose case is highlighted in CAIR\u2019s report. Elhady, a college student, was returning home to Michigan after a visit to Canada in 2015. Upon crossing the border, he was detained by CBP officers who proceeded to subject him to an extensive interrogation that lasted for hours. Throughout this ordeal, Elhady was confined to a freezing-cold cement cell wearing only his shirt, pants and thin socks. Despite his repeated pleas for additional clothing or a blanket, his requests were denied by the CBP officers until he lost consciousness from the cold. It was only then that he was finally taken to a hospital.
\nThese stories reveal the profound human toll exacted by the watchlist system, leaving affected individuals with lasting scars and eroding their sense of safety and dignity.
\nOne of the FBI\u2019s tactics while monitoring those on the watchlist is to coerce them into becoming informants within their communities. Mayor Khairullah, himself, was subjected to this approach.
\n\u201cI have been interviewed by federal agents and they asked me to sort of become an informant,\u201d he reveals. The agents, knowing he had taken several trips to Syria, requested that he go on social media and find some information about the Muslim community in the Middle Eastern country.
\nHe refused the offer, telling the agents, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing that I could share with you. If there\u2019s anything that I need to share with you that I know is important for our country, I would, I\u2019ll be more than happy to do so. But I\u2019m not going to go on social media and dig up stuff,\u201d continuing, \u201cThat\u2019s his job, not my job.\u201d
\nThe FBI\u2019s coercion tactics extend beyond high-profile civil servants to encompass young Muslim citizens in the US. The CAIR report provides several examples illustrating how these methods have been used on young American Muslims, with the case of Osama Ahmed being just one of many.
\nIn early 2011, Osama Ahmed, an 18-year-old US citizen, experienced a harrowing encounter upon his return to the US from Yemen. Right after disembarking from his flight, Ahmed was taken to an interrogation room where he was kept for some 7 hours of questioning by FBI agents before he was released. Days later, FBI agents visited Ahmed\u2019s home and forced him to be an informant in Yemen. They even offered to teach him how to skydive. One of the agents informed Ahmed that he was on the No-Fly List, but if he cooperated, his name would be removed.
\nThese two examples highlight a concerning pattern of targeting individuals within the Muslim community in the US, regardless of their age, political status or criminal background.
\nDespite federal law enforcement officials consistently identifying white supremacists as the primary threats to national security, the focus of the FBI watchlist disproportionately targets Muslims based on race and religion, as stated in the CAIR report. However, the question of whether white individuals end up on this list remains unanswered.
\nKhairullah remarks, \u201cDoes that happen to a John Doe who happens to be a white person? I mean, for God\u2019s sake, on January 6th of 2020, they almost toppled our democracy by trying to storm the Capitol building,\u201d he asserts, referring to the deeply ingrained racism found within and throughout the US political system.
\nBoth Mayor Khairullah and the CAIR report warn that the individuals on the FBI\u2019s watchlist face serious challenges and repercussions. For the past two decades, the Bureau\u2019s secret list has brought hardship and fear to the Muslim community.
\nHowever, the report cautions that, \u201cThe FBI\u2019s next million targets won\u2019t be Muslims. With the \u2018War on Terror\u2019 fog lifting, the FBI\u2019s secret list will one day find a new target. The next target will be our fellow Americans.\u201d
\nKhairullah urges the US Muslim community to be proactive and engage in local events and activities.
\n\u201cI urge everybody to volunteer in their local community, because that changes the narrative that people see of Muslims. So we all need to be involved, we all need to do our part in changing the narratives and then this way, we gain more support when we speak about issues of racism and discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD In an interview prominent Muslim Mayor Mohammad Khairullah revealed that he was invited at White House on the occasion of Eid ul Fitr on 1st May but FBI didn\u2019t cleared and he was informed that he is no longer invited in the gathering. Khairrullah told that half an hour before he was scheduled to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-341589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n