Nearly two dozen Muslim leaders pledged to boycott New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s annual interfaith breakfast Friday to protest police surveillance of Muslims following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The boycott comes more than a year after Bloomberg won kudos from members of the Muslim community, and others, for his passionate support of a proposed mosque and cultural center near the World Trade Center site.
Earlier this year, an Associated Press investigation found that the New York Police Department (NYPD) scrutinized more than 250 mosques and Muslim student groups in the years after terrorists toppled the Twin Towers. The report prompted a deluge of criticism, including calls from more than two dozen members of Congress seeking an investigation into the CIA’s collaboration with the monitoring effort.
In a letter to the mayor, the boycotting Muslim leaders said that their “community’s rights are being flagrantly violated” and that they could not “in good conscience appear at a public gathering with the government official who is ultimately responsible and smile for the camera as if all is well, when we know full well that it is not.” The letter described the NYPD program as “unjust, warrantless surveillance of our faith community.”
“The buck stops at the office of the Mayor for authorization of such operations,” the boycotters wrote.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne disputed the characterization of the police program as unlawful or specifically targeting a religious group.
“Contrary to such assertions,” he said in a statement, “the NYPD lawfully follows leads in terrorist-related investigations and does not engage in the kind of wholesale spying on communities that was falsely alleged.”
Browne added, “There have been at least 14 terrorist plots against New York City since the 9/11 attacks, and the NYPD is active engaged in making certain we are not attacked again.”
The boycott letter includes more than 50 signatures. Of those, 21 were invited by the mayor’s office to attend the breakfast.
Stu Loeser, a spokesman for the mayor, said a “couple dozen” Muslim leaders have told the mayor’s office that they will attend, which is roughly the same as in previous years.
“The mayor’s office and the NYPD maintain strong ties with the city’s Muslim communities — in fact, the police commissioner spoke at the Masjid Salaam Mosque in the Bronx [on Wednesday] afternoon just after announcing the great year-end crime stats,” Loeser said.
(Source: MyFoxNY)
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Frankly, I don’t feel too bad for those little Muslims. I believe that they all want nothing more than to see this country accept sharia law, and THAT means that they are anti American. There! I said it. Anyone disagree with me?