CAIRO — Media reports that authorities in California are monitoring mosques have sent shockwaves across the Muslim minority in America’s most populous state.

“[This] has again raised concerns that our community is being watched,” Corey Saylor, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told The Los Angeles Times on Thursday, May 29.

Citing classified files, the San Diego Union-Tribune revealed last week that FBI agents were monitoring mosques in California’s cities of Los Angeles and San Diego.

It named the Islamic Center of San Diego as one of Muslim places under government surveillance.

“We’ve heard about this in the past, but this article appears to be the first confirmation that surveillance is taking place,” Saylor said.

“Has faith moved from a personal choice to probable cause?”

An FBI spokesman in San Diego declined to comment, saying they regularly reaches out to Muslims through town meetings.

American Muslims have long complained about FBI agents questioning them about attending mosques and the imams’ sermons, according to the daily.

US President George W. Bush has authorized controversial domestic spying programs following the 9/11 attacks.

The New York Times had revealed that the National Security Agency “directly” tapped the country’s main communications systems without court-approved warrants.

The Washington Post also reported that the FBI had included major telecommunications companies on its payroll to store Internet and phone records for years for the agency to use in anti-terror investigations.

The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been spying on the financial records of American military personnel and civilians for years in an aggressive expansion by both agencies into domestic intelligence gathering.

Hearings

The mosque surveillance reports prompted civil rights groups to call for the House of Representatives and the Senate to hold hearings on the issue.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has joined the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California and CAIR chapters in Anaheim and San Diego in championing the hearings campaign.

They said in a letter to the chairmen of the Senate judiciary committees and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that hearings are needed to determine the extent of the surveillance and whether people are being monitored because they are Muslim.

Ramona Ripston, the executive director of the ACLU Southern California, believes the hearings would compel the government “to say why they’re amassing this information.”

ACLU lawyers regularly visit mosques to advise worshipers not to answer questions from FBI agents.

“There’s a lot of suspicion of the Muslim community,” said Ripston.

There are between six to seven million Muslims in the US.

Since 9/11, Muslims have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was targeting their faith.

A 2007 survey by Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum found that the majority of Americans know very little about the practices of Islam.

It indicated that attitudes toward Muslims and Islam have grown more negative in recent years.

Source: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1209358048780&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout