YO FUCK RACISM AND RELIGIOUS PREJUDICE

the spying, racial profiling, racism that the NYPD's been engaged in is, well, racist and alienating to muslims, but also a decidedly 3rd rate strategy to root out violent extremists.

assuming one doesn't believe that all muslims are conspiring to "take over" and that the vast majority are super stoked to live in a pluralistic society of religious freedom and all that, these crazy violent muslims have to end up worshipping and chilling with lots of super chill muslims. and who fucking better to pick up these lunatics then their fellow muslims? their fellow arabic speakers? their fellow, sophisticated parsers of koranic meaning?

apparently there was even some poor schmuck sent on a white water rafting trip with college muslims to monitor the hell outta these kids who took note on how many times they prayed. YO! THAT IS THE LEVEL OF SOPHISTICATION THAT THE NYPD CAN BRING TO THIS! like "yo, that guy prayed FIVE TIMES one day, isn't that like, so much? probably a sign of violent extremism" some poor schmuck whose never even heard of a goddamn muezzin.

a sure way to make people close ranks and be sympathetic to violent lunatics is exactly this kind of ham-handed, INSANELY RACIST surveillance. they might even conclude, kind of rightly, that there is a "war" against muslims.

imagine if, instead, there was just a good faith effort saying, yo, you muslims are super chill but there are some crazies in your midst, like the proliferating white, christian crazies in scandanavia and other parts of europe. if you guys would take a passionate stand against those sorts of crazies and tip us off to the bonafide lunatics we'd be able to leave you all at peace and stave off demands from racists that you're all conspiring to slit the neck of a goat (which stands for america or something) and that we've gotta treat you and your co religionists like you're terrorists.

also please tip  us off whenever you notice another bigoted, violence inciting christian or jew doing their thing, because they do that pretty often and it's aways nice to highlight that end of it.