Muslims upset by NYPD to boycott mayor's breakfast
FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2011 file photo, people pass below a New York Police Department security camera, upper left, which is above a mosque on Fulton St., in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York. Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods. The imams and activists said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that they're disturbed at his response to a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing New York Police Department intelligence-gathering programs that monitored Muslim groups, businesses and houses of worship. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
FILE - In this Aug. 18, 2011 file photo, people pass below a New York Police Department security camera, upper left, which is above a mosque on Fulton St., in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in New York. Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods. The imams and activists said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that they're disturbed at his response to a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing New York Police Department intelligence-gathering programs that monitored Muslim groups, businesses and houses of worship. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2011 file photo, people walk past immigrant Arab businesses on Steinway Street in the Astoria neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York. Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods. The imams and activists said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that they're disturbed at his response to a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing New York Police Department intelligence-gathering programs that monitored Muslim groups, businesses and houses of worship. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)
In this photo provided by the New York Police Department, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, top, third from left, and Bronx Borough Patrol Chief Carlos M. Gomez, top right, join Imam Sefou Mohamed, far left, and Imam Adbullah Bajaha, smiling, center, at Masjid Salam mosque in the Bronx borough of New York, with members of the police department's United Youth Soccer League. Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods. The imams and activists said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that they're disturbed at his response to a series of stories by the Associated Press detailing New York Police Department intelligence-gathering programs that monitored Muslim groups, businesses and houses of worship. (AP Photo/New York Police Department)
FILE - In a Sept. 26, 2009, file photo released by the New York City Police Department, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, center, briefs New York police officials and John O. Brennan, center left, assistant to the president for Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism, and Deputy New York Police Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen, center right, on events surrounding the alleged plot to bomb New York commuter trains, at Police Headquarters in New York. Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods. The imams and activists said in a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg that they're disturbed at his response to a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing New York Police Department intelligence-gathering programs that monitored Muslim groups, businesses and houses of worship. (AP Photo/NYPD, File)
FILE - In this March 10, 2011 file photo, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The CIA said it is investigating whether the agency broke the law by helping the New York Police Department build intelligence-gathering programs that monitored life in Muslim communities. Several Muslim leaders have declined invitations to the mayor's annual year-end interfaith breakfast on Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, saying they're upset at police department efforts to infiltrate mosques and spy on Muslim neighborhoods. they said they were disappointed by what he said after the Associated Press reported on the NYPD's efforts to infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods and mosques with aggressive programs designed by a CIA officer who worked with the department after the Sept. 11 attacks. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt, File)
NEW YORK (AP) ? The goodwill that Mayor Michael Bloomberg built among Muslims with his support of the planned mosque near ground zero was threatened this week as Islamic religious and civic leaders decried a recently disclosed police effort to gather intelligence on Muslim neighborhoods.
Fifteen Muslim clerics and community figures said they will boycott the mayor's annual interfaith breakfast Friday over the surveillance program, whose existence was revealed in a series of Associated Press articles.
The breakfast, traditionally held at the historic New York Public Library building on 42nd Street, has long served as a way to showcase the city's diversity during the overlapping winter holidays.
"We felt uncomfortable going to have coffee and doughnuts with the mayor knowing that this civil liberties crisis that's affecting all New Yorkers is not going to be addressed," said Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid, president of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York, a group of 35 clerics and their congregations.
He and other Muslim activists and clerics sent a letter to Bloomberg this week turning down their invitations. About three dozen other people signed the letter as supporters, including rabbis, a Roman Catholic nun, Protestant pastors and a Quaker, though it was unclear how many had been invited to the breakfast.
"I couldn't be there while knowing that the mayor supports, if not established, this warrantless spying apparatus," said Hesham El-Meligy, founder of the Building Bridges Coalition of Staten Island.
Activists accused Bloomberg of squandering the goodwill built up last year when he fiercely defended a proposed Islamic prayer and cultural center not far from where the World Trade Center stood. The mosque is still in the planning stages.
Bloomberg had also won praise from Muslim leaders for criticizing anti-Islamic rhetoric and offering words of compassion after fires in the Bronx killed a large Muslim family and destroyed a mosque.
"However, despite these welcome and positive actions, very disturbing revelations have come to light regarding the city's treatment of Muslim New Yorkers," the letter said.
Bloomberg's office has said it expects about two dozen Muslim leaders to attend the breakfast.
"You're going to see a big turnout tomorrow, and it's nice that all faiths can get together," the mayor said Thursday. Boycott participants "are going to miss a chance to have a great breakfast."
He and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have insisted their counterterrorism programs are legal.
"Contrary to assertions, 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," police spokesman Paul Browne said in an email Thursday.
However, records examined by the AP show the police department collected information on people who were neither accused nor suspected of wrongdoing.
The AP series detailed police department efforts to infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods and mosques with aggressive programs designed by a CIA officer. Documents reviewed by the AP revealed that undercover police officers known as "rakers" visited businesses such as Islamic bookstores and cafes, chatting up store owners to determine their ethnicities and gauge their views. They also played cricket and eavesdropped in ethnic clubs.
The surveillance efforts have been credited with enabling police to thwart a 2004 plot to bomb the Herald Square subway station.
Critics said the efforts amount to ethnic profiling and violate court guidelines that limit how and why police can collect intelligence before there is evidence of a crime. They have asked a judge to issue a restraining order against the police.
Participants in the boycott said they feel betrayed by the city.
"Civic engagement is a two-way street. We've done our part as a community; we're waiting for the city to do their part," said Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab-American Association of New York.
Other Muslim leaders said they disagreed with the boycott.
"I believe that engagement is more important. I think everyone disagrees with the way the NYPD is penetrating the community, but I think generalizing everything else as bad is not appropriate," said Imam Shamsi Ali of the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. "The mayor's not perfect, but there are many things about him we need to appreciate. And I think working with him is a way of appreciation."
The surveillance has revealed deep divisions in the city a decade after 9/11. Many New Yorkers say they empathize with Muslims living under the pall of suspicion, but also support aggressive police efforts against would-be terrorists.
The New York Daily News and New York Post defended the police in editorials this week, with the Daily News calling the AP's reporting "overheated, overhyped."
The AP's senior managing editor, Michael Oreskes, sent a letter to the newspaper Thursday in defense of the news organization.
"These were stories about where our city was drawing the line in protecting New Yorkers from another 9/11 attack," Oreskes wrote. "The stories were based on extensive reporting and documents. It is a journalist's job to report the activities of government. It is up to citizens to decide about those activities."
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Online:
Read AP's previous stories and documents about the NYPD at: http://www.ap.org/nypd
Letter to Bloomberg: http://interfaithletter.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/hello-world/
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Associated Press writers Samantha Gross and Tom Hays in New York and Adam Goldman in Washington contributed to this story.
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