FBI suspicions of Muslims? Perhaps well-founded.

http://tinyurl.com/y8rafyk
Muslims Say F.B.I. Tactics Sow Anger and Fear
By PAUL VITELLO and KIRK SEMPLE NYT
...In March, a national coalition of Islamic organizations warned that it would cease cooperating with the F.B.I. unless the agency stopped infiltrating mosques and using “agents provocateurs to trap unsuspecting Muslim youth.”Linda Sarsour, director of the Arab-American Association of New York, said that bonds with the F.B.I. were not permanent.****I'll bet not.**** ......after an imam in Queens was charged with aiding what the authorities called a bomb-making plot, a group of South Asian Muslims there began compiling a database of complaints about their brushes with counterterrorism investigators...“There is a sense that law enforcement is viewing our communities not as partners but as objects of suspicion,” said Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America,...a spate of recent cases — from the alleged bomb plot by a former Manhattan coffee vendor, Najibullah Zazi, to the shootings at Fort Hood, in Texas — has heightened Americans’ concerns about homegrown terrorism. Muslim leaders have promised to redouble efforts to combat extremism in their ranks.****Perhaps "redoubling" is insufficient since the extremism may be growing exponentially.****...worry about the fallout for the vast numbers of the innocent...“This is a national security issue,” said David Schanzer, who heads the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. “It’s absolutely vital that the F.B.I. and the Muslim-American community clear the air and figure out how to work together.”... Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, said in an interview that it tries to resolve anxieties by giving community leaders “explanations, where the circumstances permit, and resolving concerns where possible.”...Mr. Bresson said that no group is spotlighted because of its members’ religion or ethnicity. ... The new guidelines, which the F.B.I. confirmed in October in response to a suit filed by the civil rights group Muslim Advocates, make it easier to plant informers and allow agents to include ethnicity and religion in the assessment of targets, as long as those are not the only factors considered....the case stoked apprehensions that the government sees Arab-Americans and Muslims as a people apart....Some factions within the agency, he said, have always been leery of Islamic and Arab-American organizations, considering their loyalties to be divided....The American Muslim Task Force on Civil Rights and Elections, which threatened to cease cooperating with the F.B.I., has not yet done so....the unraveling of ties between the F.B.I. and Muslim-Americans began two years ago, with the F.B.I.’s decision to stop sharing information with the nation’s most prominent Muslim civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations....the specter looming largest among immigrant Arabs and Muslims is fear of deportation. And some say the F.B.I. has used that threat forcefully....Mr. Rolince, the former F.B.I. agent, said he understood the worries, but felt they were overblown. “The F.B.I. has 12,500 agents,” he said. “Believe me, there’s not enough of them to waste time looking at you unless they have a good reason.” ****Most smokers don't get lung cancer but enough do that sanctions against smoking have been broadly accepted and the argument that most do not is irrelevant.****