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Men walk out of Omar Mosque, the place of worship attended by Sayfullo
Saipov, the suspect who drove a truck on a bike path of lower Manhattan, in
Paterson, New Jersey on November 03, 2017.
Photo: Virginia Lozano/The Intercept
Long Before Halloween Attack, NYPD Spying on Sayfullo Saipov's Mosque Broke
Down Community Bonds
Dina Sayedahmed
November 10 2017, 12:52 p.m.
Within minutes of the Friday prayer ending, volunteers at Masjid Omar in
Paterson, New Jersey, hurried congregants along and began rolling up the
tarps that had been laid out in the mosque's courtyard to accommodate
overflow. It was a familiar process, and the worshippers cooperated. Most
got up immediately, found their shoes, and hurried out; only a few lingered.
The coordinated exit appeared to follow a standing policy at Masjid Omar.
Sayfullo Saipov, who drove a truck through a bike line in Lower Manhattan on
Halloween, killing eight people, lived directly behind Masjid Omar and
regularly prayed there for the past three months, according to two members
of the local Muslim community. Paterson boasts one of New Jersey's largest
and most vibrant Muslim and Arab populations, according to Census data in
recent years. Strings of halal meat shops, Arab- and Muslim-owned
restaurants, lively cafes, and at least five other mosques dot the map
within just a few miles of Masjid Omar. On Fridays, the peak day of the week
for Muslim houses of worship, many of the mosques in the area remain open
between prayers, bustling with young people and serving as a holistic
community center. But not Masjid Omar.
On Fridays, many of the mosques in the area remain open between prayers,
serving as a holistic community center. But not Masjid Omar.
In February 2012, Masjid Omar was named in some of the early revelations of
the New York Police Department's dragnet surveillance program on Muslims in
the metropolitan area, according to the Associated Press. The mosque had
been added to the NYPD's long list of Muslim houses of worship to surveil in
2006, even though the NYPD's report on the mosque did not indicate that any
suspicious individuals attended or that criminal activity had occurred
there. Undercover agents sent to Masjid Omar recorded conversations and took
note of worshippers' license plate numbers and ethnic backgrounds, according
to AP.
After the surveillance targeting Muslim communities was exposed in a
Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press series, the NYPD claimed its spying
was an effective way to weed out terrorism. However, the department itself
admitted the surveillance did not bring about productive leads. The story of
the October 31 attack in New York City bears out the ineptitude of the
program: Saipov, who had moved to New Jersey just a few months ago, had been
reportedly worshipping at Masjid Omar.
The NYPD spying also had a deleterious effect on the communities that were
put under surveillance. Several mosques - Masjid Omar being one - responded
to the exposure of the NYPD program by minimizing their activities and
slashing resources for their programs. Without these programs, which
introduced a social atmosphere to mosques, community bonds could weaken.
And, despite continued prayer services at Masjid Omar, suspicions linger
that undercover agents might be mingling among worshippers.
PATERSON, NJ - FEBRUARY 24: Men participate in Friday Prayer at the Omar
Mosque on February 24, 2012 in Paterson, New Jersey. The New York Police
Department (NYPD) has come under renewed criticism following revelations
that officers crossed into New Jersey to conduct surveillance on Newark and
area muslims, including students at Rutgers University. The NYPD contends
that they informed their counterparts in New Jersey and that the
surveillance was part of their post 9/11 security measures. Officials in New
Jersey, including Newark mayor Cory Booker, claim they were not informed.
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Men participate in Friday Prayer at the Masjid Omar on Feb. 24, 2012, in
Paterson, N.J. The New York Police Department had come under renewed
criticism following revelations that officers crossed into New Jersey to
conduct surveillance on Muslims.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Youness Zohd, who lives and works in Paterson, has been a regular worshipper
at Masjid Omar for nearly a decade. He recognized Saipov's face from the
mosque but, due to the restrictive structure of Masjid Omar, hadn't
socialized or engaged with him - or, for that matter, any of the mosque's
newcomers. Zohd, who continued praying at the mosque, noticed the drastic
changes after the surveillance scandal broke at Masjid Omar. (Disclosure:
Several years ago, as a child, I sporadically attended Masjid Omar community
activities at the invitation of friends.)
"Before we found out about the surveillance, we would sit together after
prayers and keep up with each other's lives," said Zohd, 36. "If someone
needed something, we got together and helped him. But now, if we try to sit
in the mosque after the prayers and talk, the mosque's leaders tell us to go
home or to go hang out at the cafes."
"They didn't want to give the NYPD any reason to come back and keep spying
on us. They were afraid. We were all afraid."
Zohd believes that the changes in the mosque's structure, which were only
reinforced after the surveillance became public, were protective measures
taken by the mosque's leaders. "They didn't want to give the NYPD any reason
to come back and keep spying on us," Zohd said. "They were afraid. We were
all afraid."
Eliminating extracurricular mosque activity and adopting pacifist and
exaggerated patriotic speech are common strategies that many mosque leaders
adopt in response to surveillance. The Friday after the Halloween attack,
Abdelkhalik Elnakib, the imam of Masjid Omar, made it a point to completely
dissociate himself and the entire Masjid Omar community from Saipov and his
actions. He centered his 20-minute sermon around a verse in the Quran that
has been tokenized over the years and is often dug up in response to violent
events.
"Whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land
- it is as if he had slain mankind entirely," Elnakib, 63, told the
overcrowded mosque in Arabic. "And whoever saves one - it is as if he had
saved mankind entirely."
"We grieve for them," Elnakib went on, speaking of the victims' families.
"We feel the emotional impact of this tragedy."
As in the aftermath of so many attacks by individuals who share their faith,
Muslims in the U.S. can feel pressure to emphasize the peacefulness of their
lives and affirm their love for America. The sentiment was on display at
Masjid Omar after the Halloween attack. "There is no enmity between us and
the American people," Elnakib said. "What makes them grieve makes us grieve,
and what makes them happy makes us happy. If they are in pain, then we are
in pain."
The exclamations can turn conspicuous in their breadth. Elnakib praised
America's health care system and - ironically, for a mosque that was
targeted for little more than its creed - its freedom of religion. He said
the freedoms Muslims couldn't find in the "Muslim world," they found in
America.
Yet the undue scrutiny on many American Muslims has curtailed some of the
freedoms their government is said to enshrine. Mosque leaders often fashion
their houses of worship as "apolitical" spaces, eschewing discussions of
social injustices against their own communities, such as the war on terror,
FBI entrapment, institutionalized racism, government surveillance, and
police brutality.
A neighbor of Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect who drove a truck on a bike path
of lower Manhattan, sits on her porch across from his apartment (9) in
Paterson, New Jersey on November 03, 2017.
A neighbor of Sayfullo Saipov, the suspect who drove a truck on a bike path
of Lower Manhattan, sits on her porch across from his apartment in Paterson,
N.J., on Nov. 03, 2017.
Photo: Virginia Lozano/The Intercept
Surveillance eats at the fabric of Muslim communities, said Sahar Aziz, a
professor of national security, civil rights, and Middle East law at Rutgers
University Law School. Without safety and privacy, Muslims' places of
resource and spiritual refuge become places of fear and cynicism. "We're
punishing them" - Muslims - "and denying them fundamental right to a safe,
spiritual, and resourceful space," Aziz said. "And we're not even making
society safer in doing that."
The key to understanding the ill effects of this spying lies in a
distinction made by Aziz between targeted surveillance of reasonably
suspicious individuals and blanket surveillance of entire mosques. The
latter is an ineffective method of finding out potential terrorists, she
said, with Saipov's case being the most recent example.
"To expect the Muslim community to be able to weed out dangerous people is a
heavy and unfair burden."
"Saipov was a lone wolf," said Aziz. "Lone wolves keep their plans to
themselves. There was no way to predict that Saipov would've done what he
did. Just because you prayed next to someone, that doesn't mean you can
predict their next move. To expect the Muslim community to be able to weed
out dangerous people is a heavy and unfair burden."
One of Saipov's neighbors, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear
of backlash, told The Intercept they had been interviewed repeatedly by the
FBI since the Halloween attack.
"It was as though they expected me to know something or to have an idea of
something, but you guys know more than I do," the neighbor said, between
chuckles, referring to both the news media and law enforcement. "You found
out about this before I did. I came home from work and didn't figure it out
until I saw everyone in our lot" - the parking lot of the small apartment
complex where Saipov and his neighbor lived. "I think we're all looking for
a reason, but I'm just as confused. I don't have a reason for it either."
The neighbor, who is also Muslim, described Saipov's family as kind,
generous people. Their children often played together, and their wives
swapped pots of traditional food. Days later, the neighbor was still unable
to wrap his mind around the incident, unable to picture the same Saipov from
the apartment complex carrying out the heinous attack.
Experts on counterterror law enforcement said there are deep problems in
asking civilians - neighbors and community members - to spot potential
terrorists when even authorities had failed to make the necessary
connections.
"It's a flawed notion that civil society can point out potential
terrorists," said Michael German, a former FBI special agent who specialized
in domestic terrorism and covert operations. "The FBI investigated several
people like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Omar Mateen, and Nidal Hasan, who later went
on to commit violent acts. If the FBI couldn't pinpoint them as suspicious,
then how do you expect civil society to do that? That's not their job."
Mass surveillance programs are ineffective and damaging to the Muslim
community, German said, and the excessive secrecy surrounding them
undermines government accountability. The unprecedented power to collect
information, he added, can also become an impediment in trying to identify
the most useful potential threads: When several mosques are being surveilled
simultaneously, information piles in excess, making it more difficult for
law enforcement officers to do their job.
Lone-wolf attacks, like Saipov's, are not new, but they are rapidly
increasing, jumping from just two in the 1950s to more than 35 so far in the
2010s. Encouraging coordination between Muslim and Arab communities and law
enforcement to identify lone wolves makes the dangerous assumption that
these communities are aware of suspects - one of the cornerstones of
Islamophobia - and merely lack the incentive to turn them in. Nonetheless,
if that is the goal, it's a tack made more - not less - difficult by
widespread surveillance of Muslim communities; the partnerships and
coordination, after all, would need to be based in trust.
"It's disingenuous of the government and law enforcement to claim
coordination between themselves and the Muslim community if they're still
surveilling them and expecting collaboration from them," Aziz said. "If the
government wants to earn the trust of the Muslim community, they're going to
have to give them the freedoms and rights to privacy that all other groups
in the U.S. enjoy."
