Fraudulent Law Enforcement Training Endangers Our National Security

July 23, 2011


Recent media coverage of law enforcement trainings done by virulent Islamophobes such as Walid Shoebat has shown that flawed material is being disseminated throughout the federal training community. Federal monies appropriated to these divisive individuals are inherently counterproductive to the effective advancement of our national security. Shoebat has turned his spewing of hate speech into a career. According to a recent report by Drew Griffin for “AC360,” Shoebat made around $560,000 in 2009 for his counterterrorism trainings to law enforcement and emergency responders.

Federal training for police officers and first responders from poisonous individuals is not an effective method of training and will not properly equip them to keep our nation safe. Instead it may increase racial and ethnic profiling of those who are perceived as Muslims. Misinformation that is aligned with hate speech should not be tolerated in trainings funded by the government, and federal agencies need to be more transparent in their vetting process when selecting counterterrorism experts. Reportedly, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent $40 million since 2006 on counterterrorism training.

From a national security perspective, training conducted by individuals who espouse hateful speech such as “terrorism and Islam are inseparable” is problematic when taxpayer funds are being used and wasted on fraudulent and ineffective programs.

Sens. Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have expressed their concern that Muslim Americans are being labeled as part of the problem in these trainings.

“Muslim Americans are central allies in our fight against violent Islamist extremism, and any training that implies otherwise is both inaccurate and counterproductive to our shared goals,” read a letter by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

Rather than producing effective material used to combat terrorism, these “experts” engage in propagating racial profiling as a means to further national security goals. Calls for investigating Muslim Americans in the medical, legal and academic fields, among others, have been highlighted in these training programs run by these anti-Muslim bigots and funded by the federal government. To implement successful and sustainable national security programs, these  “experts” must not be used to understand Islam.

These law enforcement training sessions should be part of a larger national security agenda operating on the premise of debunking myths on Muslims and Islam in order to further the goals of national security. The damage done by these trainings serves as a counterproductive hindrance to the work our law enforcement agencies are working toward. Essentially, federal funding should not be reaching these individuals, and instead, these trainings should be conducted by qualified experts who have backgrounds in Islamic studies, competencies working within the Muslim American community and a realization that one of the biggest assets to furthering our national security goals is understanding and partnering with the Muslim American community, as expressed by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security.

The for-profit nature of law enforcement training within the national security context has become a cottage industry for these individuals, who have no such background to project themselves as experts on Islam. Enforcing our national security agenda cannot be based on flawed data from individuals who seek only to gain profit and disruptive discourse. The lack of proper training will only build a faulty foundation of information based on marginalizing Islam rather than addressing the goals and tools to further enhancing counterterrorism measures.

DHS and the federal government must issue statements to explain how fraudulent training with our tax dollars have gone unnoticed for so long and how they will prevent such federally-funded hate speech and calls for racial profiling trainings from happening again. This colossal blunder damages DHS’ credibility in our communities, hence endangering the partnership we have assiduously and effectively built in the last 10 years.




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